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Comment by ad31mar | Hacker News Reader

So much anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN lately, recycling decade old strawman arguments.

Does the Occam's razor apply here? Are people just salty they didn't buy a few back when they first heard about it, now trying to justify themselves?

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What is the strawman here? I've had bitcoin since 2012, and this wasn't as much of a pressing issue back then. Perhaps blindly, I then believed it had the potential to serve as a global, decentralized, stateless currency. I still want those things, but bitcoin transaction fees have gotten too high for it to make sense as a currency for the majority of real-world transactions. There's no solution there. And as a store of value it poses a real threat to the planet. There are better technologies now; the only real advantage bitcoin has , is wider acceptance by people and institutions as a payment mechanism, due to its longer history. But, with the transaction fees being what they are, and the potential for innovation with Ethereum and other more sophisticated cryptocurrencies, that's bound to change over the next few years.

I honestly don't understand how people can continue to defend it. The only explanation I can think of is that the masses who showed up to the party late don't care if it's gotten out of hand and is now in danger of trashing the place or setting the building on fire. They just made the trip out there.

Maybe? I'm sitting on the sidelines very comfortably hoping a bunch of people don't get hurt. I feel as if the bulls are ignoring the fundamentals and limitations of Bitcoin.

I agree with Bitcoin being neither money nor commodity - nor anything else, really. To me Bitcoin is Gamestop on a grander scale, a bunch of people deciding something has value that really has none (or in the case of Gamestop very little). I don't regret "missing" the hype in either case, preferring investments that make sense based on the fundamentals (assets, cashflow, profits, etc) instead of bets on pure speculation.

I do, of course, want to be "right" about Bitcoin (who doesn't like being right?) but it's far more of a curiosity for me than anything else.

It's just a divisive topic and people repeat the same things over and over again about those (including versions of what you've said here). It's been the same for many years already.

I think these mindless copy-paste criticisms don't even deserve a thoughtful reply. They are the reason there's tribalism in Bitcoin - it's just an efficient way to cope with (endless) ignorance and trolls.

I've seen this comment before, and honestly I think it's cheap. This article is about a clear, real problem with the current implementation of Bitcoin, namely that it requires enormous amounts of energy. I am not "anti-Bitcoin", I am anti a payment and financial storage protocol that requires gargantuan amounts of energy.

So if you have a problem or comment on the article in question, please make it, we're all ears. But responding to valid criticisms of Bitcoin with hand-wavy "oh HN is so anti-Bitcoin" is not discussion, it's tribalism.

Valid criticism is one thing, but this wave of criticism ignores so many basic facts about Bitcoin mining and energy generation/transportation/storage it's unbelievable. It also ignores the benefits, handwaving them away as if they didn't exist at all (it's all nice and easy for the firstworlders they can't even imagine there's a world without reliable banks, but there is!) while offering no alternative. Why would people use Bitcoin if there was a better alternative, isn't one of the arguments that it costs so much? Try to find out how much does it cost to transfer money to Ghana or Congo by other means and how reliable it is...

To be 100% clear, I believe your comment is exactly the type of valid counterargument I'm talking about, i.e. you bring up unique issues that Bitcoin solves, and point out that other monetary systems have high costs as well. Those are things one can have an honest debate about.

That is very different than the "HN is so anti-Bitcoin bringing up decade old strawmen" comment I responded to. Perhaps most obviously by the fact that there are many in the crypto community itself that believe the energy usage of BTC is a real problem and are attempting to come up with viable alternatives like proof of stake.

If you were all ears you'd know by now that there's no viable alternative to PoW. Or genuinely cared to find out for yourself for that matter.

> If you were all ears you'd know by now that there's no viable alternative to PoW. Or genuinely cared to find out for yourself for that matter.

I love how people who are the most condescending are also usually the most wrong. Have you never heard of Ethereum 2.0?

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