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The strong anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN is still amusing. It goes way back - 13 years or more. Having read many of these negative comments, I think part of thi

The strong anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN is still amusing. It goes way back - 13 years or more. Having read many of these negative comments, I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. Just this thread has examples. It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year. If that shoe were on my foot, in addition to being annoyed I'd be curious about what I was missing. Bitcoin doesn't have to do something useful for everyone to survive. It doesn't have to "replace fiat." It doesn't have to be a payment system. It doesn't have to "go to the moon." It doesn't even need an ETF. Bitcoin just needs to fill needs (or wants) not met by anything else. They don't even have to be your needs or wants. Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true. I think that's the point that a lot of hostile commenters might be missing.

simonw 3y ago
What needs and wants is it fulfilling for you?
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  Me guessing (as somebody who is anti-crypto): they like how it returns ~50-100% year over year pretty much. I swear I saw some super highly upvoted comments that read as normal + level-headed in r/CryptoCurrnecy that was like "if it goes from $45k -> $100k this year it isn't even that much" Do you ever hear Warren Buffet saying "122% yearly returns are meh"?
  - stringfood 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Timber-6539 3y ago
    Yep, crypto bros will get in bed with the same banks that screwed them over in 2008 if the end goal means that the price of their coin (ahem) bags.. go up. The whole Bitcoin 'manifesto' and sticking it to the man is just a ruse.
    - obviouslynew 3y ago
      Or the technologists that push these open source projects forward were abandoned by the very communities that used to celebrate disruptive technologies.
- rafaelero 3y ago
  Bitcoin is wealth in the cloud. There's immense utility in being able to digitalize your wealth, including higher mobility and, since it is a decentralized network, assurance that it won't be inflated, confiscated and that you will have the freedom to transact it with whoever you want.
  - vasilipupkin 3y ago
    What does that mean ? Most wealth is in the cloud, you don’t need Bitcoin for this. I don’t have any paper stock certificates.
    - rafaelero 3y ago
      Not really. Most wealth is based on physical stuff like houses, factories and offices.
    - TimJRobinson 3y ago
      And yet if you were to visit Iran and attempt to access that wealth you'd quickly discover how little of that wealth is actually yours. It's not just that it's in the cloud, it's the only form of wealth you can keep digitally AND only you have access and control over it. Maybe that's fine because you're a good citizen who follows the rules, but some people are born into places where they don't get the privilege of a fair financial system, or the system changes on them.
      - vasilipupkin 3y ago
        But all this is circular logic. You can’t say something is valuable because it’s digital. Why is it wealth in the first place is the question. Wealth is something that represents concrete value.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    Cool. Going on GitHub and downloading core code and deploying a new coin based on Bitcoin or some other crypto. I'll call it HackerNewsCoin. Didn't know it was that simple to create "wealth". What a foolishness to think that something that has no intrinsic value can constitute wealth. Don't confuse price with value. It really is true crypto combines all that people don't understand about economy with all that people don't understand about technology.
- killerstorm 3y ago
  It provides an alternative to banks. Once you realize that banks are very fragile and abusive, just having this alternative is important. Banks can deny you access to your money on a whim. Compliance, glitch, failure, whatever. You can't use your money. You can't buy food. You can't pay rent. You can't buy tickets. You can't hire a lawyer. It's nice to have something which is based on completely different principles.
  - reaperman 3y ago
    I think you'll be amazed at the extent to which BTC will be able to be controlled by strong central governments. I'd be shocked if in ten years there's not granular control over which wallets contain "tainted" bitcoin and cannot be converted to fiat except through actual money laundering. There's been a lot of consolidation of the exchanges in USA, tons of KYC controls in place now, and old-school options like localbitcoins.com or craigslist have disappeared or been nerfed beyond recognizability. If people no longer "need" to convert BTC to fiat, this would no longer be a point of a control, but until then, governments can already and will continue to grow how much they can control BTC flow. Some of it is currently very ham-fisted, but there's a clear intent to devalue off-exchange wallets: https://www.coincenter.org/new-crypto-tax-reporting-obligations-took-effect-on-new-years-day/ https://www.coincenter.org/new-crypto-tax-reporting-obligati...
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      I remember seeing articles related to this from a few years ago. I wonder what's going on under the hood at places like Coinbase. https://news.bitcoin.com/industry-execs-freshly-minted-virgin-bitcoins/ https://news.bitcoin.com/industry-execs-freshly-minted-virgi...
    - hackernudes 3y ago
      What about the lightning network? Or Liquid sidechain? There are lots of people working on scaling bitcoin so that it can be used like cash (low fees and anonymous). When a user receives a payment in Cash App or Strike over the lightning network there is no way to track where that bitcoin came from. I haven't really tested that out yet, but I find the idea that bitcoin can be the rails of transferring value pretty compelling. Most people can still transact in fiat but with trustless interoperability between banks and service providers. And of course if people are happy transacting in units of bitcoin it can all be done in a trust-minimized way (with tradeoffs available for convenience, etc...). But to your point, the government could crack down on the app stores and service providers to not support this kinda stuff.
- latchkey 3y ago
  I've favorited off this comment for a while now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410
  - p4ul 3y ago
    Thank you so much for sharing this! It's definitely an interesting and valuable perspective.
- ericd 3y ago
  Many governments attempt to force their populations to keep their savings in the nation's currency, while aggressively devaluing the currency. The richer people in those countries tend to try to get out of it via other currency holdings in offshore accounts or real estate, but the poorer set don't generally have that option. The ability to opt out of that in a way that's harder to confiscate than eg physical gold/USD is very helpful to those people.
CPLX 3y ago
Not really. Most people who are observant are well aware that there’s deep and enduring demand for ways to gamble and speculate. It’s really easy to recognize Bitcoin filling that role like the neighborhood numbers game, pachinko, online poker, and tulip investing all have at various times in history. We just don’t like it.
- ric2b 3y ago
  The tulip bubble is wildly misunderstood, it's actually quite an interesting story about the origin of futures contracts. It lasted only a few months, there was no long term investing on tulips.
- waprin 3y ago
  The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
xpressvideoz 3y ago
What you're missing is something can be criticized even if it fulfills some needs. Drugs, gambling, crimes all satisfy some people's needs but most people have negative view on them.
- block_dagger 3y ago
  Drugs and gambling do not hurt others. Throwing “crimes” in makes your reasoning weak. Where are you getting your data on the first two? I’m not sure you’re correct.
  - quickthrowman 3y ago
    > Drugs and gambling do not hurt others. The bad things people do to other people to get money for drugs and gambling are included in the blanket statement “drugs and gambling”.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    > Drugs and gambling do not hurt others. They ruin families, neighborhoods, cities.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      If you ever need an example of how drugs genuinely ruin things on a large scale read absolutely anything about the opium wars. I do contend that "ruining families" is not a thing we should base policy on because it implies both a crazy amount of government intrusion into individual lives and because it imposes rules on everyone to make the nuclear family work.
  - npunt 3y ago
    > Drugs and gambling do not hurt others. Please spend like 30 seconds of analytical thinking trying to poke holes in this. It's remarkably easy to disprove. The challenge is what if anything we choose to do about the harms that they can cause.
    - 3y ago
stefan_ 3y ago
It must be peak irony to write this on the topic of a Bitcoin ETF. None of the technology, all of the speculation.
- FactKnower69 3y ago
  What Bitcoin is really missing before it can finally take off is yet another layer of fees and rent seeking; can't wait to pay 1.5%(!) of my portfolio every year in expenses :)
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    Blackrock's BTC ETF is .12% for the first year, SPY (The largest ETF) is .09% You know, if all the BTC haters actually knew what they were talking about we could have intelligent discussions on HN.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. But then can't you see the irony of writing that sentence when the article title is literally "Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC". That's the thing that's so baffling to me - if you're saying BTC is so great that it doesn't need the support of government and social institutions, why the push so hard to get an ETF (multiple in fact!) when the rallying cry for crypto has always been "distributed, trustless currency".
- david_shi 3y ago
  This is circular reasoning. It doesn't need the approval, what it shows is official capitulation to a "distributed, trustless currency". That's the big news.
  - etherael 3y ago
    Or what it shows is official acknowledgment that the rubes bought this narrative whilst if you look at the details, it's effectively a CBDC.
  - metw02024 3y ago
    On the contrary... bitcoin desperately needs this approval. The current (and future) price of BTC is absolutely predicated upon the greater fool theory. The network is dependent on miners. Miners earn bitcoin but spend dollars to create it. They're dependent on price appreciation to provide the liquidity that sustains their business. Without this approval, who is going to continue to pay more for bitcoin?
- psychlops 3y ago
  It wasn't a push, it was a pull.
david_shi 3y ago
The OG hacker spirit is still alive in the crypto community
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  The cryptography community, yes. The cryptocurrency community is a bunch of Wall St. bros looking for a new pay day.
  - david_shi 3y ago
    The two are more interconnected than you might think.
clpmsf 3y ago
People will always have a want for more ways/things to bet/gamble on - it just seems to be something in our nature.
- elif 3y ago
  The only losers in bitcoin are the ones that stopped. Any 5+ year holding has been ridiculously profitable. In gambling, the longer you continue, the more certain it is that you will lose. Bitcoin is a uniquely ironic form of gambling if it's gambling at all.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - koolba 3y ago
    We’re still below the all time highs of about $68K so will need 3 more years to see if that theory plays out.
    - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
      I think timing may not work , but given the strict limited supply, this works in the long term. Of course, this is highly dependent on the "coin"
    - guiambros 3y ago
      That's silly. Anyone who's dollar cost averaging bitcoin buys over a long period of time has been incredibly well rewarded. BTC is up 146% over the last 12 months, and up 15x (!) over the last 5 years. Even if you were slow and naïve and only jumped at the 2021 all-time high, and kept buying during the next 12 months (as one should when an asset you like goes down), you'd have made your money back and then some.
      - koolba 3y ago
        Dollar cost averaging and “Any 5+ year holding” are not the same thing.
mlcrypto 3y ago
It's hard for humans to put ego aside and admit they were wrong. Also hard to put emotion aside and forget the pain of missing out from $100 to $45k. I think there's still an easy 10X to match Gold and 100X is possible if it becomes the world's preferred reserve asset
- epolanski 3y ago
  Imagine thinking you can prove that an argument is settled due to price movements. Bitcoin may go to a billion and it won't change the fundamental premise: You can have ALL the Bitcoin in the world, all of it, and if there's no buyer outside, nobody willing to trade anything for it you have nothing. Now use the same argument with all the land in US, all the crop in India, all the fish in the Pacific, all the gold in Russia, all the wine in France, all the bakeries in Palermo, all the cars in Sydney. You farm, you eat, you can make jewellery and tech, you drive. And yes, it applies to US dollars too (albeit to a minor extent). If nobody wants it you can just stare at dead national heroes on paper, or burn it idk. Wealth does not come from money, and of all the money, you choose to speculate on the exchange price of a virtual one. The premise will never change and crypto cultists keep fooling themselves and finding many weak and illiterate to join their ranks. But any price movement will not change the fundamental issue.
  - mlcrypto 3y ago
    Luckily Bitcoin can be sold on a Sunday afternoon at market price with plenty of liquidity in seconds. Good luck lining up a deal like that with the items you listed.
  - toenail 3y ago
    > Bitcoin may go to a billion and it won't change the fundamental premise: Haha, bitcoin never even attempted to solve your "fundamental premise", and never made any such promise. Bitcoin is like fiat money in that regard, and different in other regards.
  - LAMike 3y ago
    SCOREBOARD
PascLeRasc 3y ago
You don't seem as curious as you say you'd be, framing all criticism as hostility or simple antagonism. I don't think you've considered what you're missing not trying to understand why people don't care about bitcoin.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  They care enough to enter every HN thread that has positive news on the industry to shit on it. Valid criticism is fine, but insightful crypto criticism on HN is rare. Fine, you don't like crypto. Say something new or insightful or skip the comment section.
epolanski 3y ago
> I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true. Pointless challenge, those aren't good qualities. Also money is worthless, unless you like looking at pieces of paper depicting death national heroes, it's worthless, don't understand why are bitcoiners fixated giving money value. It's just meant to be traded not hoarded. It had a value when it was pegged to gold. Rich people have companies, real estate, airplanes, art, jewellery, bonds, but relatively little money. Anyway, literally any other cryptocurrency share these properties. Some even technologically better, yet completely ignored.
- LAMike 3y ago
  > Also money is worthless How do you live life if you think money is worthless?
jron 3y ago
"People want you to do well but not better than them."
paulpauper 3y ago
Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true. For it to be useful it does. How else does one convert from fiat to btc and back again?
Aunche 3y ago
I view Bitcoin the same way I view Herbalife. I don't have any issue with the product. I'm bothered by the misleading claims made by proponents to benefit themselves.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  Perfectly valid view in my opinion. There are a lot of misleading claims out there, to be sure.
- obviouslynew 3y ago
  Well Herbalife is a corporate entity, that has governing leadership that you can challenge its 'claims' because the corporate entity makes them, sells it to people who don't know better etc. Conceptually, that means that Herbalife gives people false information, they take that and perpetuate it in their MLM for their benefit. Bitcoin, is piece of open source software that was released on the internet 13 years ago running all over the world. With no central governing entity, all driven by software consensus mechanisms. Would you consider that you just don't like some of the organizations that have built themselves around this network making misleading claims? Rather than the technology itself?
  - Aunche 3y ago
    I used a leaky analogy, so I'll explain more precisely what I mean. When someone tries to sell their MLM, they pretend that they want to help you get rich, but it's obvious that they just want to help themselves. I get the same vibe from Bitcoin enthusiasts. For example, they'll claim that Bitcoin will help the poor in countries with hyperinflation but that seems disingenuous. Perhaps it's not fair to expect the regular Bitcoin holder to actively help the unbanked thousands of miles away, but there doesn't even seem to be a curiosity in the entire Bitcoin community about whether it's actually it's actually used that way, let alone how to encourage adoption and what the macroeconomic implications of this.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  This is really what it comes down to. I really didn't mind bitcoin before the price exploded, it was a curiosity and interesting experiment. Since then, it has been used to transfer a lot of wealth using outright fraud, cons, and other criminal means. I get paid a lot of money (fiat) to program digital payment systems, and have spent time understanding the underlying technology, as well as a holding a degree in economics. I get what crypto is and how it works, and I won't go near it. Bitcoin isn't inherently dangerous, but the way that the crypto ecosystem convinces people to gamble on a zero sum game they don't understand is absolutely dangerous. For every bitcoin millionaire, there's someone that pumped real dollars into the system. Very real harms have, and continue, to be caused by bitcoin and crypto.
NicoJuicy 3y ago
? Most of us don't see it as a replacement of cash. This ETF doesn't mean it's a replacement of cash either. Just so many people are holding it and there's a lot of money in it, but still less than it's peak. It will probably just go down again without news, as it did before. It's not that the BTC futures ( since 2018) changed much, I expect a similar end result of this. Note : I went out in 2017 as I didn't saw it's original purpose being fulfilled and it still isn't after 14 years. Nobody is talking about paying things with crypto anymore, as far as I know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_in_El_Salvador https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_in_El_Salvador https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/why-bitcoin-failed-in-car https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/why-bitcoin-failed-in-ca... It should still be popular for criminal purpose though. But that's Monero and some other privacy coins.
- NicoJuicy 3y ago
  And as expected. There was so much hype for the ETF, that there's no interest anymore from others to actually buy crypto ( for now)
wlesieutre 3y ago
The whole premise of burning energy just for “proof of work” is what I hate. I work in architecture and year after year the industry is pushing to squeeze every last bit of energy efficiency out of everything. Meanwhile bitcoin is like “BURN SOME COAL TO ACCOMPLISH LITERALLY NOTHING USEFUL! AND KEEP DOING IT FOREVER!” And the crypto people will always bring up “Mining gold just to make gold bars is a waste of energy too” but guess what I don’t buy gold bars either.
- jojobas 3y ago
  That "nothing useful" bit is where you don't get it. Is Taylor Swift useful? Sex and the City? Options trading for Tesla stock? You could eliminate 80% of the US service sector for not being useful. "Somebody wants to pay for it" is the best criterion and bitcoin fits.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    If people want to say “I’m a bitcoin fanboy” to justify it that’d be one thing, but there’s always this insinuation that any day it’s going to find its killer use case that isn’t already solved better by a centralized system instead of only existing to buy in hopes of the price goes up
    - jojobas 3y ago
      For one, a bitcoin wallet can't be seized by fiat by any 3-letter agency of any country. A fair amount of it is speculative, but unlike a pure-speculative ponzi scheme it's rooted in some appreciation of intrinsic value.
      - metw02024 3y ago
        I'm confused by this comment. What do you mean "seized by fiat"? Custodial wallets can and have been seized by government agencies. Cold wallet storage devices can and have been seized. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, only imputed value.
gonzo41 3y ago
Real money, like USD or Pounds etc are social in their construct. People trust them. And they don't like, but will trust banks. btc and other coins are 'trustless', yet hostile to use, and the ecosystem is filled with the most shady people on the planet all looking to scam our parents. No one really trusts bitcoin. And that's on of the big bitcoin problems. Also, it doesn't live up to any of it's hype. But others have enumerated all of those faults.
etherael 3y ago
> Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true. This isn't actually true, BTC requires a certain amount of subsidy every ten minutes from the global economy. If that subsidy is not forthcoming it ceases to function. That subsidy is constantly increasing in terms of purchasing power. Further, the regulatory authorities of the world have complete power over the transactions that take place on the ledger, and pretty much full visibility into and out of the ledger when it comes to their controlled fiat currencies. Neither of the above hold true for many other cryptocurrencies, but I'm not interested in shilling for them, because the entire cryptosphere as a whole is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, largely because of attempts to force the above status quo from BTC onto the remainder, which given the multitude thereof, and the ability for them to endlessly replicate and spawn, is basically doomed to failure. Note: I am well aware that the popular opinion of BTC is not aware of much of the above, but I didn't say "people believe x" I just said "x".
- LAMike 3y ago
  > the entire cryptosphere as a whole is a wretched hive of scum and villainy COPE
cornholio 3y ago
> Bitcoin just needs to fill needs (or wants) not met by anything else. That want being, in this case, the need to evade financial regulators and easily move large amounts of money untraceable. There is basically no other thing Bitcoin does better than traditional electronic cash, especially with the transaction fees reaching current values. Is it a legitimate want? It's a complex question involving personal and political values, but let's just say not everyone who objects about crypto does so because they don't understand its real uses.
- chii 3y ago
  > move large amounts of money untraceable. paradoxically, bitcoin is the worse at this, since addresses are completely public. Unless you, like satoshi, keep the coin in the address and never spend it, any conversion to value that you can spend, such as cash, is going to be tracible. > Is it a legitimate want? yes. Unless you can prove criminality, there's the assumption of innocence.
  - cornholio 3y ago
    > addresses are completely public. Addresses in Bitcoin are pseudoanonymous. Many criminals have evaded prosecution for years (for example, the MtGox thieves) despite moving billions in the clear on the blockchain. You are feigning ignorance about the true nature of Bitcoin which is quite obviously designed to enable very strong privacy, as noted by even by its inventor in the original paper; let's not even discuss things like Monero and ZCash.
    - ivancho 3y ago
      MtGox thieves evaded prosecution because no one was doing tracing back then. Chainalysis got started specifically to link all their activity and is now a giant graph connecting all the "pseudonymous" addresses. And the thieves laundered most of their stolen coin through exchanges, not chain transactions, strange how they didn't want that very strong privacy. There's none of that left on Bitcoin, it's been indexed, clustered and mapped. Obviously there are technologies which enable complete privacy - and like tumblers, any that prove popular will be shut down, there's just too many negative externalities.
lern_too_spel 3y ago
Nobody ever said that regulators move quickly. Bitcoin's only advantages come from temporary underregulation. After the regulation catches up, all that is left is the disadvantages. The idea that Bitcoin can continue to operate with the disapproval of a functioning government is naive.
neilv 3y ago
> I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. I thought cryptocurrency was an interesting and promising idea. But I got away from it around the time it became clear the entire space was overrun by wall-to-wall scamming. And it's safe to disregard anyone who doesn't acknowledge that. If someone says "Yeah, it's wall-to-wall scamming, and other than that, the main use of it is for organized crime transactions, but there's this silver lining of X", then I might listen to X briefly, even though it seems irrelevant at this point. If someone doesn't phrase their advocacy with acknowledging the massive BS, then I assume the person is just another scammer (and they might be even if they acknowledge it).
- baobun 3y ago
  And yet, you use e-mail?
  - amjnsx 3y ago
    And fiat...!
- dcolkitt 3y ago
  I guess what exactly do you define as scamming? In terms of outright fraud, I agree there's a lot. It shouldn't be super surprising that scammers tend to prefer decentralized permissionless financial rails, for the same reason that political extremists and pornographers were some of the biggest earliest users of the decentralized permissionless publishing rails of the early Internet. But I wouldn't characterize all, or even most of crypto as scams. Gambling, maybe. Are memecoins a scam? I would say they're more like a massively multiplayer form of gambling. Which you might argue is a bad thing, and certainly is dubious from a social standpoint. But if the code is openly public and autonomous, and there's no outright deceit, I don't think gambling is really gambling. Even beyond that, there's a lot happening in crypto that most certainly isn't scams. You have stablecoins and payment rails like USDC, stores of value like Bitcoin, smart contract chains like Ethereum, decentralized finance applications like permissionless exchanges and lending markets, social applications like farcaster, decentralized AI, and gaming. Now you might argue that all of these things are stupid and pointless and wastes of money, but that's a separate debate. Of the large projects in these categories almost none are outright scams. They're teams experimenting with new ways to run financial markets or move payments or train models or hedge inflation. Like most technological experiments most will fail. But if that was the criteria for "scam" then the entire startup sector is also wall-to-wall scams.
deleted 3y ago
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1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
There's probably more comments promoting and defending Bitcoin on HN than ones questioning it. The question I have is why do commenters feel the need to respond to any comment about Bitcoin that is not a (sometimes subtle) promotion or defense of it. A reasonable person might think it's because Bitcoin is only valuable if increasingly more and more people buy it. If it's not increasingly popular or if, God forbid, everyone holding Bitcoin were to try to sell, all at once, it's Game Over. (Some folks will lose money and all Hell will break loose.) If the first statement is false, and Bitcoin is valuable if it's unpopular, then there should be no logical reason why anyone would try to "defend" Bitcoin on HN. Why would anyone care. It's valuable even if no one is buying, right. If it lacks popularity, then this is of no consequence. Ignore it. Alas, there is no way to test if second statement is true, i.e., it is Game Over if everyone cashes out their Bitcoin, other than this actually happening. Even still, there is no logical reason anyone would need to "defend" Bitcoin on HN if someone else believes this to be true. Why would it matter if other people hold or sell their Bitcoin. And yet, there are consistently HN voters and commenters who seek to "defend" Bitcoin from anyone who has doubts or asks questions. That, in and of itself, may raise suspicions even more. "Bitcoin doesn't have to do something useful for everyone to survive. It doesn;t have to "replace fiat". It doesn't have to be a payment system. It doesn't have to "go to the moon". It doesn't even need an ETF." But somehow it needs to be constantly defended in every electronic discussion. It needs constant promotion. It needs hype. No one can simply state "I am not interested in Bitcoin" in a discussion without triggering some "response". Regardless of the merits of Bitcoin, or absence of them, that is fscked up. Red flag. In case anyone gets confused, I am not suggesting that any commenter literally states "I am not interested in Bitcoin" and nothing else. I am using a hypothetical example of a seemingly benign statement to illustrate the idea that _all_ comments about crypto which are not positive are quickly "countered" by Bitcoin true believers. Here is perhaps a better example. Someone states, in so many words, that Bitcoin requires large amounts of electricity. Is this untrue. It is explicitly negative. It seems quite benign yet this sort of comment will almost invariably trigger a "defense". To some, that is a red flag that there is something suspicous about these "arguments" that people feel compelled to make about Bitcoin. Check out the film "Bitconned" if you can. Slow start but hilarious in the end. What happens when some petty criminals accidentally come in contact with hordes of "true believers". online. If I am not mistaken this was the SEC's first successful prosecution re: crypto.
the_gastropod 3y ago
> It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year. If that shoe were on my foot, in addition to being annoyed I'd be curious about what I was missing. There are MLM’s that have been around for over 100 years. I feel strongly that they’re all complete scams, yet they live on. Maybe I’m closed minded for not joining Amway. But I think I’m just being sensible, tbh.
yieldcrv 3y ago
HN should be a place where bitcoin improvement protocols are routinely discussed There should have been taproot and schnorr discussions on the frontpage for years What people are building as betas, there should be ordinals and inscription discussions about their technical implementation But instead we get these surface level discussions about bitcoin or crypto for over a decade now. People completely missing that there are others who had the exact same information and said “okay this is how I can improve it to more closely fulfill that vision” instead of “harumph! that will never work and I dont like it so there’s that!
chpatrick 3y ago
I think a big component is definitely the bitterness that comes from tech savvy people being aware of when it was just getting started and watching it go from pennies to tens of thousands without buying any. I remember when it was on Slashdot all the time in the late 2000s, the hivemind agreed that it would never lead anywhere, and so I dismissed it as well. There were even Bitcoin Faucet sites where you could go and just get 5 BTC for free, no questions asked. I still don't own any and don't want to, but there is the demon at the back of my head telling me that I could've just mined some or clicked the button on the faucet. After all we all knew about it. I know that most people wouldn't have held onto it for 14 years, but it's not a rational feeling.
738292748 3y ago
This, 100%. Bitcoin has proven its value already, and it's the only tool we have against authoritarian governments that print money and steal as much as possible with taxes. You can ask people in Argentina or Venezuela about that.
TheCapeGreek 3y ago
>Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. If you start from scratch with a non-exchange wallet and get paid in BTC for something to it, sure. But if you want to get in with any fiat, you're going through an exchange, which means KYC, which means you definitely need the approval of the exchange (and by proxy your local government/tax authority). It was a simple solve by governments to get crypto controlled centrally by proxy for most users this way.
- cesarb 3y ago
  > If you start from scratch with a non-exchange wallet and get paid in BTC for something to it, sure. I believe the original idea was that, to start from scratch, you would just leave the Bitcoin software running on your computer for a while, since that software not only hosted your wallet but also contained a miner. After a while, you would get lucky and receive 50 Bitcoins. Of course, that stopped working once mining moved to FPGA and then to ASIC; even with GPU mining software, an individual user has no hope of mining any relevant amount of Bitcoin. That bootstrap mechanism is now completely dead, and the only way to get new Bitcoins is to get them from someone, buy them in an exchange, or invest lots of money in specialized Bitcoin mining hardware.
  - LAMike 3y ago
    > the only way to get new Bitcoins is to get them from someone, buy them in an exchange, or invest lots of money in specialized Bitcoin mining hardware. Have you heard of this new technology called a "J.O.B"? It enables people to trade labor for currency. The next ten years will be about how to earn Bitcoin through skilled labor, not mining on your PC.
demondemidi 3y ago
Nah. You’re over speculating. The real reason for the negative sentiment is that HN is mostly smart people.
- lkt 3y ago
  That's absolutely not the case, HN is mostly people who think they're geniuses because they can program computers. Read the comments on any post about a topic you know a lot about and you'll see it's full of people talking very confidently about things they know very little about. There are of course some very smart people mixed in, but it's hard to pick those people out from the noise.
miohtama 3y ago
Hacker News was pro-crypto circa 2015 when Coinbase launched. The change of the tone here is mainly because of the changed audience. Hacker News was originally a forum for founders and hackers. Now it is a general forum for salarymen software developers.
- zubairq 3y ago
  I didn’t know that the hacker news demographic had changed so much. Are there any stats on this anywhere or is it a general feeling that you have? And if so then where do all the hackers hang out now?
- tromp 3y ago
  HN was pro crypto when it was still an interesting new technology. That changed when it became a speculative vehicle and breeding ground for scams.
- mekster 3y ago
  More like people are getting tired of being reminded of missing the boat year over year but they will always be missing the boat thinking it's the top this time. Or those people who suffered loss buying it at the top need reasons that Bitcoin should suck. I have a feeling Bitcoin discussions can get quite more interesting in here if it had no monetary values but people can be sensitive when money is involved.
seydor 3y ago
hn is all about the vc ecosystem which deals in dollars, so this is understandable. same with banks
cowthulhu 3y ago
My struggle with it is mainly that it doesn’t seem to accomplish any of its goals very well, while having really big downsides. A few examples: It’s difficult to use it for circumventing government controls, since so many of the on and off ramps are subject to regulation and it’s difficult (and expensive) to transact truly anonymously. It sucks as a store of value since it’s so volatile. Similar to the point above, it’s increasing subject to government regulation (namely the US) in a de facto sense. The UX sucks, and mistakes can be super punishing. If you make a mistake then you have no recourse and everyone will applaud the code working as intended, unless the mistake is really big in which case the “code as law” folks will fork the network to rollback the mistake. In the same vein as the item above, scams are rampart and there is very little recourse once scammed. As a result, it’s tough to see actual widespread adoption as a currency (and not just a speculative asset sitting in a brokerage account somewhere) since the level of technical sophistication needed to use it as a currency without risking wiping yourself out puts it way out of reach of most people. It sucks for transactions, since the fees are so high and make small transactions bit feasible. Proof of work sucks and is super wasteful. There are probably plenty of other ways it misses the mark I’m missing as well. It frustrates me because it feels so fatally flawed, but people take it so seriously. If popular sentiment was that BTC was just a fun thing to speculate on, in the same realm as TSLA or buying short dated calls on the VIX, I would be totally on board! But trying to act like it’s a serious currency that can compete with USD or whatever just seems somewhat delusional. I think blockchain and ETH style smart contracts are super cool tech, and could have super productive applications that legitimately make the world a better, more efficient place, but BTC in its current form doesn’t check that box for me.
NicoJuicy 3y ago
> Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. That's only a good thing in dictatorships, not in democracies. => I really don't care. It's not a pro in my life and my continent ( Europe) Additionally, Bitcoin is super duper easy to track
- LAMike 3y ago
  > That's only a good thing in dictatorships, not in democracies. Yes, Bitcoin allows you to be a dictator of your personal finances, compared to fiat, a "democratic" system, where people you never voted into power get to press a button and print as much money as they deem necessary to "stimulate" the economy.
  - NicoJuicy 3y ago
    Ugh. Ok. So when nothing special happens in your perfect currency, it divides by 3 or 4 in value in a year. Yeah, that seems great! Go for it!
    - LAMike 3y ago
      > Yeah, that seems great! Go for it! I mean, it is the best performing asset of the last 10 years, so yeah, it seems pretty great to anyone who has a brain. A 98% cash and 2% Bitcoin would beat the SPY returns for any 4 year period since inception. When making investments, its important to have a long term outlook. Do you just live day to day without any planning?
- LAMike 3y ago
  > Additionally, Bitcoin is super duper easy to track Could you tell me who Satoshi is? Could you explain how you can track who paid you a Lightning Network invoice? Have you ever written down a seed phrase or made a Bitcoin transaction on chain?
  - NicoJuicy 3y ago
    > Could you tell me who Satoshi is? Nope, because he's been inactive for 14 years. ( 70% of all accounts are inactive anyways - https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/23/bitcoin-supply-inactive-for-a-year-hits-record-high-of-70 https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/23/bitcoin-supply-i... ) > Lightning Network You mean the SQLite database at third parties in some cases? Or the ones hosted at the cloud providers? https://watcher.guru/news/amazon-google-cloud-host-49-of-bitcoin-lightning-nodes https://watcher.guru/news/amazon-google-cloud-host-49-of-bit... I'm not a government, in case you were wondering. I can't track the edge-cases. I don't have access to KYC Fyi, noticed the mixing services going offline? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash

simonw 3y ago

What needs and wants is it fulfilling for you?

MuffinFlavored 3y ago
Me guessing (as somebody who is anti-crypto): they like how it returns ~50-100% year over year pretty much. I swear I saw some super highly upvoted comments that read as normal + level-headed in r/CryptoCurrnecy that was like "if it goes from $45k -> $100k this year it isn't even that much" Do you ever hear Warren Buffet saying "122% yearly returns are meh"?
- stringfood 3y ago
  [dead]
- Timber-6539 3y ago
  Yep, crypto bros will get in bed with the same banks that screwed them over in 2008 if the end goal means that the price of their coin (ahem) bags.. go up. The whole Bitcoin 'manifesto' and sticking it to the man is just a ruse.
  - obviouslynew 3y ago
    Or the technologists that push these open source projects forward were abandoned by the very communities that used to celebrate disruptive technologies.
rafaelero 3y ago
Bitcoin is wealth in the cloud. There's immense utility in being able to digitalize your wealth, including higher mobility and, since it is a decentralized network, assurance that it won't be inflated, confiscated and that you will have the freedom to transact it with whoever you want.
- vasilipupkin 3y ago
  What does that mean ? Most wealth is in the cloud, you don’t need Bitcoin for this. I don’t have any paper stock certificates.
  - rafaelero 3y ago
    Not really. Most wealth is based on physical stuff like houses, factories and offices.
  - TimJRobinson 3y ago
    And yet if you were to visit Iran and attempt to access that wealth you'd quickly discover how little of that wealth is actually yours. It's not just that it's in the cloud, it's the only form of wealth you can keep digitally AND only you have access and control over it. Maybe that's fine because you're a good citizen who follows the rules, but some people are born into places where they don't get the privilege of a fair financial system, or the system changes on them.
    - vasilipupkin 3y ago
      But all this is circular logic. You can’t say something is valuable because it’s digital. Why is it wealth in the first place is the question. Wealth is something that represents concrete value.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Cool. Going on GitHub and downloading core code and deploying a new coin based on Bitcoin or some other crypto. I'll call it HackerNewsCoin. Didn't know it was that simple to create "wealth". What a foolishness to think that something that has no intrinsic value can constitute wealth. Don't confuse price with value. It really is true crypto combines all that people don't understand about economy with all that people don't understand about technology.
killerstorm 3y ago
It provides an alternative to banks. Once you realize that banks are very fragile and abusive, just having this alternative is important. Banks can deny you access to your money on a whim. Compliance, glitch, failure, whatever. You can't use your money. You can't buy food. You can't pay rent. You can't buy tickets. You can't hire a lawyer. It's nice to have something which is based on completely different principles.
- reaperman 3y ago
  I think you'll be amazed at the extent to which BTC will be able to be controlled by strong central governments. I'd be shocked if in ten years there's not granular control over which wallets contain "tainted" bitcoin and cannot be converted to fiat except through actual money laundering. There's been a lot of consolidation of the exchanges in USA, tons of KYC controls in place now, and old-school options like localbitcoins.com or craigslist have disappeared or been nerfed beyond recognizability. If people no longer "need" to convert BTC to fiat, this would no longer be a point of a control, but until then, governments can already and will continue to grow how much they can control BTC flow. Some of it is currently very ham-fisted, but there's a clear intent to devalue off-exchange wallets: https://www.coincenter.org/new-crypto-tax-reporting-obligations-took-effect-on-new-years-day/ https://www.coincenter.org/new-crypto-tax-reporting-obligati...
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    I remember seeing articles related to this from a few years ago. I wonder what's going on under the hood at places like Coinbase. https://news.bitcoin.com/industry-execs-freshly-minted-virgin-bitcoins/ https://news.bitcoin.com/industry-execs-freshly-minted-virgi...
  - hackernudes 3y ago
    What about the lightning network? Or Liquid sidechain? There are lots of people working on scaling bitcoin so that it can be used like cash (low fees and anonymous). When a user receives a payment in Cash App or Strike over the lightning network there is no way to track where that bitcoin came from. I haven't really tested that out yet, but I find the idea that bitcoin can be the rails of transferring value pretty compelling. Most people can still transact in fiat but with trustless interoperability between banks and service providers. And of course if people are happy transacting in units of bitcoin it can all be done in a trust-minimized way (with tradeoffs available for convenience, etc...). But to your point, the government could crack down on the app stores and service providers to not support this kinda stuff.
latchkey 3y ago
I've favorited off this comment for a while now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410
- p4ul 3y ago
  Thank you so much for sharing this! It's definitely an interesting and valuable perspective.
ericd 3y ago
Many governments attempt to force their populations to keep their savings in the nation's currency, while aggressively devaluing the currency. The richer people in those countries tend to try to get out of it via other currency holdings in offshore accounts or real estate, but the poorer set don't generally have that option. The ability to opt out of that in a way that's harder to confiscate than eg physical gold/USD is very helpful to those people.

CPLX 3y ago

Not really. Most people who are observant are well aware that there’s deep and enduring demand for ways to gamble and speculate. It’s really easy to recognize Bitcoin filling that role like the neighborhood numbers game, pachinko, online poker, and tulip investing all have at various times in history. We just don’t like it.

ric2b 3y ago
The tulip bubble is wildly misunderstood, it's actually quite an interesting story about the origin of futures contracts. It lasted only a few months, there was no long term investing on tulips.
waprin 3y ago
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

xpressvideoz 3y ago

What you're missing is something can be criticized even if it fulfills some needs. Drugs, gambling, crimes all satisfy some people's needs but most people have negative view on them.

block_dagger 3y ago
Drugs and gambling do not hurt others. Throwing “crimes” in makes your reasoning weak. Where are you getting your data on the first two? I’m not sure you’re correct.
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  > Drugs and gambling do not hurt others. The bad things people do to other people to get money for drugs and gambling are included in the blanket statement “drugs and gambling”.
- epolanski 3y ago
  > Drugs and gambling do not hurt others. They ruin families, neighborhoods, cities.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    If you ever need an example of how drugs genuinely ruin things on a large scale read absolutely anything about the opium wars. I do contend that "ruining families" is not a thing we should base policy on because it implies both a crazy amount of government intrusion into individual lives and because it imposes rules on everyone to make the nuclear family work.
- npunt 3y ago
  > Drugs and gambling do not hurt others. Please spend like 30 seconds of analytical thinking trying to poke holes in this. It's remarkably easy to disprove. The challenge is what if anything we choose to do about the harms that they can cause.
  - 3y ago

stefan_ 3y ago

It must be peak irony to write this on the topic of a Bitcoin ETF. None of the technology, all of the speculation.

FactKnower69 3y ago
What Bitcoin is really missing before it can finally take off is yet another layer of fees and rent seeking; can't wait to pay 1.5%(!) of my portfolio every year in expenses :)
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Blackrock's BTC ETF is .12% for the first year, SPY (The largest ETF) is .09% You know, if all the BTC haters actually knew what they were talking about we could have intelligent discussions on HN.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. But then can't you see the irony of writing that sentence when the article title is literally "Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC". That's the thing that's so baffling to me - if you're saying BTC is so great that it doesn't need the support of government and social institutions, why the push so hard to get an ETF (multiple in fact!) when the rallying cry for crypto has always been "distributed, trustless currency".

david_shi 3y ago
This is circular reasoning. It doesn't need the approval, what it shows is official capitulation to a "distributed, trustless currency". That's the big news.
- etherael 3y ago
  Or what it shows is official acknowledgment that the rubes bought this narrative whilst if you look at the details, it's effectively a CBDC.
- metw02024 3y ago
  On the contrary... bitcoin desperately needs this approval. The current (and future) price of BTC is absolutely predicated upon the greater fool theory. The network is dependent on miners. Miners earn bitcoin but spend dollars to create it. They're dependent on price appreciation to provide the liquidity that sustains their business. Without this approval, who is going to continue to pay more for bitcoin?
psychlops 3y ago
It wasn't a push, it was a pull.

david_shi 3y ago

The OG hacker spirit is still alive in the crypto community

AlexandrB 3y ago
The cryptography community, yes. The cryptocurrency community is a bunch of Wall St. bros looking for a new pay day.
- david_shi 3y ago
  The two are more interconnected than you might think.

clpmsf 3y ago

People will always have a want for more ways/things to bet/gamble on - it just seems to be something in our nature.

elif 3y ago
The only losers in bitcoin are the ones that stopped. Any 5+ year holding has been ridiculously profitable. In gambling, the longer you continue, the more certain it is that you will lose. Bitcoin is a uniquely ironic form of gambling if it's gambling at all.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- koolba 3y ago
  We’re still below the all time highs of about $68K so will need 3 more years to see if that theory plays out.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    I think timing may not work , but given the strict limited supply, this works in the long term. Of course, this is highly dependent on the "coin"
  - guiambros 3y ago
    That's silly. Anyone who's dollar cost averaging bitcoin buys over a long period of time has been incredibly well rewarded. BTC is up 146% over the last 12 months, and up 15x (!) over the last 5 years. Even if you were slow and naïve and only jumped at the 2021 all-time high, and kept buying during the next 12 months (as one should when an asset you like goes down), you'd have made your money back and then some.
    - koolba 3y ago
      Dollar cost averaging and “Any 5+ year holding” are not the same thing.

mlcrypto 3y ago

It's hard for humans to put ego aside and admit they were wrong. Also hard to put emotion aside and forget the pain of missing out from $100 to $45k. I think there's still an easy 10X to match Gold and 100X is possible if it becomes the world's preferred reserve asset

epolanski 3y ago
Imagine thinking you can prove that an argument is settled due to price movements. Bitcoin may go to a billion and it won't change the fundamental premise: You can have ALL the Bitcoin in the world, all of it, and if there's no buyer outside, nobody willing to trade anything for it you have nothing. Now use the same argument with all the land in US, all the crop in India, all the fish in the Pacific, all the gold in Russia, all the wine in France, all the bakeries in Palermo, all the cars in Sydney. You farm, you eat, you can make jewellery and tech, you drive. And yes, it applies to US dollars too (albeit to a minor extent). If nobody wants it you can just stare at dead national heroes on paper, or burn it idk. Wealth does not come from money, and of all the money, you choose to speculate on the exchange price of a virtual one. The premise will never change and crypto cultists keep fooling themselves and finding many weak and illiterate to join their ranks. But any price movement will not change the fundamental issue.
- mlcrypto 3y ago
  Luckily Bitcoin can be sold on a Sunday afternoon at market price with plenty of liquidity in seconds. Good luck lining up a deal like that with the items you listed.
- toenail 3y ago
  > Bitcoin may go to a billion and it won't change the fundamental premise: Haha, bitcoin never even attempted to solve your "fundamental premise", and never made any such promise. Bitcoin is like fiat money in that regard, and different in other regards.
- LAMike 3y ago
  SCOREBOARD

PascLeRasc 3y ago

You don't seem as curious as you say you'd be, framing all criticism as hostility or simple antagonism. I don't think you've considered what you're missing not trying to understand why people don't care about bitcoin.

mlrtime 3y ago
They care enough to enter every HN thread that has positive news on the industry to shit on it. Valid criticism is fine, but insightful crypto criticism on HN is rare. Fine, you don't like crypto. Say something new or insightful or skip the comment section.

epolanski 3y ago

> I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true. Pointless challenge, those aren't good qualities. Also money is worthless, unless you like looking at pieces of paper depicting death national heroes, it's worthless, don't understand why are bitcoiners fixated giving money value. It's just meant to be traded not hoarded. It had a value when it was pegged to gold. Rich people have companies, real estate, airplanes, art, jewellery, bonds, but relatively little money. Anyway, literally any other cryptocurrency share these properties. Some even technologically better, yet completely ignored.

LAMike 3y ago
> Also money is worthless How do you live life if you think money is worthless?

jron 3y ago

"People want you to do well but not better than them."

paulpauper 3y ago

Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true. For it to be useful it does. How else does one convert from fiat to btc and back again?

Aunche 3y ago

I view Bitcoin the same way I view Herbalife. I don't have any issue with the product. I'm bothered by the misleading claims made by proponents to benefit themselves.

cableshaft 3y ago
Perfectly valid view in my opinion. There are a lot of misleading claims out there, to be sure.
obviouslynew 3y ago
Well Herbalife is a corporate entity, that has governing leadership that you can challenge its 'claims' because the corporate entity makes them, sells it to people who don't know better etc. Conceptually, that means that Herbalife gives people false information, they take that and perpetuate it in their MLM for their benefit. Bitcoin, is piece of open source software that was released on the internet 13 years ago running all over the world. With no central governing entity, all driven by software consensus mechanisms. Would you consider that you just don't like some of the organizations that have built themselves around this network making misleading claims? Rather than the technology itself?
- Aunche 3y ago
  I used a leaky analogy, so I'll explain more precisely what I mean. When someone tries to sell their MLM, they pretend that they want to help you get rich, but it's obvious that they just want to help themselves. I get the same vibe from Bitcoin enthusiasts. For example, they'll claim that Bitcoin will help the poor in countries with hyperinflation but that seems disingenuous. Perhaps it's not fair to expect the regular Bitcoin holder to actively help the unbanked thousands of miles away, but there doesn't even seem to be a curiosity in the entire Bitcoin community about whether it's actually it's actually used that way, let alone how to encourage adoption and what the macroeconomic implications of this.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
This is really what it comes down to. I really didn't mind bitcoin before the price exploded, it was a curiosity and interesting experiment. Since then, it has been used to transfer a lot of wealth using outright fraud, cons, and other criminal means. I get paid a lot of money (fiat) to program digital payment systems, and have spent time understanding the underlying technology, as well as a holding a degree in economics. I get what crypto is and how it works, and I won't go near it. Bitcoin isn't inherently dangerous, but the way that the crypto ecosystem convinces people to gamble on a zero sum game they don't understand is absolutely dangerous. For every bitcoin millionaire, there's someone that pumped real dollars into the system. Very real harms have, and continue, to be caused by bitcoin and crypto.

NicoJuicy 3y ago

? Most of us don't see it as a replacement of cash. This ETF doesn't mean it's a replacement of cash either. Just so many people are holding it and there's a lot of money in it, but still less than it's peak. It will probably just go down again without news, as it did before. It's not that the BTC futures ( since 2018) changed much, I expect a similar end result of this. Note : I went out in 2017 as I didn't saw it's original purpose being fulfilled and it still isn't after 14 years. Nobody is talking about paying things with crypto anymore, as far as I know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_in_El_Salvador https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_in_El_Salvador https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/why-bitcoin-failed-in-car https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/why-bitcoin-failed-in-ca... It should still be popular for criminal purpose though. But that's Monero and some other privacy coins.

NicoJuicy 3y ago
And as expected. There was so much hype for the ETF, that there's no interest anymore from others to actually buy crypto ( for now)

wlesieutre 3y ago

The whole premise of burning energy just for “proof of work” is what I hate. I work in architecture and year after year the industry is pushing to squeeze every last bit of energy efficiency out of everything. Meanwhile bitcoin is like “BURN SOME COAL TO ACCOMPLISH LITERALLY NOTHING USEFUL! AND KEEP DOING IT FOREVER!” And the crypto people will always bring up “Mining gold just to make gold bars is a waste of energy too” but guess what I don’t buy gold bars either.

jojobas 3y ago
That "nothing useful" bit is where you don't get it. Is Taylor Swift useful? Sex and the City? Options trading for Tesla stock? You could eliminate 80% of the US service sector for not being useful. "Somebody wants to pay for it" is the best criterion and bitcoin fits.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  If people want to say “I’m a bitcoin fanboy” to justify it that’d be one thing, but there’s always this insinuation that any day it’s going to find its killer use case that isn’t already solved better by a centralized system instead of only existing to buy in hopes of the price goes up
  - jojobas 3y ago
    For one, a bitcoin wallet can't be seized by fiat by any 3-letter agency of any country. A fair amount of it is speculative, but unlike a pure-speculative ponzi scheme it's rooted in some appreciation of intrinsic value.
    - metw02024 3y ago
      I'm confused by this comment. What do you mean "seized by fiat"? Custodial wallets can and have been seized by government agencies. Cold wallet storage devices can and have been seized. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, only imputed value.

gonzo41 3y ago

Real money, like USD or Pounds etc are social in their construct. People trust them. And they don't like, but will trust banks. btc and other coins are 'trustless', yet hostile to use, and the ecosystem is filled with the most shady people on the planet all looking to scam our parents. No one really trusts bitcoin. And that's on of the big bitcoin problems. Also, it doesn't live up to any of it's hype. But others have enumerated all of those faults.

etherael 3y ago

> Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true. This isn't actually true, BTC requires a certain amount of subsidy every ten minutes from the global economy. If that subsidy is not forthcoming it ceases to function. That subsidy is constantly increasing in terms of purchasing power. Further, the regulatory authorities of the world have complete power over the transactions that take place on the ledger, and pretty much full visibility into and out of the ledger when it comes to their controlled fiat currencies. Neither of the above hold true for many other cryptocurrencies, but I'm not interested in shilling for them, because the entire cryptosphere as a whole is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, largely because of attempts to force the above status quo from BTC onto the remainder, which given the multitude thereof, and the ability for them to endlessly replicate and spawn, is basically doomed to failure. Note: I am well aware that the popular opinion of BTC is not aware of much of the above, but I didn't say "people believe x" I just said "x".

LAMike 3y ago
> the entire cryptosphere as a whole is a wretched hive of scum and villainy COPE

cornholio 3y ago

> Bitcoin just needs to fill needs (or wants) not met by anything else. That want being, in this case, the need to evade financial regulators and easily move large amounts of money untraceable. There is basically no other thing Bitcoin does better than traditional electronic cash, especially with the transaction fees reaching current values. Is it a legitimate want? It's a complex question involving personal and political values, but let's just say not everyone who objects about crypto does so because they don't understand its real uses.

chii 3y ago
> move large amounts of money untraceable. paradoxically, bitcoin is the worse at this, since addresses are completely public. Unless you, like satoshi, keep the coin in the address and never spend it, any conversion to value that you can spend, such as cash, is going to be tracible. > Is it a legitimate want? yes. Unless you can prove criminality, there's the assumption of innocence.
- cornholio 3y ago
  > addresses are completely public. Addresses in Bitcoin are pseudoanonymous. Many criminals have evaded prosecution for years (for example, the MtGox thieves) despite moving billions in the clear on the blockchain. You are feigning ignorance about the true nature of Bitcoin which is quite obviously designed to enable very strong privacy, as noted by even by its inventor in the original paper; let's not even discuss things like Monero and ZCash.
  - ivancho 3y ago
    MtGox thieves evaded prosecution because no one was doing tracing back then. Chainalysis got started specifically to link all their activity and is now a giant graph connecting all the "pseudonymous" addresses. And the thieves laundered most of their stolen coin through exchanges, not chain transactions, strange how they didn't want that very strong privacy. There's none of that left on Bitcoin, it's been indexed, clustered and mapped. Obviously there are technologies which enable complete privacy - and like tumblers, any that prove popular will be shut down, there's just too many negative externalities.

lern_too_spel 3y ago

Nobody ever said that regulators move quickly. Bitcoin's only advantages come from temporary underregulation. After the regulation catches up, all that is left is the disadvantages. The idea that Bitcoin can continue to operate with the disapproval of a functioning government is naive.

neilv 3y ago

> I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. I thought cryptocurrency was an interesting and promising idea. But I got away from it around the time it became clear the entire space was overrun by wall-to-wall scamming. And it's safe to disregard anyone who doesn't acknowledge that. If someone says "Yeah, it's wall-to-wall scamming, and other than that, the main use of it is for organized crime transactions, but there's this silver lining of X", then I might listen to X briefly, even though it seems irrelevant at this point. If someone doesn't phrase their advocacy with acknowledging the massive BS, then I assume the person is just another scammer (and they might be even if they acknowledge it).

baobun 3y ago
And yet, you use e-mail?
- amjnsx 3y ago
  And fiat...!
dcolkitt 3y ago
I guess what exactly do you define as scamming? In terms of outright fraud, I agree there's a lot. It shouldn't be super surprising that scammers tend to prefer decentralized permissionless financial rails, for the same reason that political extremists and pornographers were some of the biggest earliest users of the decentralized permissionless publishing rails of the early Internet. But I wouldn't characterize all, or even most of crypto as scams. Gambling, maybe. Are memecoins a scam? I would say they're more like a massively multiplayer form of gambling. Which you might argue is a bad thing, and certainly is dubious from a social standpoint. But if the code is openly public and autonomous, and there's no outright deceit, I don't think gambling is really gambling. Even beyond that, there's a lot happening in crypto that most certainly isn't scams. You have stablecoins and payment rails like USDC, stores of value like Bitcoin, smart contract chains like Ethereum, decentralized finance applications like permissionless exchanges and lending markets, social applications like farcaster, decentralized AI, and gaming. Now you might argue that all of these things are stupid and pointless and wastes of money, but that's a separate debate. Of the large projects in these categories almost none are outright scams. They're teams experimenting with new ways to run financial markets or move payments or train models or hedge inflation. Like most technological experiments most will fail. But if that was the criteria for "scam" then the entire startup sector is also wall-to-wall scams.

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1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

There's probably more comments promoting and defending Bitcoin on HN than ones questioning it. The question I have is why do commenters feel the need to respond to any comment about Bitcoin that is not a (sometimes subtle) promotion or defense of it. A reasonable person might think it's because Bitcoin is only valuable if increasingly more and more people buy it. If it's not increasingly popular or if, God forbid, everyone holding Bitcoin were to try to sell, all at once, it's Game Over. (Some folks will lose money and all Hell will break loose.) If the first statement is false, and Bitcoin is valuable if it's unpopular, then there should be no logical reason why anyone would try to "defend" Bitcoin on HN. Why would anyone care. It's valuable even if no one is buying, right. If it lacks popularity, then this is of no consequence. Ignore it. Alas, there is no way to test if second statement is true, i.e., it is Game Over if everyone cashes out their Bitcoin, other than this actually happening. Even still, there is no logical reason anyone would need to "defend" Bitcoin on HN if someone else believes this to be true. Why would it matter if other people hold or sell their Bitcoin. And yet, there are consistently HN voters and commenters who seek to "defend" Bitcoin from anyone who has doubts or asks questions. That, in and of itself, may raise suspicions even more. "Bitcoin doesn't have to do something useful for everyone to survive. It doesn;t have to "replace fiat". It doesn't have to be a payment system. It doesn't have to "go to the moon". It doesn't even need an ETF." But somehow it needs to be constantly defended in every electronic discussion. It needs constant promotion. It needs hype. No one can simply state "I am not interested in Bitcoin" in a discussion without triggering some "response". Regardless of the merits of Bitcoin, or absence of them, that is fscked up. Red flag. In case anyone gets confused, I am not suggesting that any commenter literally states "I am not interested in Bitcoin" and nothing else. I am using a hypothetical example of a seemingly benign statement to illustrate the idea that _all_ comments about crypto which are not positive are quickly "countered" by Bitcoin true believers. Here is perhaps a better example. Someone states, in so many words, that Bitcoin requires large amounts of electricity. Is this untrue. It is explicitly negative. It seems quite benign yet this sort of comment will almost invariably trigger a "defense". To some, that is a red flag that there is something suspicous about these "arguments" that people feel compelled to make about Bitcoin. Check out the film "Bitconned" if you can. Slow start but hilarious in the end. What happens when some petty criminals accidentally come in contact with hordes of "true believers". online. If I am not mistaken this was the SEC's first successful prosecution re: crypto.

the_gastropod 3y ago

> It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year. If that shoe were on my foot, in addition to being annoyed I'd be curious about what I was missing. There are MLM’s that have been around for over 100 years. I feel strongly that they’re all complete scams, yet they live on. Maybe I’m closed minded for not joining Amway. But I think I’m just being sensible, tbh.

yieldcrv 3y ago

HN should be a place where bitcoin improvement protocols are routinely discussed There should have been taproot and schnorr discussions on the frontpage for years What people are building as betas, there should be ordinals and inscription discussions about their technical implementation But instead we get these surface level discussions about bitcoin or crypto for over a decade now. People completely missing that there are others who had the exact same information and said “okay this is how I can improve it to more closely fulfill that vision” instead of “harumph! that will never work and I dont like it so there’s that!

chpatrick 3y ago

I think a big component is definitely the bitterness that comes from tech savvy people being aware of when it was just getting started and watching it go from pennies to tens of thousands without buying any. I remember when it was on Slashdot all the time in the late 2000s, the hivemind agreed that it would never lead anywhere, and so I dismissed it as well. There were even Bitcoin Faucet sites where you could go and just get 5 BTC for free, no questions asked. I still don't own any and don't want to, but there is the demon at the back of my head telling me that I could've just mined some or clicked the button on the faucet. After all we all knew about it. I know that most people wouldn't have held onto it for 14 years, but it's not a rational feeling.

738292748 3y ago

This, 100%. Bitcoin has proven its value already, and it's the only tool we have against authoritarian governments that print money and steal as much as possible with taxes. You can ask people in Argentina or Venezuela about that.

TheCapeGreek 3y ago

>Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. If you start from scratch with a non-exchange wallet and get paid in BTC for something to it, sure. But if you want to get in with any fiat, you're going through an exchange, which means KYC, which means you definitely need the approval of the exchange (and by proxy your local government/tax authority). It was a simple solve by governments to get crypto controlled centrally by proxy for most users this way.

cesarb 3y ago
> If you start from scratch with a non-exchange wallet and get paid in BTC for something to it, sure. I believe the original idea was that, to start from scratch, you would just leave the Bitcoin software running on your computer for a while, since that software not only hosted your wallet but also contained a miner. After a while, you would get lucky and receive 50 Bitcoins. Of course, that stopped working once mining moved to FPGA and then to ASIC; even with GPU mining software, an individual user has no hope of mining any relevant amount of Bitcoin. That bootstrap mechanism is now completely dead, and the only way to get new Bitcoins is to get them from someone, buy them in an exchange, or invest lots of money in specialized Bitcoin mining hardware.
- LAMike 3y ago
  > the only way to get new Bitcoins is to get them from someone, buy them in an exchange, or invest lots of money in specialized Bitcoin mining hardware. Have you heard of this new technology called a "J.O.B"? It enables people to trade labor for currency. The next ten years will be about how to earn Bitcoin through skilled labor, not mining on your PC.

demondemidi 3y ago

Nah. You’re over speculating. The real reason for the negative sentiment is that HN is mostly smart people.

lkt 3y ago
That's absolutely not the case, HN is mostly people who think they're geniuses because they can program computers. Read the comments on any post about a topic you know a lot about and you'll see it's full of people talking very confidently about things they know very little about. There are of course some very smart people mixed in, but it's hard to pick those people out from the noise.

miohtama 3y ago

Hacker News was pro-crypto circa 2015 when Coinbase launched. The change of the tone here is mainly because of the changed audience. Hacker News was originally a forum for founders and hackers. Now it is a general forum for salarymen software developers.

zubairq 3y ago
I didn’t know that the hacker news demographic had changed so much. Are there any stats on this anywhere or is it a general feeling that you have? And if so then where do all the hackers hang out now?
tromp 3y ago
HN was pro crypto when it was still an interesting new technology. That changed when it became a speculative vehicle and breeding ground for scams.
mekster 3y ago
More like people are getting tired of being reminded of missing the boat year over year but they will always be missing the boat thinking it's the top this time. Or those people who suffered loss buying it at the top need reasons that Bitcoin should suck. I have a feeling Bitcoin discussions can get quite more interesting in here if it had no monetary values but people can be sensitive when money is involved.

seydor 3y ago

hn is all about the vc ecosystem which deals in dollars, so this is understandable. same with banks

cowthulhu 3y ago

My struggle with it is mainly that it doesn’t seem to accomplish any of its goals very well, while having really big downsides. A few examples: It’s difficult to use it for circumventing government controls, since so many of the on and off ramps are subject to regulation and it’s difficult (and expensive) to transact truly anonymously. It sucks as a store of value since it’s so volatile. Similar to the point above, it’s increasing subject to government regulation (namely the US) in a de facto sense. The UX sucks, and mistakes can be super punishing. If you make a mistake then you have no recourse and everyone will applaud the code working as intended, unless the mistake is really big in which case the “code as law” folks will fork the network to rollback the mistake. In the same vein as the item above, scams are rampart and there is very little recourse once scammed. As a result, it’s tough to see actual widespread adoption as a currency (and not just a speculative asset sitting in a brokerage account somewhere) since the level of technical sophistication needed to use it as a currency without risking wiping yourself out puts it way out of reach of most people. It sucks for transactions, since the fees are so high and make small transactions bit feasible. Proof of work sucks and is super wasteful. There are probably plenty of other ways it misses the mark I’m missing as well. It frustrates me because it feels so fatally flawed, but people take it so seriously. If popular sentiment was that BTC was just a fun thing to speculate on, in the same realm as TSLA or buying short dated calls on the VIX, I would be totally on board! But trying to act like it’s a serious currency that can compete with USD or whatever just seems somewhat delusional. I think blockchain and ETH style smart contracts are super cool tech, and could have super productive applications that legitimately make the world a better, more efficient place, but BTC in its current form doesn’t check that box for me.

NicoJuicy 3y ago

> Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. That's only a good thing in dictatorships, not in democracies. => I really don't care. It's not a pro in my life and my continent ( Europe) Additionally, Bitcoin is super duper easy to track

LAMike 3y ago
> That's only a good thing in dictatorships, not in democracies. Yes, Bitcoin allows you to be a dictator of your personal finances, compared to fiat, a "democratic" system, where people you never voted into power get to press a button and print as much money as they deem necessary to "stimulate" the economy.
- NicoJuicy 3y ago
  Ugh. Ok. So when nothing special happens in your perfect currency, it divides by 3 or 4 in value in a year. Yeah, that seems great! Go for it!
  - LAMike 3y ago
    > Yeah, that seems great! Go for it! I mean, it is the best performing asset of the last 10 years, so yeah, it seems pretty great to anyone who has a brain. A 98% cash and 2% Bitcoin would beat the SPY returns for any 4 year period since inception. When making investments, its important to have a long term outlook. Do you just live day to day without any planning?
LAMike 3y ago
> Additionally, Bitcoin is super duper easy to track Could you tell me who Satoshi is? Could you explain how you can track who paid you a Lightning Network invoice? Have you ever written down a seed phrase or made a Bitcoin transaction on chain?
- NicoJuicy 3y ago
  > Could you tell me who Satoshi is? Nope, because he's been inactive for 14 years. ( 70% of all accounts are inactive anyways - https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/23/bitcoin-supply-inactive-for-a-year-hits-record-high-of-70 https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/23/bitcoin-supply-i... ) > Lightning Network You mean the SQLite database at third parties in some cases? Or the ones hosted at the cloud providers? https://watcher.guru/news/amazon-google-cloud-host-49-of-bitcoin-lightning-nodes https://watcher.guru/news/amazon-google-cloud-host-49-of-bit... I'm not a government, in case you were wondering. I can't track the edge-cases. I don't have access to KYC Fyi, noticed the mixing services going offline? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash