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I still think Bitcoin is very much flawed. As far as I can tell, it's basically a bubble-like commodity which people buy to enrich themselves through speculatio

I still think Bitcoin is very much flawed. As far as I can tell, it's basically a bubble-like commodity which people buy to enrich themselves through speculation right now. That's not really sustainable. It probably will continue to climb for a good while, since there are still many people who haven't heard of it. But then what? Another question arises: what is it good for? It certainly isn't empancipating or empowering ordinary people.

cyberlurker 6y ago
A hedge against instability of local currencies. (E.g. Venezuela) But really only if it would be difficult to obtain and safely keep USD.
- iso1631 6y ago
  Wouldn't a basked of currencies like XDR be more sensible than something as instable as bitcoin? If you don't like USD, then say a mix of CHF, EUR, GBP, USD, Yen and Yuan
  - cwkoss 6y ago
    It may be a better unit, but I'd imagine most Venezuelan bitcoin users would have trouble obtaining XDR and/or transferring that ownership stake across borders. I would also worry that FX accounts could be subject to government seizure.
  - noch 6y ago
    > something as instable as bitcoin? Bitcoin isn't unstable. It has a fixed supply of 21M. It is the other currencies to which it is compared that are unstable. Bitcoin allows you to measure fiat currency instability.
    - rspeele 6y ago
      It's astounding how these nocoiners refuse to understand Bitcoin is the ONLY asset that is always worth exactly 1 BTC. The rest of the world's unstable goods like gold, fiat currency, real estate, stocks, cars, and even groceries are always fluctuating in BTC value but BTC stays perfectly level.
      - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
        Isn't that a feature of literally every currency? Has 1 USD ever not been worth exactly 1 USD?
        Jtsummers 6y ago
        GP is being sarcastic. The idea that a currency is stable because it always has the same value with respect to itself (1BTC is always 1BTC) even though literally every other good or service price is fluctuating wildly is a fundamentally absurdist position to take, and what GGP seems to be suggesting (and others have on here and other places, earnestly, before, not sarcastically or ironically about BTC). It's irrelevant that you can always trade 1 USD for 1 USD or 1 BTC for 1 BTC if the prices for goods are so unstable that every purchase or sale becomes a risk ("Wait, did the pizza price drop by 10,000x? Crap, that delivery guy can retire on his tip now and I'm broke!").
        SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
        Ok, yeah, thank you. At this point I can't tell sarcasm from satire from honesty. Edit: I now again have no idea if they are or not. Looking at their comment history it doesn't appear they are.
        Jtsummers 6y ago
        Yeah. Me neither. A definite problem in these discussions, especially text only. You can't tell who is being earnest, who is being a contrarian, and who is being sarcastic.
    - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      In the last 5 days bitcoin has fluctuated (by my quick math) 7% compared to both CAD and USD dollars. That seems to indicate to me that's its instability, not the currency of either nation.
cwkoss 6y ago
Bitcoin is good for cross-border payments and hedging inflation. See how Bitcoin has been used in Venezuela: https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-adoption-venezuela-research https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-adoption-venezuela-research
- RC_ITR 6y ago
  What's the solution to 'Bitcoin sellers generally demand USD or EUR' though? Unless Venezuelans are mining their own at massive scale, I'm not sure how they actually hedged inflation via crypto, since they likely had some ability to buy an intermediary currency anyway.
noch 6y ago
> Another question arises: what is it good for? It certainly isn't empancipating or empowering ordinary people Here's a detailed thread[0] with global examples of empowerment of ordinary people. One example from the thread: " 7/ Democracy movements and opposition leaders in Russia, Nigeria, Belarus, and elsewhere have used Bitcoin to receive donations and continue their human rights work while their traditional bank accounts have been frozen or suspended: https://t.co/HSeP5g6TiV https://t.co/HSeP5g6TiV " [0] https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1377040725414580224?s=19 https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1377040725414580224?s=1...
- Wohlf 6y ago
  This is probably also true of less noble causes such as hate movements, money laundering, hitmen, human trafficking, drug trade, etc.
  - mannerheim 6y ago
    Tor is used for both as well.
- coolspot 6y ago
  One man’s opposition leader is another man’s terrorist.
stcredzero 6y ago
Another question arises: what is it good for? It certainly isn't empancipating or empowering ordinary people. Apparently, it saved the bacon of some Venezuelans.
- runarberg 6y ago
  They standardized international shipping to everyone's benefit. I wonder what is keeping them from standardizing international transaction of government issued money? It seems that bitcoin was useful in this particular instance only because of the failure of multiple other systems. Fixing those failure would seem like the easier option indeed.
  - mannerheim 6y ago
    Overthrowing a government doesn't sound like an easy option to me.
    - stcredzero 6y ago
      In 2021, you don't overthrow an organization. You crawl up inside it, and offer to do its bureaucratic skut-work. Make yourself useful and indispensable. Then you bring in more and more of your friends and start putting in rules and strictures as a trap. You get key, powerful people out of the way by springing those traps. Eventually, it's an entirely different set of people who are just wearing the branding and regalia of the old organization like a skin suit. Another alternative: You come up with a new way to do X which is 10X better. Then, you get the classic S-shaped adoption curve. Another alternative: You expand the context of your operations, so that those governments just become little annoyances and quaint dusty backwaters inside a larger world.
    - runarberg 6y ago
      Whoa! You must have misunderstood me dramatically. One does not need to overthrow a government to issue international standards. That certainly wasn’t the case October 1874 when they standardized international mail, nor was it needed in April 1951 when they standardized shipping containers for the global trade network. My question was simply: What is keeping banks and governments around the world from standardizing money transfer between nations, like they did so well 150 years ago with mail? And my statement: Perhaps it is easier to settle on a standard way of transferring money between nation states then to rely on bitcoin to save some people from hyperinflation + predatory money transfer solutions.
mannerheim 6y ago
I think cryptocurrency is now the only way to pay for Pornhub. We can probably expect payment providers to cancel more and more in the future.
Weebs 6y ago
I can't speak for Bitcoin's price, but the network's value is a global distributed ledger of transactions (debt) that has proven to be fault tolerant over many years. I think the store of value stuff is a bit of a bubble, and it relies on hodlers keeping the price up over time
- ska 6y ago
  > but the network's value is a global distributed ledger of transactions (debt) that has proven to be fault tolerant over many years. This strikes me as both true, and difficult to put any real value against. It's an existence proof more than practical use cases. Intuitively the value of that alone is both non-zero, and a lot less that BTC "valuation" - but where in between?
alwillis 6y ago
Another question arises: what is it good for? It certainly isn't empancipating or empowering ordinary people. I'm part of the bitcoin community on Clubhouse of just regular people who've benefited greatly from bitcoin. I'm personally investing in bitcoin due to the uncertain future of USD. It's simple: the dollar is loosing buying its buying power and bitcoin is gaining buying power. USD, gold, bonds, etc. are trending towards zero when graphed against bitcoin. I'm old enough to remember when a person could save in USD and get a return higher than the inflation rate and be able to retire comfortably. I remember seeing people who thought they could retire comfortably in 2008 until the economy blewup and we had senior citizens competing with high school kids for jobs bagging groceries. You can read about how financialized our economy has become and how bitcoin solves this problem: "Bitcoin is the Great Definancialization" — https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-the-great-definancialization/ https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-the-great-defi... Bitcoin has averaged over 200% a year for the past 10 years--and that was before billions of institutional money began flowing in.

cyberlurker 6y ago

A hedge against instability of local currencies. (E.g. Venezuela) But really only if it would be difficult to obtain and safely keep USD.

iso1631 6y ago
Wouldn't a basked of currencies like XDR be more sensible than something as instable as bitcoin? If you don't like USD, then say a mix of CHF, EUR, GBP, USD, Yen and Yuan
- cwkoss 6y ago
  It may be a better unit, but I'd imagine most Venezuelan bitcoin users would have trouble obtaining XDR and/or transferring that ownership stake across borders. I would also worry that FX accounts could be subject to government seizure.
- noch 6y ago
  > something as instable as bitcoin? Bitcoin isn't unstable. It has a fixed supply of 21M. It is the other currencies to which it is compared that are unstable. Bitcoin allows you to measure fiat currency instability.
  - rspeele 6y ago
    It's astounding how these nocoiners refuse to understand Bitcoin is the ONLY asset that is always worth exactly 1 BTC. The rest of the world's unstable goods like gold, fiat currency, real estate, stocks, cars, and even groceries are always fluctuating in BTC value but BTC stays perfectly level.
    - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      Isn't that a feature of literally every currency? Has 1 USD ever not been worth exactly 1 USD?
      - Jtsummers 6y ago
        GP is being sarcastic. The idea that a currency is stable because it always has the same value with respect to itself (1BTC is always 1BTC) even though literally every other good or service price is fluctuating wildly is a fundamentally absurdist position to take, and what GGP seems to be suggesting (and others have on here and other places, earnestly, before, not sarcastically or ironically about BTC). It's irrelevant that you can always trade 1 USD for 1 USD or 1 BTC for 1 BTC if the prices for goods are so unstable that every purchase or sale becomes a risk ("Wait, did the pizza price drop by 10,000x? Crap, that delivery guy can retire on his tip now and I'm broke!").
        SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
        Ok, yeah, thank you. At this point I can't tell sarcasm from satire from honesty. Edit: I now again have no idea if they are or not. Looking at their comment history it doesn't appear they are.
        Jtsummers 6y ago
        Yeah. Me neither. A definite problem in these discussions, especially text only. You can't tell who is being earnest, who is being a contrarian, and who is being sarcastic.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    In the last 5 days bitcoin has fluctuated (by my quick math) 7% compared to both CAD and USD dollars. That seems to indicate to me that's its instability, not the currency of either nation.

cwkoss 6y ago

Bitcoin is good for cross-border payments and hedging inflation. See how Bitcoin has been used in Venezuela: https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-adoption-venezuela-research https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-adoption-venezuela-research

RC_ITR 6y ago
What's the solution to 'Bitcoin sellers generally demand USD or EUR' though? Unless Venezuelans are mining their own at massive scale, I'm not sure how they actually hedged inflation via crypto, since they likely had some ability to buy an intermediary currency anyway.

noch 6y ago

> Another question arises: what is it good for? It certainly isn't empancipating or empowering ordinary people Here's a detailed thread[0] with global examples of empowerment of ordinary people. One example from the thread: " 7/ Democracy movements and opposition leaders in Russia, Nigeria, Belarus, and elsewhere have used Bitcoin to receive donations and continue their human rights work while their traditional bank accounts have been frozen or suspended: https://t.co/HSeP5g6TiV https://t.co/HSeP5g6TiV " [0] https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1377040725414580224?s=19 https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1377040725414580224?s=1...

Wohlf 6y ago
This is probably also true of less noble causes such as hate movements, money laundering, hitmen, human trafficking, drug trade, etc.
- mannerheim 6y ago
  Tor is used for both as well.
coolspot 6y ago
One man’s opposition leader is another man’s terrorist.

stcredzero 6y ago

Another question arises: what is it good for? It certainly isn't empancipating or empowering ordinary people. Apparently, it saved the bacon of some Venezuelans.

runarberg 6y ago
They standardized international shipping to everyone's benefit. I wonder what is keeping them from standardizing international transaction of government issued money? It seems that bitcoin was useful in this particular instance only because of the failure of multiple other systems. Fixing those failure would seem like the easier option indeed.
- mannerheim 6y ago
  Overthrowing a government doesn't sound like an easy option to me.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    In 2021, you don't overthrow an organization. You crawl up inside it, and offer to do its bureaucratic skut-work. Make yourself useful and indispensable. Then you bring in more and more of your friends and start putting in rules and strictures as a trap. You get key, powerful people out of the way by springing those traps. Eventually, it's an entirely different set of people who are just wearing the branding and regalia of the old organization like a skin suit. Another alternative: You come up with a new way to do X which is 10X better. Then, you get the classic S-shaped adoption curve. Another alternative: You expand the context of your operations, so that those governments just become little annoyances and quaint dusty backwaters inside a larger world.
  - runarberg 6y ago
    Whoa! You must have misunderstood me dramatically. One does not need to overthrow a government to issue international standards. That certainly wasn’t the case October 1874 when they standardized international mail, nor was it needed in April 1951 when they standardized shipping containers for the global trade network. My question was simply: What is keeping banks and governments around the world from standardizing money transfer between nations, like they did so well 150 years ago with mail? And my statement: Perhaps it is easier to settle on a standard way of transferring money between nation states then to rely on bitcoin to save some people from hyperinflation + predatory money transfer solutions.

mannerheim 6y ago

I think cryptocurrency is now the only way to pay for Pornhub. We can probably expect payment providers to cancel more and more in the future.

Weebs 6y ago

I can't speak for Bitcoin's price, but the network's value is a global distributed ledger of transactions (debt) that has proven to be fault tolerant over many years. I think the store of value stuff is a bit of a bubble, and it relies on hodlers keeping the price up over time

ska 6y ago
> but the network's value is a global distributed ledger of transactions (debt) that has proven to be fault tolerant over many years. This strikes me as both true, and difficult to put any real value against. It's an existence proof more than practical use cases. Intuitively the value of that alone is both non-zero, and a lot less that BTC "valuation" - but where in between?

alwillis 6y ago

Another question arises: what is it good for? It certainly isn't empancipating or empowering ordinary people. I'm part of the bitcoin community on Clubhouse of just regular people who've benefited greatly from bitcoin. I'm personally investing in bitcoin due to the uncertain future of USD. It's simple: the dollar is loosing buying its buying power and bitcoin is gaining buying power. USD, gold, bonds, etc. are trending towards zero when graphed against bitcoin. I'm old enough to remember when a person could save in USD and get a return higher than the inflation rate and be able to retire comfortably. I remember seeing people who thought they could retire comfortably in 2008 until the economy blewup and we had senior citizens competing with high school kids for jobs bagging groceries. You can read about how financialized our economy has become and how bitcoin solves this problem: "Bitcoin is the Great Definancialization" — https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-the-great-definancialization/ https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-the-great-defi... Bitcoin has averaged over 200% a year for the past 10 years--and that was before billions of institutional money began flowing in.