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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

You haven't rebutted his central argument, which is that for all the smart people working on it and all the important supposed political ramifications of the idea, no blockchain of any sort has been scaled to any mainstream consumer financial task.

He's not disputing that smart people work on it, or that there aren't variations on Bitcoin, and so pointing those things out doesn't respond to his article.

You can disagree with him as you can disagree with anything, but if you want to support the argument that it's "awful", you'll need to do better.

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"no blockchain of any sort has been scaled to any mainstream consumer financial task."

Maybe the OP could have written a post in 1990, 17 years after the first handheld mobile phone prototype, about the tech "still having not reached mainstream consumers, therefore being a failure."

The OP seems unaware how fast Bitcoin is growing. Not mainstream yet, but it's growing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bitcoin#Growth

The first mobile phones had clear value, many initial customers, and a bunch of people who were obviously interested if the price came down. Where is the equivalent waiting market here?

Similarly, where is that short-term growth coming from and how would you distinguish it from a speculative bubble? Lots of companies reported amazing growth from 1995-2000, too, but anyone who looked at their fundamentals couldn't justify it.

The "waiting market" with Bitcoin is effectively caused by network effects. If your financial transactions don't involve peers accepting Bitcoin, then you have little incentive to use it. The more people use it, the more incentives you have to do so.

Extinction, and failure, is the law. Survival, and success, is the exception. Just because dropout $billionaire is in charge of $unicorn, does not mean that all dropouts will be billionaires.

Bitcoin is no exception. It may survive, but the story about mobile phones (and any tech that succeeded) is irrelevant here. We can have this discussion when and if it is a consumer success.

Billions of dollars are moved around in cryptocurrency every day, this article just misses all that apparently. It's not a good article, don't recommend for any smart people it's a waste of time.

Yes, but what impact has blockchain had on the world outside of blockchain?

Id suggest going to Venezuela and looking for yourself.

Literally all coverage of Venezuela and bitcoin has come from bitcoin promoters, interesting-sounding claims being reprinted without verification. None of it I've seen traces back to anywhere else.

What we actually see: 370 BTC a week on LocalBitcoins, which is negligible in the context of the country.

The closest to a verifiable claim: that miners who were stealing electricity were arrested. Of course, stealing the electricity has long been a favoured Bitcoin mining strategy.

@discodave Billions of dollars moved around is actual wealth that has impact on the "world outside the blockchain". A lot of cryptocurrency is being exchanged for goods and services outside of the blockchain. Considering the amount of wealth being exchanged with cryptocurrency it has more impact on the real world than 99% of businesses or startups have or will ever have.

It has given the general public very convenient access to a "gold-like" asset.

Immutability causes bitcoin to have no counter party risk, just like gold. It has limited supply, similar to gold. Along with all the other money-like properties of gold.

Yet it is far more portable and accessible.

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