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What is the value of Bitcoin if you can't separate it from its uses?

sph 3y ago
What is the value of the dollar if you can't separate it from its uses? Bernie Madoff scammed people, so we should abolish the dollar. No money, no scams. This is the level of thinking of people crying about "crypto" in general. It's like saying "drugs are bad."
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  I can buy groceries with dollars.
  - sph 3y ago
    If I open a vegetable stand and accept Bitcoin, what would be the difference? The reason why no one uses Bitcoin is because it's a nascent technology full of rough corners that needs to be smoothed out with time. Until a few months ago, it would've taken 15 minutes for the payment to go through. Is this reason enough to throw the baby out with the bathwater? But for some weird reason, many software engineers look at Bitcoin as a finished unchanging product. It is like looking at ARPANET and saying "this is bollocks, it's never gonna work." I guess drive-by criticism is less work than sitting down and improving something with is new, exciting, a bit crap but with huge potential.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      You can do whatever you want, it doesn't mean that Bitcoin is suddenly useful to people for grocery shopping just because you opened a stand. How do you plan to be profitable when the currency is constantly deflating? You presumably have to purchase your goods in USD, so any goods you sell have to be converted, which constantly loses money. No one is going to pay you in Bitcoin because they don't want their money to deflate. The cause of the thing is more than 'there are no shops'. There are no shops because no one wants to do it. Prove me wrong. Open a Bitcoin grocery store.
    - WeylandYutani 3y ago
      Is bitcoin new? It's been 15 years. What did Amazon accomplish in that time? Or Netflix?
      - sph 3y ago
        What a silly, dishonest argument. Anyone can create incredible things with massive amounts of targeted money and investments. The entire economy of Bitcoin is not spent on its core developers to improve it. At this point I have to assume trolling if anything that hasn't reached global domination to be a failure. We are talking about a worldwide currency that is working against any law, government, bank. If it takes 50 years to reach maturity, is it a failure? Why is time taken to mature an important metric? Nothing is born in a vacuum, but builds upon what existed before. In any case, neither Amazon nor Netflix have global, unlimited reach like Bitcoin. So it makes your question even more silly.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        What is dishonest is claiming that 'it needs time to get the bugs sorted' when it is a technology literally built on an ideology. The bugs are self-imposed and are never going to get 'sorted out' because they are foundational.
        andirk 3y ago
        It's currently "sorted out" by the several layers deep you can choose to go: from more centralized and more easy to more decentralized and more complicated. One can lose paper money. No one out here is trying to solve that problem. Just put it in some shitty bank to avoid that issue, but the problem wasn't solved, just avoided.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        I am struggling to find a coherent point in what you have written.
        3y ago

sph 3y ago

What is the value of the dollar if you can't separate it from its uses? Bernie Madoff scammed people, so we should abolish the dollar. No money, no scams. This is the level of thinking of people crying about "crypto" in general. It's like saying "drugs are bad."

Eisenstein 3y ago
I can buy groceries with dollars.
- sph 3y ago
  If I open a vegetable stand and accept Bitcoin, what would be the difference? The reason why no one uses Bitcoin is because it's a nascent technology full of rough corners that needs to be smoothed out with time. Until a few months ago, it would've taken 15 minutes for the payment to go through. Is this reason enough to throw the baby out with the bathwater? But for some weird reason, many software engineers look at Bitcoin as a finished unchanging product. It is like looking at ARPANET and saying "this is bollocks, it's never gonna work." I guess drive-by criticism is less work than sitting down and improving something with is new, exciting, a bit crap but with huge potential.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    You can do whatever you want, it doesn't mean that Bitcoin is suddenly useful to people for grocery shopping just because you opened a stand. How do you plan to be profitable when the currency is constantly deflating? You presumably have to purchase your goods in USD, so any goods you sell have to be converted, which constantly loses money. No one is going to pay you in Bitcoin because they don't want their money to deflate. The cause of the thing is more than 'there are no shops'. There are no shops because no one wants to do it. Prove me wrong. Open a Bitcoin grocery store.
  - WeylandYutani 3y ago
    Is bitcoin new? It's been 15 years. What did Amazon accomplish in that time? Or Netflix?
    - sph 3y ago
      What a silly, dishonest argument. Anyone can create incredible things with massive amounts of targeted money and investments. The entire economy of Bitcoin is not spent on its core developers to improve it. At this point I have to assume trolling if anything that hasn't reached global domination to be a failure. We are talking about a worldwide currency that is working against any law, government, bank. If it takes 50 years to reach maturity, is it a failure? Why is time taken to mature an important metric? Nothing is born in a vacuum, but builds upon what existed before. In any case, neither Amazon nor Netflix have global, unlimited reach like Bitcoin. So it makes your question even more silly.
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        What is dishonest is claiming that 'it needs time to get the bugs sorted' when it is a technology literally built on an ideology. The bugs are self-imposed and are never going to get 'sorted out' because they are foundational.
        andirk 3y ago
        It's currently "sorted out" by the several layers deep you can choose to go: from more centralized and more easy to more decentralized and more complicated. One can lose paper money. No one out here is trying to solve that problem. Just put it in some shitty bank to avoid that issue, but the problem wasn't solved, just avoided.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        I am struggling to find a coherent point in what you have written.
        3y ago