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Warren Buffett said Bitcoins are a mirage and I agree. They are worthless hashes. Why do they have any value? The answer is they have no value. I said so he

by Ologn 12y ago

Warren Buffett said Bitcoins are a mirage and I agree. They are worthless hashes. Why do they have any value? The answer is they have no value. I said so here when they were worth over twice what they are now. If there is any sign of a bubble in tech, it would be Bitcoin market cap. Which is $3 billion at the moment. Who are the fools who exchange cash for them? Why do they have any value? Some people say you can use them as currency. You can use dollars as currency. Or gold. Some say it can transfer money, but so can wire transfers. Perhaps it is decentralized (who cares? Not I. Wire transfers work for me) etc. But gold has value, while Bitcoin has nothing. I remember during the dot bomb days when there were commercials for Flooz and Beenz. The leaders in the Bitcoin community are being sued and jailed for fraud, the price has gone from $1100 to $230, yet suckers are still bamboozled to trade cash for these worthless hashes. It will go to $115, then $57, then eventually $0. I doubt all those who already lost money or who are being jailed will learn anything.

balladeer 12y ago
Yes. I mean I would never put my own money into something that is more volatile than the share market. At least in share market I can see it coming, except rate crashes and when that happens everything goes down not just my own holding. It Bitcoin it can be a bug, a hack, or just many Bitcoin holders dumping Bitcoins. Also it never made sense to me that I could have been richer if I had access to those fancy super-fast CPUs to "mine" the Bitcoins. Maybe I missed the gold rush but then again I don't want to encourage another absurdly overpriced commodity which really have no meaning (or rather say "value") in real world except some overenthusiastic people and the "hoarders" trying to push it up.
- jafaku 12y ago
  "Also it never made sense to me that I could have been richer if I had access to those fancy super-fast CPUs to "mine" the Bitcoins." So that's where your hate comes from. I see...
  - balladeer 12y ago
    > I see... No, you don't see. You are just being casually snarky.
donatj 12y ago
How is a piece of paper any more valuable than a hash though? They're all just place holders.
- discodave 12y ago
  The piece of paper is more valuable than the hash because more people will accept it as legal tender.
  - laichzeit0 12y ago
    Are you implying that this should happen overnight? over the course of 2-5 years? over the course of 20-50 years? Because I bought a pair of Sennheiser headphones from a local audio equipment selling website and this in bumfuck South Africa we're talking about. I doubt the merchant is even aware they accept Bitcoin as "legal tender" since it happened through PayFast and was completely transparent to them. The point is _I_ could use it as legal tender. So from my point of view it has incredibly amount of value.
    - lil_cain 12y ago
      Using it to buy things in a shop is not the same as using it as 'legal tender'. Bitcoin is not legal tender anywhere in the world.
      - laichzeit0 12y ago
        The OP commented: "because more people will accept it as legal tender." the word "more" implying that at least one or more people already accept it as "legal tender" as per whatever definition he uses of "legal tender".
  - jafaku 12y ago
    Actually, Bitcoin is already accepted by more people than many fiat currencies.
    - 12y ago
RemoteWorker 12y ago
> Why do they have any value? Because people want them. And why do people want them? Because they find them useful for transferring wealth (see the remittances market: people no longer have to pay 10% or more to Western Union and banks), and as a store of value. It doesn't matter that you don't find them useful, or that you write angry comments. If you don't like Bitcoin don't use it, just like you don't use many other things. Unlike fiat currencies, Bitcoin is 100% voluntary, there's no violence involved.
- cb18 12y ago
  Because they find them useful for transferring wealth (see the remittances market: people no longer have to pay 10% or more to Western Union and banks), Are people actually using bitcoin for remittances anywhere on a large scale? It seems the hassle of converting to and from bitcoin in the areas remittances are typical doesn't outcompete the X% fee until bitcoin is much more widely accepted. If bitcoin was accepted everywhere or it was perfectly easy to convert to another currency, yes it would be great for remittances, but as things stand what advantage does it have in most cases? Also, western union uses computer networks too, they don't actually physically transport cash.
IkmoIkmo 12y ago
Did you spend any time at all doing basic research? Here's some thoughts on bitcoin: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/
- hnnewguy 12y ago
  I like Mr. Andreesen and all, but an Op-Ed by a VC heavily invested in Bitcoin technology constitutes "research"?
  - IkmoIkmo 12y ago
    Last year alone there were over 200 academic, quasi-academic, research papers, journal articles and theses dedicated to bitcoin. There've been tens of bitcoin conferences and there's loads of discussion on the tech and economics of bitcoin to be found at say the protocol's core developers's IRC channel, mailing list or github discussion pages. Feel free to start there if you want. But to most people none of that makes much sense if you don't even grasp what bitcoin is and why it matters. Hell I couldn't even be bothered reading about that if it didn't matter. Only once you grasp why it matters can you get into the technology and economics and see if it still adds up. And you generally don't want to start with the question of 'why it matters' from a highly technical research study. But this op-ed is titled exactly that: 'why bitcoin matters'. I think it's an excellent place to start thinking about bitcoin. I use the word research in an informal sense, hence the word 'basic research'. ('looking into something') Sorry if that was misleading. Now you can say 'he's biased, he is heavily invested'. Or you can say 'He is heavily invested because he is willing to put his money where his mouth is and make a big bet on this technology and not without good reason'. If it was a short-term bet, your criticism is valid. (I invested in A, I pump A, I dump A, I profit deluding others). But this is a long-term bet, you don't generally make those unless you genuinely believe in its fundamentals. And it's not just an opinion, but a large bet, there is money at stake. So I'd say the op-ed is very valid, perhaps much more so than someone who isn't invested in the outcome and thus has no risk saying something completely wrong, unlike Marc.
    - 12y ago

by Ologn 12y ago

balladeer 12y ago

Yes. I mean I would never put my own money into something that is more volatile than the share market. At least in share market I can see it coming, except rate crashes and when that happens everything goes down not just my own holding. It Bitcoin it can be a bug, a hack, or just many Bitcoin holders dumping Bitcoins. Also it never made sense to me that I could have been richer if I had access to those fancy super-fast CPUs to "mine" the Bitcoins. Maybe I missed the gold rush but then again I don't want to encourage another absurdly overpriced commodity which really have no meaning (or rather say "value") in real world except some overenthusiastic people and the "hoarders" trying to push it up.

jafaku 12y ago
"Also it never made sense to me that I could have been richer if I had access to those fancy super-fast CPUs to "mine" the Bitcoins." So that's where your hate comes from. I see...
- balladeer 12y ago
  > I see... No, you don't see. You are just being casually snarky.

donatj 12y ago

How is a piece of paper any more valuable than a hash though? They're all just place holders.

discodave 12y ago
The piece of paper is more valuable than the hash because more people will accept it as legal tender.
- laichzeit0 12y ago
  Are you implying that this should happen overnight? over the course of 2-5 years? over the course of 20-50 years? Because I bought a pair of Sennheiser headphones from a local audio equipment selling website and this in bumfuck South Africa we're talking about. I doubt the merchant is even aware they accept Bitcoin as "legal tender" since it happened through PayFast and was completely transparent to them. The point is _I_ could use it as legal tender. So from my point of view it has incredibly amount of value.
  - lil_cain 12y ago
    Using it to buy things in a shop is not the same as using it as 'legal tender'. Bitcoin is not legal tender anywhere in the world.
    - laichzeit0 12y ago
      The OP commented: "because more people will accept it as legal tender." the word "more" implying that at least one or more people already accept it as "legal tender" as per whatever definition he uses of "legal tender".
- jafaku 12y ago
  Actually, Bitcoin is already accepted by more people than many fiat currencies.
  - 12y ago

RemoteWorker 12y ago

> Why do they have any value? Because people want them. And why do people want them? Because they find them useful for transferring wealth (see the remittances market: people no longer have to pay 10% or more to Western Union and banks), and as a store of value. It doesn't matter that you don't find them useful, or that you write angry comments. If you don't like Bitcoin don't use it, just like you don't use many other things. Unlike fiat currencies, Bitcoin is 100% voluntary, there's no violence involved.

cb18 12y ago
Because they find them useful for transferring wealth (see the remittances market: people no longer have to pay 10% or more to Western Union and banks), Are people actually using bitcoin for remittances anywhere on a large scale? It seems the hassle of converting to and from bitcoin in the areas remittances are typical doesn't outcompete the X% fee until bitcoin is much more widely accepted. If bitcoin was accepted everywhere or it was perfectly easy to convert to another currency, yes it would be great for remittances, but as things stand what advantage does it have in most cases? Also, western union uses computer networks too, they don't actually physically transport cash.

IkmoIkmo 12y ago

Did you spend any time at all doing basic research? Here's some thoughts on bitcoin: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/

hnnewguy 12y ago
I like Mr. Andreesen and all, but an Op-Ed by a VC heavily invested in Bitcoin technology constitutes "research"?
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  Last year alone there were over 200 academic, quasi-academic, research papers, journal articles and theses dedicated to bitcoin. There've been tens of bitcoin conferences and there's loads of discussion on the tech and economics of bitcoin to be found at say the protocol's core developers's IRC channel, mailing list or github discussion pages. Feel free to start there if you want. But to most people none of that makes much sense if you don't even grasp what bitcoin is and why it matters. Hell I couldn't even be bothered reading about that if it didn't matter. Only once you grasp why it matters can you get into the technology and economics and see if it still adds up. And you generally don't want to start with the question of 'why it matters' from a highly technical research study. But this op-ed is titled exactly that: 'why bitcoin matters'. I think it's an excellent place to start thinking about bitcoin. I use the word research in an informal sense, hence the word 'basic research'. ('looking into something') Sorry if that was misleading. Now you can say 'he's biased, he is heavily invested'. Or you can say 'He is heavily invested because he is willing to put his money where his mouth is and make a big bet on this technology and not without good reason'. If it was a short-term bet, your criticism is valid. (I invested in A, I pump A, I dump A, I profit deluding others). But this is a long-term bet, you don't generally make those unless you genuinely believe in its fundamentals. And it's not just an opinion, but a large bet, there is money at stake. So I'd say the op-ed is very valid, perhaps much more so than someone who isn't invested in the outcome and thus has no risk saying something completely wrong, unlike Marc.
  - 12y ago