Quite.

LTers are in the full glory of their idiocy on this one. Let's see... they love whining about the alleged evils of 'fiat' money, but bc is just as 'fiat' as USD. They say shiz like this: bc is good because it can't be used as debt... but then they imagine a whole economy, including I assume the home mortgage and consumer loan parts of this economy, switching over to bc. How's that going to work? Or how about this... how is civil court going to work without a single & viable legal tender?

Where they really go of the rails is here however:

There's nothing intrinsic about LT-monetary-voodoo-economics to cryptocurrencies. Just like there's nothing intrinsic about selling chicken sandwiches not on Sundays. The reason why bc has LT-voodoo-gibberish hardwired in, and Chick-fil-et isn't open one day a week, is exactly the same... that particular creator creature was high on his own respective supply.

LTers imagine two separate things will happen at the same time (a) peeps will decide to dump hamburgers (BofA, etc) and switch overwhelmingly to chicken sandwiches (bc, etc), and (b) they'll all start getting high on that very same supply (being happy that they can't get their fast food fix one day a week, being happy about being subjected to LT-voodoo-gibberish).

The first (a) is unlikely. MasterPass augments cash. A successful non-voodoo cryptocurrency would likewise augment both cash & our existing banks/etc.

The second (b) is... just simply loltastical.

That's not the threat that I'm preparing for.

Why would you want a currency that people have no control over? Sure, you don't want a central bank to horribly manipulate a currency, but in theory you would want a well managed currency over a non-managed one, no?

Then what are you preparing for? Let's say all the world's major currencies fall apart in a way that doesn't cause full blown apocalypse, we all switch to cryptocurrency as a replacement, and life continues on its merry way. Buying bitcoins now means you're hoping to profit on that extremely unlikely future event; i.e. you're playing the lottery. And even if you hit, you're still gonna get steamrolled by all the world's major financial institutions because they're going to dominate the new currency with more wealth, knowledge and economic inertia than you can even comprehend.

There are so many misconceptions flowing in this thread, there is no way I'll be able to find the time to address them. I will say that once I harbored just about every one I've seen here thus far. I doubted bitcoin hard for years before I got on board. I think that's the natural process most people go through. I'm not going to post in this thread again, but I will leave one last piece of advice: if you doubt cryptocurrency, just sit on the sidelines and observe it for a while. If it is going to succeed, eventually it will be obvious. It will either die or it will thrive. A good site to track the prices of all the cryptos out there is https://www.worldcoinindex.com/. It can't hurt to check that site every once in a while to see what's the status of the crypto world.

And wonder what your Bitcoin will be worth by the time you pay.

Maybe non-government regulated currencies will workout in the future. But you're like wearing rose colored glasses when it comes to bitcoins and ignoring the flaws of it.

Guys, let's have a discussion.

Oh you say you don't 100% agree with me, I'm taking my ball and going home!

It seems my nephew invested fairly heavily by his standards (maybe 5 grand) really early on in Bitcoin and is up a ludicrous amount. Unfortunately for him he's convinced himself that instead of cashing out and putting a fat down payment on a home or paying off his school debt that instead he'll just become a multimillionaire by sticking it out while laughing at the bubble-bros who are convinced it's soon to come crashing down.

To be fair, he almost lasted 30 responses before retreating to his safe space

I actually agree with 98% of this post. Especially the anti fragility properties. I'm not sure why this guy is getting slammed, and I'm personally not looking to take up the torch and debate it right now (it's better to just come back in a few years and see, plus I don't have much to add), but I just wanted to go on the record right now as saying in my opinion this is a good post and I agree with most of the overall thoughts and sentiments contained in it. But yeah OP, it's probably a conversation better served a few more years into the future, or for those few individuals who have both a high crypto and political IQ (sorry I don't know much about politics )

I never knew you couldn't have a conversation without 100% agreement.

It's to be expected when trying to discuss a disruptive technology that's still very much in the nascent stage to a general audience. I had the exact same reactions about three years ago. I'm bowing out of this thread for now because I don't feel like anyone who has posted here thus far has put any rigorous thought into the issue and I just don't have time to write up 20 bitcoin 101 posts to get people up to speed. I expect that will change in a year or two.

It was pretty ambitious of me to expect differently. I'm mean, with all that's happening with Trump and the cluster **** that is the state of politics is right now, it's totally understandable that a community that is mostly concerned with politics would not be totally up to date on such a nascent subject.

Anyway Kazuya, you should browse BFI; they're quite a bit more seasoned when it comes to cryptocurrency over there.

Dude, you're like the 50th person to start a bitcoin thread ITF.

Also, get out of our yard!

Srsly, if you, the king's you, any person reading this, have confidence in cryptocurrency buy Ethereum and not Bitcoin and/or switch to Bitcoin. This is a tangential PSA: BTC will end in tears.

LMFAO !!!1!

I love me this constant, and repeating, bit o' sophistry. Dude, the problem isn't everyone else... the problem is you. You don't understand this shiz enough to even explain it. You would need to read 101 posts yourself to even begin to get yourself up to speed.

In other words... see ya, I wouldn't wanna be ya... and I got a prediction: you'll be as monumentally clueless in 3yrs as you are now. Come on back in 3yrs and prove me correct 111!!

Amazingly enough, for the dogmatic LTers the answer actually is "no".

These LTers have a religious like belief that "managed currency" and "central banks" are literally the root of all evil. These are the folks who'd love for the gold standard to make a comeback. Which, if the whole world was forced to use bc, would be roughly the equivalent.

Of course, what these LTers don't seem to be able to grok, is that there's nothing intrinsic about that kinda goldbuggery-voodoo to cryptocurrencies. It's just like as if the originally anonymous bc creator had been a certain kinda Christian instead of a kooky LTer, and instead of hardwiring in restrictions of the LTer-voodoo kind, he hardwired in restrictions of the "blue law" kind.

If bc actually did catch on as a standard, those LTer-voodoo restrictions, just like those hypothetical "blue law" restrictions, would be "forked out" faster than the (pre-fork) blockchain would settle. Bottom line: LMFAO @LTers !!!1!

IMO, a more serious answer for people who want to dabble in all this is to get into mining. You can jump around to whichever currency is most profitable at any given time, and if the whole cryptocurrency thing goes tits up you still have physical hardware you can unload on ebay.

Of course that isn't very appealing to a lot of people because it requires a bit of actual work and will only generate modest returns. Kind of a turnoff for those dreaming of a get rich quick scheme with no effort.

Why would anyone do this? What is the gain for the individual user?

The third possibility is that it will continue to be an obscure niche application for grey market transactions and nerdy hobbyists. Which is how it's played out for the past ten years.

FYP

What rigorous thought do you want?

The currency has bloated up a few times and popped a few times. It is fueled by speculation currently. There's no real value to the average consumer to use btc over currencies issued by their govts. atm. If it is to be taken seriously as a currency it is going to have to be useful to a lot more people than traders and drug dealers and other sketch artists.

You come off like a shill instead of someone who is actually trying to valuate btc.

fyp

Would the "dabblers" here be likely to make more than they are paying in electricity (let alone the hardware costs)?

The use cases are really black market and (though this is a bit redundant) international currency transfer.