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Yeah I don't know how anyone with a cursory knowledge about how it works would think that it's about privacy. Especially when there are alternatives (such as Mo

Yeah I don't know how anyone with a cursory knowledge about how it works would think that it's about privacy. Especially when there are alternatives (such as Monero) that do explicitly try to solve that problem.

acdha 6y ago
Have you ever known someone who got involved in some MLM scheme and didn’t want to admit that they a) didn’t check the sales pitch and b) have no way to make more money than they put in unless they convince you to buy something? Bitcoin is the tech version of that.
- kjrose 6y ago
  This is also true for gold, silver and any other currency. The value only exists because someone else is willing to exchange it for goods or services.
  - acdha 6y ago
    You’re leaving out a lot: gold and silver have significant industrial usage and aesthetic demand so while their rates fluctuate the floor is based on thousands of years of consistent value. You can certainly lose money buying high and selling low but there’s no equivalent to the way Bitcoin could fall below the cost of running the network if people switched to something else because only a few major holders have a significant reason to use it. Since it’s such a small fraction of a percentage of the global economy, almost nobody other than speculators would notice. That brings me to why your point is wrong: sovereign currencies are backed by governments and that means that there is some intrinsic demand because that currency is used to pay taxes and is paid to civil servants, contractors, etc. In all but the worst run countries that has a substantial anchoring effect. Bitcoin has nothing like that, which is one reason why it’s so volatile – which is great for a speculator but not anyone writing contracts with values set in BTC.
    - thatswrong0 6y ago
      Pardon my babbling - maybe I'm naive but thats why I'm way more on board with ETH over BTC because it can at least facilitate new sorts of.. financial instruments and products (call it what you will, but the fact that NFTs are currently popping off for some artists is pretty cool to see, even if it feels contrived), whereas the value of BTC is basically resting entirely on its first mover advantage. And this is to say nothing of the energy requirements and ecological costs of proof of work.. It's hard for me to just accept the fact that hype drives demand, and demand sets the price. The hype can be a meme or be seemingly ignorant of better alternatives, but it doesn't matter the speculative feedback loop can apparently irrationally sustain itself for a long time. I really wonder what the next major recession is going to look like.
      - acdha 6y ago
        Basically, I’d look at the hard demand as people who _need_ to have a particular asset: if you have a contract saying you’re paying me in Bitcoin that means that you’re going to pay the fees needed to keep the network operating. Very, very few people have those and so in most cases the decision is either based in the belief that you’ll be able to sell for a greater value later or an ideological belief, neither of which is especially stable.
    - dkersten 6y ago
      > You’re leaving out a lot: gold and silver have significant industrial usage Most of the traded gold sits in a vault and is never touched as then it would need to be retested for purity or something. Sure, if the economy would crash to the point that gold-as-an-investment-instrument is worthless, you could take it out of the vault and sell it for industrial use, so it has at least some intrinsic value, but I doubt it would retain a lot of its value if everyone tried doing that.
      - acdha 6y ago
        That’s why I said floor: if you buy gold now, you might not be able to sell it for as much as you hope but it’s exceedingly unlikely that the value will drop to $0 because industrial users will still use and people will keep buying jewelry. You might have to sit on it for a while but thousands of years of history suggest that demand will persist. In contrast, Bitcoin’s hashes have no industrial or aesthetic value and they’re not even linked to the concept. If Ethereum becomes more popular, cryptocurrencies could be successful as a concept even if Bitcoin speculators have millions of dollars worth of inputs nobody wants to buy. Since there are almost no situations where someone has no other options for a transaction, it’s really for the network to collapse if the price drops below the mining threshold - the number of people who are going to pay a premium to avoid PayPal/Square, wire transfers, etc. is unlikely to be enough to support an intentionally inefficient architecture.

acdha 6y ago

Have you ever known someone who got involved in some MLM scheme and didn’t want to admit that they a) didn’t check the sales pitch and b) have no way to make more money than they put in unless they convince you to buy something? Bitcoin is the tech version of that.

kjrose 6y ago
This is also true for gold, silver and any other currency. The value only exists because someone else is willing to exchange it for goods or services.
- acdha 6y ago
  You’re leaving out a lot: gold and silver have significant industrial usage and aesthetic demand so while their rates fluctuate the floor is based on thousands of years of consistent value. You can certainly lose money buying high and selling low but there’s no equivalent to the way Bitcoin could fall below the cost of running the network if people switched to something else because only a few major holders have a significant reason to use it. Since it’s such a small fraction of a percentage of the global economy, almost nobody other than speculators would notice. That brings me to why your point is wrong: sovereign currencies are backed by governments and that means that there is some intrinsic demand because that currency is used to pay taxes and is paid to civil servants, contractors, etc. In all but the worst run countries that has a substantial anchoring effect. Bitcoin has nothing like that, which is one reason why it’s so volatile – which is great for a speculator but not anyone writing contracts with values set in BTC.
  - thatswrong0 6y ago
    Pardon my babbling - maybe I'm naive but thats why I'm way more on board with ETH over BTC because it can at least facilitate new sorts of.. financial instruments and products (call it what you will, but the fact that NFTs are currently popping off for some artists is pretty cool to see, even if it feels contrived), whereas the value of BTC is basically resting entirely on its first mover advantage. And this is to say nothing of the energy requirements and ecological costs of proof of work.. It's hard for me to just accept the fact that hype drives demand, and demand sets the price. The hype can be a meme or be seemingly ignorant of better alternatives, but it doesn't matter the speculative feedback loop can apparently irrationally sustain itself for a long time. I really wonder what the next major recession is going to look like.
    - acdha 6y ago
      Basically, I’d look at the hard demand as people who _need_ to have a particular asset: if you have a contract saying you’re paying me in Bitcoin that means that you’re going to pay the fees needed to keep the network operating. Very, very few people have those and so in most cases the decision is either based in the belief that you’ll be able to sell for a greater value later or an ideological belief, neither of which is especially stable.
  - dkersten 6y ago
    > You’re leaving out a lot: gold and silver have significant industrial usage Most of the traded gold sits in a vault and is never touched as then it would need to be retested for purity or something. Sure, if the economy would crash to the point that gold-as-an-investment-instrument is worthless, you could take it out of the vault and sell it for industrial use, so it has at least some intrinsic value, but I doubt it would retain a lot of its value if everyone tried doing that.
    - acdha 6y ago
      That’s why I said floor: if you buy gold now, you might not be able to sell it for as much as you hope but it’s exceedingly unlikely that the value will drop to $0 because industrial users will still use and people will keep buying jewelry. You might have to sit on it for a while but thousands of years of history suggest that demand will persist. In contrast, Bitcoin’s hashes have no industrial or aesthetic value and they’re not even linked to the concept. If Ethereum becomes more popular, cryptocurrencies could be successful as a concept even if Bitcoin speculators have millions of dollars worth of inputs nobody wants to buy. Since there are almost no situations where someone has no other options for a transaction, it’s really for the network to collapse if the price drops below the mining threshold - the number of people who are going to pay a premium to avoid PayPal/Square, wire transfers, etc. is unlikely to be enough to support an intentionally inefficient architecture.