Bitcoin discussion and news

[Idaho]

Bitcoins particular trick has been in it's relative simplicity, just being a ledger- UNIX principal really, do one simple thing and do it very well, plus first mover.

I think it's all about first mover, very skilled developers and it's iterative.

 

[NoXion]

Shrugs. Let us know if you've missed anything.

That's kind of my point. The only real advantage of cryptocurrency over proper money that I can see is that it enables people to buy shit anonymously over the internet. Great if you're a drug dealer, gunrunner or hitman, but what about the rest of us?

 

[Idaho]

That's kind of my point. The only real advantage of cryptocurrency over proper money that I can see is that it enables people to buy shit anonymously over the internet. Great if you're a drug dealer, gunrunner or hitman, but what about the rest of us?

OK, some questions:
When did you first get a X?
When were X invented?
What did you think of people with X when they first came out?


For X insert mobile phone, smartphone, home broadband, etc

 

[elbows]

No matter how many times you repeat that stuff, various advantages and use-cases for those things were often very obvious. It's telling that you can't seem to make a similar case for crypto-currencies.

It's no good just picking things that caught on either - if I throw the Sinclair C5 into the mix then what happens?

 

[Idaho]

No matter how many times you repeat that stuff, various advantages and use-cases for those things were often very obvious. It's telling that you can't seem to make a similar case for crypto-currencies.

It's no good just picking things that caught on either - if I throw the Sinclair C5 into the mix then what happens?

Use cases weren't obvious back then.

I could spend a fair bit of my time and effort explaining possibly and likely use cases, but I am not really sure what the point would be - we will see won't we

 

[camouflage]

That's kind of my point. The only real advantage of cryptocurrency over proper money that I can see is that it enables people to buy shit anonymously over the internet. Great if you're a drug dealer, gunrunner or hitman, but what about the rest of us?

A thing made of digital information that you can transmit across the world just like that, with no intermediary party in between, and when it arrives at it's destination it remains the thing itself, not a copy of the thing- or a representation of the thing, it's indelibly there and only there when before it was here and only here. If you find anything interesting in that concept then who knows what use you might put it to or what you might build on top. What we do know is that millions of people consider this function valuable enough to be willing to pay a significant amount of "proper money" for it. If all it is is a thing that acquires more and more value over time because people want to buy it and hold on to it and only sell it for stuff they really want- that there already makes it a better way of transporting value across space and time.

Worlds full of widgets, innovations and enhancements that you or me can't see the point of, but our failure to understand someone elses value of it doesn't mean that the world is therefore forbidden to consider the thing any further. I wouldn't worry about the advantages you can't see, those are unimportant to the outside world that gets on with chasing the thing, try to worry about things like the effects of it being there in the first place and what the implications are and maybe work backward from that. The energy-use issue is I think a good example. Besides bitcoin isn't anonymous, it's pseudonymous... there's Monero or standard paper/metal cash as far as anonymity is concerned.

 

[elbows]

Use cases weren't obvious back then.

I could spend a fair bit of my time and effort explaining possibly and likely use cases, but I am not really sure what the point would be - we will see won't we

Oh great, you don't mind chucking timescale predictions out there and berating people for not knowing what they are talking about, but you can't be bothered to describe all the wonderful uses and advantages of this stuff, but you do know of some really, honest. Bullshit!

And you seriously expect me to believe that the use cases for broadband were not obvious long in advance? I had a modem in 1991, to connect to bulletin boards, and I vividly recall it taking 1 hour to download a 1MB file. Later that decade with 33.6k and 56k modems, millions more people would have understood the use-case for broadband, including decent video as opposed to the comedy stamp sized video that was sometimes on offer.

Early mobile phones (eg 'car phones') had dodgy yuppie connotations and the somewhat impractical size of the time may have distracted some, but the overall use case was rather obvious, and could take its cues from such memories as childhood imagination being captured by walkie-talkies.

 

[Idaho]

Smartphones were seen as ludicrous and only for posers.

Broadband was only a good idea for the 5% of nerds who worked with computers or used bulletin boards.

Angry man on the Internet doesn't like something. Great. Hold the front page.

 

[elbows]

Smartphones were seen as ludicrous and only for posers.

No, that is one of the things they were seen as. People having such negative judgements on things is usually part of the mix, but you are trying to use that as some kind of proof that the thing in question must therefore have value - there are doubters so it must be good!!! Well, no!

Let me take a more recent example: VR, AR, Mixed Reality. There are large amounts of hype around these things, and there are serious questions about the extent to which they will catch on fast. Especially in the case of VR, we can spend plenty of time looking at reasons why this generation of VR headsets & the software & games that make use of them may not live up to even a fraction of the hype or early $$$ expectations.

But, even if they fail this time, its not very hard to come up with a bunch of actual uses for them. Regardless of naysayers, I can still explain the basic idea and some of what it could be used for to someone rather quickly.

 

[mauvais]

You could use this model to talk up all kinds of technologies, both those that were initially unrecognised and later became essential, and those that were derided as crap and well, actually were total crap.

Perhaps a more interesting discussion is what would it take for you to consider the bitcoin question to probably be answered in the negative, rather than an infinite 'maybe its time will come' attitude.

 

[elbows]

Broadband was only a good idea for the 5% of nerds who worked with computers or used bulletin boards.

Now you are deliberately conflating 'somebody recognising the utility of a new technology' with 'the masses recognising the utility of a new technology'. I'm not asking you to show me a world where everyone understands the great future uses of bitcoin, I'm just asking you to make a real case for it.

Angry man on the Internet doesn't like something. Great. Hold the front page.

I don't think you grasp that I generally like technology and like to talk about its merits and its limitations. My anger on the bitcoin front is due to what sort of games have been played with it so far, the hype, the energy cost, the economic and political mantras that tend to accompany its advocates, etc. It is possible from time to time to catch a glimpse of some of the clever aspects of some of the underpinning systems and concepts. At which point I am used to being able to look at various pros and cons of these things, and other attributes. But in this case my quest for positive aspects to feed into my own opinion of this stuff is met not with inspiring visions of the future, that really demonstrate the utility of the thing, but rather a load of old wankery. So yes, I get angry, what a shocker.

 

[elbows]

Perhaps a more interesting discussion is what would it take for you to consider the bitcoin question to probably be answered in the negative, rather than an infinite 'maybe its time will come' attitude.

I would be interested in an answer to that too.

I bet a load of government regulation would certainly kill off a fair number of the congregation for a start. It's just not the same without the spirit of the Wild West, etc.

 

[elbows]

What a great job you did of convincing us that this isn't Alchemy 2.0 said nobody.

 

[NoXion]

A thing made of digital information that you can transmit across the world just like that, with no intermediary party in between, and when it arrives at it's destination it remains the thing itself, not a copy of the thing- or a representation of the thing, it's indelibly there and only there when before it was here and only here. If you find anything interesting in that concept then who knows what use you might put it to or what you might build on top.

I'm not convinced.

All digital information is copied. "Cut and paste" is just a metaphor, the original data is just deleted, rather than left in place as with copy+paste.

Doubtless cryptocurrencies have some clever system in place to ensure that each unit remains unique and uncloned, but let's be real here, protection against counterfeiting isn't as important as cryptocurrency advocates make it out to be. For any currency, the anti-counterfeiting measures merely have to be good enough to maintain confidence, rather than having to be absolutely perfect.

What we do know is that millions of people consider this function valuable enough to be willing to pay a significant amount of "proper money" for it.

That doesn't establish anything. There are plenty of people willing to pay silly money for all sorts of things.

If all it is is a thing that acquires more and more value over time because people want to buy it and hold on to it and only sell it for stuff they really want- that there already makes it a better way of transporting value across space and time.

Until the point where you need a Cray supercomputer to mine even a tiny fraction of a coin, and then you run into the old problems that plagued other currencies based on a limited commodity, like the gold standard.

Which would explain why Libertarians' love this kind of shit so much - goldbuggery seems to be an endemic mental disease amongst those types.

Worlds full of widgets, innovations and enhancements that you or me can't see the point of, but our failure to understand someone elses value of it doesn't mean that the world is therefore forbidden to consider the thing any further. I wouldn't worry about the advantages you can't see, those are unimportant to the outside world that gets on with chasing the thing, try to worry about things like the effects of it being there in the first place and what the implications are and maybe work backward from that.

When someone tells you that they're having trouble imagining the practical applications for the latest techno whizz-toy that you think is worthy of attention, it does no good to just tell them to imagine harder.

I'm not a crypto geek. I haven't been following this shit as closely as you so obviously have. My experience is limited to hearing about people using cryptocurrencies to buy drugs, weapons and contract killings, as well as reading the occasional news stories about people who've had their coins stolen from them.

You've advanced this idea that cryptocurrencies could be useful as a means of moving value across time and space, but frankly there are already loads of financial instruments and services tailored to do just that, so that isn't good enough.

Also, if the antique vase turns out to be a fake, at least you'll still have something nice looking to decorate your home with. If a cryptocurrency goes tits up (oh hai there DogeCoin), you're left holding a load of meaningless data representing wasted energy. Call it my bias towards the tangible, material world in which I actually live, where all the ultimate off switches are located.

The energy-use issue is I think a good example. Besides bitcoin isn't anonymous, it's pseudonymous... there's Monero or standard paper/metal cash as far as anonymity is concerned.

The energy issue is a point against BitCoin, and my point in bringing up the anonymity angle was to point out it's limited usefulness to people who aren't usually considered scum by wider society.

 

[mauvais]

Smartphones were seen as ludicrous and only for posers.

Broadband was only a good idea for the 5% of nerds who worked with computers or used bulletin boards.

Angry man on the Internet doesn't like something. Great. Hold the front page.

This was never really quantifiably true about smartphones, which evolved iteratively out of basic mobile phones and then was significantly moved on by the iPhone. There is some truth at the periphery - especially pre-iPhone PDAs or 'communicator' phones which let themselves down by means of form factor and poor experience. It's hard to see how Bitcoin, and to a lesser extent cryptocurrency as a whole, will be evolved and reformed in a comparative way, although it's not impossible.

Broadband is an interesting example in another way because it had a sort of 'meta' use case from which other possibilities flowed. As a recent example, 4K TV is a product of the ability to transfer enough data within a fixed period. Demand for faster connections is driven by the development of those follow-on services rather than the medium itself. Similarly, unlike say the evolution of cash into contactless, it's hard to see how this will work for Bitcoin without a major political driver.

 

[bimble]

In Japan you can already use it in daily life to pay for things in shops hotels restaurants etc. I think it’s not so much a new category of thing (like examples of new tech above, all of which do practical stuff in the world that the old version couldn’t) it’s more just a parallel version of currency doing the same old jobs of both exchange for goods & store of wealth.
The usefulness / attractiveness of this idea is perhaps harder to grasp the more stable the currency of your country(?).

 

[Idaho]

You could use this model to talk up all kinds of technologies, both those that were initially unrecognised and later became essential, and those that were derided as crap and well, actually were total crap.

Perhaps a more interesting discussion is what would it take for you to consider the bitcoin question to probably be answered in the negative, rather than an infinite 'maybe its time will come' attitude.

That's easy. When it has no value. When no one wants or needs it.

 

[mauvais]

That's easy. When it has no value. When no one wants or needs it.

Disastrous endgames excluded, this will probably never happen, but wants and needs could easily be confined to an insular pool of speculators, leaving no real world applications or utility. So this kind of absolute feels to me like a bit of a cop-out.

 

[ddraig]

i've got 20 satoshis!!
Only another 4-5000 years to get a whole bitcoin

 

[elbows]

The usefulness / attractiveness of this idea is perhaps harder to grasp the more stable the currency of your country(?).

Thats a fair point.

By the way I know your point is more about the stability of home currency than bitcoins price stability (although thats obviously a factor too), but you have reminded me to point out that this years bitcoin price changes are on the dramatic side and this obviously has a variety of implications.

 

[Idaho]

Disastrous endgames excluded, this will probably never happen, but wants and needs could easily be confined to an insular pool of speculators, leaving no real world applications or utility. So this kind of absolute feels to me like a bit of a cop-out.

There is no way that it would continue with just an insular pool of speculators. You'd need increased numbers of speculators otherwise it would fizzle out.

Speculators/traders provide liquidity. That allows others to transact in and out of the currency. In our current idiom, you need them.

 

[mauvais]

There is no way that it would continue with just an insular pool of speculators. You'd need increased numbers of speculators otherwise it would fizzle out.

Speculators/traders provide liquidity. That allows others to transact in and out of the currency. In our current idiom, you need them.

Transpose this onto small-cap shares, Ponzi scams and any other serious bubble you can care to think of and you may come to see it's not necessarily that simple. Turnover of punters helps but you can travel a long way on the collective hopes/greed/stupidity/whatever of a finite set of people.

 

[Idaho]

Ok. I not sure what your point is.

 

[mauvais]

Ok. I not sure what your point is.

The point is what's the success/failure criteria outside of the club? Success is relatively easy enough to define but it's failure I'm interested in. As an arbitrary example of this criteria, if by the year 2027 noone of any commercial note is using/accepting Bitcoin, would you acknowledge it as that failure? What is it?

Other speculations are easier - for example, Tesla's business model & value can be proven up and pan out, or it can go bust/be sold for a fraction of its value, or possibly something in between, but one day, one of these things will have happened.

The USD or whatever value of BTC can also drop to the floor but even then the mechanism still exists and could in theory be revived, so proponents of it will still be able to say (almost certainly wrongly in that scenario) that it's not dead. I'm not interested in that outcome, but the earlier point at which we can call it socially useless. What does it look like?

 

[elbows]

One thing I have noticed more is that even some of the traditional finance industry players who might openly compare the bitcoin situation of 2017 with tulip mania, are starting to make more positive sounds about some aspects of underlying technology, eg blockchain. It seems reasonable to think that a bunch of products and services might emerge from the traditional industry, but I don't know what they've got up their sleeves.

 

[bimble]

Rumours are around that Amazon’s considering accepting payment in bitcoin soon. If that happens it’s probably here to stay. (Expedia the travel website already allows payment in btc).

 

[Idaho]

Rumours are around that Amazon’s considering accepting payment in bitcoin soon. If that happens it’s probably here to stay. (Expedia the travel website already allows payment in btc).

To be fair, that rumour has gone round so many times that it's a meme.

 

[bimble]

To be fair, that rumour has gone round so many times that it's a meme.

Oh. Every time the rumour goes round the price goes up ?

 

[Idaho]

The point is what's the success/failure criteria outside of the club? Success is relatively easy enough to define but it's failure I'm interested in. As an arbitrary example of this criteria, if by the year 2027 noone of any commercial note is using/accepting Bitcoin, would you acknowledge it as that failure? What is it?

Other speculations are easier - for example, Tesla's business model & value can be proven up and pan out, or it can go bust/be sold for a fraction of its value, or possibly something in between, but one day, one of these things will have happened.

The USD or whatever value of BTC can also drop to the floor but even then the mechanism still exists and could in theory be revived, so proponents of it will still be able to say (almost certainly wrongly in that scenario) that it's not dead. I'm not interested in that outcome, but the earlier point at which we can call it socially useless. What does it look like?

I was looking for a particular adoption graph but couldn't find it. Found a similar one :


You are looking for an abstract objective criteria to measure success. Which isn't the worst approach - but I don't think it's particularly relevant. Bitcoin was an idea that slowly caught on and has had a few bubbles and pops. It's been ignored, derided and attacked. And now the existing finance industry is starting to work out whether to use it, ignore it or copy it. Likewise we have the same choice. What value does some arbitrary measure I think up add to the picture?

 

[Idaho]

Oh. Every time the rumour goes round the price goes up ?

Not sure really. I think it's just that Amazon = big successful Internet retailer, therefore it's a natural next step on the ladder of success for bitcoin. Much in the way mauvais, above, is asking for a significant metric.