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> When that happened he shuttered the website and kept everyone's bitcoins. > I knew of bitcoin early on due to this guy, but even then I had no interest and c

> When that happened he shuttered the website and kept everyone's bitcoins. > I knew of bitcoin early on due to this guy, but even then I had no interest and considered it bullshit. Then when I saw what this guy did it just solidified my opinion that it can't be trusted. But isn't it instead an early lesson in "not your keys not your coin" maxim that Bitcoin advocates preach? > If the value of gold crashes it still has an inherent value because it's a useful physical good (looking pretty is not the only application of gold). a bitcoin has ZERO inherent value. Yes, but: 1) it's very difficult to self-custody gold (it's bulky, needs a safe place for storage — and if you put it in a bank, you need to be able to trust that you can get it out again); 2) it's very difficult to transfer, especially cross borders, especially in large amounts; 3) it's very difficult to use as an actual money, whereas bitcoin could conceivably be used as such (especially with Lightning).

runarberg 4y ago
Your parent was talking about gold in the niche case of protecting from inflation, and passed no judgement over the merit of doing so, only that it was better then cryptocurrency in that particular niche. If you want to purchase gold to protect your money from inflation (which you probably shouldn’t) then you probably buy it through some insured exchange—maybe even through your bank—that will keep it for you, if you don’t trust any exchange, that is your problem. If you need to transfer your money, or use it, then you’re not protecting it against inflation anymore are you? So you will just use regular money for that. Anyway, you shouldn’t buy gold to protect your money from inflation. Instead you probably should just risk an inflation and keep your money in a savings account, or buy secure government bonds for it, or something.
danaris 4y ago
> "not your keys not your coin" maxim that Bitcoin advocates preach? I keep seeing this phrase crop up throughout the past several days of cryptocurrency news, and something always rubbed me the wrong way about it, but I couldn't put my finger on it until today. It's demanding a change in human nature to accommodate the system, rather than changing the system to accommodate human nature. It's really not that different than the people who, 15 years ago, were saying, "Well, of course your accounts got hacked, because you didn't create a separate 27-character totally random password for every single account you need, like I do, and never store those passwords anywhere except your head!" People don't want to deal with a hardware token every single time they want to do anything with their money...and the only reason they have to, with cryptocurrency, is because its proponents think an unregulated "decentralized" financial system where the only law is code is a good idea. (Of course, it was never going to stay unregulated forever. None of the aspects of cryptocurrency that rely on the government not paying attention can last more than another few years.)
- aww_dang 4y ago
  Self-custody means users withdrawing their coins from exchanges or other custodial services. >"Well, of course your accounts got hacked, because you didn't create a separate 27-character totally random password for every single account you need, like I do, and never store those passwords anywhere except your head!" The keys can be recorded as a seed phrase. Typically this is a sequence of dictionary words. Look into it before you dismiss it so flippantly. Things have come a long way to make things easier for the user. There are also dedicated hardware wallet devices for key storage. If you're not transacting or conducting business with cryptocurrency, why do you care so much? It is literally none of your business. Nobody is forcing you to pay taxes or finance wars with BTC.
  - danaris 4y ago
    I wasn't aware that something had to be "my business" before I was allowed to discuss it on HN. And "dedicated hardware wallet devices" are exactly the kind of thing that I'm talking about here. There is no way those are going to be appealing to mainstream users; thus, if cryptocurrency were ever to genuinely enter the mainstream, the vast, vast majority of users would be keeping their crypto on exchanges. Y'know, exactly the way the vast, vast majority of people keep their money in regular bank accounts. Which don't require this kind of rigamarole, and never result in regular people (ie, not the very wealthy) losing money, because it's all regulated and insured by the government. (Yes, I know FDIC insurance has a limit. The limit is high enough that regular people will never even have to care that it exists.)
    - aww_dang 4y ago
      That's fine if you want to champion the cause of the normie. Just don't do it in a paternalistic way. If people were satisfied with the high transaction costs and regulatory overhead of traditional finance, they wouldn't be in crypto. There are a few more reasonable options here. 1) Create or advocate for a cryptocurrency with reversible transactions and all of the regulatory features you desire. Let the market decide how large that niche is. 2) Loosen or advocate for loosening the existing regulations on traditional financial products so that they are competitive with some of the features of cryptocurrency. See also, Zelle. Another product HN seemed to hate. Yesterday someone was arguing that Peter Thiel is a super villain. Another full page of comments was decrying one of PayPal's policies necessitated by regulations. People are generally unhappy with PayPal's fee structure, but they continue to use it. The fees and draconian policies are largely required to comply with regulations. Want more personable human support? That also costs money. The argument for regulating cryptocurrency is basically an argument for creating a captured and gatekept ecosystem. Of course, I get it. "Think of the children", "Think of the helpless normies", same story. What we will get instead will be more PayPals. As for scams and outright Ponizis, it is worth noting that those go on under the watchful eye of the regulatory state you love so well. Bernie Madoff was similarly connected and even served on regulatory boards. SBF, the disgraced FTX head had direct connections to the SEC and chairman Gary Gensler. SBF even testified, asking for more regulation. I'm doubtful, but still hopeful for the possibility of a good faith discussion. Regulation is not a pancea against fraud. Instead it creates an atmosphere were connected insiders can create greater frauds. The FTX debacle is illustrative of this. Yet here we are hearing the same appeals for more regulation from would be saviors of normies. Posters who themselves do not use cryptocurrency and insist that it has no legitimate use. For myself I just wanted to run a few online games with payouts for players in cryptocurrency. Now players also want NFT character saves. I've never used a centralized exchange. I don't make big money in this niche. I do have fun. The community is happy. Nobody is crying about valuations. Actual users of cryptocurrency aren't saying, "There outta be a law!". None of my users are claiming, "If only there were a statist savior protecting us from this video game!" or, "This game would be so much better with barriers to entry for developers" From that perspective, yes I do feel comfortable asking you and the rest of HN's passionate cryptocurrency haters to butt out. You could also go out and build a better alternative in the marketplace of ideas.
pseudostem 4y ago
>it's bulky Slight nitpick, Total gold above the earth's surface is less than a cube with sides 25 metres each.
- itronitron 4y ago
  For anyone that is curious, it's about 4.5 double chests of gold block stacks in minecraft. Not particularly difficult, but a challenge nonetheless.
- saalweachter 4y ago
  The weird thing to me is that the total mass of silver mined is only about 8x the total mass of silver, but the price spread is 80x. Copper is much more abundant, over 400x more copper than silver has been mined, but silver is almost as scarce as gold. It really seems like the price spread should be closer.
soco 4y ago
Uh, I wear some gold on me and cross borders with it and keep it at home when not and there's this thing called pawn shop in my village and otherwise and... are you sure those you mentioned are real problems? Or maybe you mean only the large amounts problems - in which case we should underline bitcoin aims to solve the problems of the rich, which most people on earth are not.

runarberg 4y ago

Your parent was talking about gold in the niche case of protecting from inflation, and passed no judgement over the merit of doing so, only that it was better then cryptocurrency in that particular niche. If you want to purchase gold to protect your money from inflation (which you probably shouldn’t) then you probably buy it through some insured exchange—maybe even through your bank—that will keep it for you, if you don’t trust any exchange, that is your problem. If you need to transfer your money, or use it, then you’re not protecting it against inflation anymore are you? So you will just use regular money for that. Anyway, you shouldn’t buy gold to protect your money from inflation. Instead you probably should just risk an inflation and keep your money in a savings account, or buy secure government bonds for it, or something.

danaris 4y ago

> "not your keys not your coin" maxim that Bitcoin advocates preach? I keep seeing this phrase crop up throughout the past several days of cryptocurrency news, and something always rubbed me the wrong way about it, but I couldn't put my finger on it until today. It's demanding a change in human nature to accommodate the system, rather than changing the system to accommodate human nature. It's really not that different than the people who, 15 years ago, were saying, "Well, of course your accounts got hacked, because you didn't create a separate 27-character totally random password for every single account you need, like I do, and never store those passwords anywhere except your head!" People don't want to deal with a hardware token every single time they want to do anything with their money...and the only reason they have to, with cryptocurrency, is because its proponents think an unregulated "decentralized" financial system where the only law is code is a good idea. (Of course, it was never going to stay unregulated forever. None of the aspects of cryptocurrency that rely on the government not paying attention can last more than another few years.)

aww_dang 4y ago
Self-custody means users withdrawing their coins from exchanges or other custodial services. >"Well, of course your accounts got hacked, because you didn't create a separate 27-character totally random password for every single account you need, like I do, and never store those passwords anywhere except your head!" The keys can be recorded as a seed phrase. Typically this is a sequence of dictionary words. Look into it before you dismiss it so flippantly. Things have come a long way to make things easier for the user. There are also dedicated hardware wallet devices for key storage. If you're not transacting or conducting business with cryptocurrency, why do you care so much? It is literally none of your business. Nobody is forcing you to pay taxes or finance wars with BTC.
- danaris 4y ago
  I wasn't aware that something had to be "my business" before I was allowed to discuss it on HN. And "dedicated hardware wallet devices" are exactly the kind of thing that I'm talking about here. There is no way those are going to be appealing to mainstream users; thus, if cryptocurrency were ever to genuinely enter the mainstream, the vast, vast majority of users would be keeping their crypto on exchanges. Y'know, exactly the way the vast, vast majority of people keep their money in regular bank accounts. Which don't require this kind of rigamarole, and never result in regular people (ie, not the very wealthy) losing money, because it's all regulated and insured by the government. (Yes, I know FDIC insurance has a limit. The limit is high enough that regular people will never even have to care that it exists.)
  - aww_dang 4y ago
    That's fine if you want to champion the cause of the normie. Just don't do it in a paternalistic way. If people were satisfied with the high transaction costs and regulatory overhead of traditional finance, they wouldn't be in crypto. There are a few more reasonable options here. 1) Create or advocate for a cryptocurrency with reversible transactions and all of the regulatory features you desire. Let the market decide how large that niche is. 2) Loosen or advocate for loosening the existing regulations on traditional financial products so that they are competitive with some of the features of cryptocurrency. See also, Zelle. Another product HN seemed to hate. Yesterday someone was arguing that Peter Thiel is a super villain. Another full page of comments was decrying one of PayPal's policies necessitated by regulations. People are generally unhappy with PayPal's fee structure, but they continue to use it. The fees and draconian policies are largely required to comply with regulations. Want more personable human support? That also costs money. The argument for regulating cryptocurrency is basically an argument for creating a captured and gatekept ecosystem. Of course, I get it. "Think of the children", "Think of the helpless normies", same story. What we will get instead will be more PayPals. As for scams and outright Ponizis, it is worth noting that those go on under the watchful eye of the regulatory state you love so well. Bernie Madoff was similarly connected and even served on regulatory boards. SBF, the disgraced FTX head had direct connections to the SEC and chairman Gary Gensler. SBF even testified, asking for more regulation. I'm doubtful, but still hopeful for the possibility of a good faith discussion. Regulation is not a pancea against fraud. Instead it creates an atmosphere were connected insiders can create greater frauds. The FTX debacle is illustrative of this. Yet here we are hearing the same appeals for more regulation from would be saviors of normies. Posters who themselves do not use cryptocurrency and insist that it has no legitimate use. For myself I just wanted to run a few online games with payouts for players in cryptocurrency. Now players also want NFT character saves. I've never used a centralized exchange. I don't make big money in this niche. I do have fun. The community is happy. Nobody is crying about valuations. Actual users of cryptocurrency aren't saying, "There outta be a law!". None of my users are claiming, "If only there were a statist savior protecting us from this video game!" or, "This game would be so much better with barriers to entry for developers" From that perspective, yes I do feel comfortable asking you and the rest of HN's passionate cryptocurrency haters to butt out. You could also go out and build a better alternative in the marketplace of ideas.

pseudostem 4y ago

>it's bulky Slight nitpick, Total gold above the earth's surface is less than a cube with sides 25 metres each.

itronitron 4y ago
For anyone that is curious, it's about 4.5 double chests of gold block stacks in minecraft. Not particularly difficult, but a challenge nonetheless.
saalweachter 4y ago
The weird thing to me is that the total mass of silver mined is only about 8x the total mass of silver, but the price spread is 80x. Copper is much more abundant, over 400x more copper than silver has been mined, but silver is almost as scarce as gold. It really seems like the price spread should be closer.

soco 4y ago

Uh, I wear some gold on me and cross borders with it and keep it at home when not and there's this thing called pawn shop in my village and otherwise and... are you sure those you mentioned are real problems? Or maybe you mean only the large amounts problems - in which case we should underline bitcoin aims to solve the problems of the rich, which most people on earth are not.