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Comment by emodendroket | Hacker News Reader

Nothing says "stable store of value" like wild fluctuations in exchange rates.

Who called Bitcoin a "stable store of value" and why are you listening to them?

This kind of goalpost-moving drives me nuts about Bitcoin defenders. Every time it fails at one of its stated goals, that goal is not only dropped, but evangelists insist it was never there to begin with.

First the selling point was that "the USD can never be a reliable store of value because it's evil fiat currency controlled by a central bank, use Bitcoin instead!". This has quietly faded as the volatility of Bitcoin continues to exceed that of the US dollar by orders of magnitude.

Then it was about "decentralization", another argument that went away when people realized that Chinese mining pools control the whole thing.

Then it was all about the low transaction fees and freeing you from the tyranny of payment processors, until the fees went higher than PayPal, and now /r/Bitcoin will call you stupid for complaining about fees.

I don't even know what the current arguments in Bitcoin's favor are anymore, but I'm sure they'll be different next year.

And of course, in all of these cases, there's never any acknowledgement that the shift happened - "We're at war with Eurasia; we've always been at war with Eurasia"

Have you been talking to the same person every time? Or is it possible that different people have different ideas and opinions?

There is definitively a narrative by Bitcoin supporters comparing the Big-Number-On-A-Harddrive to gold. It is suggested that people flee from uncertainty in the real world (Venezuela, China etc.) to cryptocurrency.

It would be nice if those who hold/held this idea would come out and critically evaluate this position in public forums like this one.

Are you sure you're talking to the same people over time wrt to these arguments?

Different people are attracted to different aspects of crypto currency.

Bitcoins goal has always been censorship resistance. The fact that Wikileaks still exists despite powerful interests strong arming banks into dropping them is an example of this.

> Bitcoins goal has always been ....

You realize this is exactly what I'm talking about, right?

don't censor me, bro!

The manifesto linked an article about QE, didn't it?

Bitcoin is nothing but a vehicle to get money out of China illegally complicated by the fawning of teenagers who see it a way to rebel and also by speculators and a few crazy Ayn Rand believers who doesn't realize what she wanted would be hell on earth (just google the words venezuela ayn rand). Did I leave any of the loonies out? I think not.

There's no legal, useful application of it. Just none. Every time I ask, people come and say but... but... international transfers! and I point it out that for that transfer the sender needs to buy bitcoins, transfer and the receiver needs to sell them because there is no legal, useful application of it :) And this is untenable, you can't have the receiver go through hoops to receive money. And when I compare this to how Transferwise combines a fantastic user experience with favorable rates (which I actually compared to an FX company not to a bank) then I am a Transferwise shill despite it's usually not me who brings up the transfer argument so I now I did just so we don't need to have that conversation again and again.

Do note that Transferwise vs traditional FX is not apples-to-apples.

When you exchange at at bank you are done now. With Transferwise you might be done now, or maybe tomorrow, or maybe they'll cancel the deal because the market moved.

It's a fine product, but the difference in risk profile needs to be taken into account when considering the price.

I am neither a defender nor an evangelist; I hold some BTC but it's purely because it's the go-between of other cryptos. I will readily admit that I am in crypto because I like speculating.

I have never heard anyone outside of the deepest idiot-evangelists call it a "stable store". I've heard it call a good investment, but that is a wholly different beast.

The only goalpost moving going on here is you hoisting the intention of Bitcoin as a "store of value" rather than the stated goals (decentralized currency, universal ledger) and practical uses (speculation, Chinese currency escape).

Any "currency" that isn't a stable store of value hardly deserves the name.

The one that always makes me laugh is when they say it's good because there's no chargebacks. What kind of sucker seeks that property when looking for a means to buy stuff online? Just wire money over Western Union at that point.

Is anyone expecting stability? According to the chart, it went from $1000 to $3000 in 2.5 months.

Lots of weak hands in it right now. More scaling debates, ominous US legislation, Goldman Sachs says it looks "heavy." I got out recently - for me it was the disposition effect [1], but shortly after, one of the more compelling global macro voices that I like to listen to, Raoul Pal, announced that he sold his stake. Makes me bearish long-term. Raoul's reasons were based on the malleability of the protocol and specifically that more than 21M bitcoins can be created at the whim of developers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_effect.

In what scenario would it be in anyone's interest to raise the maximum total of coins to be created?

Hypothetically, if miner profits went into freefall, the alternatives would be to raise tx fees even further (making the network less usable), or to change the protocol to mint more coins. You are correct that the latter would massively discredit the project's original goals, and is therefore unlikely (since it would damage the value of the currency).

The network relies on having a large ecosystem of miners to prevent anyone from mounting coordination attacks. Those miners are paid either by new bitcoins (out of the finite supply), or by tx fees.

> and specifically that more than 21M bitcoins can be created at the whim of developers

It really can't be, though.

Wouldn't the miners have to actually run the new software in order for the new coin creation to be valid?

Presumably, boosters who tell me it will eventually replace the world's various currencies do expect some level of stability, because nobody in their right mind is going to use a currency that deflates and inflates 40% month over month.

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