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Comment by DickingAround | Hacker News Reader

It is if you think it's as simple as 'processing a transaction'. Anyone can design a system that records a transaction. It's very hard to make one that can't be deleted and can't be reversed. Doing this unlocks some amazing things, in particular hard, inflation resistant money.

And if you don't think inflation resistance is important, consider how many poor people have been robbed by those who just print more money and give it to their friends. It's been happening for centuries. It has destroyed whole countries just just once or twice but many times. Coin clipping to fund wars is as old as coins. So is stealing people's money at the point of a sword.

On the outside it might not appear 'efficient' when you don't have to implement all the same features bitcoin has. But if you actually try to build a system with these features, there is no better way so far.

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You can reverse it, it's called a 51% attack. It's also too volatile to transact with. If I have $100 today I know it's not going to be $90 next week, then $65 the following, then $250 after that. This also makes it a shitty store of value.

Just be honest with what it is — a speculative asset everyone is hoping to get in "on the ground floor of". It only has value today because you can convert it to fiat, do you really think people would still use it if that were to change?

Bitcoin can absolutely be stolen at the point of a sword, and unlike with a bank, they can't just reverse it.

In some countries, bitcoin might be better... but there's got to be ways to help them that don't involve the whole world mining.

It might not have inflation, but I suspect that if the whole world switched to CC we would still have poverty, still have slave labor type wages for some, and all the usual stuff.

Bitcoin specifically seems to have a built in regressive tax in the form of transaction fees. Even sales tax is a bit better because that has exceptions for most essentials. This punishes those who rarely ever make transactions above 100$ and rewards those who make large ones regularly.

> Doing this unlocks some amazing things, in particular hard, inflation resistant money.

What does immutability of the underlying record have to do with fluctuations in the tokens market value?

Look the central point of fiat currencies is that it provides for monetary control to governments, which includes a measure of inflation.

If you truly believe that replacing that with a non-state controlled currency that does not allow for monetary control is something government will allow or is even something that the general public would want, you're diluting yourself and are way to deep into the crypto bubble.

The only reason you hear anything positive about cryptos from the general public is because they think they can make a quick buck.

The lack of a mechanism for reversing transactions isn't a feature, it's a misfeature.

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