Ask HN: Why are you pro/anti Bitcoin? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are you pro/anti Bitcoin?

I’m a tech person who can’t understand if Bitcoin is just a fad that has no underlying value or if it’s the next internet. When it comes to transferring money I’m fairly happy with PayPal, Transferwise & stripe.

I’ve been following Bitcoin since 2013 but never made a serious investment as I’m not a believer. At the same time I can’t rule it out completely. Will fiat last forever or will it be replaced? Is crypto that replacement? Maximalists would have us believe that the USD will hyper inflate and Bitcoin is a hedge. But is it?

I’m using Bitcoin interchangeably with crypto. If you are for other crypto and not Bitcoin can you tell us why? If you are against it all can you tell why?

Just trying to get different opinions on why people believe / don’t believe in Bitcoin(or crypto in general)

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I'm neither "pro Bitcoin" nor "anti Bitcoin". I don't own any Bitcoin and never have, but it's not because I'm against it. I just haven't needed it. What I am, is skeptical of BTC as a speculative commodity that should be treated as an investment. I don't need more stuff to invest in... what I find appealing about the idea of crypto-currencies in general is their use as a currency.

And in that regard, I find something like Monero, which specifically has anonymity as a feature, more appealing. And then all the "smart contract" / "programmable money" aspects of things like Ethereum also have some appeal, but not enough to date to where I've bothered actually buying any.

All of that said, I want a viable crypto-currency - that functions primarily as a currency - to exist, as something that's outside of government control, and ideally something that allows for anonymous transactions. I'm just not sure we have it yet. Maybe it's Monero, or maybe we're still waiting for The One. I don't spend enough time on this topic to be sure.

This is essentially my view as well. I also have never owned bitcoin. I personally am not really bothered that bitcoin can be used for illegal transactions. I find much of legal industry to be morally wrong anyway.

That said I find the speculative nature totally ridiculous and it basically keeps me from ever touching it as currency. Same for the high transaction costs. And the fact so much energy goes into it is also quite irritating. Mining should eventually not make economic sense (which is good), but with the never ending price growth it seems like we'll just keep mining forever.

Absolutely pro alternative currencies. There needs to be a “currency of the Internet” that isn’t controlled by a dozen people in a single country. It’s also just cool in a cyberpunk aesthetic sense, which is a perfectly valid reason for cryptocurrency’s existence.

Negative on the way crypto has become a financial instrument. Most of the issues you’re seeing come from the fact that coins are being used to make money, not from the inherent nature of digital currencies.

Ambivalent on Bitcoin in particular. All it really has going for it is first mover advantage. Other options like Cardano or Ethereum have far less issues. However, they still seem to be largely shaped by a small group of people, which largely defeats the purpose.

So, in sum: still waiting for the real killer cryptocurrency. It needs to be both stable and have good reasons to be adopted that aren’t, “I’ll make money from this as an investment.”

I'm anti all of these alt-coin things. They're just beanie babies that use absurd amounts of resources. Their value comes from hype and limited availability. Why not buy and sell stock? That's basically another set of alt coins that's arguably based on more intrinsic value, doesn't burn energy like an inferno, and you can buy and sell without much risk of accidentally commiting tax fraud.

If you are asking why not stock, you don’t get the point. You obviously have access to the US stock market, and have never had banks steal money from you, straight out of your account.

Yeah, I don’t like altcoins either. Stick to bitcoin. Hardest money ever.

Cryotocurrency is real investment in cutting-edge technology, not speculative games, for many investors.

See: Filecoin, Chainlink, etc

Many are useful and cutting edge but many more are useless and outdated yet have a much higher dollar value. Bitcoin is a collector’s item, so is Doge. Most of the HN community understands blockchain well enough to know that the crypto market doesn’t make much sense from a technical standpoint.

I’d like to see the market settle and begin treating coins based on the tech behind them and the future value instead of gambling chips. I see the value in some but there’s no telling if the current market will recognize that before a better competitor arrives.

DOGE fundamentals as a p2p currency slaughter Bitcoin, they don't even shit in the same room, so not sure what the rest is.

> Many are useful and cutting edge but many more are useless and outdated yet have a much higher dollar value.

Ban startups and collections.

I'm very much against it. It's actively causing environmental harm, scams are common, market manipulation within cryptocoins is common, very volatile, it's a source of hardware shortages, etc. I view the whole thing as monetary speculation for speculation's sake.

As much as i hate the speculative bubbles, the high electrical usage, difficulty of obtaining and using it, the disturbing services that are traded on the dark-net, crypto-currency is the only way to transfer money electronically today.

All non-crypto-currency based methods require permissions, and are politically gated.

Thus despite the negatives, i think crypto-currency can help connect the world.

Bitcoin, and other alt-currencies, are mostly owned by a very small number of people: https://blog.dshr.org/2018/10/gini-coefficients-of-cryptocur...

On paper, they are very, very rich.

In reality, they can very quickly and easily crash bitcoin by flooding the market.

No thanks.

The more I learn about it the less useful it seems. Most of what you could do with it can be done with a proper database, and as for setting up something that can exist without authority, well that ends up causing all kinds of problems when mistakes are made or someone is swindled, making it into an entirely "buyer beware" kind of market, which of course is ripe for scammers and con-artists. There is also the argument that the authority just shifts from a place that is regulated to whoever owns the most compute, which to some seems liberating but to me feels precarious.

That said all of my millennial friends that have gained some wealth without working at google or being a high profile accountant/lawyer all gained it via bitcoin and alt-coin speculating, in some ways it seems to be the only viable method to do so right now, but I believe governments will crack down on it and regulate it soon, which will likely stabilize it enough to keep any massive gains from happening in the future. Also it could just be one of those hot potato style bubbles like the .com crash where whoever is left holding the expensive bag gets a loss while those who sold just before ended up rich.

Govt crackdown is a good reason to invest in Monero.

I am very pro bitcoin. It is the hardest money humans have ever invented, and the best financial investment in the last 14 years. It’s energy usage is a good thing, and is a proxy for human preference. It will only grow larger, eclipse all other stores or value. Everything there is, divided by 21 million.

Or you can ignore it, earn 4% on your index funds, retire after 40 years and have a simple life. I’ve chosen something else…

What's your investment strategy, if you don't mind me asking?

Buy bitcoin every week (Dollar Cost Average). Buy the dip when you can. Never sell.

Right on. What percent of your portfolio is crypto?

Crypto in general and Bitcoin specifically are super volatile or other words, unstable. To many people, this means many different things.

For me, I am anti-crypto:

* Seen many bad examples of abuse, e.g. MLMs, scams, laundering, cyber crimes, etc.

* Bad impression with early users. Most are driven by greed with vanity more than productivity or strong values.

* Wasting so much energy for "copy and paste" with no real use case. This hurts environment a lot.

I question the motivations; I hear virtues of decentralization, new world order, a ledger of truth, supporting third-world economies, privacy, a new internet.

But from people I know, behind all that is just wanting to get rich quick. The majority of people just hold on Coinbase, a centralized exchange, and tell other people to buy it too so the price can go up.

Bitcoin is purely numbers in a computer. As such, it doesn't really exist.

Supposing, as in many countries where there is conflict today, there is no electricity available for weeks on end. How do you prove you have bitcoin? How do you go about buying something with it?

What happens if you forget/misplace/lose the password? I know of some people who are forever locked out of using the bitcoin(s) they "own" because the password has been lost.

What happens to those 'lost' bitcoin? Who owns them now? Do they just disappear into the unknown, the same as every other thing sent to the bit-bucket?

Now, compare 'owning' the bitcoin to really owning a small bar of gold. Gold exists forever, atom by atom, till the end of the universe. It matters not if the electricity is gone for a century or two, that gold can be used as a store of wealth or to buy something, no matter what is happening in the world around it.

Anti

- Not suitable as an asset.

- Not suitable as a currency.

- Bad for the environment.

- “Community” is rife with scams and illegality.

Pro Bitcoin, anti Bitcoin as 'store of value' or 'digital gold'. Bitcoin is the purest form of permission less money we've ever had. It's time to take bitcoin back to it's roots, and I'm working on that with www.getswype.io

You have asked a mix of questions...

Is the price of crypto/BTC versus USD going to go up or down? No one knows for sure and there is little helpful discussion to come from that question.

Is BTC going to "replace" USD? Almost surely not (US cannot control BTC sufficiently).

Is crypto going to "replace" USD? USD may at some point acquire some features of crypto but not without years of advance notice, massive debates in Congress, etc. Crypto will almost surely not replace USD without US government adoption. Simplest explanation is that the US government only accepts USD for payment (IRS or any other department). The US government is by far the largest player in the world monetary system.

I blogged about this twice;

Pro; Bitcoin solves the "principal-agent" problem that is common amongst governance in contemporary institutions [0]

Cons; The technology is still too primitive to be practically applied on a global scale [1]

[0]: https://as1ndu.xyz/2021/04/clarifying-the-blockchain-proposi...

[1]: https://as1ndu.xyz/2018/05/why-blockchain-is-not-yet-working...

I am in a third group, I don't care.

I am not necessarily anti crypto BUT considering it has become a speculative vehicle to try and make quick cash along with ransomeware friendly, I think it is no good to me at least for now. May be some day. Until then, I will wait. The idea that it was supposed to be decentralized and change how payments are made hasn't happened YET.

What if the “buy in” is too high on that day?

I absolutely am anti-bitcoin, because proof of work is horrible for the environment and BTC seems to have no real plan to fix it.

I will only use proof-of-stake networks, and I think everybody else should do the same.

Bitcoin is a just an unregulated casino game akin to musical chairs. You put money is along with other people and you hope to take it out at a profit. But people will continue to gamble.

I'm neither - I just don't understand the point of Bitcoin. What problem is it solving?

> I’m fairly happy with PayPal, Transferwise & stripe. Congratulations! You're privileged so much that you don't recognize your own privilege before you. However, for those who aren't: The 'underlying value' of Bitcoin etc. is absolutely obvious!

I was born and brought up in India. I live abroad now. People are sending each other money via UPI/ Google Pay / PayTM. No ones sending Bitcoin for the meal they had yesterday. When cash was taken away people started using PayTM and not Bitcoin. They used this to send money to the road side seller selling sandwiches for 1/3rd of a dollar.

Other developing countries could use wallets too I guess? What volume of crypto is actually used by people without a bank account? What are they buying with it? Why do I mostly see rich tech people championing for it on Twitter?

The government of India has poisoned the minds of Indians to believe that cryptocurrency is bad, risky, dangerous and criminal. In my experience people were interested, but afraid. My western (for what it is worth) viewpoint was that adoption of cryptocurrency may challenge the gold culture in India. If BTC was promoted, I feel it would surpass gold quite quickly — India has a long term save, store of wealth culture with gold; a cryptocurrency “alternative saving mechanism” challenges the state apparatus and is of great concern to the continued control of the country by its leaders.

Ok, so what was it like when your President/Prime Minister/Criminal in Charge (Modi?) canceled all your money overnight? Did you too lose all your savings?

99.3% of all notes in circulation were exchanged. A vanishingly small amount of money was lost.

The second order effects of course were much worse.

The decentralisation aspect is a lie, like equality under communism was a lie. See https://gauravsharma.com/2021/02/04/bitcoin-is-a-scam/

The security aspects of it are vastly underestimated IMO.

Anti Bitcoin. The planet is burning.

I believe in Power, Sex and Money. I can give up first one if I had but last 2 , hell no.

You don't understand Bitcoin because you are 1) white 2) male 3) middle aged 4) citicen of the United States. Take away any one of those and with each step you get a little bit closer to understanding why Crypto/Bitcoin is perhaps the most important invention in human history!

Is there a detailed breakdown of the demographics of crypto owners?

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the majority of crypto owners and crypto enthusiasts are younger white males who are better than average financially, probably #2 being Asian males of the wealthier countries/ethnicities of Asia.

The highest BTC adoption per capita is actually in Nigeria. So no, it’s far more diverse than you think.

Yep. Lots of (non-wealthy) South Asians freaking out on social media right now.

I suspect if a major mass media outlet popularized a story on the inequities of who wins and loses with cryptocurrency, the cancel culture people would be out in force, backed by environmentalists.