waytogo

> There are tons of membership management plugins and platforms out there, pretty much all integrate with Stripe, and most of them will keep a mailchimp list in sync

Which membership management would you recommend?

Second this. While I love Stripe's API, Braintree/Paypal driven checkouts have higher conversions just because of Paypal.

Anyone knows the rates in the US or European countries?

Good point and thus, trust only coins traded minimum on two exchanges and have similar curves.

Obivious sign that chatsbots are dead (which was also stated in the article's original title): FB's Messenger doesn't show featured chatbots on the home tab anymore.

Looked into both Ripple (XRP) and Stellar (XLM) and invested more into Stellar because of...

- the much better scaling than traditional coins (semi-central structure)

- the track record of the founder Jed

- the fuller feature set including the creation of new tokens like ETH but easier

- the recent announcement like IBMs partnering and stress tests, Kin moving to Stellar, Signal's founder creating his coin on Stellar

- Stellar's lower market cap, so there's still room above

I think Ripple is also good but has a different focus and since the original founder of Ripple left to Stellar, I am a bit more into Stellar.

> But I will point out that, at the end (almost the very end) of 2017, it's not even 20,000 -- BTC is at 13,000.

BTC just hit 10K a month ago and the mainstream end-of-2017-forecast through summer and fall 2017 was ~5k. Then 13K is a fine number (13x in 2017).

You gave the answer yourself. Brand and popularity might change over time. But at the moment it is BTC. Just go to Google Trends and no other coin is that mainstream. The search volume for Bitcoin is 50% of 'iphone' which is massive itself.

Re other coins: There are just two which are scalable because of their semi-central nature (XRP, XLM) but they have to get there first which will take time. The other millions of coins are usually decentral (and slow) tech and often they are shaky not working or don't have any own blockchains while valued in the billions (eg EOS). And you should not forget the upcoming lightning network for BTC.

But why do I try to convince you, at the end of 2018 BTC is at 100K, you missed another opportunity and you come again here and tell us the same FUD.

I mean technically reliable.

(Really) everybody knows that you should not keep your money on an exchange.

Gold can also crash and btw is a volatile asset as well.

> destroys Bitcoin being usable as digital cash.

So what? I value the use as store of value much higher than a cash system and I don't care if this was the initial use case. Go and find a better store of value (won't be easy) but it's easy to find another cash system (FIAT-based ones likes CCs or new upcoming ones like Stellar).

Some of those whale addresses are exchanges themselves.

> It's not going to exist for decades, let alone for centuries, because of the nature of technology

How do you know, did you found a time machine??

> It isn't backed and guaranteed by a government

Even better. So many countries (basically 70% of all countries) have governments I wouldn't trust a single cent.

> there are no organization that are demanding to be paid only in Bitcoin as America demands to be paid only in dollars.

Exchanges?

> precious metals all far exceed as stronger "stores of value"

Go and try to buy some gold, it's not that easy and also, oh which surprise, also volatile.

> Everyone knows everyone else's entire transaction history,

Pipe it through exchanges and it get anonymous again. Not that I like this feature but if you need it...

You didn't really convinced me.

> I said Bitcoin's usefulness is diminishing by becoming less useful due to the high transaction time and price.

If I want to store my assets I don't care about high transaction prices.

> It's more a greater fools game at this point and I only mentioned ponzi scheme as it was what I was responding to.

But you still used it in the wrong context. Bitcoin can't be a Ponzi scheme because the founder and the early adopters clearly didn't have this intent.

> It is becoming exponentially more difficult to mine them, and there is only a finite number of bitcoins in that can be mined.

This was planned and one of the greatest features (for a store of value): Limited supply. With limited supply you won't have inflation but deflation which is good for storing value but not good if you want to use it as a cash system. But for p2p cash use cases newer system like Stellar/XLM which integrate controlled inflation (1%/yr) are better.

> Buying bitcoins is making these 2000 people richer.

Guess you are confusing matters. Running a local wallet as a full node doesn't mean you make tons of money. You can run 20 nodes but your friend who is BTC trader could still have 100 times more BTC than you (so, running a node != holding a shitload of BTC).

> Actually I don't understand anyone that puts money in a cryptocurrency that is supposed to have "intrinsic value".

From another post: Bitcoin is a store of value. Moreover, it's one with a high liquidity, strong brand, limited supply, available in 180 countries, without banks involved and super reliable (gold doesn't have that features and please show me any other asset that has these features). So, it has a use and value.

> Bitcoin's usefulness diminish

No, you mentioned it yourself: Bitcoin is a store of value. Moreover, it's one with a high liquidity, strong brand, limited supply, available in 180 countries, without banks involved and super reliable (gold doesn't have that features and please show me any other asset that has these features). So, it has a use and value.

That it has evolved to this is no one's fault and btw this might change (the cash part) with the lightning network again.

> more like a Ponzi scheme

That would mean that all operators of Bitcoin, so everybody who is just investing or running local wallets with full nodes deliberately intend Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme?? This is utter nonsense. If I launch an ICO tomorrow. Just a landing page and a BS white paper, you could allege that I deliberately plan my ICO/coin/token to be a Ponzi scheme. But you can't allege millions of BTC investors that they intend a Ponzi scheme eight years after this things started. Maybe you should check the definition of a Ponzi scheme again.

However, do you own or did you ever own any BTC?

(1) Having a town house with some wall socket at the entry or a garage and (2) not trying to get into a big city centre might be a use case, yes. Thanks for elaborating your example but I don't think that this use case is strong or ubiquitous enough (maybe in SF) to lead e-bikes to mass adoption. I still think the concept of an e-bike, in particular the charging, is super flawed. If the battery is removable you can charge this thing but you have to carry a fat battery pack back and forth and your bike looks super clumsy (and yes, all bikes with removable batteries look clumsy) or if it's integrated it looks nice but it's hard to charge that thing.

I mean, I see that all bike manufacturer start to produce e-bikes and they form a large part of their revenues because they are much more expensive than normal bikes but if I'd make a mini poll here, how many of you guys have an e-bike, how many a normal bike? I bet the rate is 1:10 (e-bike:bike) or even lower.

How often was Bitcoin called a Ponzi scheme? When it was at 50, at 100 or at 1,000? Always.

If I look at my stock portfolio there are so many strange stocks and funds I once invested in. They feel much more like Ponzi schemes or pump and dump, especially the riskier funds.

If I look at my angel tickets into early stage ventures (done with FIAT) even worse.

And if I look at the countless ICOs based on Ethereum, this is the real pump and dump Ponzi Disney Land.

But Bitcoin? Seriously? I highly doubt that Bitcoin's founder or its early adopters intended Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme.

Then again what is the living situation ('use case') where an e-bike works? I also made the example with a house and garage. I don't see any killer use case but are happy to learn relevant use cases.

> i'd be happy to take some photographs for you.

Yes please! You could put them on Imgur. Thanks!

I don't grok e-bikes. I like them and I'd like to get one but I just don't know how I will manage the charging. I am livinig in a big city and have no garage and no wall socket in front of my street door. And 100% of all destinations I ride to don't have wall sockets for charging neither.

So, I would need to carry every time the heavy battery upstairs (3 floors)? I am anyway always full-loaded with bags or whatever and don't want to carry every-time this stupid battery as well.

Then, the really beautiful e-bikes have an integrated battery in the frame, a bit like the iPhones. How should this now work?? I carry the 17-20kg bike upstairs every time?

Ok, only if you have a house with a garage in some suburb you can ride those bikes but then you are usually so far way from the city center that you need a car again.

As a final note: These bikes are so much heavier (17kg and up) and I am wondering if it's that much more effort to ride a light 10kg bike without any electrical motor.

So, I am really curious about the real use case of e-bikes.

Edit: Why the downvote?

The grandparent post was about FB and MySpace, not Twitter.

However, Twitter is a different beast. They got better over time because Twitter evolved from a friends network to kind of a interest-driven network. At the beginning people were following friends and then you had the same dissatisfying outcome like with FB (nobody wants to unfollow a crap-posting friend and muting wasn't available then). But nowadays you rather follow people on Twitter based on interest or because you share the same industry, etc.

> they did exactly what you were asking for

No, MySpace and Facebook didn't what I was asking for because they didn't have any feed then.

With MySpace and Facebook in its early days, I could just stalk profiles and both didn't serve me any content based on my interest. On MySpace I could browse through some music genres but this is not my understanding of an interest-driven site.

OT: I don't get social networks.

Till today, I don't see any value in real name social networks like Facebook. They should present content I want but they don't, they show upvoted content from my connections which is wrong from a consumer and entertainment perspective.

My friends like or share mostly content of people because those people are kind of high-profile in their circles. Not because they post good content. The typical example, we all know, is some boring dude working at a VC that just raised a new fund who hourly posts really crappy content on FB and gets hundreds of likes every single time. Now, guess why. This happens all the time, everyday, every minute, just go to your FB feed right now and check how many of those high-status animals post again and again some random content which is liked and shared by too many likers.

So, the status of my connections determine which (lousy) content I have to see? No thanks and this is why I prefer interest-driven platforms such as HN.

> higher resolution) screens

Is the new Kindle Oasis 2017 with a 7" 300ppi screen 'high resolution' enough?

Re fast screens, I think it's good that they are slow, otherwise I'd use those readers like my smartphone for surfing and other stuff which puts me more into ADD mode.

OT: Just wondering why so many people are using password managers. When you use a password manager you have one single point of attack and failure. I wouldn't like to give all my credentials to one single entity.

tl;dr security questions are insecure because most questions are flawed (like what's your mother’s maiden name)

I think every two weeks of buying an iPad Pro as my daily driver and then I think, nah I'll miss the Inspector. Otherwise the iPad should have all I need.

> For a proper financial market with money, a good store of value might just be a long term savings account in a bank

Not sure. Look what 2008 happened: States had to rescue banks which would have gone bankrupt otherwise and because of this the entire economy/currency suffered. A FIAT saving account—even in a developed country/financial market—is a terrible store of value.

> weak economies have more people who can't afford the rather extreme transaction fees

When I look at Google Trends https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=bitcoin I see many weaker countries or low-income countries (South America, Russia) which have a quite high interest in BTC.

The transaction fees don't hurt if it's just about putting your savings in a safe spot. The people are not going to buy groceries with BTC.