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Most successful technologies didn't succeed because they are and always were perfect; they succeeded because they were good enough at the right time. Who knows

Most successful technologies didn't succeed because they are and always were perfect; they succeeded because they were good enough at the right time. Who knows whether or not Bitcoin is past that threshold - time will tell. But I have to wonder: is it really worse than the financial system we use right now? Any argument against the use of Bitcoin is also indirectly arguing that something else is better. What is better in this case? An altcoin? If so, I haven't seen it yet - at least not in a way that puts Bitcoin in inadequate-without-a-doubt territory. Could you really write a bullet-proof case for using our current financial system instead, especially if the roles were switched and we were coming from something Bitcoin-like to a proposal for using fiat currency?

yc1010 11y ago
The whole article seems written around "Stellar good, Bitcoin bad" premise, when the author ignores that Stellar is basically Ripple with another name, and we know how that ended up eh
- skeuomorf 11y ago
  nitpick: While Stellar is a fork of Ripple, they have different consensus protocols underneath. Stellar uses the (Stellar Consensus Protocol) [0] while Ripple uses probabilistic voting. [1] [0] https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pd... [1] https://ripple.com/files/ripple_consensus_whitepaper.pdf https://ripple.com/files/ripple_consensus_whitepaper.pdf
- itistoday2 11y ago
  > The whole article seems written around "Stellar good, Bitcoin bad" premise Having read the paper and discussed with others, the claim also seems untrue. Stellar's new protocol, Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), like Bitcoin, allows forks. Unlike Bitcoin, however, it has no way of resolving them. Further, it seems easier for a fork to occur in SCP than it is in Bitcoin. What this means is that in Bitcoin everyone agrees to what your balance is, but in SCP they will not once a fork occurs. There will, in effect, be multiple Stellars, with no limit to how many. In attempting to make it easier for others to join the verification process, Stellar has actually made their entire protocol less secure than Ripple (which restricts membership and therefore can better prevent such forks). See also Gregory Maxwell's criticisms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342348
pera 11y ago
The thing is there is not such thing as "perfect technologies", but just "good enough". And Bitcoin have (at least) demonstrated that is in fact good enough for now.
davidgerard 11y ago
> But I have to wonder: is it really worse than the financial system we use right now Yes, in every way. There is literally no practical use case for Bitcoin compared to the present financial system. It is not anonymous, it is not untraceable, its transaction limit is ludicrous, it has no reversibility (that's an absolute killer objection for so many cases), it doesn't actually work out as effective for any real-world remittance case (the bit you pay WU for turns out to be that last mile), the Bitcoin space is saturated with crooks and scams, etc., etc., etc. You know this list at least as well as I do. It's had six years to find itself a niche. Satoshi himself abandoned it five years ago. > Could you really write a bullet-proof case for using our current financial system instead, especially if the roles were switched and we were coming from something Bitcoin-like to a proposal for using fiat currency? Although it would certainly be a useful exercise, no-one actually has to do this to assert my point above, and you don't get to assert them not bothering to do so as evidence for your claim. We have a system that observably more or less works, and isn't in need of a replacement with such a wide range of deficiencies. I have plenty of issues with the economic arrangements of the present day, but Bitcoin solves none of them.
kristianp 11y ago
Not really a direct reply to your comment, but tangential: In the case of replacing proof of work with something else, how will the coins be distributed? Who will trust the distributors enough to adopt it? POW has been effective in distributing new coins, although it has been too friendly to early adopters. I like the hybrid POW/POS (proof of stake) altcoins for increasing the energy efficiency of the network while still fairly distributing coins to miners. There are too many alternative coins, no one stands out enough to look like overtaking Bitcoin's popularity. I like the idea from the article of modifying the block time down from 10 minutes. Gradually moving to a 1-minute block time should be possible, but it is too radical to be considered. How will future improvements to Bitcoin be voted on? Increasing the blocksize has only been done because (I'm guessing) there is little alternative, or other alternatives would change things too much. Of course making more changes to Bitcoin adds 'political risk' that deter potential adopters. One problem with bitcoin and alternatives is that the main venue for discussion is such a "ghetto". Bitcointalk.org is the defacto official bitcoin site, but the quality of the discussion on there varies wildly and there is little protection from scams. This is just the nature of it, being a simple forum.
- wmf 11y ago
  If Bitcoin really takes off, 99% of its users will buy it rather than mining. So a new currency could be distributed by auction and it would be no worse than Bitcoin.
  - kristianp 11y ago
    Yes, but who would trust a new currency enough to buy it? You have to trust the people you are buying a new currency from, who by implication have control of the supply. At least with bitcoin people (those who do buy it) trust the system that created the supply.
davidgerard 11y ago
> Could you really write a bullet-proof case for using our current financial system instead, especially if the roles were switched and we were coming from something Bitcoin-like to a proposal for using fiat currency? By the way, someone on Reddit answered this challenge. http://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/36p1eq/hacker_news_is_on_about_bitcoin_again_triggered/crgnc65 http://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/36p1eq/hacker_news... "Fiat is like Bitcoin, but with a few new features. "Rather than using a traditional decentralized system, the currency supply is managed by a semi-independent ruling body, which stabilizes the currency against hyperinflation, deflation (a major problem of the Bitcoin economy), speculation (ditto), and financial attacks. They also provide insurance on bank deposits in case of theft! "While Bitcoin has long transaction times, this new "fiat" currency has quick transactions through credit and debit cards. These even allow chargebacks, providing you with protection against scams. Fiat is also revolutionizing the world of remittance and money orders, with fees much lower than Bitcoin's through the use of internal ledgers. "While the Bitcoin network uses massive amounts of power, the new fiat network is environmentally sound and does away with the need to develop specialized ASIC hardware to mine Bitcoin and to maintain a lengthy record of the blockchain. Fiat even has solved Bitcoin's transaction rate problem! "But one of the most exciting features of fiat is "cash," a physical representation f previously-digital money. It's anonymous (unlike Bitcoin, which records all transactions forever). Because it is a physical item, it cannot be stolen by computer criminals, one major risk of Bitcoin. Best of all, it's accepted by everyone, everywhere- no need for computers, addresses, or block confirmation wait. "Fiat- it's the currency of the future!"

yc1010 11y ago

The whole article seems written around "Stellar good, Bitcoin bad" premise, when the author ignores that Stellar is basically Ripple with another name, and we know how that ended up eh

skeuomorf 11y ago
nitpick: While Stellar is a fork of Ripple, they have different consensus protocols underneath. Stellar uses the (Stellar Consensus Protocol) [0] while Ripple uses probabilistic voting. [1] [0] https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pd... [1] https://ripple.com/files/ripple_consensus_whitepaper.pdf https://ripple.com/files/ripple_consensus_whitepaper.pdf
itistoday2 11y ago
> The whole article seems written around "Stellar good, Bitcoin bad" premise Having read the paper and discussed with others, the claim also seems untrue. Stellar's new protocol, Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), like Bitcoin, allows forks. Unlike Bitcoin, however, it has no way of resolving them. Further, it seems easier for a fork to occur in SCP than it is in Bitcoin. What this means is that in Bitcoin everyone agrees to what your balance is, but in SCP they will not once a fork occurs. There will, in effect, be multiple Stellars, with no limit to how many. In attempting to make it easier for others to join the verification process, Stellar has actually made their entire protocol less secure than Ripple (which restricts membership and therefore can better prevent such forks). See also Gregory Maxwell's criticisms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342348

pera 11y ago

The thing is there is not such thing as "perfect technologies", but just "good enough". And Bitcoin have (at least) demonstrated that is in fact good enough for now.

davidgerard 11y ago

> But I have to wonder: is it really worse than the financial system we use right now Yes, in every way. There is literally no practical use case for Bitcoin compared to the present financial system. It is not anonymous, it is not untraceable, its transaction limit is ludicrous, it has no reversibility (that's an absolute killer objection for so many cases), it doesn't actually work out as effective for any real-world remittance case (the bit you pay WU for turns out to be that last mile), the Bitcoin space is saturated with crooks and scams, etc., etc., etc. You know this list at least as well as I do. It's had six years to find itself a niche. Satoshi himself abandoned it five years ago. > Could you really write a bullet-proof case for using our current financial system instead, especially if the roles were switched and we were coming from something Bitcoin-like to a proposal for using fiat currency? Although it would certainly be a useful exercise, no-one actually has to do this to assert my point above, and you don't get to assert them not bothering to do so as evidence for your claim. We have a system that observably more or less works, and isn't in need of a replacement with such a wide range of deficiencies. I have plenty of issues with the economic arrangements of the present day, but Bitcoin solves none of them.

kristianp 11y ago

Not really a direct reply to your comment, but tangential: In the case of replacing proof of work with something else, how will the coins be distributed? Who will trust the distributors enough to adopt it? POW has been effective in distributing new coins, although it has been too friendly to early adopters. I like the hybrid POW/POS (proof of stake) altcoins for increasing the energy efficiency of the network while still fairly distributing coins to miners. There are too many alternative coins, no one stands out enough to look like overtaking Bitcoin's popularity. I like the idea from the article of modifying the block time down from 10 minutes. Gradually moving to a 1-minute block time should be possible, but it is too radical to be considered. How will future improvements to Bitcoin be voted on? Increasing the blocksize has only been done because (I'm guessing) there is little alternative, or other alternatives would change things too much. Of course making more changes to Bitcoin adds 'political risk' that deter potential adopters. One problem with bitcoin and alternatives is that the main venue for discussion is such a "ghetto". Bitcointalk.org is the defacto official bitcoin site, but the quality of the discussion on there varies wildly and there is little protection from scams. This is just the nature of it, being a simple forum.

wmf 11y ago
If Bitcoin really takes off, 99% of its users will buy it rather than mining. So a new currency could be distributed by auction and it would be no worse than Bitcoin.
- kristianp 11y ago
  Yes, but who would trust a new currency enough to buy it? You have to trust the people you are buying a new currency from, who by implication have control of the supply. At least with bitcoin people (those who do buy it) trust the system that created the supply.

davidgerard 11y ago

> Could you really write a bullet-proof case for using our current financial system instead, especially if the roles were switched and we were coming from something Bitcoin-like to a proposal for using fiat currency? By the way, someone on Reddit answered this challenge. http://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/36p1eq/hacker_news_is_on_about_bitcoin_again_triggered/crgnc65 http://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/36p1eq/hacker_news... "Fiat is like Bitcoin, but with a few new features. "Rather than using a traditional decentralized system, the currency supply is managed by a semi-independent ruling body, which stabilizes the currency against hyperinflation, deflation (a major problem of the Bitcoin economy), speculation (ditto), and financial attacks. They also provide insurance on bank deposits in case of theft! "While Bitcoin has long transaction times, this new "fiat" currency has quick transactions through credit and debit cards. These even allow chargebacks, providing you with protection against scams. Fiat is also revolutionizing the world of remittance and money orders, with fees much lower than Bitcoin's through the use of internal ledgers. "While the Bitcoin network uses massive amounts of power, the new fiat network is environmentally sound and does away with the need to develop specialized ASIC hardware to mine Bitcoin and to maintain a lengthy record of the blockchain. Fiat even has solved Bitcoin's transaction rate problem! "But one of the most exciting features of fiat is "cash," a physical representation f previously-digital money. It's anonymous (unlike Bitcoin, which records all transactions forever). Because it is a physical item, it cannot be stolen by computer criminals, one major risk of Bitcoin. Best of all, it's accepted by everyone, everywhere- no need for computers, addresses, or block confirmation wait. "Fiat- it's the currency of the future!"