8 ms·

Do Cryptocurrencies Such as Bitcoin Have a Future?

49 points by mgav 12y ago

xefer 12y ago
I'm always amused that every bitcoin story seems to include a stock photo of a shiny physical coin with a big "B" on it.
- lucb1e 12y ago
  People are always looking for a way to visualize it. Since it is a currency, and people associate coins with currency, what better icon to use?
  - mrkickling 12y ago
    Well, since it's a crypto-currency, maybe something cryptographic? But I see the point, people associate currencies with coins.
    - allemagne 12y ago
      How do you visualize cryptography? A padlock? It might be a cool image to have a stack of those "B" coins with holes punched through them attached to a lock. I don't know if that would really help describe what bitcoin is though.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        A police officer peaking around his blindfold at an ostrich with its head buried in the sand?
  - icebraining 12y ago
    A spreadsheet would be a closer representation of Bitcoin. You can make it a paper one if you want a proper photo :)
    - lucb1e 12y ago
      But does a spreadsheet icon look like a currency to you?
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    How about a stately, classic bank building engulfed in flames.
  - sfk 12y ago
    A tulip?
- lectrick 12y ago
  People still have trouble grasping immaterial, purely-informational things.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure that 99% of the money I have handled in the last decade or so has been "purely-informational".
    - lectrick 12y ago
      Yes, but you can take a physical dollar out of your wallet and look at it. JUST LOOK AT IT! It's a piece of paper with special ink on it that makes it difficult, but not impossible, to counterfeit! BUT IT'S REAL! ;) The article mentions that 88% of cash in circulation is in $100 bills. (I know that the percentage of ALL transactions that are in cash is low.)
- dagw 12y ago
  Well a vector version of that image (A big B in gold coin) is the first thing you see when you go to bitcoin.org so you can't really blame the media for following their example.
dmichulke 12y ago
Are headlines the new way of discouraging investment in cryptocurrencies given Betteridge's law?
lectrick 12y ago
As a stable store of value... Not for a while. (Then again, gold has been around for awhile, and is IT a stable store of value?) As a value exchange mechanism... Certainly. Already useful (and troublesome, to certain establishments) for that. As a secondary ("world"/"international") or even primary currency... Only if your already-legitimized currency is performing worse (hmmm, Argentina, Greece, Iceland, Russia...). As a third-world currency exchanged via cell phones... Well, now we're talking. Although anything that stores value can be used in the same way, which is exactly how M-Pesa started out as phone credits (the "base" or "backing" value) and is now used for much more than that. I will say that anyone who travels (still a very underrated undertaking that abysmally few Americans engage in) has been frustrated by currency exchange. If I could default to something like Bitcoin when I travel, it would ease that pain quite a bit. Governments are concerned about "capital flight". Thing is, it's difficult to destroy (as well as to create) "value," it usually just gets transformed. It therefore stands to reason that if you don't want your country's value to flee, stop debasing your own currency (so that people stop exchanging it for other currencies), and make things of value (so that more representations of value, i.e. cash, flow into your country).
- pjc50 12y ago
  Bitcoin gives you two currency exchange transactions to do where previously there was only one. I can't really see it taking off except for transactions that are banned from one of the other payment systems, and given that transactions are entirely public with persistent pseudonyms, that's not great either. Bitcoin's transaction cost and risk is necessarily greater than any centralised solution, so as soon as it establishes a useful market it can be undercut. (Don't quote the minimum transaction fee in response to this, quote the miner electricity cost per transaction, the exchange bid/offer spread, and the escrow fees if relevant). It's entirely trivial for value to be destroyed: this is what happened in the leveraged property downturn as recently as 2008. "Just fix your current account deficit" is about as useful a piece of advice for countries as "just create jobs", ie not very.
  - tokenizerrr 12y ago
    > Bitcoin gives you two currency exchange transactions to do where previously there was only one What? Only if you don't treat bitcoin as a currency. If bitcoin is used as its own currency, and both you and the seller hold bitcoin, there is no exchange, or at most one: When you buy in from your existing currency.
rukittenme 12y ago
When Bitcoin was high, it was the future. When Bitcoin is low, does it have a future? I wish we would make decisions about a technology's or company's or economy's viability based on something less fickle than price.
- piker 12y ago
  Perhaps the price reflects a collective decision about the technology's viability.
  - rukittenme 12y ago
    Doubtful, the "wisdom of crowds" is useless for something like Bitcoin. It's too new, too revolutionary, too complex for its applications and failures to be apparent to even a select few. Let alone a statistically relevant population.
- lectrick 12y ago
  Yes. I've also noticed a funny thing. If you actually understand Bitcoin, you tend to like it. If you don't seem to understand it, you tend to not like it. This is unfortunate. People seem to understand "money" (although they don't), but it is enough that they think they do. Not sure if that will work out with Bitcoin.
swalsh 12y ago
I bought several bitcoins in early 2010, and when the price peaked to $1000, I sold what I had left. To me I was interested in the technology piece, but thought the economics of it was utterly crazy. Having a fixed supply of some arbitrary number with a fixed release seems so "old worldly". It ignores the fact that we have this huge computer network that has built into it access to near perfect information about the economy. I thought something better would come along, which is why I sold it. However the one thing that really rang with me was this. When I transferred the bitcoins to my account (bitstamp) I didn't even remember the fee. I'm not certain there even was a fee. However when I transferred the dollars, there definitely was a fee, Which seemed like a lot of money. The cost of using bitcoin is a really big game changer. If it was stable, I think adoption would be bigger.
- Torgo 12y ago
  I personally have seen interest wane because of several high-profile scams and hacks. I originally knew quite a few people really interested, and I'm pretty much the only one left.
PuDDin_Face 12y ago
"they have no basic underlying value" is not true. Bitcoin themselves are value - intrinsic value. The time it took to mine the Bitcoin is what gives it the value. I think this is a much better measure than we have of actual currency where no one, even the reserve really understands where the value of a dollar is.
- icebraining 12y ago
  LTV¹ applied to Bitcoin? I had never seen that :D I disagree with your reasoning for the same reason I disagree with LTV. That time is just sunk cost - there's no value to it, and certainly no market value. ¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
  - orbifold 12y ago
    I was under the impression LTV applies to human labor, so applied to bitcoin it would imply that they should have close to no value, whereas fiat currencies derive value from the efforts of the tax payers.
    - lectrick 12y ago
      LTV as applied to Bitcoin uses the many many kilowatts of electricity used to verify transactions as the "labor".
- pjc50 12y ago
  The time it took to mine the Bitcoin is what gives it the value That's a cost, not a value, and it's a purely wasteful activity.
- sz4kerto 12y ago
  If I dig a large hole today in my garden and fill up tomorrow, then does this work have value just because of the time I invested in it? Not at all. (By the way, us tech people are in a lucky situation exactly because you are not right: we don't work very hard compared to many factory workers in the world but still get very high salaries.)
AlexMuir 12y ago
I used to joke that I had more bitcoins than I could spend in my lifetime. Not because I had a lot, but because there was fuck all to spend them on. I just paid for my lunch in Bitcoin. Not as some evangelical, cryptanarchistic statement, but because I have bitcoins and I needed lunch. The mechanism for paying is on a par with credit cards, if not slightly above. I've watched the monetary value of my bitcoins plunge in the last year, but I've seen their practical value to me increase massively. A year ago I could buy precisely zero lunches for 1 BTC, now I'd get at least 50.
- rhizome31 12y ago
  Where can we buy tangible stuff with bitcoins? Is it only in the USA?
  - AlexMuir 12y ago
    I'm in Budapest and there are now two bars and a restaurant that take Bitcoin.
  - cyphunk 12y ago
    more likely to find more places to buy bitcoin outside the US than inside. In Berlin and there are at least 5 resturants and a dozen other stores of various wares one can use them.
- mootothemax 12y ago
  The mechanism for paying is on a par with credit cards, if not slightly above. Was it really easier than taking out your credit/debit card and "beeping" it against the card reader? (i.e. PayPass/payWave). Whilst I'm all in favour of pushing new technologies, I simply can't imagine that paying by bitcoin was easier than that!
  - AlexMuir 12y ago
    I've never once paid by Paywave, even though I think I have it on all my cards. I don't know if it's a European thing but despite all the tech being installed it just hasn't seen much adoption - I know no-one who uses it. We're still firmly chip and pin. From a business's perspective though, Bitcoin is immeasurably easier. No approval needed, just buy a £100 android tablet and off you go. Funds available immediately. Compare that to going down the bank and grovelling for them to let you take cards. Obviously it's not close to an alternative yet, but it's an easier flow.
nly 12y ago
Of course it has a future... just not a very interesting one. The messiah period is over, and the technical and practical merits (what few there are) have now been digested.
mootothemax 12y ago
On a day-to-day basis, bitcoin takes ages to confirm that payment has been received, supports somewhere around 3 [three] transactions per second, and shifts risk from sellers to buyers (e.g. compare refund possibilities with credit cards). There are various hacks that are being proposed to increase the number of transactions per second, and reduce confirmation time. Ultimately, they're just that, though: hacks on a proof-of-concept. What I'm really interested in is whether it's possible to have a cryptocurrency that doesn't rely on e.g. blockchain technology. How you'd fix the issue of double-spending ("I can just copy-and-paste my money - yippee!") without a blockchain or equivalent is beyond me. I'm just really intrigued by the idea of being able to cryptographically sign over a digital $5-equivalent -note to someone else, instantaneously, and without relying on a third party saying "Hmm, yep, that note looks legit to me". Sadly, a lot of bitcoin's popularity seems to come from people who sincerely hope and believe that it's their lottery ticket to millions in the future. Whilst these people are vocal, it's probably a good idea to be aware of and filter out their voices.
- bjelkeman-again 12y ago
  As to your last point, it always surprises me that an argument for Bitcoin often is made in the style "remove the oppression/control by central banks". To be replaced by what? Oppression/control by early Bitcoin speculators [1]? No thanks. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-of-the-bitcoins-2013-12?IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-of-the-bi...
- eblanshey 12y ago
  > What I'm really interested in is whether it's possible to have a cryptocurrency that doesn't rely on e.g. blockchain technology. Yes, it is possible. MaidSafe is building the solution as we speak, and does not get anywhere near the attention it deserves. Because there is such a general lack of understanding of its underpinnings, it is usually lumped together with other blockchain technologies or altcoins. There is no blockchain, there are no transaction fees, and transactions are irreversible almost immediately (no confirmation time). There is no wasteful mining. I wrote a pretty comprehensive article[0] on how it works from a technological standpoint if anyone is interested. Perhaps someone will find it useful. [0] http://blanshey.com/introduction-to-maidsafe-what-it-is-how-it-works-and-how-it-compares-to-bitcoin/ http://blanshey.com/introduction-to-maidsafe-what-it-is-how-...
dontdownvote 12y ago
I'm not an expert in this subject but IMHO: 1-Bitcoin is just an huge ponzi scheme. The early birds to got into the system are the ones that will have HUGE profits. So I want to create my own currency and be able to get an advantage also. 2-Bitcoin is unfair. Besides everything governments taking care of currency seems the most fair and democratic way of dealing with it. With Bitcoin technical people have advantage over non-technical people. It remembers me Nietzsche when he writes something like: "There are only 3 types of people: the rich that wants to keep being rich; the poor that wants to be rich; the intelectual, that using his ideals (advantages) wants to be rich." [1] Due to the strong bias, I created another account to express this unpopular opinion. Shouldn't be like this. [edited]
- witty_username 12y ago
  > The early birds to got into the system are the ones that will have HUGE profits. So I want to create my own currency and be able to get an advantage also. That is in most part due to a bubble caused by people thinking of Bitcoin as an investment vehicle. > Technical people have advantage over non-technical people. It remembers me Nietzsche when he tells something like: Explain?
  - Retric 12y ago
    > most part due to a bubble Not really, Bitcoin's where front loaded. It would have been easy to have the same fixed number of bitcoins, but set things so only 70% of possible bitcoins where released in the first 100 years.
- lectrick 12y ago
  > With Bitcoin technical people have advantage over non-technical people With all due respect, I think that is true of pretty much everything. Smart people have an advantage over non-smart people. If you want to level the playing field, you can always research the Hutu massacre of the Tutsis... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide
rbfuller 12y ago
Bitcoin is here to stay for at least this one reason: gambling. I have bought and sold more bitcoin since I started sportsbooking and playing poker with it than I ever had before. With services like circle and bitcoin-friendly gambling sites, I am able to instantly deposit and withdraw to my gaming site, and then within 2-3 days have my winnings back into my bank account in my native currency. It is really a better system than I have experienced gambling online with fiat previously.
dagw 12y ago
Even as a Bitcoin skeptic I'm absolutely convinced that in 20-30 years time something that can directly trace its intellectual roots to the Satoshi white paper will play a significant role in several aspects of financial transactions. The underlying mathematics is just too useful to be ignored. Actual Bitcoin as we know it today will probably be an interesting historical anecdote.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
LukeFitzpatrick 12y ago
A Bitcoin bot has already been created, it predicts 90% accuracy on future tradings. What I'm concerned with is, if this made public, would it devalue the worth of Bitcoin? And, how will Bitcoin deal with quantum computing?
snowwrestler 12y ago
The skeptic says that currency is a security because its issuer will pay you face value for it. What will the Federal Reserve pay me for my dollar? This seems like an outmoded view of what a currency is.
- dontdownvote 12y ago
  Ok, so everybody can make a currency, keep some for them (directly or indirectly), convince people to use it, making it scarce and making the value of it grow. Great idea! How couldn't we think about it before! Let's start with a small group (technical people, in case of cryptocurrencies) that are idealists and full of goodwill. Then we'll pack the idea as the world's salvation from stupid governments and fees. Don't be evil! Meanwhile my (fat) share of myCurrency is getting value exponentially.
quinndupont 12y ago
Perhaps given the source (Wall Street Journal), it is no surprise that they asked a couple of economics professors for their opinions on Bitcoin's future... but, they could have thought a little more creatively about the possibilities. Dr. Harvey (on the "Yes" side), made the typical gesture, at least part right, that the technology is the interesting part. In fact, the subheading says it all: "Valuing Bitcoin as a Technology"---but an edit would improve the matter: "Valuing Technology"; or simply "Technology". Other than those who have skin in the Bitcoin game, there's no reason for your average person to care about Bitcoin in particular, but the idea and the technological pursuits that it embodies are worth paying attention to. In fact, I think this is the primary reason HN likes Bitcoin---nobody cares about its economic logic or valuation or whether a new block every ten minutes enables liquidity or not. The IDEA behind Bitcoin, and subsequent cryptocurrencies, is what matters. The TECHNOLOGY that permits novel arrangements of power, social interaction, and human-computer interfacing is exciting. Personally, I'm ambivalent on whether the technology is, on its own terms, good or bad. But, what I don't doubt, is whether the idea is going to stay---we won't call it "Bitcoin" in 10 years, but we may call it "Ethereum" or "Dogecoin" or something not yet invented. In fact, we'll likely just call it by some acronym only the geeks care about (but everyone uses): like HTTP or USB. The technology will recede from its specular, media-driven attention and just become how things are done. Banks will transfer funds on a blockchain (perhaps the government forces them for transparency and verifiability), ATMs will become decentralized, you'll establish a smart contract with your Uber driver... and so on.[1] [1] For anyone interested, I'll be giving a talk on cryptocurrencies at NYU this Wednesday (March 4, 5PM), along with Bill Maurer and Finn Brunton. Free registration here: http://events.nyu.edu/#event_id/30104/view/event http://events.nyu.edu/#event_id/30104/view/event
- dontdownvote 12y ago
  Ok, so everybody can make a currency, keep some for them (directly or indirectly), convince people to use it, making it scarce and making the value of it grow. Great idea! How couldn't we think about it before! Let's start with a small group (technical people, in case of cryptocurrencies) that are idealists and full of goodwill. Then we'll pack the idea as the world's salvation from stupid governments and fees. Don't be evil! Meanwhile my (fat) share of myCurrency is getting value exponentially.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

49 points by mgav 12y ago

xefer 12y ago

I'm always amused that every bitcoin story seems to include a stock photo of a shiny physical coin with a big "B" on it.

lucb1e 12y ago
People are always looking for a way to visualize it. Since it is a currency, and people associate coins with currency, what better icon to use?
- mrkickling 12y ago
  Well, since it's a crypto-currency, maybe something cryptographic? But I see the point, people associate currencies with coins.
  - allemagne 12y ago
    How do you visualize cryptography? A padlock? It might be a cool image to have a stack of those "B" coins with holes punched through them attached to a lock. I don't know if that would really help describe what bitcoin is though.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      A police officer peaking around his blindfold at an ostrich with its head buried in the sand?
- icebraining 12y ago
  A spreadsheet would be a closer representation of Bitcoin. You can make it a paper one if you want a proper photo :)
  - lucb1e 12y ago
    But does a spreadsheet icon look like a currency to you?
- maxerickson 12y ago
  How about a stately, classic bank building engulfed in flames.
- sfk 12y ago
  A tulip?
lectrick 12y ago
People still have trouble grasping immaterial, purely-informational things.
- arethuza 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure that 99% of the money I have handled in the last decade or so has been "purely-informational".
  - lectrick 12y ago
    Yes, but you can take a physical dollar out of your wallet and look at it. JUST LOOK AT IT! It's a piece of paper with special ink on it that makes it difficult, but not impossible, to counterfeit! BUT IT'S REAL! ;) The article mentions that 88% of cash in circulation is in $100 bills. (I know that the percentage of ALL transactions that are in cash is low.)
dagw 12y ago
Well a vector version of that image (A big B in gold coin) is the first thing you see when you go to bitcoin.org so you can't really blame the media for following their example.

dmichulke 12y ago

Are headlines the new way of discouraging investment in cryptocurrencies given Betteridge's law?

lectrick 12y ago

As a stable store of value... Not for a while. (Then again, gold has been around for awhile, and is IT a stable store of value?) As a value exchange mechanism... Certainly. Already useful (and troublesome, to certain establishments) for that. As a secondary ("world"/"international") or even primary currency... Only if your already-legitimized currency is performing worse (hmmm, Argentina, Greece, Iceland, Russia...). As a third-world currency exchanged via cell phones... Well, now we're talking. Although anything that stores value can be used in the same way, which is exactly how M-Pesa started out as phone credits (the "base" or "backing" value) and is now used for much more than that. I will say that anyone who travels (still a very underrated undertaking that abysmally few Americans engage in) has been frustrated by currency exchange. If I could default to something like Bitcoin when I travel, it would ease that pain quite a bit. Governments are concerned about "capital flight". Thing is, it's difficult to destroy (as well as to create) "value," it usually just gets transformed. It therefore stands to reason that if you don't want your country's value to flee, stop debasing your own currency (so that people stop exchanging it for other currencies), and make things of value (so that more representations of value, i.e. cash, flow into your country).

pjc50 12y ago
Bitcoin gives you two currency exchange transactions to do where previously there was only one. I can't really see it taking off except for transactions that are banned from one of the other payment systems, and given that transactions are entirely public with persistent pseudonyms, that's not great either. Bitcoin's transaction cost and risk is necessarily greater than any centralised solution, so as soon as it establishes a useful market it can be undercut. (Don't quote the minimum transaction fee in response to this, quote the miner electricity cost per transaction, the exchange bid/offer spread, and the escrow fees if relevant). It's entirely trivial for value to be destroyed: this is what happened in the leveraged property downturn as recently as 2008. "Just fix your current account deficit" is about as useful a piece of advice for countries as "just create jobs", ie not very.
- tokenizerrr 12y ago
  > Bitcoin gives you two currency exchange transactions to do where previously there was only one What? Only if you don't treat bitcoin as a currency. If bitcoin is used as its own currency, and both you and the seller hold bitcoin, there is no exchange, or at most one: When you buy in from your existing currency.

rukittenme 12y ago

When Bitcoin was high, it was the future. When Bitcoin is low, does it have a future? I wish we would make decisions about a technology's or company's or economy's viability based on something less fickle than price.

piker 12y ago
Perhaps the price reflects a collective decision about the technology's viability.
- rukittenme 12y ago
  Doubtful, the "wisdom of crowds" is useless for something like Bitcoin. It's too new, too revolutionary, too complex for its applications and failures to be apparent to even a select few. Let alone a statistically relevant population.
lectrick 12y ago
Yes. I've also noticed a funny thing. If you actually understand Bitcoin, you tend to like it. If you don't seem to understand it, you tend to not like it. This is unfortunate. People seem to understand "money" (although they don't), but it is enough that they think they do. Not sure if that will work out with Bitcoin.

swalsh 12y ago

I bought several bitcoins in early 2010, and when the price peaked to $1000, I sold what I had left. To me I was interested in the technology piece, but thought the economics of it was utterly crazy. Having a fixed supply of some arbitrary number with a fixed release seems so "old worldly". It ignores the fact that we have this huge computer network that has built into it access to near perfect information about the economy. I thought something better would come along, which is why I sold it. However the one thing that really rang with me was this. When I transferred the bitcoins to my account (bitstamp) I didn't even remember the fee. I'm not certain there even was a fee. However when I transferred the dollars, there definitely was a fee, Which seemed like a lot of money. The cost of using bitcoin is a really big game changer. If it was stable, I think adoption would be bigger.

Torgo 12y ago
I personally have seen interest wane because of several high-profile scams and hacks. I originally knew quite a few people really interested, and I'm pretty much the only one left.

PuDDin_Face 12y ago

"they have no basic underlying value" is not true. Bitcoin themselves are value - intrinsic value. The time it took to mine the Bitcoin is what gives it the value. I think this is a much better measure than we have of actual currency where no one, even the reserve really understands where the value of a dollar is.

icebraining 12y ago
LTV¹ applied to Bitcoin? I had never seen that :D I disagree with your reasoning for the same reason I disagree with LTV. That time is just sunk cost - there's no value to it, and certainly no market value. ¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
- orbifold 12y ago
  I was under the impression LTV applies to human labor, so applied to bitcoin it would imply that they should have close to no value, whereas fiat currencies derive value from the efforts of the tax payers.
  - lectrick 12y ago
    LTV as applied to Bitcoin uses the many many kilowatts of electricity used to verify transactions as the "labor".
pjc50 12y ago
The time it took to mine the Bitcoin is what gives it the value That's a cost, not a value, and it's a purely wasteful activity.
sz4kerto 12y ago
If I dig a large hole today in my garden and fill up tomorrow, then does this work have value just because of the time I invested in it? Not at all. (By the way, us tech people are in a lucky situation exactly because you are not right: we don't work very hard compared to many factory workers in the world but still get very high salaries.)

AlexMuir 12y ago

I used to joke that I had more bitcoins than I could spend in my lifetime. Not because I had a lot, but because there was fuck all to spend them on. I just paid for my lunch in Bitcoin. Not as some evangelical, cryptanarchistic statement, but because I have bitcoins and I needed lunch. The mechanism for paying is on a par with credit cards, if not slightly above. I've watched the monetary value of my bitcoins plunge in the last year, but I've seen their practical value to me increase massively. A year ago I could buy precisely zero lunches for 1 BTC, now I'd get at least 50.

rhizome31 12y ago
Where can we buy tangible stuff with bitcoins? Is it only in the USA?
- AlexMuir 12y ago
  I'm in Budapest and there are now two bars and a restaurant that take Bitcoin.
- cyphunk 12y ago
  more likely to find more places to buy bitcoin outside the US than inside. In Berlin and there are at least 5 resturants and a dozen other stores of various wares one can use them.
mootothemax 12y ago
The mechanism for paying is on a par with credit cards, if not slightly above. Was it really easier than taking out your credit/debit card and "beeping" it against the card reader? (i.e. PayPass/payWave). Whilst I'm all in favour of pushing new technologies, I simply can't imagine that paying by bitcoin was easier than that!
- AlexMuir 12y ago
  I've never once paid by Paywave, even though I think I have it on all my cards. I don't know if it's a European thing but despite all the tech being installed it just hasn't seen much adoption - I know no-one who uses it. We're still firmly chip and pin. From a business's perspective though, Bitcoin is immeasurably easier. No approval needed, just buy a £100 android tablet and off you go. Funds available immediately. Compare that to going down the bank and grovelling for them to let you take cards. Obviously it's not close to an alternative yet, but it's an easier flow.

nly 12y ago

Of course it has a future... just not a very interesting one. The messiah period is over, and the technical and practical merits (what few there are) have now been digested.

mootothemax 12y ago

On a day-to-day basis, bitcoin takes ages to confirm that payment has been received, supports somewhere around 3 [three] transactions per second, and shifts risk from sellers to buyers (e.g. compare refund possibilities with credit cards). There are various hacks that are being proposed to increase the number of transactions per second, and reduce confirmation time. Ultimately, they're just that, though: hacks on a proof-of-concept. What I'm really interested in is whether it's possible to have a cryptocurrency that doesn't rely on e.g. blockchain technology. How you'd fix the issue of double-spending ("I can just copy-and-paste my money - yippee!") without a blockchain or equivalent is beyond me. I'm just really intrigued by the idea of being able to cryptographically sign over a digital $5-equivalent -note to someone else, instantaneously, and without relying on a third party saying "Hmm, yep, that note looks legit to me". Sadly, a lot of bitcoin's popularity seems to come from people who sincerely hope and believe that it's their lottery ticket to millions in the future. Whilst these people are vocal, it's probably a good idea to be aware of and filter out their voices.

bjelkeman-again 12y ago
As to your last point, it always surprises me that an argument for Bitcoin often is made in the style "remove the oppression/control by central banks". To be replaced by what? Oppression/control by early Bitcoin speculators [1]? No thanks. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-of-the-bitcoins-2013-12?IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-of-the-bi...
eblanshey 12y ago
> What I'm really interested in is whether it's possible to have a cryptocurrency that doesn't rely on e.g. blockchain technology. Yes, it is possible. MaidSafe is building the solution as we speak, and does not get anywhere near the attention it deserves. Because there is such a general lack of understanding of its underpinnings, it is usually lumped together with other blockchain technologies or altcoins. There is no blockchain, there are no transaction fees, and transactions are irreversible almost immediately (no confirmation time). There is no wasteful mining. I wrote a pretty comprehensive article[0] on how it works from a technological standpoint if anyone is interested. Perhaps someone will find it useful. [0] http://blanshey.com/introduction-to-maidsafe-what-it-is-how-it-works-and-how-it-compares-to-bitcoin/ http://blanshey.com/introduction-to-maidsafe-what-it-is-how-...

dontdownvote 12y ago

I'm not an expert in this subject but IMHO: 1-Bitcoin is just an huge ponzi scheme. The early birds to got into the system are the ones that will have HUGE profits. So I want to create my own currency and be able to get an advantage also. 2-Bitcoin is unfair. Besides everything governments taking care of currency seems the most fair and democratic way of dealing with it. With Bitcoin technical people have advantage over non-technical people. It remembers me Nietzsche when he writes something like: "There are only 3 types of people: the rich that wants to keep being rich; the poor that wants to be rich; the intelectual, that using his ideals (advantages) wants to be rich." [1] Due to the strong bias, I created another account to express this unpopular opinion. Shouldn't be like this. [edited]

witty_username 12y ago
> The early birds to got into the system are the ones that will have HUGE profits. So I want to create my own currency and be able to get an advantage also. That is in most part due to a bubble caused by people thinking of Bitcoin as an investment vehicle. > Technical people have advantage over non-technical people. It remembers me Nietzsche when he tells something like: Explain?
- Retric 12y ago
  > most part due to a bubble Not really, Bitcoin's where front loaded. It would have been easy to have the same fixed number of bitcoins, but set things so only 70% of possible bitcoins where released in the first 100 years.
lectrick 12y ago
> With Bitcoin technical people have advantage over non-technical people With all due respect, I think that is true of pretty much everything. Smart people have an advantage over non-smart people. If you want to level the playing field, you can always research the Hutu massacre of the Tutsis... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide

rbfuller 12y ago

Bitcoin is here to stay for at least this one reason: gambling. I have bought and sold more bitcoin since I started sportsbooking and playing poker with it than I ever had before. With services like circle and bitcoin-friendly gambling sites, I am able to instantly deposit and withdraw to my gaming site, and then within 2-3 days have my winnings back into my bank account in my native currency. It is really a better system than I have experienced gambling online with fiat previously.

dagw 12y ago

Even as a Bitcoin skeptic I'm absolutely convinced that in 20-30 years time something that can directly trace its intellectual roots to the Satoshi white paper will play a significant role in several aspects of financial transactions. The underlying mathematics is just too useful to be ignored. Actual Bitcoin as we know it today will probably be an interesting historical anecdote.

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LukeFitzpatrick 12y ago

A Bitcoin bot has already been created, it predicts 90% accuracy on future tradings. What I'm concerned with is, if this made public, would it devalue the worth of Bitcoin? And, how will Bitcoin deal with quantum computing?

snowwrestler 12y ago

The skeptic says that currency is a security because its issuer will pay you face value for it. What will the Federal Reserve pay me for my dollar? This seems like an outmoded view of what a currency is.

dontdownvote 12y ago
Ok, so everybody can make a currency, keep some for them (directly or indirectly), convince people to use it, making it scarce and making the value of it grow. Great idea! How couldn't we think about it before! Let's start with a small group (technical people, in case of cryptocurrencies) that are idealists and full of goodwill. Then we'll pack the idea as the world's salvation from stupid governments and fees. Don't be evil! Meanwhile my (fat) share of myCurrency is getting value exponentially.

quinndupont 12y ago

Perhaps given the source (Wall Street Journal), it is no surprise that they asked a couple of economics professors for their opinions on Bitcoin's future... but, they could have thought a little more creatively about the possibilities. Dr. Harvey (on the "Yes" side), made the typical gesture, at least part right, that the technology is the interesting part. In fact, the subheading says it all: "Valuing Bitcoin as a Technology"---but an edit would improve the matter: "Valuing Technology"; or simply "Technology". Other than those who have skin in the Bitcoin game, there's no reason for your average person to care about Bitcoin in particular, but the idea and the technological pursuits that it embodies are worth paying attention to. In fact, I think this is the primary reason HN likes Bitcoin---nobody cares about its economic logic or valuation or whether a new block every ten minutes enables liquidity or not. The IDEA behind Bitcoin, and subsequent cryptocurrencies, is what matters. The TECHNOLOGY that permits novel arrangements of power, social interaction, and human-computer interfacing is exciting. Personally, I'm ambivalent on whether the technology is, on its own terms, good or bad. But, what I don't doubt, is whether the idea is going to stay---we won't call it "Bitcoin" in 10 years, but we may call it "Ethereum" or "Dogecoin" or something not yet invented. In fact, we'll likely just call it by some acronym only the geeks care about (but everyone uses): like HTTP or USB. The technology will recede from its specular, media-driven attention and just become how things are done. Banks will transfer funds on a blockchain (perhaps the government forces them for transparency and verifiability), ATMs will become decentralized, you'll establish a smart contract with your Uber driver... and so on.[1] [1] For anyone interested, I'll be giving a talk on cryptocurrencies at NYU this Wednesday (March 4, 5PM), along with Bill Maurer and Finn Brunton. Free registration here: http://events.nyu.edu/#event_id/30104/view/event http://events.nyu.edu/#event_id/30104/view/event

dontdownvote 12y ago
Ok, so everybody can make a currency, keep some for them (directly or indirectly), convince people to use it, making it scarce and making the value of it grow. Great idea! How couldn't we think about it before! Let's start with a small group (technical people, in case of cryptocurrencies) that are idealists and full of goodwill. Then we'll pack the idea as the world's salvation from stupid governments and fees. Don't be evil! Meanwhile my (fat) share of myCurrency is getting value exponentially.

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