it's so funny. this is why i like the term "crypto zealot" because somehow a gang of people have become emotionally connected to crypto currencies in an almost religious way.

i love the traders. i like anyone trying to make a buck. the people who argue with me online are not traders. i don't think they're really even investors. they're more like acolytes.

the irony that only i get to appreciate is that i love bitcoin and actually use it as it's meant, to conduct transactions. it's perfect for cashing out from online poker. it works great as a payments system for the underground economy.

but it always just ends with me getting labeled a hater or clueless because i'm poking them in the spot of their brain where religion is supposed to live but they have replaced it with bitcoin.

me: *says a thing*
you: what you said sucks
me: ok, how?
you: what you said sucks

Is it really that hard to get my point that you made unsubstantiated claims? I didn't say they sucked. I'm saying it's a bit pointless and wasteful to state your opinions like they are fact. And it's annoying that you ask others to do the legwork of knocking them down.

Good luck finding all my zeal posts.

your claim that i'm making unsubstantiated claims is an unsubstantiated claim.

now do you see how ******ed your response is? you can respond to the post, or not, but so far you're no better than a common gutter troll.

LOL. my god. please forgive me. sorry for annoying you, i wasn't aware that i had the responsibility of knocking down my own posts. give me until tomorrow morning and i'll elaborate on my posts substantially and then also refute them.

gl augie

Your McD coin sounds like a **** product. It can only be accepted at McDonalds. What if I want in-n-out instead?

Also who is your fat friend that will pay a premium for McD's gift cards over altcoins? Can I trade with him?

augie doesnt have an argument because he's conflating too many issues.


1/ rich getting richer

this is camped in capitalism. Some people (like wolfgang streeck) argue that capitalism as we know today is a dead economic model.

what augie doesnt understand is that mining is completely agnostic to capitalism.


2/mining as decentralization

in the 9 years or whatever bitcoin has been running, no one has successfully attacked the blockchain.

why?

first, because visavis the $ value of the blockchain has increased basically every year. This makes it very hard to usurp the existing mining infrastructure.

second, pow functions as building on the longest chain, thats why nodes are so important because they hold the longest chain in agreement. If someone wanted to go back and mine under stealth, it becomes exponentially more difficult to present a fraudulent chain because he'd have to present more blocks than the real chain. hence 51%

third, even when the price went from 1150-160, a 90% drop, no one was able to attack the blockchain.

fourth, he has no understanding of pow algorithms. there are coins such as ethereum and litecoin where it is abhorrently difficult to manufacture an asic because they force memory use.

you're right, it's a crap product. it's funny. you ask the exact same question of people shilling alt coins and they will tell you that the huge success of $McD will inevitably lead to in-n-out accepting $McD as a payment option.

these people have to be liars because they can't be that stupid. stupid or liar are the only two options.

he's not paying a premium. he received a premium. by every standard of "what is a currency?" it seems that McD's gift cards are closer to a currency than any alt coin.

just so it's obvious, my argument in the first post is that a decentralized currency is DOA because natural economic forces will simply lead to a different kind of centralization. i'd prefer a currency centralized with the government instead of a gang coders and miners.


man talk about conflating issues...i'm sure i could rattle off 8 paragraphs on this specific two sentences but let's leave "capitalism is a dead economic model" off to the side.

btw, i'm morally fine with "rich getting richer"

i'm confused on how mining is completely agnostic to capitalism. seems to me, mining depends on capitalism and if capitalism is not in place there's no reason to mine at all.

imagine would would happen if you were to insert bitcoin into a highly controlled economic system? let's say the north korean economy magically had electricity and computers and citizens started mining bitcoin. how exactly would bitcoin function in that environment other than ushering in unbridled capitalism? i'm just really confused by what you said and i hope you can elaborate.

again, talk about conflating issues! i don't care about centralization one way or the other. i just like to point out that a currency like BTC is not decentralized, never will be, and is becoming less so every day. i'm not concerned about an "attack" in the manner you're suggesting. i would be concerned about an "attack" in the form of an unappointed and unelected group setting bad monetary policy.

you're definitely right about that but you're confused about what i actually care about. sounds like that's good for people who value decentralization. but then i'm wondering why so few people use or value these coins. is it because decentralization is far less important than making a buck?

He is receiving a premium vs. USD, as he should. You say USD > McDs gift card > altcoins (in other words, he should pay a premium to move from altcoins to McDs cards). I say USD > some altcoins > McDs gift card.

More I think about it the McDs card example is bad because it's a derivative of USD. If the gift card were denominated in burgers rather than dollars you could envision a world where the gift card > USD.

I honestly don't think I've ever read someone write so many words and still not possess an actual argument.

You're hand waving, that's it.

I knew I would regret replying. You just don't know enough about what you're talked g about to form an actual argument. Could someone or some group usurp bitcoin or any decentralized digital currency? Sure. Of course. It's happening right now, but as I already explained, nodes are very important and there is a ethos from which people on the network operate under:

Don't trust, verify

This makes it hard to get usurped via your thoughts. It's no different than you saying it's not smart to walk during a thunderstorm. Could you get struck? Sure, of course. But it's so infinitesimally small. Bitcoin has been running at literally 99.95% uptime for almost 10 years now.

You don't understand how bitcoin works and how nodes ensure what you're suggesting as something that ought to be easy to do, actually onerous and disgustingly hard in real life. No one has succeeded ever in convincing people to run software outside of core. Bitcoin is worth $4000. Didn't happen at $160 lows, $1150 highs.

Literally? Isn't it more :P

Don't reply to him. He doesn't have coherent arguments, what he's actually trying to argue has been discussed here many times, and he's shown he's arrogant enough not to listen to anyone else.

You're making a technical point, he's making a political point about potential central bank and government policy, and an economic point about where the ever-increasing projected demand for Bitcoin is going to come from that the speculators are banking on.

It would be a blessing if you personally would stop replying, yes.

Keep up your constructive posting mr month old troll account.

Stop replying to me too while you're at it. Hit the bricks.

yes, i can see that you don't understand what i meant to say, as commas,are,funny pointed out. we've clearly just talked past each other. forgive me for writing long posts, i'm just attempting to fully articulate my thoughts. i guess i just write like i talk, they don't take me that long.

i understand what you mean by hand waving but that's sort of an unnecessary attack because it implies a level of intentional deception. i'm just typing out my thoughts and inviting anyone to tell me why they are wrong.

i have no credentials and no technical knowledge. but i do think i have an above average level of common sense. so i'm trying to figure out how exactly a gang of nerds and a gang of bitcoin miners currently possess a large portion of the future wealth of the world, because it defies common sense, yet it's true if the bitcoinization optimists are correct.

Well at least there has been some good discussion itt the last day.

Nice to get a bit of both sides of an argument.

Would be nice if those calling out augie articulate their thoughts so I can read over them more thoroughly rather than saying his positions are weak and kinda ending it there.

Obv not asking for a dissertation.

Do you have know knowledge of how the current monetary system works?

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

Henry Ford


I agree, bitcoin does defy some common sense, however, the monetary system defies something I don't even have words for. I've never been satisfied with the definition for insanity. "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result". I think maybe "The monetary system" would fit a bit better.

the flaws of current monetary policy are an entirely separate discussion, one that i'm not remotely interested in.

i am interested on how exactly the gang of nerds and the gang of miners who currently own bitcoin are going to become the richest men on earth. walk me through that one if you could.

I'm not saying they are. Who said that?

How are nerds like Zuckerberg and Gates and Brin going to become the richest men on earth when they are just geeks on their computers?

How did John D Rockefeller playing with his tar sands make him the richest man on earth?

Not saying it 100% will happen, but creating a new technology that changes how the world works is how everyone has always gotten mega rich. Cutting the need for "trusted" intermediaries out of financial transactions is just one application, and if the tech continues to develop, it has the potential to change the world.

Sure a lot of ICOs are crap. A lot of internet startups were crap. But if a few of them turn into Amazon and Google, they can on the whole be a good investment if you take the time to choose wisely.

To answer your question literally, Zuckerberg and Gates created companies that provide hundreds of billions in value to users. Rockefeller acquired tremendous quantities of oil, a product of immense industrial value.

The question is, what value does Bitcoin create for people? What value will it create in the future?

It obviously has value now that it didn't have eight years ago. It facilitates gambling and other gray-area transactions on the internet. It's pretty quick. It's somewhat anonymous.

It behaves like a currency, but the thing goldbugs and coinbugs rail against, central bank intervention, is why fiat currencies are useful--they are relatively stable and allow for commerce denominated in that currency to transpire. Central bank intervention promotes economic growth and stability, which are a type of public good.

It's a fair question to ask: how will governments, tasked with the public interest, react to a private currency that threatens their ability to effect economic policy or collect tax revenues?

From a private markets standpoint, what "moat" does or will Bitcoin specifically have that will prevent a competitor from making it obsolete?

Why should Bitcoin become universally accepted and popularized when stable fiat currencies are available and widely used? I don't believe there's anything so wrong with fiat currencies that indicates Bitcoin or any other type of coin will become superior as a currency. So if the main value in Bitcoin is merely as a payment processor rather than as a currency/stable means of exchange then why do we need it as a coin and why should the coins be worth anything?

The serious headwinds I see:

-security. Bitcoins get stolen/hacked all the time. Why would I do a large transaction in Bitcoin rather than dollars? Anonymity is the only reason I can think of, and in exchange I have to take on real security risk. How many average people want to take large or even small security risks with their money in exchange for anonymity? I'd estimate that it's a very small portion.

-limited future pain points solved. Bitcoin has solved pain points for purchasers of gambling, narcotics and various other illicit services. What pain points exist in other areas that Bitcoin will solve that current systems don't already or won't be able to? If the pain is the nuisance of bank transactions, then that means it's superior as a payment processor, not as a currency. And banks or competitors can replicate the payment processing function piecemeal. Is the value in tax evasion? Escaping money from behind opaque borders such as China's? I'd be interested in somebody's estimation of the potential market value for these uses, but it can't be trillions.

-no moat. Facebook's moat is network lock-in combined with aggressive innovation and acquisition of competitors. Same goes for Microsoft, Google, Apple and Oracle. Even with their incredible fortress-like strength these companies are deathly afraid of obsolescence, because it happens all the time; see Blackberry. How is a mostly-inert product such as Bitcoin, or Ethereum or any particular coin that gains traction, going to survive vicious competition from other currencies or payment processors that arise?

Re security: the bitcoin network itself has never been hacked, despite being up and running for 9 years and despite hackers having massive financial incentives to do so. Security issues now are due to:
(1) exchange misconduct/irresponsibility, which will get better as the market grows and competition grows and we get more Coinbases and fewer Mt Goxes.
(2) user error - people losing hard drives or private keys (will decrease as familiarity with the technology increases), sending money to incorrect addresses (will decrease over time as the process becomes more user friendly. apps like toshi now exist to send ether in the same way as you do with venmo), or getting hacked (while this issue will never completely go away, hardware wallets and more hack-proof technologies will continue to get better, cheaper and more widespread).

If you're asking for why you should you use bitcoin to buy a burrito instead of a credit card today the answer is you shouldn't. Bitcoin isn't ready for that level of low dollar transactions yet. Give it time. It took minutes to download a picture in the 90s. 20 years later you're streaming Netflix in HD on a phone while in a moving car. Scaling solutions take time.

Try sending money to a different country and you'll see why bitcoin is valuable. Right now you can either wire the money and wait for weeks for it to arrive or you can use western union and pay a ~9% fee. With bitcoin you can send it in seconds for less than a dollar.

Or try being one of the billion+ people on Earth that have no access to banks, credit or investment opportunities, but own a phone capable of using bitcoin. Bitcoin can create a truly connected worldwide financial system, the way Facebook created a worldwide social network/messaging system.

Or try living in a country with an unstable currency like Argentina, where your wealth is rapidly decreasing due to runaway inflation.

Or try living in a country like Cyprus where the government decides to just take half of everyone's bank balance due to massive national debts.

re the moat: Bitcoin and ethereum may or may not end up winning out, but blockchain technology is real, is here to stay and will most certainly revolutionize finance. BTC/ETH currently have the developers, the networks and the general awareness to put them at an advantage for being the dominant currencies moving forward. This is why they're valued in the billions and not the trillions.