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> The early internet did not have such lofty hopes, so its growth was more organic.

People forget that in the early days of the Internet and its predecessors, most computers were still bigger than a washing machine, mostly available only to universities and big or specialized corporations, and data lines were limited to bandwidths many orders of magnitudes narrower than today.

The Internet had an inherent hard limit on scale and availability simply by the technology that was available at the time. Not only did the Internet then grow with the available technology, filling it out, its very nature provided a great lever to all research and development, leading to the exponential advancement of information technology that we live in today.

There is no comparison, at all.

> The Internet had an inherent hard limit on scale and availability simply by the technology that was available at the time.

All technology is limited by what is available at the time. I am nowhere near as bullish as I used to be on “blockchain” but I still think it can have a huge impact. If the internet democratized informatiom the blockchain has the potential to democratize finance and some types of information. The internet had all kinds of crazy scammers during the dotcom era. I think there is still potential here and while the shape isn’t super obvious I think it’s not worth betting against. Im no koolaide drinking crypro cargo cultist but I am optimistic it will solve some problems and be a net positive.

> People use cryptocurrency too. For value transfer

What's your evidence for this?

Even major Bitcoin advocates say it's no longer useful as a payment system: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/

Bitcoin's total TPS is circa 2-3. [1] And presumably a small fraction of that is actual money transfer. In contrast, M-Pesa, a digital money system that started about the same time and has millions of users, has 100x that volume and is growing rapidly. [2]

So I'm entirely skeptical that it's better for any significant market than even legacy money transfer methods, let alone trying to compete with newer tech.

[1] https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second

[2] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/money/news-money/m-pesa-reac...

> What's your evidence for this?

I've used it for that. People use it on darknet markets for value transfer. I have seen many people claim to use it in Venezuela, though I can't confirm that (one of them posted in this thread [1]).

> Bitcoin's total TPS is circa 2-3. [1] And presumably a small fraction of that is actual money transfer. In contrast, M-Pesa, a digital money system that started about the same time and has millions of users, has 100x that volume and is growing rapidly. [2]

That's no longer true. The lightning network increases that to effectively infinite TPS. The infrastructure of nodes isn't that great yet, but it is now possible in principle for Bitcoin to scale to an essentially arbitrary throughput.

> So I'm entirely skeptical that it's better for any significant market than even legacy money transfer methods, let alone trying to compete with newer tech.

That's a fair skepticism. Though not due to slowness/throughput, as that problem is solved. And not due to environmental concerns, because that problem will be solved (in Ethereum, not Bitcoin). The legitimate objections to cryptos I see are:

1. It's not clear that decentralization, uncensorability, and irrevocability are really properties that people need. provides a value anyone really need.

2. Deflationary assets are subject to boom/bust cycles that can be toxic to modern economies. Crypto assets tend to be deflationary, and as such may not, over the longer term, serve effectively as global currencies.

I think those two points are the core of any serious objection to crypto. I believe that in the case of #1, the architectural change it would induce in our financial system is worthwhile, and consumers will feel the effects of that rather than the benefits currently stated for crypto. As for #2, it's a legitimate concern, and it may ultimately make them untenable, but we'll just have to see.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495476

I appreciate your willingness to at least contemplate that Bitcoin might have flaws, which is better than most Bitcoin advocates.

But you share one of the habits that makes these discussions so frustrating. You substitute marginal examples and handwaves at the future when asked for clear present evidence.

The Lightning network might possibly one day increase capacity to infinite TPS. It doesn't yet, and reasonable people think it never will. E.g.: https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/175418385308/why-the-lig...

I am saying that based on the evidence I find, despite 10 years of enormous free advertising, approximately nobody uses it today for money transfer when compared with other money transfer options. Do you have clear evidence otherwise? Not anecdote, not what it possibly does, but actual evidence?

> You substitute marginal examples and handwaves at the future when asked for clear present evidence.

Such is unfortunately the nature of all predictive discussion. I don't think i'm being any more speculative than anyone discussing say, autonomous cars, or similarly 'somewhere on the horizon' technologies.

> It doesn't yet, and reasonable people think it never will. E.g.: https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/175418385308/why-the-lig....

There's a decent bit going on in that link, but point by point:

> 1. it doesn’t work. the software is absolute dogshit. buggy as hell.

This is just saying the current iteration is buggy. That's no counter-argument to the concept.

> 1.5. it can’t work. the mesh network problem

The difficulty of this problem depends on the number of relevant nodes, and the way you structure the network itself. He even cites a good example - BGP. He claims that BGP works because the nodes trust each other, but regardless of them trusting each other, they solve the mesh network problem. That trust is not integral to the solving of the mesh network problem.

> 2. the whole idea is dumb. nobody wants a network of prepaid channels.

Now this sounds like a decent argument. Except that, one could argue that your bank account and credit card are simply prepaid channels. If the LN gets up to scale, and if it achieves sufficient node liquidity that you can pay essentially anyone...then I don't see how this prepaid channel differs in any way from a traditional bank account.

> 3. the LN solves a problem that doesn’t exist. the idea is to make transactions fast again

The LN may or may not cause merchants to adopt Bitcoin for payments. But it definitely solves the more narrow "Bitcoin doesn't scale" problem.

> 4. the LN is coin-agnostic - so it isn’t an excuse for bitcoin’s unscalability

This doesn't even logically follow. It's just a complete non-sequitur. The LN is an excuse for Bitcoins not scaling yet. The LN can also be used to scale other coins. It may be that people prefer those other coins once they've achieved scale.

> Do you have clear evidence otherwise? Not anecdote, not what it possibly does, but actual evidence?

It's extremely hard to get data for something like that. But the clearest cut case is darknet markets. Cryptocurrencies are definitely actually used there for real commerce.

That is not at all the nature of all predictive discussion. Handwaves suit for a seed round, for example. But when you're looking for an A or a B round, you need significant evidence for your forward-looking statements. Bitcoin is years past the point where it deserves to get away with handwaves.

Also, "people use cryptocurrency for value transfer" is not a forward-looking statement. It's a statement of what people do now. And this comes out of you saying, "blockchains are useful now".

> That is not at all the nature of all predictive discussion. Handwaves suit for a seed round, for example. But when you're looking for an A or a B round, you need significant evidence for your forward-looking statements. Bitcoin is years past the point where it deserves to get away with handwaves.

You're handwaving right now. You can't know which part of the distribution you're in until it's over. I've provided quite a bit of evidence, as well. There are some forward looking statements for which there is no hard evidence, but only because there cannot yet be any.

> Also, "people use cryptocurrency for value transfer" is not a forward-looking statement. It's a statement of what people do now. And this comes out of you saying, "blockchains are useful now".

They do use it for value transfer right now.

I am definitely not handwaving. I'm saying that the normal evidentiary standards for business evaluation should apply to Bitcoin. It's no longer novel, so the novelty exemption doesn't apply.

> They do use it for value transfer right now.

Money launderers do. KGB agents do. A variety of other criminals do. But I have yet to see evidence that a significant portion of ordinary people use it for value transfer in preference to either traditional means or modern, non-blockchain digital ones.

So yes, you are technically correct on a narrow interpretation of a single sentence. But you are so far wrong in terms of the meaning of that sentence in the broader discussion. For the purposes of evaluating Bitcoin's commercial utility, effectively nobody uses it. If you have data otherwise, let's see it.

The same applies for comparisons with the early Internet. Pre-web, lots of non-technical people used it for practical purposes because it provided superior utility over other options. That doesn't appear to be true for money transfer for Bitcoin. Even prominent Bitcoin advocates have given up on that. E.g.: http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/

It's useful for cross-country transfers of money, and in-country if the alternative would be very annoying (or you just happen to have some cryptocurrency around and not regular money). I do use it for that and I've found it useful. The biggest downside in my experience has not been all the abstract figures and numbers and stories floating around, but the exchanges. Turning cryptocurrencies back into regular money is very annoying and the US ones are even very shady (locking your money in, etc). It's what's keeping it inside of the fringes for me.

Turning cryptocurrencies back into regular money is pretty easy and efficient with Kraken.

> People use cryptocurrency too. For value transfer, and to a more limited extent, for dapps like Augur.

Soooo, buying drugs and illegal gambling? Sure, I'll give you that one.

My argument rephrased: "Because cryptocurrency investors have repeatedly made claims that don't pan out, we can be reasonably skeptical and concerned about their energy consumption until they actually fix it or at the very least provide peer-reviewed scientific analysis on how it will be fixed."

> Soooo, buying drugs and illegal gambling? Sure, I'll give you that one.

Yes, although also remittance payments, and some usage in places with unstable currencies like Venezuela. Hard to gauge how much, though.

> My argument rephrased: "Because cryptocurrency investors have repeatedly made claims that don't pan out, we can be reasonably skeptical and concerned about their energy consumption until they actually fix it or at the very least provide peer-reviewed scientific analysis on how it will be fixed."

While that is, in the abstract, a fair argument I don't think there are actually that many examples of it in practice. Vitalik didn't claim Ethereum would be a world computer right away. He's always been clear and explicit about the scaling roadmap. I don't think the promises of the core devs of Ethereum or Bitcoin have been overstated or unmet. If you believe otherwise though, i'd be happy to listen to your argument.

Bitcoin is a solution to unstable currencies in the same way that gasoline is a fire extinguisher. People in Venezuela that want to actually eat are using USD.

they cannot send or receive usd from abroad. they can do it with bitcoin. you get now the value proposition of a global currency that is not government controlled?

If crypto, being "not controlled by a central authority", solves inflation, surely it would already have replaced the default currency in Venezuela by now?

"Authorities have .. permitted trading of bitcoin in Venezuela, though they have heavily fined and detained people who use computers to earn bitcoins by auditing online cryptocurrency transactions. Such “mining” operations use immense amounts of electricity, which is heavily subsidised in Venezuela — meaning the state essentially winds up paying for the process."

"few businesses openly advertise that they accept cryptocurrency out of concern they will be extorted. It’s still difficult to make many purchases in Venezuela with bitcoin"

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/venezuelans-seeing...

They have a national registry that you need to subscribe to if you are a miner. That and you also need to keep in handy your customs paperwork to prove that you paid entry duties for the equipment. Otherwise you open yourself to police extortion.

does extortion happen regardless? Because the article seems to imply that the miners were mining legally, but where extorted by police anyways

People in Venezuela certainly do send and receive USD from abroad, it is obviously the only way it gets into the country. You can go to a grocery store and buy food with USD. This is what people are actually doing. I suppose you can try to convince the people at your local grocery store to accept cryptocurrencies but good luck with that. And good luck using cryptocurrencies in a country that suffers from frequent blackouts of both electricity and internet.

I'm sorry but I currently live in Venezuela and what you are saying is wrong. Very few places in Caracas or hotels will actually take USD for payment since it is considered illegal unless you go through the regular channels with the idiotic govt exchange rate.

Bitcoin not only thrives here and allows you to bypass the whole craziness with the economy by using exchanges like localbitcoins.com where somebody would deposit the amount of bitcoin you sold to your local bank account. This way you just keep your money in bitcoins if you want. This is specially true with miners.

for sure people that live in Europe cannot deposit good amounts of USD to send through the bank to their relatives there. I know this for a fact. I think you are misinformed.

aris is technically correct. They are not legally allowed to bring a ton of USD into the country (if they're even well enough off to do so). And legally, they have to do so at government-mandated exchange rates (which no one does, because everyone buys/sells on the black market). Surely people are using USD where possible. But likely, they're HODLing their USDs (against the rapidly inflating Bolivares) wherever possible, too.

Meanwhile, no doubt some are using crypto to supplement their incomes/savings as well.

> aris is technically correct.

No,“can” and “are legally allowed to” don't, technically, mean the same thing.

For most Venezuelans, getting access to cash is not a practical reality, even if it's a theoretical one. I went to Venezuela in 2011 and you couldn't even bring $1K USD worth of goods into the country without being taxed to death on it (or paying off some government official). How about cash? Also, I'd rather carry a USB stick with a private key on it than a wad of cash in one of the world's most violent countries (in the middle of an economic depression).

Well the thing is that cash is nowhere to be found so you just go around with your debit card and you are fine.

The other part is that we Venezuelans never walk anywhere. Going somewhere without a car feels dangerous. Oh and in big cities, if the car is armored the better. Plenty of shops now to convert your SUVs.

And how do you buy things with your usb stick?

You buy things via the internet. USB stick (or whatever, paper wallet even) is just cold storage for the private keys of ETH, QTUM, BTC, wallet, etc.

But can't i do the same thing from wherever i am and have it delivered? Or have it mailed as a gift? Even with the situation in Venezuela, Fedex/DHL still ship there.

Furthermore how does that allow you to pay for food, water, utilities, or even fuel for your car?

Do what? Order things with paper money or are you talking about some VISA/MC-backed debit/credit card? Where do you sign up for a USD-based bank account in Venezuela? How do you pass KYC checks? You got a family member or friend who lives in the States you can trust to escrow that for you?

Shipping Fedex/DHL in Venezuela isn't nearly as reliable as shipping in the United States. Nor is it cheap.

Energy and gas are super cheap in Venezuela (38 cents a gallon). I'm not sure where you're going with your argument there.

You can hold crypto as a hedge against the Bolivares, convert to fiat as needed, just like any other fungible asset.

Let’s say I am in Venenzuela and I have some bitcoin. Now what do I do with it? Can I pay my rent with it? Buy food? Of course not. It isn’t solving any problem a USD account isn’t solving. Converting Bitcoin into anything actually usable is the problem.

You can use localbitcoins.com or localethereum.com and somebody will buy your cripto and give you bolivares in your local bank account. That way you save a trip to the US to open an account, which most people can't afford anyway

> Soooo, buying drugs and illegal gambling? Sure, I'll give you that one.

Well, why is this so easy for you to brush aside?

If indeed blockchain tech can successfully subvert bad public policy, isn't that pretty remarkable in its own right?

No it isn't. You could do the same thing with dollars in the mail. All bitcoin does is make it easier to commit shady transactions.

> or at the very least provide peer-reviewed scientific analysis on how it will be fixed

https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1011

There you go. Read it then make your arguments against it. If not, then shut-up.

Being rude like that will get you banned on HN, so please don't do that again, regardless of how right you are or wrong someone else may be.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So, I said there are plans for solving the energy consumption issue. And your counter-argument is what, exactly?

"I'll believe it when I see it"

No, no, no. You'll see it when you believe it. It's a new paradigm.