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Comment by hug0 | Hacker News Reader

Surely, if 1000 people own 40% of a currency which had evangelical aims to service 7.5 billion people, then it is impossible to call it decentralised... Add this to the obvious fact that the vast majority of new bitcoins mined are from china, which due to the scale of processing power now has a monopoly due to capital barriers. The conclusion is... great experiment, but as in all deliberate implementations of social ,political, or economic theory. The real world is a very different beast to one man's view from a desk. I feel sorry for any new uneducated investors getting in now. This has become nothing more than a pyramid scheme that adds no value whatsoever to the world. Not cryptocurrency as an idea, but bitcoin's current iteration and implementation.

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> Surely, if 1000 people own 40% of a currency which had evangelical aims to service 7.5 billion people, then it is impossible to call it decentralised...

Decentralized can have many meanings. What is important is that you can transact with anyone without a third party having any say. For that 99% of all coins could be in the hands of a single person as long as there would be enough left for others to use.

> Add this to the obvious fact that the vast majority of new bitcoins mined are from china, which due to the scale of processing power now has a monopoly due to capital barriers

As long as they do not collude to destroy or disrupt the network it has no relevance at all.

> This has become nothing more than a pyramid scheme that adds no value whatsoever to the world. Not cryptocurrency as an idea, but bitcoin's current iteration and implementation.

As Bitcoin is practically useless due to high fees and congestion, I agree. But not because the reasons you gave.

> As Bitcoin is practically useless due to high fees and congestion

I disagree here. Gold is very expensive to get into and out of on a percentage basis, also requires careful storage, and is more difficult to exchange (manual pickup/delivery or insured registered mail). And yet it is worth eight trillion dollars.

In addition, believing that Bitcoin is dead for transactional uses because of temporary issues may be a mistake. It is simply software after all, and there are now hundreds of billions of reasons for the developers and users to get it right. My thought is that the alt-coins are simply testing “improvements” to the core technology, and if any updates are sufficiently proven and begin to threaten Bitcoin they will simply be stolen by Bitcoin’s users and eventually co-opt the alt-coin’s value due to Metcalfe’s law.

Yes okay. I can add that Bitcoin is practically useless because you can get the exact same service using other coins like Bitcoin Cash.

The problem is uncertainty if your transaction goes through, because it's practically impossible to predict if the fee you just paid will be enough, and that Bitcoin cannot support more users.

Gold does not have these issues. Gold also has other usage but what is the use of Bitcoin if you cannot move it?

> In addition, believing that Bitcoin is dead for transactional uses because of temporary issues may be a mistake.

Agree. I should say that Bitcoin is practically useless right now when the fees and confirmation times are skyrocketing.

It's not hard to titrate your fee to your desired confirmation speed. Just look at the mempool, sorted by fee and age of transaction: https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

If everyone else does the same you're out of luck. Your best bet is to pay a lot more and hope you pay more than the others.

This is because you're not only competeing against the transactions in the mempool but also against future transactions which may enter after you make your transcation and before more blocks are found.

> Decentralized can have many meanings. What is important is that you can transact with anyone without a third party having any say.

I understand the premise of decentralised transactions, it's just that if the value of the currency can be manipulated by small group, it is not removing the need for trust, just shifting it...

> As long as they do not collude to destroy or disrupt the network it has no relevance at all.

I thought the point of decentralisation was to remove the need to trust others...

> As Bitcoin is practically useless due to high fees and congestion, I agree. But not because the reasons you gave.

AGREE! 7tps vs Visas 4,000tps with a peak capacity of 56,000 tps...

> it's just that if the value of the currency can be manipulated by small group, it is not removing the need for trust, just shifting it...

I think there's different aspects to "manipulated".

Large holders or exchanges can always manipulate the price, this is true for cryptocurrencies, the stock market and other things as well. Cryptocurrencies is however much less mature and more easily manipulated, but I foresee it to stabilize in the years to come.

If we're thinking of the miners to manipulate the coin I think the real genius of Bitcoin is they are heavily incentivized not to. All miners are heavily invested in Bitcoin's success so it's in their best interest not to destroy Bitcoin's value.

> I thought the point of decentralisation was to remove the need to trust others...

To be clear: what miners can do if they collude is try to revert transactions or block new transactions. If this happens it would be obvious and Bitcoin's value would be severely damaged.

There is trust yes, but it's more trust in the incentives behind Bitcoin than to specific miners themselves.

> "7tps vs Visas 4,000tps with a peak capacity of 56,000 tps..."

Lightning Network will far exceed 56,000 tps.

The white paper doesn't discuss wealth distribution at all. Bitcoin is a critique of money involving trust in entities not party to a transaction, and not much else. Where this leads us as far as far as wealth distribution goes is potentially interesting, but was never evangelized by the white paper or the community that built it.

The idea that money should be distributed more broadly than 1000 people controlling 40% of it sounds really nice, but it is missing the level of formalism that Bitcoin brings to the question of money.

> Surely, if 1000 people own 40% of a currency which had evangelical aims to service 7.5 billion people, then it is impossible to call it decentralised

Haha. Where do you get that? If a random guy says you so, don't believe in him.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitco...

That 1000 number likely includes many exchange wallets

In my view Bitcoin as a very important flaw it's distribution timing it should have been scheduled with a more linear curve and to last at least 100 years so you can achieve a fairer distribution or alternatively to have a small inflation system built in.

cryptocurrency can be used in the background for fiat money settlements, It has made me a better software engineer for sure, secure code will always be in fashion. Also the majority of online gambling which is a billion dollar industry is better suited with cryptocurrency. I don't think it is going away, it could crash 80% and I still wouldnt sell as long as the money remains programmable.

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