Bitcoin Can Only Win (mass adoption) by Losing (its heart) | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin Can Only Win (mass adoption) by Losing (its heart)

aaron-lebo.github.io

21 pointsaaron-lebo16 comments

>Future three [the use of Bitcoin exclusively in black markets] is by almost any measure a complete failure.

I completely disagree. This is exactly what the people who laid the technological foundations for Bitcoin (Hal Finney, Wei Dai, David Chaum, etc.), and the Cypherpunks in general were trying to accomplish.

Talk to any of the (many) agorist types endorsing Bitcoin today and I'm sure they would tell you that they would still be very happy for Bitcoin if it was relegated exclusive to black markets, because it means that internet black markets can still work even with only oppressively regulated fiat monetary systems!

Relegation to black markets might only be a failure if you judge Bitcoin by its market cap, and not what it accomplishes.

And of course, depending on who you ask, we might expect black markets to grow substantially in the next few years.

To most of the cypherpunks, Bitcoin's mainstream success thus far is just icing on the cake.

Most of this seems quite balanced and objective. It's a good post. That said, I think it still massively underestimates the challenge of getting consumers to want to use bitcoin. I think that is the biggest problem bitcoin faces. This suggests that obtaining and storing bitcoins are barriers, but I think those would be trivially solved if only consumers had a major desire to pay for stuff with bitcoin.

Bitcoin can't go mainstream unless it has a system of incentives that appeal to consumers who don't care about the ideology of it. Who will create that system of incentives? I confess little knowledge of the protocol, but I think it is most likely to emerge from a PayPal-like payments company, and funded through transaction fees. The problem is that when a single company is providing those incentives and taking transaction fees, it looks quite similar to credit card companies (so then what was the point of bitcoin?), which is the direction I initially thought the article was heading in.

I'm in total agreement, and almost went back and edited the article to reflect that, but I figured it is another topic entirely.

Outside of those who are just looking to get rich, those excited about Bitcoin are in it for largely ideological reasons: independence (in libertarian terms) and privacy.

However, looking at how the US votes and what services they used (such as Facebook), I don't think the average person cares too much about either. Any currency with true anonymity that got big enough would probably be outlawed, too. When you get past that, Bitcoin isn't more efficient than the current system, it isn't more convenient, and there's not really a single thing it does better for most people.

There's not a huge selling point for the general public. You are are right that some service could come along which fits the right niche, but it doesn't seem to be here yet.

The incentive to use Bitcoin is near-zero transaction fees. Merchants can and do share those savings with customers.

Any future where Bitcoin fails will still have near-zero transaction fees because the technology exists to enable that today. Describing such a future without describing what has outcompeted Bitcoin seems incomplete.

Consumers expect chargebacks to be an option, and if their bank account gets compromised, for the bank to reimburse. That stuff is possible (AFAIK) on top of bitcoin, but it needs to be funded somehow. I think that if bitcoin goes mainstream, the fees may end up looking similar to existing payment solutions.

It is refreshing to see people having some skepticism about bitcoin and cryptocurrency. I suspect that all us have a very limited perspective on what the potential and future of bitcoin and Crypto is. I think we can all agree that cryptocurrecy is a disruptive technology.

Just like the Internet cryptocurrency will bring great weatlth and inovations(google, wikipidea, VOIP, Skype, facebook, etc) and great failures(Internet bubble,lost of privacy, etc).

With all respect to our American cousins -> Bitcoin != A US financial system. Regrettably yet another article from an American perspective, by an American author, that doesn't take into account the actual context.

...balanced and well written, but forgets the rest-of-the-world exists. America is certainly powerful and influential - but this system goes well beyond her borders.

Everyone doesn't have to use money in the same way for it to be useful. That's the entire point of money to begin with. It is these kind of shallow political articles that drives it down. Not those who are currently trading.

The arguments seem to only consider Bitcoin in the US, yet it's clearly global.

I mean that as no slight. I'm an American and I best understand the American political scene; anything about any other countries would have been ill-informed at best.

But...I will say that because of the dominance of the United States (SV in particular) in the tech scene (and the US's financial clout), I find it likely that any mass adoption would come from an American startup, and ultimately true "mass adoption" would have to include America and would therefore end up with these same problems.

I think your arguments make sense when focusing on the US, but I don't necessarily agree that "mass adoption" would have to include the US. If bitcoin were made illegal (or impotent by regulations) in the US, bitcoin wouldn't die-- we'd just get left behind in terms of innovation; financial and otherwise. As an American, I'm hoping that doesn't happen.

There is another future scenario that is missed here - Bitcoin could fail to become the "currency of the Internet" but succeed in becoming a digital investment asset (like Gold bullion).

Future scenario 1 could occur and the result could very well be a significant improvement on the current system.

At this point... what is Bitcoin?

I'm not asking for the definition of cryptocurrency, but what does it mean for people?

Liberation from a financial system designed to exploit everyone but those who administrate it.

Which does mean option one is diametrically opposed to my definition of bitcoin, if private enterprise uses proprietary additions to lock in consumers to their platforms and strattle the flow and generation of capital the way they do now.

Like others say, it is a huge improvement over the status quo, but not the kind of resource I want as my store of value.

To me it means "technological breakthrough" akin to P2P.

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