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Thank you. I have been waiting for this article since I first heard about Bitcoin years ago. I think it's a great experiment, and it's been fun to watch, but

Thank you. I have been waiting for this article since I first heard about Bitcoin years ago. I think it's a great experiment, and it's been fun to watch, but when I hear non-tech friends talk about "investing in Bitcoin" it makes me cringe. I think it's a very interesting question to ask how a community as smart as the SV hacker crowd can be so fundamentally blind about basic economics that we have known for centuries. I think our markets desperately need new technology and I'm glad we're thinking about it, but throwing away the economics playbook of the last 500 years seems like a step backward in financial technology rather than a step forward.

cinquemb 13y ago
I think it's a great experiment, and it's been fun to watch, but when I hear non-tech friends talk about "investing in Bitcoin" it makes me cringe. Agreed. I've been following bitcoin for a couple of years, and this year when my friends/family started talking like that I was a bit disheartened. To be fair, If I heard something along the lines of "using bitcoin to obtain resources that are hard/ more insecure using traditional means/trust models", my eyes would have lit up. It seems like all the voices around speculating price points in fiat have been drowning out those of utility (of course, this is not limited to just bitcoins), though those who find it's utility still trudge on. Right now, I'm interested in the interactions around the exchange process because I think that's where the trust model applauded by many (myself included), is at its weakest. It would be pretty cool if there were some kind of platform built into/on top of a bitcoin client that allowed for a peer to peer exchange where maybe using the current banking system in some way, users could escrow/deposit/withdraw fiat into the network (using the network as a ledger that associates fiat amounts with addresses maybe with something like prepaid debit cards). I guess if I were to simplify that rambling a bit, I would like to see the exchange process built into a protocol and not a service it is today.
sliverstorm 13y ago
I think it's a very interesting question to ask how a community as smart as the SV hacker crowd can be so fundamentally blind about basic economics that we have known for centuries Oh, it happens all the time. Smart people are blinded by ego & overconfidence in their own intelligence. It's sort of like Dunning-Kruger for smart people.
Gormo 13y ago
To be fair, the Bitcoin folks are trying to throw away the economics playbook of the last 50 years, which is itself a result of the economics playbook of the previous 500 years having been thrown away in the first place. Fiat currencies haven't worked out; whether Bitcoin is the right thing to replace them is an open question, but there seems little doubt that there needs to be something to replace a short-lived status quo which never worked properly from the outset.

cinquemb 13y ago

I think it's a great experiment, and it's been fun to watch, but when I hear non-tech friends talk about "investing in Bitcoin" it makes me cringe. Agreed. I've been following bitcoin for a couple of years, and this year when my friends/family started talking like that I was a bit disheartened. To be fair, If I heard something along the lines of "using bitcoin to obtain resources that are hard/ more insecure using traditional means/trust models", my eyes would have lit up. It seems like all the voices around speculating price points in fiat have been drowning out those of utility (of course, this is not limited to just bitcoins), though those who find it's utility still trudge on. Right now, I'm interested in the interactions around the exchange process because I think that's where the trust model applauded by many (myself included), is at its weakest. It would be pretty cool if there were some kind of platform built into/on top of a bitcoin client that allowed for a peer to peer exchange where maybe using the current banking system in some way, users could escrow/deposit/withdraw fiat into the network (using the network as a ledger that associates fiat amounts with addresses maybe with something like prepaid debit cards). I guess if I were to simplify that rambling a bit, I would like to see the exchange process built into a protocol and not a service it is today.

sliverstorm 13y ago

I think it's a very interesting question to ask how a community as smart as the SV hacker crowd can be so fundamentally blind about basic economics that we have known for centuries Oh, it happens all the time. Smart people are blinded by ego & overconfidence in their own intelligence. It's sort of like Dunning-Kruger for smart people.

Gormo 13y ago

To be fair, the Bitcoin folks are trying to throw away the economics playbook of the last 50 years, which is itself a result of the economics playbook of the previous 500 years having been thrown away in the first place. Fiat currencies haven't worked out; whether Bitcoin is the right thing to replace them is an open question, but there seems little doubt that there needs to be something to replace a short-lived status quo which never worked properly from the outset.