Hacker News Reader

Comment by wickoff | Hacker News Reader

I wonder, can you make an argument that Bitcoin is like an index akin to S&P, but for gambling and hedging against events like asset seizure or state currency failure?

First let's assume that fundamentals remain unchanged. No innovation, no growth in adoption, no major security failures. Let's also assume that the rough percentage of world populations willing to gamble remains roughly the same over the decades. BTC is deflationary, private keys will keep getting lost indefinitely. So wouldn't it make sense for the price of Bitcoin to at least keep up with inflation, forever?

View on HN

I hold many cryptocurrencies, and your argument is only valid if people don't switch to other new better cryptocurrencies.

There used to be very strong network effects, but now that you can exchange coins easily, it's trivial to move to a new shiny thing.

On the plus side, Bitcoin has a brand name and recognition. An average person has no idea about Ethereum or Monero. In my opinion, its brand is the only thing keeping it afloat. Other coins are clearly superior in functionality (except maybe the hash rate).

I've heard it argued that Bitcoin's unique feature, something that makes Bitcoin exceptionally valuable in comparison to other cryptocurrencies is its governance model.

Bitcoin governance is basically a combination of anarchy with extreme conservatism. In the 10 years of its existence there had been exactly zero intentional hard forks. The immutability of Bitcoin's fundamental rules is ingrained in its community.

Why is that important? Let's look at Ethereum for example. Ethereum's developers and community use hard forks to change the rules of their protocol all the time, you have no clue what Ethereum's inflation rate will settle at, its monetary policy is permanently in flux with singular individuals like Vitalik Buterin having enormous influence on governance.

>Other coins are clearly superior in functionality (except maybe the hash rate).

This isn't true, and the opposite is quite true.

Bitcoin is the only coin that seems immune from a 51% attack. Every other coin has a significantly lower threshold needed for people to commit a 51% attack.

Ethereum and other Blockchain coins are not 'superior', they use the same POW solution as Bitcoin. Often, another coin will discover a new way to make blockchain better, and Bitcoin adopts it later. When Etheruem failed to scale, I sold all of my POW alt coins.

The rest of the coins are centralized, which defeats the purpose of blockchain. Entirely useless as cryptocurrency.

I see a future for Bitcoin and Stable coins. I don't see alt coins doing anything Bitcoin cant.

Ethereum didn't fail to scale, its just taking much longer than anticipated. The plans are finally coming together though for PoS and Sharding on the base chain, with layer 2 there for more scaling as needed

Layer 2 is not decentralized.

POS is not decentralized

Sharding has a unstoppable risk of a 51% attack.

Ethereum has failed.

> POS is not decentralized

huh?

> Sharding has a unstoppable risk of a 51% attack.

So does bitcoin?

POS uses few users to validate transactions. This is not decentralized.

> Sharding has a unstoppable risk of a 51% attack.

>So does bitcoin?

Bitcoin cost of 51 percent attack is ~400k for 1 hour. ETH is 90k for 1 hour.

https://www.crypto51.app/

> Bitcoin cost of 51 percent attack is ~400k for 1 hour. ETH is 90k for 1 hour.

Seems not wildly different to me and nearly the same order of magnitude, and you are also admitting that 51% is a concern for Bitcoin, so it sounds like we're agreeing now!

> POS uses few users to validate transactions.

The "few" can be quite a large number, and those same validators are by definition very invested.

The S&P companies generate a stream of future profit; that's where the value of holding the index comes from. Bitcoin doesn't and I don't see the logic in assuming it's deflationary or that its fundamentals will remain constant in the long term when the empirical evidence strongly suggests otherwise. It's extremely volatile and has lost more value in the space of months than most inflationary currencies have lost in decades. The problem with the idea of an "index for gambling" is that there are plenty of other assets for gamblers to pick...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com