So many bitcoin haters in these comments... we'll see who's wrong in a decade or so.
Are there any other kind?
Besides, the fact that among the top 3 exchanges were the crap fests of "a man-week of amateur PHP code" and the like that were taken down speaks volumes about the kind of crap the bitcoin crowd can't see through.
(1) There are people who think it's a pure speculative bubble or pyramid scheme. (I disagree because it has utility.)
(2) There are also people who point out that it's a deflationary currency and therefore broken. (I sympathize a bit with this view but it's not enough to make me dismiss it completely. I think this might be a solvable problem.)
(3) There seem to be some who just take a contrarian position against things that have received a ton of hype or that are too fashionable.
What exactly is the news here? Some company accepts some new form of payment that hardly anyone uses.
When it comes to "money", Bitcoin proponents seem massively misinformed on how it actually works. The blockchain technology is interesting, but a new currency isn't as exciting as they want you to believe. I don't care that my dollar has no inherent value, as long as people accept it in exchange, that's all I care about. And they do, everywhere.
Well that's a bit short-sighted then.
Plenty of people care about a lot more than that in a currency, namely that is it responsibly and equitably managed. Bitcoin is not this, of course, but it's a giant step in the right direction compared to the Federal Reserve.
That and the vast majority of bitcoins are held for speculation instead of used as a currency.
Then why should I care about it?
>"It's a giant step in the right direction compared to the Federal Reserve.
The Fed system is far from perfect, but despite what the conspiracy theorists think, it didn't spring out of some sinister idea; it's the evolution of a complex financial system that has generated more wealth, for more people, faster, than at any point in history. Those are facts that you're up against when promoting Bitcoin, a system where some early adopters think they are going to hoard the currency until they get rich from it, because other people can't obtain it. Why would any outsiders buy into that system? That's the thing that some people can't grasp; there is no reason whatsoever for your currency to be scarce. It should grow to match demand.
I also believed that. Recently I've come to realize I'm skewed because I'm in an eastern country with little financial controls. Bitcoin has real traction in places like Brazil or China. That has real value, and it is enough to make BTC gain critical mass.
Had you asked me two months ago, I'd say bitcoin as a currency was doomed. Today? Not so sure anymore.
But, again, the core innovation about cryptocurrencies/blockchain (I risk a lot of HN karma using the later word!) is strong and has long term implications beyond the current issues on PoW, miners, etc.
Aside for people excited by the tech (and its potential applications to other fields), the core of bitcoin believes are either get-rich-quick types who buy into the pyramid scheme, tin-foil crackpots (similar to gold hoarders), and stick-it-to-the-man true believers (with a freeman-of-the-land [1] mentality) naive enough to believe it can trump regulation and disrupt "the system".
In areas of high corruption, a networked, global currency could be rather freeing.
My home country Tunisia for example has very strict currency controls in place, which means that it is impossible to purchase any goods from outside the country or even transfer money overseas.
The government now provides rechargeable card with a 1000 TND (~500 USD) limit that can be used for online purchases. However, these are only issued to software developers and entrepreneurs to allow them to subscribe to online services, such as hosting, domain names, etc.
Bitcoin provides a quick and easy way to circumvent that: convert your TND to BTC, and use that to purchase online goods or to transfer money outside the country.
I'm actually thinking of setting up a MVP to test out this idea, but I'm struggling to come up with a solution that is completely transparent for the end-user. In other words, I don't want the user to have to understand Bitcoin or buy/sell it manually. I'd prefer instead for the system to use BTC under the hood.
Another example I read about recently is Argentina. People are using Bitcoin there for daily transactions and for their savings due to high fluctuations in the local currency.
Is that reality as of today, or is that a hope for the future?
Well, perhaps, but
(a) these people are a very small amount compared to "first world" bitcoin champions
(b) they would be better off pushing for actual policy change regarding their problems, instead of using a technological workaround who (depending on the whims of those in power) can land them in jail/money loss at any time...
Yes, your second point is true, but sometimes the country itself is struggling to stabilize its currency. Thankfully, that's not (yet) the case in Tunisia.
I can certifiably tell you that I AM better off because I started using bitcoin. And it's not because of the exchange rate, but because of the freedom to do what I please with my money.
But the overwhelming majority of bitcoin investment, marketing and ownership isn't coming from Tunisia. It's coming from the West (and China), where most people have no problems spending or obtaining currency (maybe China does).
Why are Westerners so eager to make money off of people's inability to move money around poor countries, and why is it supported?
I've used BTC in an emergency situation, to transfer money when I would otherwise have needed to wait for several days for an international bank transfer (and then would also have hit my bank's foreign ATM withdrawal limit).
Your third paragraph is a veiled insult based on a notion that if applied consistently would deem the international banking system at least as immoral as Bitcoin.
As for why it's big in more developed countries, I guess it's because people are using it either as an investment device, or for purchasing goods anonymously.
A common issue in Tunisia especially is sending money to relatives in France. I want to give them the end-to-end experience in one place: you send me TND, I send your relative EUR. But everything I've thought of to accomplish that is just too complex.
So right now my idea is just to give users BTC in an online wallet and let them do whatever they want with it. That means I'll need to effectively educate users about the basics of Bitcoin at the very least.
In that case you end up holding TND and need to purchase the bitcoin to give to your customers in another currency. You would have an easier result if you just directly exchanged TND to EUR without putting BTC in between. Likely that's about as legal as your solution. Just because at some point the value is hold in BTC doesn't mean currency controls cease to exist.
I don't see the value Bitcoin provides here at all except for the fact that the government agency that should enforce currency controls is likely not competent enough yet to spot what you are doing. I'd place a bet that as soon as you start advertising your transparent TND-EUR conversion scheme that they'll shut you down as fast as if you wouldn't use BTC.
The key selling point for BTC is that it is completely digital. Think of it this way: if I have TND and would like to buy some EUR, how do I "store" the EUR I get? I only have a Tunisian bank account, so the EUR I receive from say a German account will still be stuck inside Tunisia. And if I receive cash, it won't do me much good. Not to mention the inherent risk involved in doing bank transfers.
But if I use my TND to buy BTC, I can store that BTC in an online wallet, or completely offline. I can easily transfer it to anyone anywhere in the world, or use it buy goods online. The simple act of getting your hands on BTC means that currency controls, transfer fees, etc. are completely circumvented. As for security and accountability, it becomes much easier to control given Bitcoin's digital nature.
That is leaving out the point that both the operators and the clients are willfully circumventing the law, which most governments don't appreciate.
One way is to simply buy BTC from local sellers who perhaps bring BTC from outside the country. They take a cut and I add a markup before selling it back.
But there's another advantage I have. I'm currently residing outside the country, and if I do setup the business it will be funded using outside money. Because the company is funded externally, I can actually transfer any revenue it generates outside of the country.
As for your last point, that is in fact my biggest concern. The government could easily close down the company and its bank accounts at its pleasure. To avoid this, I think the safest option is to go with a purely decentralized market that simply connects buyers with sellers, but that will make it much harder to take a cut.
Anyways, I'm still thinking about the whole thing, and as you noted, it's not that straightforward.
The question was why Bitcoin gets negative responses on places like HackerNews, and that question was answered.
If you want a hedge against a catastrophic collapse of the dollar (or whatever your local currency happens to be), there are innumerable other, better alternatives.
Besides, if there was such a collapse, who's to say that Bitcoin won't get dragged down with it? After all, more than likely you're using bitcoins to buy things that cost dollars.
Bitcoin is far from the only case where catastrophic data losses or leaks are very costly. It's something that's certainely worth thinking about carefully, but it's not a fatal flaw for the system's usability - if it were all digital data use cases would be fatally flawed.
1) I'm still bitter I threw all mine away. I had a few hundred in the early days and thought, "this isnt going anywhere"....
2) I'm one of HN's resident conspiracy theorists, for lack of a better term, and bitcoin can be seen as a threat to freedom because for all the awesome things it is, it is not anonymous. This may seem innocuous at first, but if you subscribe to the globalist conspiracy view, one of the primary tenants of "their plan" involves cashless, digital only currecy easily tied to your personhood. In essence, I fear the future will be more totalitarian and dystopian than people realize, and digital currencies like bt seem ripe for abuse and use in such a system.
3) Along the same lines as 2, I feel like once banks start getting into bitcoin heavily, despite its theoretical mechanisms to prevent it, the banks will find a way to corrupt and control the system. The community has already experienced the first attempts in the form of the huge first price inflation.
4) Another problem with bitcoin is that it requires good cybersecurity, which we all know is much more rare than anyone wants to admit. It's ripe for mass thefts. Once that wallet is gone, not much can be done.
Ok, thats most of it, now I have to say that I understand there are many "ifs" in what I am saying, but to me the threats are real. I still will use bitcoin for the time being anyway, and there are many good things about it and other *coins, but you didnt ask what I liked, you asked what I dont like.
On that note, blockchain technology independent of bitcoin I expect to be a huuge hit. Blockchain all the things!
Like I said, Bitcoin will scale like the internet scaled which is in direct proportion to demand. Blocks aren't often full and if you are in a hurry then you need to pay 10 or 20 cents to prioritize your transaction.
But it's hard to get and hard to use. It's useful for a pseudo-anonymous transfer for value.
Unless I'm doing something illegal, Visa is a better option.
There's always one situation where one currency is more convenient than the others.
Is this attitude a remnant of the religious wars in Europe?
There can be only one?
One interesting thing is there is an optimal fee based on the size of the block of transactions.
If you re read my comment you can see I explicitly said getting money out of those countries, which have been infamous for capital controls.
Also - Magic Beans - accepted at 48 locations in Athens https://coinmap.org/#/map/37.99873292/23.73853683/12
Look up the ideal properties of money and you might understand the big picture better, but it may mean challenging your deeply held beliefs and not everyone is ready for that.
But even without game theoretic arguments involving civil disobedience, Bitcoin is still interesting. It offers cryptographic protections that have never existed before in real fintech applications (e.g. programmable signatures), and radical transparency and configurable trust that can patch the sort of vulnerabilities that led to the 2007 financial crisis.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/49osb4/examples_of_rbi...
[2]: https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin...
On the other hand a global payment system would require a currency which is at the very least stable (and not increasing in value). But a stable value might not be enough to cover the expenses of most of the miners. Mining is already dominated by Chinese miners which happen to have access to the cheapest electricity - which incidentally completely undermines the aspect of decentralization.
In summary it seems that at this point a decentralized payment system just appears to be too expensive (computationally) to be any serious competition for currencies in countries with a well established, trusted payment system. It still might be of use in the developing world.
It works in the other direction too. Lowered value lowers mining competition which LOWERS difficulty. It stabilizes itself automatically.
Until these things are fixed, I don't think I will ever use or invest in Bitcoin.
I hate this "Linux of the desktop" analogy because people really fail to realize that it has already happened and that they have missed it. I blogged about this a couple of months back: https://blog.r3bl.me/en/year-of-linux/