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Comment by sanswork | Hacker News Reader

Not really surprising. 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin and it flopped as far as the general public was concerned. Bitcoin picked up some more merchants but they almost universally saw disappointing sales or dramatic drop offs(Overstock the poster child which at one point was claiming serious expectations of $15-20m in bitcoin sales ended up with a 5th of the lower end of their claim).

Mining companies are closing left, right, and centre, and bitcoin exchanges are shutting down for more profitable ventures.

I don't think Bitcoin is dead or even close to dead but I'm pretty sure we've seen its peak.

Unlike the previous bubbles this one was in full sight of the general public with constant media coverage. It's gone to $1000 had most people(in western nations) learn about it and respond almost unanimously with 'Meh'.

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400 million of venture capital has flown into Bitcoin startups in 2014. This money is used to improve Bitcoin and to build new services on top. It's not over until we have seen what comes out of that.

Square alone has raised more 50% more than that. VC money in an industry doesn't guarantee success.

Look at the services built too. Mining companies and exchanges. Tell me how those are going to draw in new users?

> Look at the services built too. Mining companies and exchanges.

Not really. Often, it is merchant solutions like BitPay or consumer services like Blockchain.info or Xapo that are funded. Most interesting in my opinion is blockstream. Mining tends to be privately funded outside the VC-ecosystem.

Bitpay is basically just a one way exchange that handles the trading for you. It is no different to end users except in the amount of work required. Xapo is a huge flop and accounts for 1/10th of that 400m. Bitfury accounts for another 1/10th.

Blockchain raised a silly amount of money for a platform that most people in the community have lost faith in due to repeated security failings.

>Blockchain.info ... a platform that most people in the community have lost faith in

That's a remarkably bold claim. Citation definitely needed.

You will need to define the "community", and then provide a source for "most". I don't see how you can possibly do that, since both data points are lost in the murky fog that is the world of Bitcoin

"community" /r/bitcoin|/r/bitcoinmarkets|bct

"source" the few weeks a month or so back where every second post was about how evil or bad or stupid blockchain.info was and no one should use them anymore. It was around the time the problem was discovered with their keygen and when someone was regularly sweeping coins from wallets on the service.

You're right to put "source" in quotes, because that's embarrassingly weak.

You haven't even counted them. You're providing no real data.

There's no way that it justifies your stark claim that "most people in the community have lost faith in Blockchain.info".

Why do you feel the need to enhance your argument with exaggeration and unsupported assertions?

I didn't realize my statement would confuse someone into thinking it was the result of a scientifically accurate survey and not just an observation of sentiment. I apologize for the confusion.

Thanks, I appreciate the apology!

Almost 10% of the comments in this thread are by you, and they're filled with numerous bold claims of fact.

Are all those statements "observations of sentiment", too, or was it only this one?

>Are all those statements "observations of sentiment", too, or was it only this one?

If I use exact numbers they tend to be facts I can source you. If I use vague terms it is because I don't have the numbers or it is a sentiment claim.

I've had a look through my comments here and don't really see too many bold claims at all. Do you have any specific ones you want an answer for?

"Most" is hardly a vague term, as it definitely means "more than 50%". Some would say it means more than 75%.

So you're boldly claiming that the company has lost over 50% of its community support. That's an incredibly damaging statement. And you're basing it on shamefully weak evidence.

If you really wanted to be vague, then the appropriate word might have been "some". So you could have said "Some people in the community have lost faith in Blockchain.info". But that wouldn't have sounded as impressive, would it? It would sound like you don't know what you're talking about and you don't have any real proof. So you went with the bold and confident "most".

> Do you have any specific ones you want an answer for?

Frankly, after this discussion, absolutely all of them, because you seem to be prone to exaggeration, to put it mildly.

You seem fixated on my choice of wording. I've explained my meaning. I could have also said "many" and been factually correct and with the same impressiveness. I've apologized for confusing you but if you're just going to keep going on about it there is really no point in us continuing to discuss things.

>Frankly, after this discussion, absolutely all of them, because you seem to be prone to exaggeration, to put it mildly.

Well go ahead and copy any paste any of the ones you are unsure of here and I'll reply.

>Well go ahead and copy any paste any of the ones you are unsure of here and I'll reply.

I said "all of them", but who has time for that? Just take another statement of yours as an example:

>"2014 Was meant to be the year of Bitcoin" based on the claims of all the leading people in the bitcoin world outside of Gavin.[1]

"All" the leading figures in the Bitcoin world, except one, said 2014 would be the year of Bitcoin? Really?

I'm sure "some" of them said that, or some kind of bullish statement of that sort, but even if you'd claimed that, you'd still run into an argument about who are "the leading figures" anyway.

It's the way you frequently employ these sweeping generalizations and broad exaggerations to support your arguments that makes me more and more inclined to discount any statement you make.

Probably some of what you say is true. But basically you seem to spew out assertions without checking them. You have a terrible habit of stating your opinions as facts. I suspect you may even be twisting the facts to better support your claims, in the heat of an argument. So how can I trust you? I don't have time to sort out the truth from the half-truths and exaggerations.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8884950

The leading figures in an industry are pretty easy to pick out. They are the most influential/well known figures. My list would be Silbert, Gavin, Andreas, Shrem, Ver, Garzik, Voorhees, the Winklevoss brothers, and Tony Galappi(In the order I thought of them not of influence).

All of who except for Gavin(and almost never Garzik) have at points claimed it would be the big break out year. That it was going to the moon this year, $XX,XXX coins, that big investors were arriving any day now, etc.

The problem you seem to have is that you are a literalist and are unable to understand when someone uses broad words in conversational English to imply meaning instead of specifics.

I'm confident most people can understand that when I say "all the leading people" that I mean "the majority of the most well known influencers".

>So how can I trust you? I don't have time to sort out the truth from the half-truths and exaggerations.

How can you trust me? I think its clear that you cannot as you seem to want to take everything I say literally.

Someone shared this with me yesterday after someone was pestering me for a source for a benign statement and it feels appropriate for your current discussion:

http://wondermark.com/1k62/

None of those are going to draw in users - i think the "killer app" for bitcoin is still yet to be found. I went to a bitcoin meetup/talk recently, and what i m hearing is that bitcoin's direction is more heading towards what might be called 'smart' money, such as a more trustworthy escrow, contracts, etc.

likely that money will never be recouped.

people throw at money at anything.

That's actually a quite tragic number considering that the Bitcoin market cap is around 2.5B, if the other poster in the thread is right. It is a serious disparity at the moment.

"Was meant to be" amounts to your own view. The software isn't even called 1.0 yet, and the core developers all say the important applications are a couple of years away.

Yes, Bitcoin was probably hurt by the mania surrounding $1000. Had it gone to $180 from $30, without the spike, there would be calls of tulip mania instead.

Is it too early to build applications on top of Bitcoin? No, I don't think so, some wants to be in early. But to call "the year of" on what amounts to beta software and VC backed startups is a bit much.

"Was meant to be" based on the claims of all the leading people in the bitcoin world outside of Gavin. Barry Silbert has been telling everyone about how Wall st was coming in 3 months since Nov 2013. Go back to January 2013 posts on /r/bitcoin to get a feel for what people expected of the year. With the exception of more merchant acceptance it has failed all those expectations.

No one cares what version the software is and that you would think anyone does is one of the problems with the Bitcoin community. Bitcoin had its chance to impress the general public and get them on board when it had all its media attention this past year and it failed.

It's not beta software, it has been running for years and not much has changed. It has constantly lost value/trust for one year now. I can't think of a piece of software that is clearly _losing_ momentum (especially if it's beta) and then, magically, after 1.0 things turn around.

Price is probably not the right metric to gauge "momentum".

The software isn't even called 1.0 yet

Neither is node.js, yet tons of successful startups run on it.

For years, Gmail was still "beta". If it had a major security leak, "it's beta" would mean little. It would still qualify as a failure.

> Neither is node.js, yet tons of successful startups run on it.

It will get them off the ground. Then they will need to start rewriting a backend pipeline in something fast and predictable.

I'm hearing echos of 'x will be the year of Linux on the desktop' in these discussions...

> most people(in western nations) learn about it and respond almost unanimously with 'Meh'.

I have very mundane needs, and I've never figured out a compelling case for me to use bitcoin. In general, it's always been more trouble than convenience.

I know there are people with exotic needs, but I think the majority of people are more like me.

When was the last time you transferred money to someone (esp. out of country), how much did it cost, and how long did it take?

Now, imagine you're poor, your family lives abroad, and a $20 fee on a $500 transfer is indeed a big issue.

There are usability concerns (a bitcoin ATM to deposit money and have it sent to an address would be nice) but the use case of near-zero, same-day money transfers is enormous. In the affluent western world it's strange to imagine that someone could depend on your speedy transfers and that even an extra $20 would go a long way.

I do it pretty regularly as I move countries frequently and have bank accounts in 3 countries at the moment. I generally do international transfers 2-4 times a month. The last ~20 times I've transferred money overseas it has been in my receiving account the next morning and it usually costs ~0.3%.

Bitcoin isn't better for remittance. Actually moving the money has never been the expensive parts of remittance it is giving people a way to receive money on the other side and compliance. The current bitcoin remittance companies advertising lower fees are doing it entirely by ignoring compliance and that will work great until they have any volume and then they will be shut down.

I've heard people say "BTMs save money on not needing a store" but do you think if an automated machine was doable WU wouldn't have replaced most of their partner branches by now?

I have to respectfully disagree. It is not the transaction fees itself, but the currency exchange rates that kill you at one end or the other. (I would agree with you regarding intra-Europe CEPA transfers however.)

I'm American and have lived overseas for several years and the currency exchange rates in combination with the 10-20 USD fees are a constant annoyance. And an annoyance for my startup which operates in USD but does business in several countries. It badly affects margin for smaller payments.

I'm a big Amazon Prime customer and I do a lot of purchase for family and friends for delivery in the US. I don't dare use my overseas credit card to pay for it, but if Amazon were to accept BTC I could pay from where I live. That would be very valuable to me personally.

I'm interested in bitcoin because it takes control away from traditional choke point exchange bank and also could serve as a 'world currency' of sorts. I also think that it would make possible a lot of cross-border sales that currently face real practical impediments.

With bitcoin you don't get rid of the currency exchange rates you add another one. Source -> Bitcoin -> Destination.

I think he is not complaining about the fact that currency need to be exchanged but at how big the spread is. I.e. they give him a quite poor exchange rate as a way of extracting a hidden fee.

It is not the transaction fees itself, but the currency exchange rates that kill you at one end or the other.

Wouldn't the incredibly volatile currency exchange rate of Bitcoin also cause problems? It is not immune to this as it is free floating against other currencies.

I'd love to see a world-currency which does away with existing credit card companies and transfer fees worldwide, but Bitcoin is not suitable, and I suspect if we see one emerge it will quickly be regulated and taxed by governments like all other means of storing wealth.

What happens when my family, let's say in Mexico, receives the $500 and needs to buy food? Is there any way, currently, that they can they do so for less than $20? (Seriously asking, I don't really know.)

Today? Probably not -- changing currencies is expensive. But if merchants realize they won't eat the Visa/MC 3% fee, and bitcoin prices stabilize, it becomes viable. (The Euro has lost over 10% vs. the dollar these past 6 months, let alone the ruble, hard currencies aren't that safe either.)

The last time I transferred money to someone it cost zero, and it took a few seconds. The same for recurring transfers to me. Last time I transferred abroad I think it cost £20 on a sum of several thousand for a swift transfer, which isn't terrible, and most importantly, the transfer was verified against identities and there is a record on both ends. Same with credit cards abroad and at home, except with much lower fees and strong guarantees against fraud after the payment.

Is it being used presently by lots of people on low incomes to transfer money? What if they do and it drops 10% on the day? How would they acquire it easily? How would they exchange it easily and quickly for their local currency?

I'd love to see a digital currency which actually competes in a meaningful way with the convenience of digital cash, but Bitcoin is nowhere close. It has serious issues with volatility, speculation, acquisition, storage and lack of regulation/insurance, all of which mean I wouldn't touch it in its current form.

I am living abroad and while I'm not truly poor, a couple of months ago I had less that £20 to my name, so I'm quite cost conscious.

I needed to send some money overseas and I looked at bitcoin for exactly the same reasons that you described. However, I found that sending the money via bit coin would take longer and wind up costing me more in transaction fees than just using transferwise. While the actual bitcoin transfer itself was free and instantaneous, there were multiple days of waiting and percentage fees to convert from or to fiat currency at each end of the transaction.

This is due to the fact that bitcoin is not widely accepted yet. An in order for it to be widely accepted, more people have to want it. In order for people to want it, it has to be widely accepted.

This is why bitcoin is doomed to fail.

The same could be said for the telephone, fax machine, or any technology that requires network effects.

It might not be bitcoin, but in 20 years do you think no cryptocurrency will be in widespread use?

yeah so that's why transferwise exists

this is hugely disingenous.

> 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin

You obviously base this off price alone. If you look at startups based around bitcoin or the blockchain, if you consider that regulatory clarity has or is being provided by most major economies, if you look at transaction volume, feature developement etc then 2014 was a good year for bitcoin.

>Mining companies are closing left, right, and centre, and bitcoin exchanges are shutting down for more profitable ventures.

One cloud mining service (CEX.io) has suspened cloud mining operations. What other mining companies have closed? The hashrate has fallen recently but if lots of mining companies(as you suggest) have closed we would have expected a much larger drop.

As for exchanges shutting to pursue other more profitable ventures, this is 1 exchange (Vault of Satoshi) not a huge exchange by anyones metrics. You said exchanges (plural) which others?

>Unlike the previous bubbles this one was in full sight of the general public with constant media coverage. It's gone to $1000 had most people(in western nations) learn about it and respond almost unanimously with 'Meh'.

The general public may have, investors and people that understand tech have not responded in that way at all. If you asked the general public about the internet in 1990 they would have said meh!, those same people now bank online, shop online and communicate online. Do they care about the internet? No, but at the same time could they bare to be parted from facebook?

Bitcoin will become widely used and adopted, whether consumers know they are using it or not is another matter.

I don't base it off price, I base it off adaption and public interest of which outside of new merchants there has been no indication of any growth(and I'm pretty sure if you started subtracting merchants who no longer take it or who don't have their staff trained on it it would be shrinking as well). Bitpay has shown now growth in processing numbers($1m/per day) for almost all of 2014.

Transaction volume is a ridiculously bad metric to judge growth. You want to prove growth get coinbase and blockchain.info to release MAU figures. They won't of course for obvious reasons.

>One cloud mining service (CEX.io) has suspened cloud mining operations.

HASH profit, PETAmine, Hashie, Coins-miner are the first few I found after a quick look for more names for you.

Also Cointerra for mining equipment.

>As for exchanges shutting to pursue other more profitable ventures, this is 1 exchange (Vault of Satoshi) not a huge exchange by anyones metrics. You said exchanges (plural) which others?

The other company I was thinking of was Delta Financial. Not an exchange.

>The general public may have, investors and people that understand tech have not responded in that way at all.

Except they have. Look outside of bitcoin forums for the general feelings towards bitcoin some time. It is almost universally negative especially in tech and finance circles.

?If you asked the general public about the internet in 1990 they would have said meh!, those same people now bank online, shop online and communicate online. Do they care about the internet? No, but at the same time could they bare to be parted from facebook?

Luckily though we have the internet now which has accelerated the spread of new ideas and products on it. We're not dealing with a pre-internet world anymore so comparing them is silly.

>Bitcoin will become widely used and adopted, whether consumers know they are using it or not is another matter.

If consumers don't know they are using it then there is no reason for it to be used. You think banks can't speed up their transfers to be instant if there is any pressure without using bitcoin?

Luckily though we have the internet now which has accelerated the spread of new ideas and products on it. We're not dealing with a pre-internet world anymore so comparing them is silly.

I think you don't understand. People had no need of the Internet until applications such as online banking, online shopping etc were available to them. They didn't come pre installed on the Internet and whilst they wrre being developed most Internet users were people who got involved with it because it was cool new technology. Your mum and dad only got it when it had already become a mature technology.

I don't think you understand. Before the internet ideas took longer to spread as it was more difficult to disseminate information to people. Now it is incredibly easy which is why new technologies and services have increased adoption rates.

Bitcoin doesn't have that because most people don't care about what it does better and do care about what it does worse.

6 years into the experiment including an entire year regularly in the news and still almost no one cares and the userbase appears to have actually shrunk this year from an estimated peak of ~1-2m to an estimated 500k. And even that 500k is considered generous.

>Your mum and dad only got it when it had already become a mature technology.

I appreciate your condescending tone and trying to imply that I'm a child. But I've been on the internet and programming since 95 and while far from the earliest user I was a lot closer to them than most people. I'm well aware of days when online banking wasn't a common thing. And the fact that the idea of it and online shopping didn't spread fast because we were largely in the pre-internet(it existed but had limited adoption) world then.

i didnt mean to be condescending, i merely meant the older generation such as my parents or grandparents.

In the case that bitcoin succeeds we shouldn't expect it to be a smooth ascend. After the dot-com bubble it too seemed like we had seen peak internet. A bunch of people underestimated how hard it is to do something useful with bitcoin, that doesn't necessarily mean that it will be a failure. I'm not confident that bitcoin will succeed, but neither am I confident that it won't.

> a 3rd of the lower end of their claim

$5M USD in Bitcoin sales is pretty astonishing, actually.

EDIT: 1/5 of $15M is still pretty astonishing. I expected something around 250K in BTC-denominated sales.

I made a mistake in typing that it was $3m. 1/3rd of which was in the first week. I'll correct it above.

Well the money laundering from Silk Road and Silk Road 2 etc (eg $70k on a Tesla) was probably much of it.

$3M in sales is the yearly turnover of a small local bakery chain with a few retail points. Every village of more than 5000 people has several companies with this turnover. $3M is nothing. For a retailer of low-margin goods like Overstock, they must have spend more on implementing bitcoin payments than they made on the sales that were paid with them, and that's not even counting costs of converting back to $ etc.

> and that's not even counting costs of converting back to $ etc.

Even worse, it's not counting the loss of the value of bitcoins. Lots of people dumped bitcoins on overstock when it was worth much more than $200. They need to convert those bitcoins into cash to pay taxes, rent, etc.

Overstock lucked out by not doing more business in bitcoins because they would have lost even more due to the drop in bitcoin price...

"2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin and it flopped as far as the general public was concerned."

"as far as the general public was concerned" :) Yeah, they were too busy watching the big bottom Kim and losing their home.

"(Overstock the poster child which at one point was claiming serious expectations of $15-20m in bitcoin sales ended up with a 5th of the lower end of their claim)."

Did you see how poorly Amazon did? They're a much larger and better store. No coins on Amazon.

"Mining companies are closing left, right, and centre, and bitcoin exchanges are shutting down for more profitable ventures."

As are oil companies. So goes the world. Isn't linear let alone vertical. Two steps forward...

What would those, 'more profitable ventures' be? You of course don't say because those miners aren't good for anything else.

"I don't think Bitcoin is dead or even close to dead but I'm pretty sure we've seen its peak."

If you're pretty sure, you would say why, but you don't. Apparently cirucular logic is big on the HH. That and or Tourette's.

>"as far as the general public was concerned" :) Yeah, they were too busy watching the big bottom Kim and losing their home.

They are the ones that matter when you're trying to promote a new currency. And yes they don't care.

>Did you see how poorly Amazon did? They're a much larger and better store. No coins on Amazon.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here?

>What would those, 'more profitable ventures' be? You of course don't say because those miners aren't good for anything else.

For Vault of Satoshi it was apparently streaming video.

>If you're pretty sure, you would say why, but you don't. Apparently cirucular logic is big on the HH. That and or Tourette's.

I've said why. You are throwing out a lot of personal insults here to cover up the fact that in all your posts you've added zero content. You've attacked things that people have said without providing counter points and insulted them to mask your lack of content.

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