6 ms·
Andressen is making bitcoin out to be a decentralized paypal, when it was more intended to be a form of currency. It makes more sense as a long term investment
by hooande 13y ago
Andressen is making bitcoin out to be a decentralized paypal, when it was more intended to be a form of currency. It makes more sense as a long term investment or speculative bet than it does a way to transfer money from point A to point B.
An analogy would be if person A and person B conducted a transaction by converting their money from dollars to euros or vice versa (assuming A and B are both in the same country). Depending on the current exchange rate, this could be a good or a bad thing for both of them. If the dollar is weak, both parties stand to lose. If the dollar is strong then it won't last because the market will quickly be flooded with people trying to get in on the deal.
There is no way of controlling or predicting the bitcoin exchange rate. If I send money to someone in my country with paypal they are going to whack me with fees, but at least I know what the fees will be in advance. I can plan on it as a business. Having to deal with an unknown and uncontrolled exchange rate just doesn't sound fun. This is assuming that bitcoin stops having wild price swings over time and stabilizes to the level of established global currencies.
It just doesn't make sense to perform a currency conversion when transferring money to someone who uses the same currency as the sender. This article was amazing and pmarca opened my eyes to uses of bitcoin that I never would have imagined. But the only thing I can't imagine is this new currency living up to the utility that is expected of it.
Bitcoin the protocal, however, is freaking awesome. I expect to see a lot of startups taking advantage of some of the non-monetary uses, up to and including micropayments. It could be a very long time before bitcoin paychecks are mainstream. But electronic transactions of all kinds are going to be getting easier soon.
- dllthomas 13y ago"Bitcoin the protocal, however, is freaking awesome. I expect to see a lot of startups taking advantage of some of the non-monetary uses, up to and including micropayments." I agree with all of this except the implication that micropayments are a non-monetary use.
- nhaehnle 13y agoThe micropayments claim is a red herring. If Bitcoin were to actually take off for micropayments, it would no longer scale, and/or the operation of Bitcoin nodes would be limited to people with very serious hardware. At that point, we're back to the game that is currently being played by banks, just with different players in charge. So it's understandable that many people hope that such a transition will happen and that they will end up in charge after that transition. For the society as a whole, however, Bitcoin does not have an inherent advantage that is sustainably scalable.
- simondlr 13y agoMicropayment channels do provide very small payments without flooding the network: https://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/wiki/WorkingWithMicropayments https://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/wiki/WorkingWithMicropaym...
- drcode 13y agoYou're assuming no progress will be made in bitcoin scalibility in the near future, and comparing it to another technology stack that arguably hasn't seen any meaningful innovation in 40 years (since the advent of the debit/credit card.)
- nhaehnle 13y agoIf there really hasn't been any meaningful innovation in that other technology stack, then the situation looks actually looks worse for the long-term fate of Bitcoin, because it means that the other technology stack could easily improve given the incentive. That doesn't mean that Bitcoin will disappear or anything like that. It's just not going to become the prevalent unit of account as a currency.
- drcode 13y agoOh no question, MasterCard et al are going to change their tune greatly in the coming years due to this new competition, and we're all going to benefit from this.