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The anti-BTC sentiment on HN puzzles me. There is no intelligent critique. The doubts that are endlessly repeated here have been addressed in detail, and are av

The anti-BTC sentiment on HN puzzles me. There is no intelligent critique. The doubts that are endlessly repeated here have been addressed in detail, and are available online. Scaling and transaction throughput, energy consumption, state attacks, protocol weakness and lack of backing have all been responded to, to a sufficiently satisfactory degree.

ipsum2 6y ago
> to a sufficiently satisfactory degree That's an opinion, not a fact.
karpierz 6y ago
The core issue I've seen that goes unanswered is what problem does BTC solve? The answers I've seen so far are: 1. Avoiding Venezuelan hyper-inflation - it is a use-case, but doesn't really apply to the United States for example. 2. Store of value - volatility is way too high and there are much better alternatives (Treasury bonds) 3. Evading capital controls - it is a use-case, but not really applicable to most citizens in the US, and is unlikely to be applicable in the future. 4. Settlement layer for banks - banks already have a settlement layer that works for them. The downsides of a decentralized system vs. a centralized system are an increased cost (in energy, computation, time, money, etc.) of transaction. So what justifies the cost?
- JulianRaphael 6y ago
  This is not to refute your comment, but would you have been able to foresee what problems the internet will solve when ARPANET had 15 sites in 1971? I mean if someone would have told you back then that you'd be able to stream a movie in 4K from more or less anywhere in the world, you'd probably have laughed that person out of the room. So look at ARPANET back then and look at the internet today and how much innovation has happened on top of it. And I'm sure there will be a lot more innovation on the good ol' internet for many more years to come. In a similar way, BTC will evolve. It arguable already has. All the money flowing into cryptocurrencies and the crypto tech stack drives more and more competition (and yes - also corruption and bad behaviour) and some of it will be meaningful. Just like some tech startups were/are scams, some are kind of useless but harmless and a few changed the world. I personally don't know what problem(s) crypto will solve, but I can see that the technology summons a lot of creative energy. Creative energy that gets empowered through capital and channeled through competition will eventually produce breakthroughs somewhere. Let mankind's creativity run wild and let yourself surprise by the unexpected outcomes!
- MrMan 6y ago
  It solves so far the problem of how do I own an asset that only goes up? That is pretty much it
- thehappypm 6y ago
  The main issue with BTC being a store of value is that it's already hyper hoarded. Look it up -- it's far, far more concentrated in a few hands than any real-world currency or any real-world asset.
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  > The core issue I've seen that goes unanswered is what problem does BTC solve? To me, it's trustless money. I don't need to trust the US gov, I don't care about who they will elect or which wars they are gonna start or which banks they are gonna bailout. You can verify everything through code and math. If that's not valuable to you, maybe there's some other use case you're interested. If you've done your research and there's really no use case that excites you, then you can just ignore it.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    Trustless is bad. Humans need trust without it we get genocide and other bad things. Trustless is another way of expressing a desire for a fantasy world where people are not interdependent and each hacker can live in their own bubble with no obligations to society. At some point the militias you pay to kill and protect you will kill you hoping to find your treasure hoard
  - tw600040 6y ago
    It's NOT trustless money. Instead of trusting the US gov, you are trusting that this decentralized ledger will gain acceptance by the whole world. Which one is more of a leap of faith?
    - rawtxapp 6y ago
      > you are trusting that this decentralized ledger will gain acceptance by the whole world. Bitcoin itself is inherently trustless, that's the whole point of it. You can trust that there will never be more than 21M Bitcoins, you can trust that there will never be a double-spend, you can trust that it will run 24/7, etc. Whether it will gain worldwide acceptance is another matter (btw, adoption is increasing at very fast pace now), as long as there's a subset of the world that accepts it, that's good enough for me.
      - tablespoon 6y ago
        > Bitcoin itself is inherently trustless, that's the whole point of it. You can trust that there will never be more than 21M Bitcoins, you can trust that there will never be a double-spend, you can trust that it will run 24/7, etc. No it isn't. If the Bitcoin devs and miners agree on a change (for instance, to increase the cap), it'll happen, so you have to trust them.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
  The core issue that Bitcoin resolves is transferring power from MBAs to nerds.
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    I'd say it's more transfer of power from politicians to the the people, but we can always disagree.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
      well, MBAs here is a catch all phrase that includes politicians (even though they are usually lawyers).
- yahyaheee 6y ago
  Yeah the cost of decentralization is so high that you really need to be gaining something from it. I’ve long said that if drugs were legal it would remove most of bitcoins usage. Money is ultimately a reflection of power, and decentralization is merely a tool for when those power structures limit the market.
- qertoip 6y ago
  You seem to have a very US centric view. There are other 7.5 billion people in the World.
- afc 6y ago
  I use it as a store of value. Because I expect that it will continue to significantly appreciate (it has gone up 10X or more in the last year!), I couldn't care less about its volatility. I expect that as its exponential rise slows down (like all exponential growth, it must come to an end, perhaps after a few more halving cycles), the volatility will decrease accordingly. You're right that there are other systems to store value, but it doesn't follow that Bitcoin doesn't have value as one. It does for me, today. I've used it (together with some other systems to store value) in a very real sense to store portions of my salary and, months later, consume it, acquiring tangible assets. I couldn't care less about having to convert it to Euros first, that doesn't make it any less useful to me.
  - postalrat 6y ago
    Do you feel all crytocurrencies (or crtyptostoreofvalues) deserve the same status as bitcoin? If not what makes bitcoin special?
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    > I use it as a store of value. Because I expect that it will continue to significantly appreciate Then you don't use it as a store of value; you use it as a speculative investment.
    - afc 6y ago
      Meh, not really. At the end of the day, same as gold, bonds, stocks, fiat and real estate, I use it just to park the outputs of my production today, with what I think is a reasonable expectation that I'll be able to get it back in the future (which I use together with other similar asset types). So far, it has greatly fulfilled my expectations and I have little doubts that it'll continue to do so. I consider it very useful. But sure, you're free call it whatever you want and continue to push your world view, and miss the point that, for me, today, it is very useful.
foepys 6y ago
Please explain to me how scaling is solved in bitcoin. The lighting network requires an on-chain transaction to create and close a channel both times. Even if the world population were static it would take months to open a channel for everybody. Companies also need multiple channels each. LN also requires a constant observation of the LN network or malicious actors can just take more from a channel than allowed. This eventually leads to entities specialized in monitoring the chain for the average Joe. You could call those payment providers.
- kajumix 6y ago
  "LN also requires a constant observation of the LN network or malicious actors can just take more from a channel than allowed." Not true. Cite a source.
  - foepys 6y ago
    Very true and often conveniently omitted by LN fans. Lightning Network Whitepaper, section 3.3.4 states very clearly: "For this reason, one should periodically monitor the blockchain to see if one’s counterparty has broadcast an invalidated Commitment Transaction, or delegate a third party to do so. A third party can be delegated by only giving the Breach Remedy transaction to this third party. They can be incentivized to watch the blockchain broadcast such a transaction in the event of counterparty maliciousness by giving these third parties some fee in the output. Since the third party is only able to take action when the counterparty is acting maliciously, this third party does not have any power to force close of the channel."
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  > Please explain to me how scaling is solved in bitcoin. The lighting network requires an on-chain transaction to create and close a channel both times. Channel factories solve this issue by being able to create and close many channels at once. > LN also requires a constant observation of the LN network or malicious actors can just take more from a channel than allowed. These are called watchtowers, they never have control of your funds, they are simply watching the blockchain for counterparty actions, which if they tried to steal your money, they would end up losing all theirs, so just knowing that you might be using a watchtower is a very strong deterrent to not cheat you.
Spivak 6y ago
I don’t think they have which is why they keep coming up again. BTC genuinely uses a stupid amount of energy and there isn’t a terribly good reason for it since we don’t need a completely trustless financial system outside of some libertarian ideal. It would be necessary if establishing trust was impossible but it isn’t. BTC transaction fees and throughput are still an issue. Off-chain transactions that use the main network as a settlement layer is a non-solution that undermines the whole point of BTC. Might as well just use banks as a settlement later for the lighting network for all it matters at that point. Volatility and the fact that BTC is more of an investment vehicle than anything else matters if you want to actually use it to buy stuff. The fact that there is no form of monetary policy means that the available currency doesn’t expand and contract with growth in economic output which makes prices unstable and naturally deflationary. BTC is fine as a nerdy digital cash and commodity market based on its value as such but a general purpose currency it isn’t.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > we don’t need a completely trustless financial system outside of some libertarian ideal Who's "we" ? I certainly do need it.
  - jayd16 6y ago
    Most people. Almost no one has it so how can we all need it?
    - zadler 6y ago
      That’s missing the point. You could have said the same thing about the internet. But we are not collectively making this decision based on politics, the market has decided that crypto is valuable.
      - jayd16 6y ago
        With the internet its easy to extrapolate value from most tasks. Cheaper, faster, easier, always available, available at a distance etc. Why do I need a fully trustless system that is worse in every other category? Slow, more expensive, less consumer protection, etc. At the very least its not obvious and the market has not spoken. Even people speculating use off chain exchanges, not the chain itself.
mlcrypto 6y ago
The amount of economics, philosophy, history, & engineering one must understand to grasp Bitcoin is rare. That's why they say we are lucky to make our wealth in it
ArchD 6y ago
When people run out of good arguments, they give you tons of weak arguments. What you see and describe is a bullish sign for the thing they are trying to argue against. It's somewhat pointless to argue with random strangers on the Internet who may or may not appreciate your effort at reasonable discussion. If you believe in your own arguments, put your money where your mouth is and be proven right economically and be the one who quietly owns the last laugh.
FireBeyond 6y ago
> The anti-BTC sentiment on HN puzzles me. There is no intelligent critique. That's an ... amazingly blanket ... statement, for the countless thousands of words people here have said on the topic.
colinmhayes 6y ago
Bitcoin is incredibly wasteful and has no genuine use case that isn't better served by ethereum2 or monero.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The fact that there are competitors to a "store of value" is exactly the problem. When you put your money into funkopops you don't want people to suddenly decide that beanie babies are in again.
imtringued 6y ago
>There is no intelligent critique. Bitcoin "people" hail second layer scaling solutions like lightning which is basically paypal but decentralized. So why on earth would you not expect the people/companies who would participate in lightning to not just build their own scaling layer? What we are seeing is just that Visa and other competitors build a central scaling solution outside Bitcoin. Thus Bitcoin failed to decentralize anything if the vast majority of people using Bitcoin don't even interact with the block chain. The fees are incredibly high, so high that any Venezuelan that is using Bitcoin is already rich and just wants to flee the country with their wealth. It's not private, anyone who knows your address can track your balance, your transactions and can even send tainted Bitcoin to you, to ruin the untainted Bitcoin in your wallet. >lack of backing have all been responded to, to a sufficiently satisfactory degree. They haven't. The only thing I see is that people consider Bitcoin as the perfect Cryptocurrency as it is and nothing has to be changed to make it better, yet they expect the market cap to grow forever without doing anything for it, but still assume that the changes they refuse to implement will be the driving force of that value.

ipsum2 6y ago

> to a sufficiently satisfactory degree That's an opinion, not a fact.

karpierz 6y ago

The core issue I've seen that goes unanswered is what problem does BTC solve? The answers I've seen so far are: 1. Avoiding Venezuelan hyper-inflation - it is a use-case, but doesn't really apply to the United States for example. 2. Store of value - volatility is way too high and there are much better alternatives (Treasury bonds) 3. Evading capital controls - it is a use-case, but not really applicable to most citizens in the US, and is unlikely to be applicable in the future. 4. Settlement layer for banks - banks already have a settlement layer that works for them. The downsides of a decentralized system vs. a centralized system are an increased cost (in energy, computation, time, money, etc.) of transaction. So what justifies the cost?

JulianRaphael 6y ago
This is not to refute your comment, but would you have been able to foresee what problems the internet will solve when ARPANET had 15 sites in 1971? I mean if someone would have told you back then that you'd be able to stream a movie in 4K from more or less anywhere in the world, you'd probably have laughed that person out of the room. So look at ARPANET back then and look at the internet today and how much innovation has happened on top of it. And I'm sure there will be a lot more innovation on the good ol' internet for many more years to come. In a similar way, BTC will evolve. It arguable already has. All the money flowing into cryptocurrencies and the crypto tech stack drives more and more competition (and yes - also corruption and bad behaviour) and some of it will be meaningful. Just like some tech startups were/are scams, some are kind of useless but harmless and a few changed the world. I personally don't know what problem(s) crypto will solve, but I can see that the technology summons a lot of creative energy. Creative energy that gets empowered through capital and channeled through competition will eventually produce breakthroughs somewhere. Let mankind's creativity run wild and let yourself surprise by the unexpected outcomes!
MrMan 6y ago
It solves so far the problem of how do I own an asset that only goes up? That is pretty much it
thehappypm 6y ago
The main issue with BTC being a store of value is that it's already hyper hoarded. Look it up -- it's far, far more concentrated in a few hands than any real-world currency or any real-world asset.
rawtxapp 6y ago
> The core issue I've seen that goes unanswered is what problem does BTC solve? To me, it's trustless money. I don't need to trust the US gov, I don't care about who they will elect or which wars they are gonna start or which banks they are gonna bailout. You can verify everything through code and math. If that's not valuable to you, maybe there's some other use case you're interested. If you've done your research and there's really no use case that excites you, then you can just ignore it.
- MrMan 6y ago
  Trustless is bad. Humans need trust without it we get genocide and other bad things. Trustless is another way of expressing a desire for a fantasy world where people are not interdependent and each hacker can live in their own bubble with no obligations to society. At some point the militias you pay to kill and protect you will kill you hoping to find your treasure hoard
- tw600040 6y ago
  It's NOT trustless money. Instead of trusting the US gov, you are trusting that this decentralized ledger will gain acceptance by the whole world. Which one is more of a leap of faith?
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    > you are trusting that this decentralized ledger will gain acceptance by the whole world. Bitcoin itself is inherently trustless, that's the whole point of it. You can trust that there will never be more than 21M Bitcoins, you can trust that there will never be a double-spend, you can trust that it will run 24/7, etc. Whether it will gain worldwide acceptance is another matter (btw, adoption is increasing at very fast pace now), as long as there's a subset of the world that accepts it, that's good enough for me.
    - tablespoon 6y ago
      > Bitcoin itself is inherently trustless, that's the whole point of it. You can trust that there will never be more than 21M Bitcoins, you can trust that there will never be a double-spend, you can trust that it will run 24/7, etc. No it isn't. If the Bitcoin devs and miners agree on a change (for instance, to increase the cap), it'll happen, so you have to trust them.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
The core issue that Bitcoin resolves is transferring power from MBAs to nerds.
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  I'd say it's more transfer of power from politicians to the the people, but we can always disagree.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
    well, MBAs here is a catch all phrase that includes politicians (even though they are usually lawyers).
yahyaheee 6y ago
Yeah the cost of decentralization is so high that you really need to be gaining something from it. I’ve long said that if drugs were legal it would remove most of bitcoins usage. Money is ultimately a reflection of power, and decentralization is merely a tool for when those power structures limit the market.
qertoip 6y ago
You seem to have a very US centric view. There are other 7.5 billion people in the World.
afc 6y ago
I use it as a store of value. Because I expect that it will continue to significantly appreciate (it has gone up 10X or more in the last year!), I couldn't care less about its volatility. I expect that as its exponential rise slows down (like all exponential growth, it must come to an end, perhaps after a few more halving cycles), the volatility will decrease accordingly. You're right that there are other systems to store value, but it doesn't follow that Bitcoin doesn't have value as one. It does for me, today. I've used it (together with some other systems to store value) in a very real sense to store portions of my salary and, months later, consume it, acquiring tangible assets. I couldn't care less about having to convert it to Euros first, that doesn't make it any less useful to me.
- postalrat 6y ago
  Do you feel all crytocurrencies (or crtyptostoreofvalues) deserve the same status as bitcoin? If not what makes bitcoin special?
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  > I use it as a store of value. Because I expect that it will continue to significantly appreciate Then you don't use it as a store of value; you use it as a speculative investment.
  - afc 6y ago
    Meh, not really. At the end of the day, same as gold, bonds, stocks, fiat and real estate, I use it just to park the outputs of my production today, with what I think is a reasonable expectation that I'll be able to get it back in the future (which I use together with other similar asset types). So far, it has greatly fulfilled my expectations and I have little doubts that it'll continue to do so. I consider it very useful. But sure, you're free call it whatever you want and continue to push your world view, and miss the point that, for me, today, it is very useful.

foepys 6y ago

Please explain to me how scaling is solved in bitcoin. The lighting network requires an on-chain transaction to create and close a channel both times. Even if the world population were static it would take months to open a channel for everybody. Companies also need multiple channels each. LN also requires a constant observation of the LN network or malicious actors can just take more from a channel than allowed. This eventually leads to entities specialized in monitoring the chain for the average Joe. You could call those payment providers.

kajumix 6y ago
"LN also requires a constant observation of the LN network or malicious actors can just take more from a channel than allowed." Not true. Cite a source.
- foepys 6y ago
  Very true and often conveniently omitted by LN fans. Lightning Network Whitepaper, section 3.3.4 states very clearly: "For this reason, one should periodically monitor the blockchain to see if one’s counterparty has broadcast an invalidated Commitment Transaction, or delegate a third party to do so. A third party can be delegated by only giving the Breach Remedy transaction to this third party. They can be incentivized to watch the blockchain broadcast such a transaction in the event of counterparty maliciousness by giving these third parties some fee in the output. Since the third party is only able to take action when the counterparty is acting maliciously, this third party does not have any power to force close of the channel."
rawtxapp 6y ago
> Please explain to me how scaling is solved in bitcoin. The lighting network requires an on-chain transaction to create and close a channel both times. Channel factories solve this issue by being able to create and close many channels at once. > LN also requires a constant observation of the LN network or malicious actors can just take more from a channel than allowed. These are called watchtowers, they never have control of your funds, they are simply watching the blockchain for counterparty actions, which if they tried to steal your money, they would end up losing all theirs, so just knowing that you might be using a watchtower is a very strong deterrent to not cheat you.

Spivak 6y ago

I don’t think they have which is why they keep coming up again. BTC genuinely uses a stupid amount of energy and there isn’t a terribly good reason for it since we don’t need a completely trustless financial system outside of some libertarian ideal. It would be necessary if establishing trust was impossible but it isn’t. BTC transaction fees and throughput are still an issue. Off-chain transactions that use the main network as a settlement layer is a non-solution that undermines the whole point of BTC. Might as well just use banks as a settlement later for the lighting network for all it matters at that point. Volatility and the fact that BTC is more of an investment vehicle than anything else matters if you want to actually use it to buy stuff. The fact that there is no form of monetary policy means that the available currency doesn’t expand and contract with growth in economic output which makes prices unstable and naturally deflationary. BTC is fine as a nerdy digital cash and commodity market based on its value as such but a general purpose currency it isn’t.

matheusmoreira 6y ago
> we don’t need a completely trustless financial system outside of some libertarian ideal Who's "we" ? I certainly do need it.
- jayd16 6y ago
  Most people. Almost no one has it so how can we all need it?
  - zadler 6y ago
    That’s missing the point. You could have said the same thing about the internet. But we are not collectively making this decision based on politics, the market has decided that crypto is valuable.
    - jayd16 6y ago
      With the internet its easy to extrapolate value from most tasks. Cheaper, faster, easier, always available, available at a distance etc. Why do I need a fully trustless system that is worse in every other category? Slow, more expensive, less consumer protection, etc. At the very least its not obvious and the market has not spoken. Even people speculating use off chain exchanges, not the chain itself.

mlcrypto 6y ago

The amount of economics, philosophy, history, & engineering one must understand to grasp Bitcoin is rare. That's why they say we are lucky to make our wealth in it

ArchD 6y ago

When people run out of good arguments, they give you tons of weak arguments. What you see and describe is a bullish sign for the thing they are trying to argue against. It's somewhat pointless to argue with random strangers on the Internet who may or may not appreciate your effort at reasonable discussion. If you believe in your own arguments, put your money where your mouth is and be proven right economically and be the one who quietly owns the last laugh.

FireBeyond 6y ago

> The anti-BTC sentiment on HN puzzles me. There is no intelligent critique. That's an ... amazingly blanket ... statement, for the countless thousands of words people here have said on the topic.

colinmhayes 6y ago

Bitcoin is incredibly wasteful and has no genuine use case that isn't better served by ethereum2 or monero.

imtringued 6y ago
The fact that there are competitors to a "store of value" is exactly the problem. When you put your money into funkopops you don't want people to suddenly decide that beanie babies are in again.

imtringued 6y ago

>There is no intelligent critique. Bitcoin "people" hail second layer scaling solutions like lightning which is basically paypal but decentralized. So why on earth would you not expect the people/companies who would participate in lightning to not just build their own scaling layer? What we are seeing is just that Visa and other competitors build a central scaling solution outside Bitcoin. Thus Bitcoin failed to decentralize anything if the vast majority of people using Bitcoin don't even interact with the block chain. The fees are incredibly high, so high that any Venezuelan that is using Bitcoin is already rich and just wants to flee the country with their wealth. It's not private, anyone who knows your address can track your balance, your transactions and can even send tainted Bitcoin to you, to ruin the untainted Bitcoin in your wallet. >lack of backing have all been responded to, to a sufficiently satisfactory degree. They haven't. The only thing I see is that people consider Bitcoin as the perfect Cryptocurrency as it is and nothing has to be changed to make it better, yet they expect the market cap to grow forever without doing anything for it, but still assume that the changes they refuse to implement will be the driving force of that value.