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Comment by Helianthus | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what you expected, Bitcoin enthusiasts.

You bought into a system where coins could be permanently lost because you forgot a password.

You bought into a system where the government cheerfully gained control of a large share of the market by simple confiscation.

You have recreated money. But you aren't even good at it! You still think that simple cryptography will excuse you from the fact that you're greedy bastards.

The reason I hate Bitcoin is that it intentionally promotes a counter-establishment treatise, and you have the batshit insane gall to claim that it is different.

I'm venting.

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>You bought into a system where coins could be permanently lost because you forgot a password.

As opposed to a system where coins can be permanently lost because you have a hole in your pocket?

Would have to be a rather large hole to lose a million dollars through it. Would have to be about 43" wide.

It's funny seeing you on my side. How you been? I haven't crossed words with you in a while. james_d?

Different, James, I think. I'm not completely on board with your view, but your criticism here is valid and should be acknowledged by BTC proponents if they have any hope of observing their currency as realists. This kind of thing is a major drawback to using Bitcoin.

Have you never trolled the r/debatereligion circuit?

Oh, you have got the right guy then. :) but I don't know why you said james_d.

Somehow I always thought your middle name (or initial) was d.

It's nice to see you.

Are you referring to the 144,000 BTC confiscated in the Silk Road bust? There are almost 12,000,000 BTC in circulation. The Silk Road share accounts for about 1.2% Compare that with any government currency that is 100% government-controlled.

It's easy to permanently lose cash, too.

Yeah, it's easy to lose cash if you're on Wall Street, but no one lauds that.

You're stuck in a place where you're trying to differentiate yourself from Wall Street and you are exactly like Wall Street.

And then you compare the total BTC in circulation and its equivalence in USD... and...

What the fuck do you think you're doing?

Do you think you're toying with trillions of dollars?

The banking machine is ignoring you. It simply doesn't care.

i guess the point is that money on wall street only changes hands. BTC are permanently destroyed.

I'm not an enthusiast, I don't own and have never owned any Bitcoin.

However I think your dismissal of Bitcoin is wrong. Not because it doesn't have flaws, and not even because it's guaranteed to succeed—there's no telling when a crypto breakthrough could cause Bitcoin to crash and burn faster than tulip bulbs—but rather because Bitcoin is the most interesting development in currency of the past millennium. There's simply no denying it has unique properties of considerable interest, regardless of ideology or affiliation.

I'm not particularly invested in BTC either (own like 0.000001 or something), but I find it fascinating for similar reasons.

Imho it represents and inflection point in human history, by virtue of solving a previously unsolvable algorithmic problem (distributed consensus), at least in the context of digital currency.

BTC's solution wasn't even technically possible until two other major innovations - the construction of the internet, and the invention of the Bittorrent protocol. And 'Satoshi's' insight that a simple time delay via proof-of-work finally tied it all together and made possible the first (technically) viable distributed currency.

All the remaining problems are minor by comparison and will eventually get solved, in the same way the modern banking system eventually solved problems of bank robberies and fraud - not so much completely solving them, but by making them extremely difficult to pull off and/or get away with, reducing the odds and risk to levels acceptable for the general public. Same will happen with BTC and its infrastructure over time as well.

You fail to point out that cash has all the same drawbacks:

You can permanently lose cash if destroyed in a fire.

Your cash or bank account can be confiscated easily by the government.

Etc.

Of course, unlike cash, Bitcoin has advantages because it offers the option to prevent these losses: you can back up a Bitcoin wallet. You can avoid government confiscation (password-protected wallet). Etc.

I'm always astounded by comparisons of bitcoin to paper cash - in 10 years we probably won't even be using paper cash and it is hardly ever used for large transactions now in advanced countries - paper cash is history. I think I've done about 5% at most of my spending in paper in the last month.

How about digital cash?

Also, Bitcoin can be confiscated by the government, along with the computer/server it sits on (see silk road). A $5 wrench or a jail cell will deal with your encryption. You can also permanently lose it if someone copies your wallet/backup and then spends it particularly while it is on one of these exchanges - that's because transactions are not reversible or traceable to a verified identity.

Technically, I think Bitcoin sounds really substantial and love the idea of creating/spending keys which avoid government inflation, but the axioms on which the usage is based are all wrong -

I've never lost money in a fire, and never will. I don't want to avoid government confiscation by technical means (which fail), I want to avoid it by law. I don't want to be able to launder money (or for others to). I don't want my transactions to be anonymous and to have no central authority and no accountability when theft/fraud happens.

> Also, Bitcoin can be confiscated by the government

Not if you specifically want to prevent this. A bitcoin private key is 256-bit ECDSA, which provides 128 bits of security. If you can remember a 10 word randomly generated diceware phrase[1], you can securely store bitcoins in your brain.

[1] calculating the private key as a SHA256(phrase) for example

A $5 wrench or a jail cell will deal with your encryption.

You are wrong and overly pessimistic. Look at DPR. The govt confiscated 174k BTC, but he supposedly has another (encrypted) ~500k BTC wallet, and he is NOT/will NOT be tortured to reveal the key.

The govt confiscated 174k BTC, but he supposedly has another (encrypted) ~500k BTC wallet

If he does I'd be very surprised if he can ever spend it, even if he does somehow get to a copy. Torture is not the only or most effective avenue to thwart encryption or your plans to keep money from them, they could claim enough back-taxes to bankrupt you, repossess anything you buy etc, etc.

Of course an oppressive government has many options to attack an individual, but Bitcoin enables individuals to protect themselves. For example a political refugee can flee his country with bitcoins in his head (brainwallet) which would be a lot safer than fleeing with cash in his pockets.

You also have scenarios that are not as drastic, where the adversary is not a government but, for example, a powerful (ex-)spouse trying to seize some of the assets in illegal ways during a divorce going wrong. Etc.

Your refusal to acknowledge this usefulness of Bitcoin makes your criticism look weak and one-sided.

I don't think the US is at the point where they torture citizens for private keys. And they'd only be able to use jail as leverage by offering a reduced sentence. Even then, you might refuse if, for example, you'd rather stay in prison and leave the money to your family.

Be careful with your first sentence. For example, the US would not hesitate to torture Snowden for his key if they even had the slightest way to get their hands on him.

Just declare this person an enemy of the state/terrorist and there you go - to you and your encryption.

Even then, you might refuse if, for example, you'd rather stay in prison and leave the money to your family.

Somehow, I don't think the government will leave you that option ;) You'll stay in prison and have the means to use the bitcoins confiscated or outlawed. They can also confiscate all your other assets, like the house your family lives in.

There are many options available to a sovereign government which mean that relying on purely technical measures will not defeat them, because they have a monopoly on force, up to and including lethal force.

Yes, but unless the government becomes significantly more tyrannical than they are at present, bitcoin is a useful tool for dodging asset forfeiture. For example, your private keys could be distributed amongst n of m gangsters/wife/sons/lawyers/whatever including foreigners.

Implemented correctly, it's much much more difficult to steal or seize than cash while at the same time being much much easier to smuggle to places with no extradition where money trumps the rule of law.

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Wait a few years for the Bitcoin ecosystem to mature, and all the security mechanisms developed by banks (and more advanced ones that are just inapplicable to cash) will appear and be applied to Bitcoin: theft insurances, properly secured web wallets (HSM, userbased multi-sig, cold wallets, etc), tamper-proof hardware wallets, etc.

And at which point we'll be back to seeing 0.3+2.9% on every transaction to cover the costs of such...

Which will be fine. Even with such fees, Bitcoin would remain superior to existing currencies/payement networks: instant transfers across the world, censorship resistance, etc.

Unicorns!

Instead of hating something you should try to understand it first:

> permanently lost because you forgot a password

You don't have to encrypt your wallet, that's up to you. If you believe that not even knowing the password of an encrypted wallet you should be able to recover your bitcoins your problem is actually with cryptography in general.

> the government cheerfully gained control of a large share

Powerful entities have power, welcome to the real world.

> the fact that you're greedy bastards

huh? can you expand on this?

> it intentionally promotes a counter-establishment treatise

Nop, Bitcoin is a technology, and neither the paper nor the Bitcoin Foundation is "counter-establishment". Actually the last one is trying really hard to make Bitcoin "pro" establishment.

Sorry I don't wanna be rude but your post is absurd.

Nobody is forcing you to use it OR help its development. Why do you even care?

I care because the stories are spamming up HN. You can't downvote stories, and flagging them would probably be considered inappropriate.

Can't you just... like... not read them? On every visit to HN I click 3-4 links tops, but you don't see me complaining in the comments section of the other 26 :)

Yes I can, but if I do then the site will only get worse. http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/

Interesting link, thank you!

But I don't see how it's relevant - this is a site about start-up news and Bitcoin is exactly where the opportunities for start-ups are. It's not like they're posting porn or something - probably the next PayPal will come from someone reading these links and comments here.

Although I admit that sometimes there are too many links about politics on HN, but you can say politics is also kind of relevant to the start-up world, especially when it concerns policy decisions about technology.

In conclusion, I'm yet to see an irrelevant link on HN. The algorithm works as advertised IMHO.

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