Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely
cynicusrex.comThis article has some substance to it that is worth discussion, but I feel it's value is greatly diminished by the sheer amount of ad hominem in it. Don't buy Bitcoin because Michael Saylor and Elon Musk also own some? That's terrible advice. The USD is also owned by terrible people, and is used to fund terrible things.
I agree with the author that many people rationalize or fall into some of the standard Bitcoin beliefs to justify their desire to get rich, but to project their own case of that on all Bitcoin enthusiasts is completely unfair. Some of the smartest engineers I know work on Bitcoin, and don't see a paycheck for it. The availability of grants for Bitcoin open source work is pretty new, and many of these people have been working on BTC long before there was a strong financial incentive. The real money-motivated play for them would have been to fall into a FAANG and collect a guaranteed high salary.
>“This article has some substance to it that is worth discussion”
Thank you, I appreciate that.
>“sheer amount of ad hominem in it.”
I wouldn't say sheer, but admittedly yes, I couldn't help myself since that's part of the reason I opted out. I just don't like to invest in things associated with shady people. And if calling Saylor shady is an ad hominem, then I'll live with that. Rebuke accepted.
>“The USD is also owned by terrible people, and is used to fund terrible things.”
This is whataboutism which I mention in the article as well.
>“but to project their own case of that on all Bitcoin enthusiasts is completely unfair.”
I'm not doing that, or at least it wasn't my intention. That's why I opened with “Realizing the extent”. By using “extent” I mean a lot, not everyone. That why I also added: “So, governments are not without faults, but likewise not the evil bogeymen as many people make them out to be, and neither are bitcoin enthusiasts.” I am definitely aware that not everyone is toxic. Although I could've given it some more weight throughout the article. But I stand by my observation that cryptocurrencies really are the most toxic communities I've ever encountered, on par with religious fanatics. Anyway, I'll look where I can add some extra nuance.
>“Some of the smartest engineers I know work on Bitcoin”
Anyone can say about anyone that they're the smartest people they know. It carries zero validity. I'll just copy-paste my reaction to an identical comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26448833:
«“you'll see some of the smartest engineers of our generation working real hard”
“I've been reading those cheap empty words way too much lately. Unless they are the likes of John von Neumann I'll just assume they're people of average intelligence working on things that look incredibly intimidating to outsiders.”
Also, an excerpt from Marcus Aurelius - Meditations: “How corrupt and two-faced is one who claims, 'I intend to be fair and honest in my dealings with you.' What are you up to, my friend? There is really no need for this preamble. The matter will soon become plain. It should be written on your face,* it should ring out immediately in your voice, and shine out at once in your eyes, as the loved one at once knows everything about his lovers from the manner of their glance. In short, a good and honest person should resemble one who smells like a goat in this respect, that anyone who comes near him is immediately aware of it whether he wishes it or not. But the mere pretence of simplicity is like an open blade. There is nothing more odious than the friendship of the wolf for the lamb; avoid this above all. A good, straightforward, and kindly person reveals these qualities in his eyes, and they will not escape you.”»
That being said, I appreciate your civility. Have a great one.
The whataboutism you mentioned in your article was around the energy discussion, and I agree that's a really weak argument for Bitcoin's energy usage, especially when there are many other better arguments. But I don't think it's fair to apply that to what I said about USD. I'm not saying that because the USD is used for / the US government does bad things, that we should excuse both it and Bitcoin and that it's a wash. I'm saying that making a choice about what to put your value in based on who else uses it, or who works on it isn't the best way to judge the usefulness of it.
On the smartest engineer front, I'll grant you that it's an overused platitude, but I'd consider any engineer I know who's in the 80th percentile to be "one of the smartest engineers I know", which to be fair is going to be quite a few people. But my point there wasn't to give Bitcoin credit by association, but more to demonstrate that I have no doubt that those people are smart enough to land lucrative jobs at big tech companies. So if they're just in it for the money, why haven't they?
To answer your last, people working on something out of passion and/or belief in its future carries zero correlation about how exciting (or good) the thing is.
I've known my fair share of programmers that make me look like a blabbering cretin. I still don't think what they worked on was something special though.
So this line of argumentation IMO leads to nowhere [productive]. Sure there are extremely smart people working on BTC. But the same could be said in literally any area, right?
The NFT fad has definitely turned me off as it seems totally bonkers, also the fact that the problem BTC is supposedly solving constantly changes based on whatever gets people to put money into it.
Add to this exchanges / tether printing manipulating the price and i'm pretty bearish on BTC and crypto right now, seems like the only problem they are trying to solve is "how can I become ludicrously rich by writing some code from scratch."
But what if I'm wrong?....
I'm not sure I understand the hate for NFTs. Don't get me wrong, the concept of NFT as currently used is completely absurd and definitely overhyped. But what is bad about it? People who spend their money on NFTs mostly do it because they got rich in the past few years gambling on BTC or ETH, and now use that money to basically tip the artists they like. Or they plan to resell the token at some point, which is pure speculation, but nobody other than themselves risk to get burn. Minting and selling NFTs is almost zero work and effort for artists, all the risks are on the buyers side, and only if they buy them as speculative assets.
It still make no sense to me, but if rich people want to gamble their money and by doing so support some artists, that doesn't sound too bad IMHO.
I would be more cautious if retail investors would start to gamble in this market, but that's not what I've seen so far.
(I'm also bearish on BTC, mainly because of Tether and the horrible incentives of PoW)
It's just indicative of the fact that we're 20 years into the blockchain, and the only real use case seems to be "acquire garish amounts of wealth from nowhere."
Something everyone wants for sure, but if that's all it is, the party's gonna stop someday.
Yes, it's definitely frustrating if that's the end game.
>the fact that the problem BTC is supposedly solving constantly changes
I grew my own Bitcoin thesis (legally in my basement for fun and profit). When people say that people changed the Bitcoin narrative, I can always unwrap those layers of opinions and evaluate them against my home-grown thesis.
> constantly changes
Suggested correction: "is constantly being expanded and added to"
The bitcoin community often removes things from the list. I remember the days when bitcoin was supposed to be a revolutionary platform for microtransactions...
The person behind strike built an application that allows him to stream money (a payment every second) to his programmer in Europe with 0 fees using the LN... If you don't keep up with the tech, you shouldnt make these proclamations.
I have thought about this with Bitcoin: if the protocol and potential capabilities are so interesting, why is 99% of the conversation related to Bitcoin about the current price. It does make me believe that greed is the predominant driver of most Bitcoin holders, which to me makes the whole concept a lot less principled than people pretend it is.
Greed is definitely why I'm in it. I love gambling!
Look at the message in the Genesis block of Bitcoin and you will understand it’s intended purpose. It is a speculative asset intended to be held for investment, speculative, or hedging purposes. It was released in response to central bank money printing that the creator Satoshi Nakamoto viewed to be excessive. If I remember correctly, if you held 1% of your portfolio in bitcoin in 2017 and 99% of your investment portfolio in a S&P500 index ETF, your investment portfolio would’ve doubled the performance of the S&P500 index without any work or effort on your part.
If you’re looking for cryptocurrency technology aspects that don’t include money or greed, look at cryptocurrencies outside of the top 10 or top 20 by market cap. The ones around rank 30 or more are less about the price and more about the technology and fun of it.
Bitcoin has expensive transaction processing fees. This makes transactions inconvenient. Centralized exchanges helped with this by keeping trading internal to their systems and out of thr blockchain. As a result, it turned into a speculative asset.
Better coins don't have this property. Monero is a better currency in every way and it's essentially a stable 200 USD coin.
The only reason I have some crypto is for paying for things.
The only way to do MMS over the internet that isn't completely crazy* or requires a google account is jmp.chat as far as I can tell. It looks like they originally accepted paypal and paypal did it's thing so now the default is bitcoin. For small projects like this bitcoin is one of the easier ways to set up payments.
My DNS provider also had a bug in their payment form when I went to renew the domain name (or maybe it was really my bank despite them telling me it was on their end, who knows.) I was able to just pay them with bitcoin and that solved the problem.
Whether you like it or not, crypto is here to stay and it's way easier for both users and developers.
*One of the providers I was looking at even tried activating my camera on the log in page (the browser didn't say anything but the camera on that machine is weird and if you don't use a special API it just spams the kernel log with errors, idk how they did it.)
It's a clever solution in search of a problem. It's like a guy I knew in school who when would suggest "oh, it's a visitor pattern!". No, sometimes a for loop is just a for loop.
Bitcoin looks like it should solve something, but it doesn't. Except makes crime easier. Just the tax evasion alone must be staggering.
Actually, it's not. I tried to make a meaningful comment about building apps in this thread and it got downvoted... [1]
> why is 99% of the conversation related to Bitcoin about the current price.
Because of the circles you're in and the loud minority that's constantly talking about the price. There's a whole community of people just building stuff without wasting their time constantly arguing for price on social networks.
Many still talk about how much money they will make despite not shilling on social media. There is still a focus on price inflation. Look at a16z investments and see how the bar for larger amounts of funding is different for crypto companies. They know they have earlier liquidity events with hype cycles and lack of regulation.
Making money and wealth is more interesting to more people than some nerdy engineering crap. Is this a surprise?
Because most of the interesting solutions are alternatives. You have a strange focus just on bitcoin and not the larger crypto ecosystem.
Admittedly I got in from a greed perspective, but as I read more about the philosophy of bitcoin I stayed for a distributed, censorship-proof currency. Why do I need permission from a central authority to send and receive money? Why do we allow credit cards to invade our privacy and observe our purchasing history? Why store my wealth in fiat that's guaranteed to lose at least 2% of its value every year? It's way out of that system.
You dont need permission to send funds, provided they are legal and you can proove that. These checks are for reason. You dont want money loundering and criminal money flowing around unchecked. Pay income tax on your cash and send them wherever you want (legaly).
Greed until Gold market-cap, idealism afterwards
>why is 99% of the conversation related to Bitcoin about the current price.
People like to talk about money. Reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1138/
Ok I’ve been reading about BTC and I’m finally falling into the “it’s a terrible idea” camp.
Here are the problems I’m concerned about. If Bitcoin supporters want to defend it, please could you explain why:
1. A scaling proof of work is not environmentally disastrous. The “renewable energy” argument doesn’t make sense, I think, and existing financial systems seem to be more energy efficient, but open to other counter arguments.
2. A decentralised ledger which concentrates initial supply amongst a tiny fraction of the world’s population would be a good idea and somehow preferable to the current situation.
Finally, please explain whether Bitcoin is a currency (like the dollar) or a store of value (like gold). If it’s a currency, please explain how it can be used as such when transactions are slow and expensive. If it’s a store of value, please explain why the fact that gold is physically useful and in strictly finite supply (on earth) compared to crypto currencies (in general), does not matter.
Bitcoin isn't claiming that it takes corruption out of the human psyche. Corrupt people stay corrupt. All bitcoin does is take unfounded trust away from individual organisations and governments, and instead puts that trust in maths and the collective. It never claimed that it will combat corruption, and likely never will.
NFTs are definitely switching me off from cryptocurrencies as I find the use of it ridiculous. Sure there are _some_ genuine use cases, but so far it's just been terrible, and does not fill me with confidence. Time will tell if NFTs are gonna become anything that's not silliness among the rich.
> take unfounded trust away from individual organisations and governments, and instead puts that trust in maths and the collective
If by "collective" you mean a tiny portion of the community that are core developers, megaminers, megapools, exchanges and whales, uhh, then sure, but that doesn't seem much different than fiat. There is still an elite minority in control.
Sure, but not everyone can foresee everything. Email was meant to be a decentralised, self-hosted service, yet here we are, gmail, outlook have the majority of users.
In addition to that, most of those megaminers, and megapools, can't do much without working with a large chunk of other miners. Without it, the worse they can do is not fulfill individual transactions (which other miners can continue to accept).
Just because a minority is hoarding bitcoin, does not make bitcoin's core issue invalid, that is, don't trust financial institutions or governments.
Bitcoin never claimed to solve the issues that are at the core of monetary systems (greed, corruption etc). It solves the issue of trust. I don't have to trust a financial institutions or government to tell me how much money I own. Nor is there a government or bank that can freeze my account because I've been naughty (or, in certain cases, because the government deems you naughty because of $ideology). That's what bitcoin solves. Not the issues that are core to monetary systems. Issues that mostly come from human psyche.
>It solves the issue of trust.
No it does not. There are already complaints of vested interests holding back technological advances to BTC. Nothing technically prevents vested interests from colluding to fork the chain ala the ETH DAO scandal. It's not a minority hoarding bitcoin, it's minority controlling bitcoin. You could say you haven't seen enough evidence of this being a problem, but then BTC hasn't been around for centuries or nor does it run a global economy at scale yet.
Butcoin takes trust away from governments and bankers and puts it in the hands of crypto exchanges, that print fake dollars (Tether) to buy Bitcoin and raise its price. Nice transition.
You're clearly misunderstanding what bitcoin is about. No trust is put into crypto exchanges. Trust is put into cryptography, which miners help with. This kind of puts the trust in miners, but in order to do anything as a miner, you'd need to either break sha256, or you'd need 51% of the computing power. The latter is more likely, but it would make bitcoin useless because people will lose trust in the system, thus anything you'd do with the money you'd steal/double spend would be worthless.
On the other hand, individuals can still put their trust in crypto exchanges, but unlike the old system, you are not required to put your trust in an exchange.
You are not required to trust exchanges. But in reality, it's them who rule the Bitcoin's world. And they are much worse than governments and banks.
What makes you say exchanges rule Bitcoin's world? If exchanges are the equivalent of banks, miners are the equivalent of governments. So if anyone "rules" "the" Bitcoin's world, then it would be miners. Not exchanges.
It's really sad that his story got flagged. I think it's a reasonable and well-argued opinion piece, and I can only assume it got flagged because some users vigorously disagree with the opinion. @mods any input?
+1 for what you said. I also think it's a reasonable opinion piece worth to be discussed. But, I think it may got flagged simply because it's (or part of it) kind of off-topic for HN.
What is more bizarre is that some comments here got down voted without answers even though they are relevant to the post. It's becoming a bit harder to talk about Bitcoin while we need to discuss it more than before. And these fanatic energies from Bitcoin lovers and haters don't help.
Money doesn't corrupt, it simply reveals character
I like this and heard it said before... power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals. Works for founders.
I think the author needs to integrate into these arguments the Nixon Shock of 1971 and what’s happening with inflation in the US since 2008. There’s a reason the Dow just hit a record high and it’s not because the fundamentals of those firms are strong.
I’m not a Bitcoin holder but the correct finger pointing here is at monetary policy.
> the correct finger pointing here is at monetary policy.
At this point, even calling it "policy" is utter delusion: it would somehow implies the people who hold the wheel have a minimal clue about what the impact of their decisions ("Policies") will have for the mid to long term future of the economy.
They absolutely don't. They are driving without a map, only worrying about the next turn in the road.
We are raised to believe our leaders are at least vaguely competent.
At best: they aren't. At worst: their actual competence is centered around how much they can do for themselves.
It’s really akin to doctors centuries ago who would bleed out patients. Their cure is worse than the disease.
i agree if you mean the unlimited liquidity and fiscal has pumped up asset speculation to historic proportions
i disagree if you mean people are somehow buying it as a hedge to the dollar
Those are the same thing
I agree with most of this article except the part about fractional reserve banking. All fractional reserve banking means is that banks are allowed to loan out their customer's money. People have known this to be more economically efficient since the Middle Ages. If you're not using your money, it's better in the hands of someone actively using it to conduct a commercial transaction.
Without a central bank to print out money, it's unlikely for there ever to be a fractional reserve banking system in Bitcoin. Any large scale bitcoin bank exit event would completely crash the bitcoin economy.
I added a paragraph clarifying my stance on fractional reserve banking. That section could've indeed been easily misinterpreted. Thank you.
Ok, this seems to be a well-thought out argument against Bitcoin. I'm happy to buy into it. Yes, maybe BTC corrupts people.
But then without proper digital money protocols, how are we supposed to build the next wave of web applications?
Ethereum can be used to do useful things. E.g. we're rating data sets by quality through staking [1]. NFTs seem to make sense for artists (see what Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park said) [2]. Those products are simply not possible without projects like Ethereum.
2: https://mobile.twitter.com/mikeshinoda/status/13580909764142...
We have lots of non-crypto digital money protocols. Millions of people use them every day.
Crypto currencies and block chains are mostly reinventing existing wheels, with a weak promise of decentralization on top, which seems to break down whenever a big-enough event happens.
I tried using traditional banking to build modern applications. In Germany, it's a nightmare.
Additionally the space is heavily regulated. I worked for a company that did several million EUR a year legit revenue in the music industry. Stripe, Adyen and others slammed the door in front of us when we wanted to build automated royalty payments.
We need to fix the loop holes. Money is also an amazing instrument that keeps us motivated. Without the lure of money and its power, we wouldn’t do anything. Startups? Why bother when there is no money involved.
I really think if there was one thing we got right - that’s money as a civilization. What we need to do is fix the loop holes. That includes taxes, corporation as persons, the whole 2011 movement of Occupy Wall Street.
> Why bother when there is no money involved
Because you want to make something useful and helpful for the world? Personal satisfaction? Passion? Necessity?
Granted, those are no arguments to work for free in a world where operating a business and keeping yourself fed cost money, but if somehow those weren't concerns, I can assure you people would still have plenty of motivation to innovate still.
People are motivated by a variety of things, only one being wealth accumulation; and there is an inherent tension between the qualitative and the quantitative (for instance, one would be insulted if one's dinner guest offered to pay the bill for a home-cooked meal).
There's a lot to be said for the social technology of markets and the extrinsic motivations of money. But from FOSS to mutual aid to gift economies [0], currency-denominated markets should only be one tool in our political-economy toolbox.
I think basic income solves it nicely. You still get the allure of money (folks want to make more), but they can also now focus on innovation and creative endeavors. It's a win win in my opinion.
I‘m not so sure if nicely is the right term. Mass starvation as an outcome is not off the table I would say
How do you think people functioned before the invention of money?
No statement in this arena taken to an extreme stands to reason, including "without the lure of money and its power, we wouldn't do anything".
I contribute to open source, as many others here do. Lots and lots of people contribute to society and the common good in other ways without the expectation of capitalistic reward.
Problem with bitcoin is there's no way to redistribute wealth.
How about giving inactive bitcoins to new people? Is it possible? Can you really access the bitcoins that were created at the beginning without updating your bitcoins to latest standards. How do you even update your bitcoin?
Actually Bitcoin is all about wealth redistribution. It is not possible to make money with Bitcoin unless it is at the expense of somebody else. And the fact that some people are making money with it indicates such redistribution is taking place.
Bitcoin is not the best wealth distributor since only an exponentially small fraction 2^-n of all bitcoin is emitted after 4*n years.
> there's no way to redistribute wealth.
There are those who would call that a feature, not a bug.
For the people who look around at the current world and think "ah yes, the problem is too much wealth redistribution?"
I think a lot of people think that what gets called corporate welfare is in fact too much wealth distribution.
Proudly presented by: The mainstream media
Yes theft becomes more difficult, but I'm sure governments will still figure out ways to steal.
Could you access your money in the bank if you refused to update their app? Or if you refused to use technology more modern than a carrier pigeon? Or what if you refused to update your drivers license?
And more importantly, how could any modern person get through life without a laser disc player? Or Google glass? Or Foursquare check-ins?
Which is to say: Your examples have a strong stink of survival bias. There are endless examples of technologies which failed, even where proponents were being heavily that they would be world changing.
Yes. Why?
"Relieving humans from having to worry about or deal with money would be an actual Copernican revolution. How that would work is beyond me, but that's precisely why it would be revolutionary."
This
It's called communism and everytime it's tried it ends in genocide and hundreds of millions murdered.
It exist in granular form in government safety nets, universal healthcare and a handful of other policies in some parts of the world. it also exists in various disjointed pockets of the human experience outside of any easily identified ideological framework. Beyond those tools, it's not called anything because it doesn't exist in totality.
No it's not. Your argument is a straw man fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man.
No, it's called absolute automation, and it's hard but possible within realm of capitalism.
You assume that homo sapiens would be satisfied at an arbitrary stage of the Maslow pyramid
Not being forced to choose "work or death" every day of their lives would free people to actualize the fuck outta themselves
Greed isn't good or bad, it just is. It's a known variable. Greed makes something that's very complicated (human behavior) simpler to understand.
I agree with OP that all the honking horns from automobiles can be a drag, but the manure left from the horses also had some downsides.
> and lastly, it having a multitude of popular proponents with extreme viewpoints such as “animals have no rights”, or the right to bear arms which strikes me as vile, unethical, and borderline insane
The right to bear arms is an extreme right wing viewpoint? This is quite the rant but the author is all over the map
Wealthy democracies have a fairly wide range of acceptable views and policy decisions about firearms but in almost all of them except the US "civilians should have nearly unrestricted access to personal weapons" is an extreme view yes.
Based on their bio, the author appears to be based in Belgium. Although I have my own thoughts on the matter, outside the US, the right to bear arms is indeed an extreme right-wing viewpoint.
I'm in the UK - I used to belong to a gun club and could have easily gone forward to own a rifle if I wanted to, including a semi-automatic (only in .22). I believe most countries in Europe have similar policies. The main difference between here and the US is the categories of weapon you're allowed to use; here it's primarily sporting or hunting weapons where in the US, using guns for defence (and using serious calibres for sporting/hunting) is within the Overton window.
Note that you can get serious calibre rifles in the UK but only in bolt or lever action. Case in point: https://www.gunstar.co.uk/desert-tech-hti-bolt-action-50-rif...
The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic. It's the main reason I haven't bought, and won't buy, any BTC (regardless of the fact I think the tech is completely subpar). Having said that, there's plenty of really great communities around crypto that shouldn't be pooled together along with Bitcoin. Nano, for example, is probably the most hated altcoin by Bitcoin maximalists (probably because they feel threatened?) and coincidently is one of the most tight-knit and constructive communities I found (don't take my word for it, check out the nanocurrency subreddit). There's tons of developers sharing their projects, users tipping all over the place like the good 'ol BTC days, people brainstorming ways of dropping Nano in places where the local currency is in hyperinflation via WeNano. It's just a really cool bunch of peeps.
I frankly don't care if the price of Nano plummets to 1 cent. And I actually hope it doesn't skyrocket and get the attention BTC got, because, to quote the article, "I came for the money", but I stayed for the community. The tech being superior to Bitcoin is just a bonus.
You've been overposting about this. It has become repetitive, and you're starting to reliably generate "here comes the nano shill" comments in every thread. While accusations of shilling are against the site guidelines, posting predictably like this is also against the intended use of the site.
Also, these Bitcoin flamewars are supremely boring. They're exciting in an activating/agitating sort of way, but they aren't intellectually interesting. You're not the only user responsible for that, of course, but you're contributing way too much to it.
If you want to use HN as intended, please post instead on other things of intellectual interest. If you don't want to use HN as intended, please don't post to it. Either way, please stop posting on this topic.
> The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic.
If you go on places like Twitter and reddit somewhat, I agree with you. But if you look on Github, you'll see some of the smartest engineers of our generation working real hard and I wouldn't discount their work based on some loud mouths on social networks.
“you'll see some of the smartest engineers of our generation working real hard”
I've been reading those cheap empty words way too much lately. Unless they are the likes of John von Neumann I'll just assume they're people of average intelligence working on things that look incredibly intimidating to outsiders.
Also, an excerpt from Marcus Aurelius - Meditations: “How corrupt and two-faced is one who claims, 'I intend to be fair and honest in my dealings with you.' What are you up to, my friend? There is really no need for this preamble. The matter will soon become plain. It should be written on your face,* it should ring out immediately in your voice, and shine out at once in your eyes, as the loved one at once knows everything about his lovers from the manner of their glance. In short, a good and honest person should resemble one who smells like a goat in this respect, that anyone who comes near him is immediately aware of it whether he wishes it or not. But the mere pretence of simplicity is like an open blade. There is nothing more odious than the friendship of the wolf for the lamb; avoid this above all. A good, straightforward, and kindly person reveals these qualities in his eyes, and they will not escape you.”
I'm saying it as someone who actually dived pretty deep into both Bitcoin and Ethereum protocols and who has actually seen the research and the code...
Sometimes I wonder if getting people to click on more ads was actually a more socially beneficial project for that talent.
If you look at it from the perspective that ad-clicking has funded the biggest information retrieval system and the biggest human connection platform, yes it was overall socially beneficial.
A counterfactual is that those two things would have happened anyway, and the ad-funded model has deeply corrupted both of them.
I don't think there's world with these counterfactuals in place, do you have any proof?
That’s not a meaningful way to discuss counterfactuals.
Those engineers are so smart they refuse to scale Bitcoin.
No, they built some of the most well thought scaling solutions in forms of layer 2 (payment channels, lightning network, zk-rollups) and many other solutions like sharding, etc.
You're the one who refuses to see those solutions.
Please send me $3.00 via Lightning Network and I will agree whole-heartedly.
Its just not working as a payment system.. Compared to solutions such as lydia or weibo in china..
And what's to say nano won't go the same way as bitcoin. By which I mean it will also attract its share of vocal proponents who want to get rich and will act the way you describe the current bitcoin community.
It is also an unfair assessment of the bitcoin community as it is pretty much based on the most vocal proponents and not for example based on the development community.
The argument is that the currency produces this behavior.
The development is not a victim here.
That sounds like every early stage crypto community. Once there is real USD at stake, the fangs come out.
>The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic.
The issue I have (and for me it applies to crypto in general) is how difficult it's to take even the most banal statements made about it at face value. That's not to say I'm a complete sucker and don't do my research. More that I find it considerably harder to find authorities I can trust (for want of a better word) on the subject than I might with some other piece of tech.
> regardless of the fact I think the tech is completely subpar
> Bitcoin uses the Hashcash proof of work system.
Do you feel that way about all proof of work systems? Do you prefer proof of stake instead? Can you elaborate on what you find subpar about the tech surrounding Bitcoin?
I briefly looked at nano based on the OP’s comment expecting to see proof of stake, but it looks like something more interesting? https://docs.nano.org/what-is-nano/overview/#what-is-nano
I don’t understand how it works yet, but I generally hold what I think is your skepticism for proof-of-stake.
To me, proof-of-stake takes all the technical guarantees of the blockchain and throws them out for a hand-wavy weak guarantee of correctness based on incentive structure. I don’t see how it’s that different from historical digital (or even fiat) currencies based on trust.
Proof-of-work is the interesting bit it crypto currencies.
No coiners are pretty damn toxic. I have friends that will clutch pearls over Bitcoin's energy usage (strange how they've consistently hated BTC since well before that became a talking point), yet will happily take 5 international vacations a year and have the carbon footprint of a medium sized town.
Faux righteous indignation is one of the most toxic takes around.
I agree completely, and to push this a little further - name a community that isn't toxic.
The worst part about virtue signalling nowadays is that it throws out the accumulated history and cultural knowledge of humanity - as expressed in art, literature, etc. Which in a million repeated ways demonstrate that evil in humanity is ubiquitous and ever-present.
There's so many people soap-boxing acting like they don't suffer the same circumstance of every other human around them. And it's almost guaranteed that the ones preaching about how they know to do things better are almost always the worst offenders themselves projecting their own mental obsessions onto the world.
Skateboarders, rock climbers, mathematics, tractor enthusiasts, Britney Spears fanclubs (hence Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm), book clubs, permaculture, meteorologists, bobbin lacers, et cetera. The world is not as toxic when profit isn't involved.
> The world is not as toxic when profit isn't involved.
Got it - this evinces a certain idealism that ignores some pretty glaring stuff that defined the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. All the places that either outright outlawed profit, or otherwise viewed it as evil.
Also regarding your list - what a weird view - that there's angelic spheres where we somehow transcend human behavior.
You only have to look at the scandals of the knitting community to see that no one is immune to toxicity.
No-coiners are a function of Bitcoin just as much as HODLers are.
Why even be part of these communities? It's possible to buy cryptocurrency and avoid all the hype and negativity.
The point of a currency is to enable a society.
A frequent claim about cryptocurrencies is that they can enable a better society than fiat.
The proof is in the pudding.
I don't see how not participating in cryptocurrency communities prevents you from transacting with anyone else.
I’m not sure why you’d make this comment since nobody is talking about preventing anyone from transacting.
Are you saying in your _better_ _society_ a-holes don't get money?! I'm in!
Why does anyone need to be part of a community around a currency? I don’t feel a sense of community based on being a dollar user.
I chuckled. I know the last sentence was meant as joke but here's an answer anyway: because the dollar is not a pyramid scheme. Whereas any new currency that doesn't have a fair distribution mechanism will be. The earliest adopters in such flawed currencies will always have an increasingly disproportionate amount of the total wealth as it gets adopted. Hence the incentive for communities to spread awareness of their pyramid scheme, whether they realise it or not.
Have fun staying poor!
I hate that expression so much.
Nano literally just got taken down by a ddos because it’s network cannot handle spam https://www.coindesk.com/nanos-network-flooded-spam-nodes-ou...
Bitcoin never goes down
I think the Bitcoin people on Twitter are quite fun, actually. When Bitcoin crashes, they flood Twitter with HODL memes, which helps through the dark times.
This sounds like a cult
Comparing Twitter Bitcoin Hodlers to a cult is like comparing Covid lockdowns to the Holocaust.
Nonsense! When bitcoin crashes you must sell, not hodl, because it is clearly DOOMED!
Buy only when it is nearing ATH.
How can it near ATH while it is crashing?
Just HODL!
I mean, buy high, sell low. That's the way!
HODL
>The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic. It's the main reason I haven't bought, and won't buy, any BTC (regardless of the fact I think the tech is completely subpar).
In that case "Have fun staying poor"
And what if he is not poor? I have rich friend who no longer needs to work and he did not buy a single bitcoin. Not for ideological reasons though as he does not even know what reddit is (what a blessed person). He just said I have enough and secure to live the rest of days and do not like to get involved in extra money making activities.
3, 2, 1 ... here comes the nano shill.
Dude, do you post anything else on HN?
> Have I been salty? Definitely. There's no point in denying that. I could've purchased a home had I been in a coma until now.
That about sums it all up. I too watched the rise of bitcoin and was too lazy to mine some on my own computer. I have screenshots of people buying pizza for like 20 BTC.
All we had to do was buy some. We can still do it.
> If I'd have deserved it is something else.
Does it matter if you "deserved" it? So many literal sociopaths are running the world and getting rich by exploiting everyone else. Did they deserve it? Does a lottery winner deserve their gains?
Better to throw out all these notions and just start playing the game. Anything else means being exploited as well.
> All we had to do was buy some. We can still do it.
So you look at the four orders of magnitude that separate the famous "dude overpaying for pizza with Bitcoins" from the current price. And you apparently feel so strongly you leave out the argument for why that is relevant to encouraging others on HN to make a current investment in Bitcoin.
Are you seriously implying that a Bitcoin will be worth $500,000,000 over the next decade? I don't think you are, so what's the relevance of history of Bitcoin's price? Why does that generate FOMO in you?
Is there a more persuasive explanation than simple gold fever? Are you really not able to think of practical circumstances which would cause the price of Bitcoin to go down?
> Are you seriously implying that a Bitcoin will be worth $500,000,000 over the next decade?
Why wouldn't it? Is there anything that would put a cap on its price? The value will keep increasing for as long as people keep believing it's valuable. It may or may not reach absurd prices like 100 thousand dollars or more.
I think there's a good chance that it will. The set of people who value the coin keeps growing. It's grown to the point even companies are buying bitcoin now.
> Are you really not able to think of practical circumstances which would cause the price of Bitcoin to go down?
Sure I can. People could attempt to sell large quantities, crashing the market.
Bitcoin itself could be attacked in any number of ways. Electricity costs could be adjusted to reduce mining efficiency. Nation states could seize control of the network via 51% attacks. I'm not really sure whether these events will come to pass though.
Tyranny that way leads.
This is a weird, angry screed.
Op should read The Ascent of Money and maybe worry less about the moral failings of other humans.
Peace and trust cannot exist without currency. Money lubricates peaceful resolution of conflict.
If you need food and I have it, trade or violence are your only options if currency doesn’t exist.
Screaming at Bitcoin is like screaming at evolution. As long as humans evolve, money will keep pace.
Or Bitcoin could just be an energy wasting failure that distracts people from building important things.
Will money evolve? Certainly.
Does Bitcoin have a future beyond a bubble? We don’t know.
> If you need food and I have it, trade or violence are your only options if currency doesn’t exist.
Another option is debt. You give me the food and I owe you something equivalent later.
>Peace and trust cannot exist without currency.
This is completely false. Currency is orthogonal to trust.
>Money lubricates peaceful resolution of conflict.
Just as easily as it is the driver behind conflict.
>If you need food and I have it, trade or violence are your only options if currency doesn’t exist.
Trade, gift or violence are your only options regardless of the existence of currency.
What currency does is help to expand the number of people that can do business beyond the number of people one can have a personal relationship with.
That is immensely powerful, but it also enables a whole world of fraud and bad things that we need a functioning trusted regulator to deal with.
But bitcoin isn't an advanced form of money.
What makes Bitcoin marginally better money when its valuations are primarily driven by its ability to be a hedge against a system which intends to and is capable of capturing and controlling it?
The price of BTC must be going up since we are seeing these sour grapes stories on the front page again.
An NFT sold for 69 million the other day. Crypto is here to stay. It’s time to rethink the critical analysis of crypto.
What percentage of stimulus checks are going to be spent on BTC?
I'm a bit fascinated by the negativity of bitcoin on HN. It goes all the way back to when it was trading for below $1. I almost purchased some but decided not to DUE to HN comments, I assumed they knew what they were talking about, I was wrong.
BTC 60K! With an Elon tweet! Great way to start the day! Haters gonna hate.