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I was thinking about miners, they get bitcoins as a reward for helping to keep the network secure. So what I'm saying is that they get rewarded for their work i

I was thinking about miners, they get bitcoins as a reward for helping to keep the network secure. So what I'm saying is that they get rewarded for their work in much the same way that all the cogs in the supply chain machine get rewarded for their work. There are just fewer steps. There's interplay with other actors of course, the people that trade bitcoin are one of those actors. This kind of interaction also exists for physical objects like cars, they also only get their value by interacting with the rest of the world. But yes if cars would disappear this would have an impact on more people simply because there are more people involved in the manufacturing process.

acdha 5y ago
> But yes if cars would disappear this would have an impact on more people simply because there are more people involved in the manufacturing process. I was thinking more about the impact on users, not just producers. There are millions of people living in low-density housing where they have limited alternatives to go to work, shop, etc. – maybe e-bikes could be an option for some but in most cases you’d be talking redesign of entire cities. Many, many businesses would be disrupted - some fatally. That’s what it looks like for people outside of an industry to depend on a technology. This can be seen especially in the case of the web: 30 years ago, a company in San Francisco making a mistake would not have meant that people in cities around the world would have trouble communicating or taking orders from customers. People find WhatsApp so useful that they based their daily life on it. Repeat for online ordering, advertising, support, etc. Contrast with Bitcoin: statistically, almost nobody uses it for business or personal transactions and the few who do almost always have alternatives — usually cheaper and faster, if ideologically unsatisfying. If it disappeared tomorrow, there would be no lines at stores, no accountants wondering how to pay suppliers, nobody waiting for their paycheck or unable to get a mortgage.

acdha 5y ago

> But yes if cars would disappear this would have an impact on more people simply because there are more people involved in the manufacturing process. I was thinking more about the impact on users, not just producers. There are millions of people living in low-density housing where they have limited alternatives to go to work, shop, etc. – maybe e-bikes could be an option for some but in most cases you’d be talking redesign of entire cities. Many, many businesses would be disrupted - some fatally. That’s what it looks like for people outside of an industry to depend on a technology. This can be seen especially in the case of the web: 30 years ago, a company in San Francisco making a mistake would not have meant that people in cities around the world would have trouble communicating or taking orders from customers. People find WhatsApp so useful that they based their daily life on it. Repeat for online ordering, advertising, support, etc. Contrast with Bitcoin: statistically, almost nobody uses it for business or personal transactions and the few who do almost always have alternatives — usually cheaper and faster, if ideologically unsatisfying. If it disappeared tomorrow, there would be no lines at stores, no accountants wondering how to pay suppliers, nobody waiting for their paycheck or unable to get a mortgage.