3 Ways Bitcoins Could Be Worthless? | Hacker News Reader

3 Ways Bitcoins Could Be Worthless?

pjbrunet.com

5 pointspjbrunet8 comments

Wow, somebody who doesn't understand mining writes about bitcoin. No, you don't get the "majority vote" because you have more users. Complete nonsense.

Relevant quote "a greedy company like Apple or Microsoft could simply install a Bitcoin client on every device and would have the majority vote needed to alter the software, increase the supply of Bitcoins"

A "bitcoin client" doesn't give any "voting" power. Mining does. Mining takes a lot of power, so sure, if Apple or Microsoft wanted all of their devices to run out of power in an hour or so they could try such a thing. Besides, against specialised hardware this would be a drop in the bucket anyway: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Your "relevant quote" demonstrates that op is clueless.

Yeah, that's what I meant. I only quoted what GP was talking about.

You don't think an entire country (or group of countries) can't build their own custom mining hardware?

You're also talking about today's devices. You need to consider devices 5 years from now, created in a world where $10,000 Bitcoins exist.

Why jump to that conclusion? I never said 1 person = 1 vote. What I'm saying is, if Bitcoin takes hold (meaning it's really superior to fiat money, people use it in daily life, etc.) then eventually a tiny percentage of people will end up holding most of the wealth in the world.

Hypothetically, let's just say 1% of the world ends up with 99% of the Bitcoins. That's generous because today it's more like .0000001% of the world owns 99.99999% of the Bitcoins. Using some common sense and a maybe a lot of imagination, the 99% of people who missed the boat will be pissed once they realize what happened. They missed the mining boat and they didn't get to buy Bitcoins for $1 either. The 99% won't just play along and say, "Golly, I'm so glad there's only 21 million coins because that allows me to preserve my wealth." LOL, yeah right!

(Again, we're assuming Bitcoin continues to gain traction over the next 100+ years, the value of Bitcoin is intrinsically tied up with its future potential.) The 1% will be so vastly outnumbered, it won't be difficult for the 99% to get control of the network. That's why I think the money supply should keep increasing if Bitcoin wants to be accepted.

If you think the 99% of people who missed the Bitcoin boat will be "OK" with Bitcoins replacing fiat money, then please explain why. Bitcoin won't make people any less greedy.

> Hypothetically, let's just say 1% of the world ends up with 99% of the Bitcoins.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#Doesn.27t_Bitcoin_unfairly_be...

> it won't be difficult for the 99% to get control of the network

What does "control of the network" even mean? Do you realize that at best this would make bitcoin totally useless resulting in a lose-lose scenario? Yes, that's totally a worthwhile attempt.

> If you think the 99% of people who missed the Bitcoin boat will be "OK" with Bitcoins replacing fiat money, then please explain why.

Bitcoin doesn't have to replace fiat money to be successful. Besides, why would they not be? Seems to be the same argument as above, so https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#Doesn.27t_Bitcoin_unfairly_be...

To address the link, I don't deny early adopters should be rewarded. They should be. But if Bitcoin is adopted by even 1% of the world (whether its fair or not) the "reward" could seem out-of-this-world extreme to the average person, if it continues to grow in value at this rate.

If Bitcoin wants more participation (fewer enemies?) ten years from now, there needs to be more incentive to keep it going. I think altcoins could alleviate extreme wealth disparity but that's a separate issue I won't get into. Bitcoins are already a target for theft and hardly anyone knows about them yet, seems reasonable to assume that gets 10x worse as they grow in value 10x.

As far as "control of the network" I was deliberately vague. The more I research Bitcoin there's a number of scenarios, I'm just repeating information I found various places. And don't you think we have only scratched the surface?

How about these?

1. The blockchain is a big, slow-moving, easy-to-identify target that would be easy (for say an ISP) to detect, destroy, corrupt, etc. People say Bitcoins can't be blocked because all these pirated movies can't be blocked. There's a big difference. Every movie is different. The blockchain is easier to identify. Also people said Bitcoin transactions are small and therefore hard to detect. Wrong again. If say Amazon or Walmart starts using Bitcoin the blockchain will be enormous. Even if it can be trucated somewhat, that doesn't change the fact it's a big, slow-moving and easy to identify target.

2. Just the fact Bitcoin can be altered to truncate its blockchain means the developers have only one chance to get a major change like that right. There's no "dev server" to emulate a world economy. If there's some little flaw in a major modification to the Bitcoin software, that could collapse all faith in the network. Don't you think? Also the developers are only human. Who could "save" Bitcoin if the developers made an unpopular or catastrophic change? I think it would be more interesting if the Bitcoin software was frozen so that it would not work at all if it was ever modified/reverse-engineered. Granted, I don't understand exactly how Bitcoin changes over time but seems to me experiments/improvements/updates should happen in the altcoins and Bitcoin should be safe from tampering. If the Bitcoin software can't be changed, not even by the developers, that makes the 21 million coin limit more real rather than an imaginary LOL limit.

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