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Pretty much any fledging currency will be volatile. So you might as well be asking why anyone would adopt any new currency? As a currency gains adoption and va

Pretty much any fledging currency will be volatile. So you might as well be asking why anyone would adopt any new currency? As a currency gains adoption and value, its volatility naturally goes down. As far as what advantages bitcoin has over traditional existing currency? Numerous. Immutable, unseizable, uncensorable, fixed supply/non-inflationary/store of value, digitally transferrable without a 3rd party.

jodrellblank 5y ago
Bitcoins have been seized, and stolen. Bitcoins have been banned in China. Not at all transferable without a majority of nodes on the network agreeing - unless you mean you can hand a flash drive to someone, and that’s not an advantage to a currency you can hand notes to someone. Why is “non inflationary” an advantage? It means less incentive to spend, more incentive to hoard, and anyone who comes later is necessarily poorer. It’s terrible, population increases and younger people fight for the scraps of the few bitcents left, so the pyramid early adopters can take advantage. That isn’t going to hold as a stable system.
- treebot 5y ago
  How would a government seize Bitcoin? Stealing Bitcoin is not the same as seizing.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > How would a government seize Bitcoin? The same way it seizes anything else; have people with guns show up [0] to the person with control over it, and inform them they must turn it over or face dire consequences. Seizing money held in a personal wallet means doing that to the owner (whether its a physical or digital wallet), seizing money held in a third-party service (often the case with Bitcoin) means doing it to the service operator. > Stealing Bitcoin is not the same as seizing. True, in that “stealing” is what is called when someone seizes property from another without legal authority. But false in the senae that seems intended, in that the mechanics the government uses when seizing something are exactly mechanics that would constitute stealing if they weren't backed by law. [0] Or people without guns with the implicit backing of people with guns. Or just messages from an agency known to be backed by people with guns.
    - hackingforfun 5y ago
      Trezor [1] and Ledger [2] are both hardware wallets that can have a passphrase which would generate any number of wallets, each derived from the user's private key, but each generating a different public key. If someone has say 20 different passphrases, how would the people with guns know which wallet they are getting? There can be wallets without the entirety of funds stored in them, i.e. give away some to save the rest, and the people with guns think they got it all. Even not considering passphrases, anytime you set up a crypto wallet there is a 12 or 24 word mnemonic seed which could be memorized and not written down anywhere, and which could be used to restore a wallet at a later time. So, how exactly does seizing work in this case? [1] https://wiki.trezor.io/Passphrase https://wiki.trezor.io/Passphrase [2] https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005214529-Advanced-passphrase-security https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005214529-Ad...
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        Yes, with any form of money you can try to convince the authorities that a different, incomplete, or empty cache of funds is the thing they are trying to seize, or that you simply don't have what they are trying to seize. Whether the authorities believe you and whether they decide to inflict the alternative consequences implicitly or explicitly threatened as part of the seizure mechanism ... depends on the information that forms the basis of the seizure, the personality and nature of the individuals involved and the regime they serve, and other factors. Features that make it harder for authorities to be certain you are lying when you are also make it harder for the authorities to be certain you are telling the truth when you are. This is not universally beneficial.
        hackingforfun 5y ago
        Personally, I don't think I'll ever need to hide crypto from the government and I pay my taxes. However, I figure that it could be regular thieves with guns, too. I get that this thread was going in the direction of government, but I think people with guns can be pretty general. What I think is cool is that technology like this has never existed. Banks were the only way to have this level of security. You don't get that with physical gold or physical cash. How do people not see how innovative this is? It's a way to store money outside of the traditional financial system, just like gold, except it's much harder to seize, much easier to transfer, is much more divisible, etc. You can literally store a million dollars in your head by memorizing a 12 word mnemonic seed, or hand a million dollars to someone via a paper or hardware wallet. How do people not think that is cool?

jodrellblank 5y ago

Bitcoins have been seized, and stolen. Bitcoins have been banned in China. Not at all transferable without a majority of nodes on the network agreeing - unless you mean you can hand a flash drive to someone, and that’s not an advantage to a currency you can hand notes to someone. Why is “non inflationary” an advantage? It means less incentive to spend, more incentive to hoard, and anyone who comes later is necessarily poorer. It’s terrible, population increases and younger people fight for the scraps of the few bitcents left, so the pyramid early adopters can take advantage. That isn’t going to hold as a stable system.

treebot 5y ago
How would a government seize Bitcoin? Stealing Bitcoin is not the same as seizing.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > How would a government seize Bitcoin? The same way it seizes anything else; have people with guns show up [0] to the person with control over it, and inform them they must turn it over or face dire consequences. Seizing money held in a personal wallet means doing that to the owner (whether its a physical or digital wallet), seizing money held in a third-party service (often the case with Bitcoin) means doing it to the service operator. > Stealing Bitcoin is not the same as seizing. True, in that “stealing” is what is called when someone seizes property from another without legal authority. But false in the senae that seems intended, in that the mechanics the government uses when seizing something are exactly mechanics that would constitute stealing if they weren't backed by law. [0] Or people without guns with the implicit backing of people with guns. Or just messages from an agency known to be backed by people with guns.
  - hackingforfun 5y ago
    Trezor [1] and Ledger [2] are both hardware wallets that can have a passphrase which would generate any number of wallets, each derived from the user's private key, but each generating a different public key. If someone has say 20 different passphrases, how would the people with guns know which wallet they are getting? There can be wallets without the entirety of funds stored in them, i.e. give away some to save the rest, and the people with guns think they got it all. Even not considering passphrases, anytime you set up a crypto wallet there is a 12 or 24 word mnemonic seed which could be memorized and not written down anywhere, and which could be used to restore a wallet at a later time. So, how exactly does seizing work in this case? [1] https://wiki.trezor.io/Passphrase https://wiki.trezor.io/Passphrase [2] https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005214529-Advanced-passphrase-security https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005214529-Ad...
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      Yes, with any form of money you can try to convince the authorities that a different, incomplete, or empty cache of funds is the thing they are trying to seize, or that you simply don't have what they are trying to seize. Whether the authorities believe you and whether they decide to inflict the alternative consequences implicitly or explicitly threatened as part of the seizure mechanism ... depends on the information that forms the basis of the seizure, the personality and nature of the individuals involved and the regime they serve, and other factors. Features that make it harder for authorities to be certain you are lying when you are also make it harder for the authorities to be certain you are telling the truth when you are. This is not universally beneficial.
      - hackingforfun 5y ago
        Personally, I don't think I'll ever need to hide crypto from the government and I pay my taxes. However, I figure that it could be regular thieves with guns, too. I get that this thread was going in the direction of government, but I think people with guns can be pretty general. What I think is cool is that technology like this has never existed. Banks were the only way to have this level of security. You don't get that with physical gold or physical cash. How do people not see how innovative this is? It's a way to store money outside of the traditional financial system, just like gold, except it's much harder to seize, much easier to transfer, is much more divisible, etc. You can literally store a million dollars in your head by memorizing a 12 word mnemonic seed, or hand a million dollars to someone via a paper or hardware wallet. How do people not think that is cool?