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One problem that I think is salient about Bitcoin is that it's just not that useful. It's supposed to be a currency, but no one's actually using it for currenc

One problem that I think is salient about Bitcoin is that it's just not that useful. It's supposed to be a currency, but no one's actually using it for currency. They're just gambling on it, hoping to take advantage of other people's mistakes to make their own money. It's a zero-sum game, and it's destructive. People are just playing around with the electronic version of Monopoly money. The driving force behind currencies is a large organization or group of organizations that work to keep it reliable. The dollar is kept stable because the federal government is large, established, and pays in dollars. With more and more people using the dollar, it becomes even more stable, to the point that other countries can use it for transactions. Bitcoin doesn't have that. People don't have any assets tied in with Bitcoin the way that they do with dollars or Euros or yen. And why would they, when it's so volatile that a bank account of Bitcoins will change its value by 50% in a day? Proponents of Bitcoin say that its benefits are that it's decentralized, unregulated, and doesn't have to rely on a government to ensure that it's stable. I actually think that these are bad traits for a currency to have.

vijayboyapati 13y ago
The fallacy here is that a monetary good requires some separate use. As a money per se, bitcoin is very useful. As I wrote in this thread, it allows the transfer of value to anyone, anywhere in the world without an intermediary. This has never been possible before, and it certainly impossible with the dollar. There are several markets for which this innovation has profound implications
- maxerickson 13y ago
  By the numbers, most people need an intermediary to move even a modest amount of bitcoin. They don't have any. You can say there is no dependence on a single intermediary. This is a quibble, but I think it's an important one, for example, a lot of the arguments about using bitcoin in Argentina or whatever ignore the part where Argentinians don't have a whole lot of bitcoin to start using.
joepie91_ 13y ago
> It's supposed to be a currency, but no one's actually using it for currency. They're just gambling on it, hoping to take advantage of other people's mistakes to make their own money. It's a zero-sum game, and it's destructive. People are just playing around with the electronic version of Monopoly money. Source for that? I regularly pay for things with BTC, and part of my salary is paid out in BTC. Or are you perhaps mistaking a particular subset of Bitcoin "users" (speculators) for "the entire Bitcoin ecosystem"?
rglullis 13y ago
Whenever I see comments like yours, I remember the story about the Microsoft execs that thought that "They can't make money with Internet search. Once people find they want on the directories like Yahoo, they will just bookmark the pages they are interested." For fuck's sake: yes, the United States has a stable government and can guarantee the relative stability of the USD. But the world is not just the US. We keep talking about how technology makes us more mobile, or digital nomads. I lived in 3 different continents in the past 5 years. My assets are not tied to Bitcoin, but the best way I found to transfer money between countries was by using BTC as an intermediary. What do you think it's likely to happen faster: to have a monetary/transaction system that is more efficient than governments, or to have governments globally becoming stable? The Euro has been stable in terms of prices, but it has not shown yet that it is resilient enough. Who can be sure that Greece will still be using the euro 3 years from now? 5 years from now? What happens when Germany gets tired of bailing the fat cats on PIIGS?

vijayboyapati 13y ago

The fallacy here is that a monetary good requires some separate use. As a money per se, bitcoin is very useful. As I wrote in this thread, it allows the transfer of value to anyone, anywhere in the world without an intermediary. This has never been possible before, and it certainly impossible with the dollar. There are several markets for which this innovation has profound implications

maxerickson 13y ago
By the numbers, most people need an intermediary to move even a modest amount of bitcoin. They don't have any. You can say there is no dependence on a single intermediary. This is a quibble, but I think it's an important one, for example, a lot of the arguments about using bitcoin in Argentina or whatever ignore the part where Argentinians don't have a whole lot of bitcoin to start using.

joepie91_ 13y ago

> It's supposed to be a currency, but no one's actually using it for currency. They're just gambling on it, hoping to take advantage of other people's mistakes to make their own money. It's a zero-sum game, and it's destructive. People are just playing around with the electronic version of Monopoly money. Source for that? I regularly pay for things with BTC, and part of my salary is paid out in BTC. Or are you perhaps mistaking a particular subset of Bitcoin "users" (speculators) for "the entire Bitcoin ecosystem"?

rglullis 13y ago

Whenever I see comments like yours, I remember the story about the Microsoft execs that thought that "They can't make money with Internet search. Once people find they want on the directories like Yahoo, they will just bookmark the pages they are interested." For fuck's sake: yes, the United States has a stable government and can guarantee the relative stability of the USD. But the world is not just the US. We keep talking about how technology makes us more mobile, or digital nomads. I lived in 3 different continents in the past 5 years. My assets are not tied to Bitcoin, but the best way I found to transfer money between countries was by using BTC as an intermediary. What do you think it's likely to happen faster: to have a monetary/transaction system that is more efficient than governments, or to have governments globally becoming stable? The Euro has been stable in terms of prices, but it has not shown yet that it is resilient enough. Who can be sure that Greece will still be using the euro 3 years from now? 5 years from now? What happens when Germany gets tired of bailing the fat cats on PIIGS?