4 ms·

I appreciate the feeling, but the problem is that Bitcoin just isn't very useful for the original vision, "a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash". [1

I appreciate the feeling, but the problem is that Bitcoin just isn't very useful for the original vision, "a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash". [1] It's fine for a little light crime, where people are willing to put up with slow transactions, high costs, inconvenience, and significant risks to e.g., buy some mail-order LSD. But when you compare it with things like debit cards, Venmo, and M-Pesa, it's just not competitive. I think Bitcoin was a really interesting idea in the pre-iPhone era, but for a variety of reasons it just didn't pan out. Which is why the space was so readily colonized by scammers, grifters, criminals, fraudsters, speculators, and loons. [1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

fooey 4y ago
Yeah, the original vision was never plausible. BTC has absolutely never been viable as a currency and never will be.
- runnr_az 4y ago
  Totally. Why would I want anyone I pay to know exactly how much I’ve spent on all my other transactions?
  - fidelramos 4y ago
    Not a problem thanks to CashFusion [0], easy privacy for P2P electronic cash. [0] https://cashfusion.org/ https://cashfusion.org/
kersplody 4y ago
It was supposed to be cash without the burden of nation state oversight. Instead, it turned into a giant casino ecosystem of unregulated securities involving more and more layers of abstraction (exchanges, stable-coins, NFTs, bundled transactions, hedges, subchains, ...)
- nickelpro 4y ago
  > It was supposed to be cash without the burden of nation state oversight While convenience remains the core point under contention, the secondary point of debate with crypto is the one you raise here: why is this a good thing? Why would I want an unregulated currency, free of consumer protections or government oversight? If someone steals my credit card I call the bank and reverse the charges. When a bank gets robbed or collapses, the FDIC ensures consumers are unaffected. Governments aren't a power independent of their communities, they're not aliens from outer space interfering with natural human ways of life. Government is how we the community organize ourselves to ensure our collective protection. They're, obviously, deeply imperfect, but a system completely severing itself from those organizing principles is fated to replicate them with even greater imperfection.
  - somewhereoutth 4y ago
    Your last paragraph is spot on. The right know that government intervention is what holds them back from consolidating power over the less fortunate in society, so it has been a central plank of their strategy to present the government as indeed being 'aliens from outer space', and so to neuter its reach.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - moistly 4y ago
    > Why would I want an unregulated currency, free of consumer protections or government oversight And why would I believe that it has value compared to gold, or a cow? And while the value of a dollar is an abstract of those physical trades, at least it has the backing of the nation’s resources, its people, and its military ability to plunder. Bitcoin has all the backing of …
- wpietri 4y ago
  If you read about the history of nation-state oversight of finance, you can learn that going "without the burden of nation state oversight" is approximately equivalent to "a giant casino ecosystem". Not always, of course, but often enough. E.g., the South Seas bubble, the wildcat banking era, and the US stock market leading up to Black Tuesday. An awful lot of financial regulation comes into being because financiers working in some unregulated area create such a giant disaster that there's enough popular anger to override government's normal tendency to suck up to people with money.
ftlio 4y ago
> I think Bitcoin was a really interesting idea in the pre-iPhone era, but for a variety of reasons it just didn't pan out. It’s panning out just fine. Everyone who thinks Bitcoin is old news presupposes that you can do something like Bitcoin, but better. There’s no evidence of this in any non-Bitcoin cryptocurrency. This also ignores that Bitcoin is improving every year. Tools like Liquid and Lightning are incredibly sophisticated, first principles based approaches to real problems in finance, banking, and fungibility. That fly by night securities called "cryptocurrencies" with shallow liquidity claim that they can do better, but always fail to deliver, hasn't undermined anything about Bitcoin. I agree with the parent post. This is great for crypto. Maybe all the web developers who think they can do cryptography better than cryptographers can go do something else now.
- mumblemumble 4y ago
  > Everyone who thinks Bitcoin is old news presupposes that you can do something like Bitcoin, but better. For most people's everyday purposes, all those things the parent mentioned are doing something like Bitcoin, but better. The one technical problem that cryptocurrency unquestionably handles better than any other technology is solve a problem that is only experienced by people who choose to use cryptocurrency.
- Kstarek 4y ago
  This is patently false, many crypto currencies have done what Bitcoin has done much better, Fantom, Monero, Ethereum to name a few off the top of my head
- dwaltrip 4y ago
  I was an early adopter of bitcoin (2012) and I'm pretty over it at this point. It hasn't managed to do much more than be fancy digital gold. I don't find gold very interesting. It isn't a productive asset. It's just a shiny rock that people lock up in a vault. It doesn't benefit society. And as financial instruments, both bitcoin and gold are deflationary, which seems quite bad. I still have a bit of hope for some actually useful stuff to come out of the defi / smart-contract space. But I'm still fairly skeptical. There is a lot of noise and little signal.
- 4y ago
geuis 4y ago
What do you mean "pre-iPhone era"? Bitcoin was released in 2009.
- garrickvanburen 4y ago
  2009 is well before the iPhone was the default computer
  - int_19h 4y ago
    iPhone is at 15% global market share; when was it ever a "default computer"?
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
      iPhone and iPhone-like devices. The iPhone era describes mobile computing, touchscreens, app stores, etc.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        Exactly. I'm not a big fan of Apple, but in the same way they defined the user experience for desktops via the Mac, they defined the user experience for mobile computing with the iPhone. So much so that most people don't even remember that there were plenty of smartphones previous to the iPhone.
  - antifa 4y ago
    2009 seems to be the start of what I'd call the iPhone era. 2011 would be the latest.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Sure, but that was really the beginning of the smartphone era. In 2009, the iPhone had ~15% market share for smartphones. [1] Counting 2007 and 2008, Apple sold ~15 million units, about half of those in the last quarter of 2008. So when the Bitcoin paper was first published, Apple had sold something under 10m units. And that paper was of course based on earlier work. My point is that conceptually, the peer-to-peer, proof-of-work thing was much more suited to the desktop era, a sort of SETI@Home for money. It wasn't until a few years later that we truly began to see what the mobile era would look like (e.g., Venmo was August 2009, Uber was May 2010). The peer-to-peer aspect is basically a failure, as the rise of mining pools and centralized exchanges demonstrate. As do the relatively small transaction volumes for Bitcoin compared to things that are actual modern cash substitutes. If somebody were inventing cryptocurrency today, it would not look like Bitcoin. [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/04/idc_apple_iphone_was_no_3_smartphone_in_2009_with_14_4_of_market https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/04/idc_apple_iphone_...
rhinoceraptor 4y ago
I think its one saving grace will be that it is used for non-recreational drugs that will soon become illegal or functionally unobtainable, for example Plan B and HRT.

fooey 4y ago

Yeah, the original vision was never plausible. BTC has absolutely never been viable as a currency and never will be.

runnr_az 4y ago
Totally. Why would I want anyone I pay to know exactly how much I’ve spent on all my other transactions?
- fidelramos 4y ago
  Not a problem thanks to CashFusion [0], easy privacy for P2P electronic cash. [0] https://cashfusion.org/ https://cashfusion.org/

kersplody 4y ago

It was supposed to be cash without the burden of nation state oversight. Instead, it turned into a giant casino ecosystem of unregulated securities involving more and more layers of abstraction (exchanges, stable-coins, NFTs, bundled transactions, hedges, subchains, ...)

nickelpro 4y ago
> It was supposed to be cash without the burden of nation state oversight While convenience remains the core point under contention, the secondary point of debate with crypto is the one you raise here: why is this a good thing? Why would I want an unregulated currency, free of consumer protections or government oversight? If someone steals my credit card I call the bank and reverse the charges. When a bank gets robbed or collapses, the FDIC ensures consumers are unaffected. Governments aren't a power independent of their communities, they're not aliens from outer space interfering with natural human ways of life. Government is how we the community organize ourselves to ensure our collective protection. They're, obviously, deeply imperfect, but a system completely severing itself from those organizing principles is fated to replicate them with even greater imperfection.
- somewhereoutth 4y ago
  Your last paragraph is spot on. The right know that government intervention is what holds them back from consolidating power over the less fortunate in society, so it has been a central plank of their strategy to present the government as indeed being 'aliens from outer space', and so to neuter its reach.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- moistly 4y ago
  > Why would I want an unregulated currency, free of consumer protections or government oversight And why would I believe that it has value compared to gold, or a cow? And while the value of a dollar is an abstract of those physical trades, at least it has the backing of the nation’s resources, its people, and its military ability to plunder. Bitcoin has all the backing of …
wpietri 4y ago
If you read about the history of nation-state oversight of finance, you can learn that going "without the burden of nation state oversight" is approximately equivalent to "a giant casino ecosystem". Not always, of course, but often enough. E.g., the South Seas bubble, the wildcat banking era, and the US stock market leading up to Black Tuesday. An awful lot of financial regulation comes into being because financiers working in some unregulated area create such a giant disaster that there's enough popular anger to override government's normal tendency to suck up to people with money.

ftlio 4y ago

> I think Bitcoin was a really interesting idea in the pre-iPhone era, but for a variety of reasons it just didn't pan out. It’s panning out just fine. Everyone who thinks Bitcoin is old news presupposes that you can do something like Bitcoin, but better. There’s no evidence of this in any non-Bitcoin cryptocurrency. This also ignores that Bitcoin is improving every year. Tools like Liquid and Lightning are incredibly sophisticated, first principles based approaches to real problems in finance, banking, and fungibility. That fly by night securities called "cryptocurrencies" with shallow liquidity claim that they can do better, but always fail to deliver, hasn't undermined anything about Bitcoin. I agree with the parent post. This is great for crypto. Maybe all the web developers who think they can do cryptography better than cryptographers can go do something else now.

mumblemumble 4y ago
> Everyone who thinks Bitcoin is old news presupposes that you can do something like Bitcoin, but better. For most people's everyday purposes, all those things the parent mentioned are doing something like Bitcoin, but better. The one technical problem that cryptocurrency unquestionably handles better than any other technology is solve a problem that is only experienced by people who choose to use cryptocurrency.
Kstarek 4y ago
This is patently false, many crypto currencies have done what Bitcoin has done much better, Fantom, Monero, Ethereum to name a few off the top of my head
dwaltrip 4y ago
I was an early adopter of bitcoin (2012) and I'm pretty over it at this point. It hasn't managed to do much more than be fancy digital gold. I don't find gold very interesting. It isn't a productive asset. It's just a shiny rock that people lock up in a vault. It doesn't benefit society. And as financial instruments, both bitcoin and gold are deflationary, which seems quite bad. I still have a bit of hope for some actually useful stuff to come out of the defi / smart-contract space. But I'm still fairly skeptical. There is a lot of noise and little signal.
4y ago

geuis 4y ago

What do you mean "pre-iPhone era"? Bitcoin was released in 2009.

garrickvanburen 4y ago
2009 is well before the iPhone was the default computer
- int_19h 4y ago
  iPhone is at 15% global market share; when was it ever a "default computer"?
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
    iPhone and iPhone-like devices. The iPhone era describes mobile computing, touchscreens, app stores, etc.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      Exactly. I'm not a big fan of Apple, but in the same way they defined the user experience for desktops via the Mac, they defined the user experience for mobile computing with the iPhone. So much so that most people don't even remember that there were plenty of smartphones previous to the iPhone.
- antifa 4y ago
  2009 seems to be the start of what I'd call the iPhone era. 2011 would be the latest.
wpietri 4y ago
Sure, but that was really the beginning of the smartphone era. In 2009, the iPhone had ~15% market share for smartphones. [1] Counting 2007 and 2008, Apple sold ~15 million units, about half of those in the last quarter of 2008. So when the Bitcoin paper was first published, Apple had sold something under 10m units. And that paper was of course based on earlier work. My point is that conceptually, the peer-to-peer, proof-of-work thing was much more suited to the desktop era, a sort of SETI@Home for money. It wasn't until a few years later that we truly began to see what the mobile era would look like (e.g., Venmo was August 2009, Uber was May 2010). The peer-to-peer aspect is basically a failure, as the rise of mining pools and centralized exchanges demonstrate. As do the relatively small transaction volumes for Bitcoin compared to things that are actual modern cash substitutes. If somebody were inventing cryptocurrency today, it would not look like Bitcoin. [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/04/idc_apple_iphone_was_no_3_smartphone_in_2009_with_14_4_of_market https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/04/idc_apple_iphone_...

rhinoceraptor 4y ago

I think its one saving grace will be that it is used for non-recreational drugs that will soon become illegal or functionally unobtainable, for example Plan B and HRT.