Ask HN: How many of you changed your mind about Bitcoin? I'm curious of the current sentiment regarding Bitcoin. Did you change your opinion about Bitcoin, blockchain and e.g. its energy consumption? By changing your opinion I mean in any direction. From "I was pro to I'm now against Bitcoin" or "I was against to I'm now pro Bitcoin". What changed your mind? |
Classical solutions running out of a database almost certainly could work better, but historically the middlemen involved have been unwilling to relinquish that level of control and just serve as dumb infrastructure.
You are right regarding visa and other middleman of course. But it is not a problem most people have, isn't it?
Now that we are in inflationary times with seemingly no limits to the fiscal stimulus and endless money printing, Bitcoin is more relevant than ever.
I would love to understand how those who are anti-Bitcoin think about inflation and stimulus and the debasement of the fiat money supply.
The actual use cases for crypto-currencies seem like really extreme edge cases to me. I don't think they will ever see widespread usage.
These days I follow the price to infer which direction black market money exchangers in China are running-- are the illegal capital flows toward or away from China today? I also think it's neat that sorta 'banking as a commodity item' has a sticker price in BTC. That is all.
VS physical gold it has a lower storage cost, lower transfer cost, faster to transfer, easier to divide, harder to steal, etc. Houses can't be divided up very easily, have high transaction costs (listing, agent commission, paperwork/mortgage, etc.). Stocks can't be custodied, can be frozen, diluted, etc. Toilet paper can be printed at will.
More broadly, blockchain technology will forever be my go-to example of a (bad) solution in search of a problem.
But I also have a small percentage of my portfolio allocated to an ETF indexed to the price of Bitcoin because the last ten years have proven that, in the crypto market, there's apparently always a greater fool willing to participate in this multi-billion dollar Keynesian beauty contest.
I saw the use of blockchain as wildly inefficient, and now that bitcoin processing is using up more energy than some countries, I think that has born out.
And I still don't see the inherent value of bitcoin. People like to rail against "fiat currency," but bitcoin is also fiat currency; its value simply comes from the decree of a different group of people. I trust the full faith and credit of the US government more than I trust the folks on /r/crypto.
I always thought that Bitcoin is an interesting and novel technology, and risky speculative asset.
I’ve also always thought that most of the crypto ecosystem is fraudulent schemes designed to separate people from their dollars, and that this unforgiving nature and lack of institutional and state control will likely preclude mass adoption as an actual currency.
So no, not much has changed, though the second point has gotten much, much worse.
I haven't seen anything that actually makes Crypto worth the mining.
The only things Bitcoin and Monero really excel at is avoiding sanctions, buying drugs on the dark web, ransomware, and as an alternative if your entire country goes to shit (e.g Venezuela).
I think for this reason crypto will always be around in some form, but I doubt it will ever be mainstream.
Central Bank Issued crypto currencies will almost certainly be a thing though.
My bank account is FDIC insured up to $250k. My investments are in stable index funds. I feel much better now, I woke up several times to watch my money lose half of its value overnight with bitcoin.
Years later in the 2017 bubble I took it a lot more seriously, but still not serious enough to put real money in it. I put a very small amount into it and also played with ethereum/solidity coding. I didn't find myself enjoying the coding part of it and I just left the scene after the bubble popped.
Come early 2021 I found the few hundred dollars I did put into btc/eth went up a very decent amount by then, and by this year the industry is a lot more mature and it doesn't feel like it was going to collapse any minute. I put in a lot more money into it (but still keeping it under 10% of my liquid assets) and feel pretty good about the diversity of my liquid investments (i.e. money outside of real estate). I don't think it's right to put 100% (or even 50%) of your money in crypto like the crypto-twitter or wsb crowd always do, but keeping a small percentage (under 10%) seems reasonable as a hedge for my own portfolio. Also I don't take the decentralization/untraceability of bitcoin/crypto very seriously. I just own my crypto through coinbase (a very centralized way to do so) which I'm sure is a disagreeable position for the real crypto proponents.
At first, I didn't like bitcoin because of its energy use and lack of regulation (which protects end users, believe it or not).
Now, I don't like it because it's become this bizarre quasi-legal gambling addiction predating upon an entire generation of tech-forward but economically downtrodden youth. I see ads on 4chan that shill shitcoins, for heavens' sake.
Buying Bitcoin is how you enroll.
> no one to enroll people.
This is laughable. Everyone who owns Bitcoin is incentivized to get other people to buy Bitcoin.
Every HODLer spends half their time virtually knocking on doors trying to make you the greater fool, by buying into bitcoin.
These big conferences and coiners on HN are constantly doing PR to make more people buy into bitcoin, to make their stash grow in value. And this speculation and pumping the only reason to do it, because it's a failure as a currency.
Outside of the lightning network, which I haven't seen become mainstream yet, I don't see bitcoin evolving to compete with the other coins out there that do a much better job.
The only utility that makes any sense is the same one that originally made me pro - You can use it to buy drugs online (spent 41 bitcoin on a 1/4 of weed in the early days).
These days - I'll firmly state that it's a pyramid scheme.
I knew those keys would have to be protected with my life. I loved the fact that it is ultimately the responsibility of the individual. Life is too 'safe', living on the edge where one mistake can mean bankruptcy builds character. No man nor state could take this from me, at least without direct, physical violence (and this can be mitigated through things like time lock contracts and physical security).
I knew one day people would hate for me for it, and would create a thousand excuses on why energy is bad, why money is bad, why Bitcoin is bad.. blah blah blah
I am even more bullish today than when I started! I only wish I had more!
Then the price went volatile and I thought more about it. I did the MIT Blockchain course, and it just seemed so clever.
Then I learned more about monetary policy and how central banks just create money at will. Combining all this with my economics background, it makes sense that Bitcoin could replace gold and have a real function in the world.
Most people on HN understand the technology, but they don't understand money. Gold is a $12tr market. The US bond market is ~$46tr. Capital needs a way to preserve its own value, but the dynamics of money creation throw that into whack over time.
I know it must suck if you’re not in a developed western country (coming from a 3rd world I know) but now that I’m in America it’s almost like people want the financial systems to completely collapse.
I want to see practical daily life applications that many people will immediately benefit from. I feel like the power players have already been forming and if I’m honest I think some of the crypto rich folks are 10x worse morally and ethically compared to anyone else I’ve met before. Very few have genuine interest in furthering the concept of decentralization. Most just seem to want to get rich by converting to USD ASAP and buying properties or something else.
I could be totally wrong and possibly just getting the wrong message about people in the crypto world. Just my observation though.
As for speculation I came to think that if you wanna buy crypto, you might as well buy exchange tokens since they have Some intrinsic value and are still somewhat correlated to bitcoin’s ups and downs.
Obviously if you’re looking to x100 just buy Small projects that might become very well regarded within the community
So to chip in on that: I changed my mind from "this is stupid" to "this is stupid and evil".
Reason: Energy consumption, plus the greed.
Christopher Hitchens said that religion is the only way that a good person can do absolutely heinous evil acts. But he was wrong. Greed can, too.
The number of bodies otherwise good people have crawled over in the name of bitcoin greed, while yelling "IT'LL BE A UTOPIA IN THE END (and by the way in the meantime I'm getting rich yo, but that's a coincidence)!" is sickening.
I spent money, got a video card, did some mining, and lost it all in MtGox. 8(
I'm now of the opinion that it's a speculative investment, subject, subject to the whims of governments who might have large pools of bitcoins in dark wallets.
The current boom in value is highly dependent on Tether, there's likely to be a 90% correction when that implodes.
Once that happens, far less electricity will be wasted on it.
Bitcoin always seemed like a solution in search of a problem. The supposed need to replace fiat currencies never resonated with me, and the demand to get around government currency controls seemed real but overblown. I disliked the pump-and-dump rhetoric and the breathless hype from its early adopters that reminded me of the real estate and tech bubbles. As for the energy consumption, it's an unforgivable flaw.
I've also always deeply mistrusted the markets. Not just because of the scammers and theft, but because bitcoin trading platforms lacked the protections against wash sales that arise if you're not actively monitoring against it. What assurances did we have that most of the trading volume wasn't actually being done by a few key players/miners trading between their own accounts to make it look like there was actual volume, occasionally skimming off of unsuspecting people who were drawn by the price increases they manufactured?
I think we're past the point that bitcoin is merely a pump-and-dump scheme though. It is already a historic economic phenomenon. It's been over 4 years since bitcoin passed the $1,000 threshold. It's become a brand and a cultural idea, and due to its strictly limited inelastic supply, small increases in demand have resulted in large and sustained price increases. If I had to bet whether bitcoin will be higher or lower than it is now in ten years I still think it'll be substantially lower, but I am less certain now.
Another thing that's changed for me is that I think there really is a potential market for the creation and frictionless transfer of unique digital goods. The NFT market is even more scammy and absurd than cryptocurrencies, but there seems to be a kernel of truly useful innovation in the ethereum and cardano networks. I could see a world where I connect a metamask wallet to an online game, trade an item I make in it for digital currency that can be used to pay for a subscription or donate to a content creator, all from my browser. Or perhaps I can rent my processing power. I don't think bitcoin will be the platform for this, but it's helped drive demand and resources to it.
Bitcoin has other consequences that will resonate. It's made a lot of people wealthy, and it's a special, unusual group of people -- , irrational risk-takers, young, tech-adjacent, global and often from low-income countries, and often disillusioned with the traditional paths to wealth and power in our capitalist system. Their spending and investment of their newfound wealth will be impactful over the next few years. Much of it will be misspent I am sure, and we'll end up overfunding ethical AI non-profits and building ghost cities in Central America, but our boom-and-bust system misallocates capital all the time too. It's kind of like a global R&D account for wild ideas.
I think Smart Contract Platforms (SCP) are interesting, but they are primarily for trading shittokens and fraud. The only real use for DeFi I can see is stablecoin market making. But now we are playing with fiat again, are we not? I thought we wanted to get away from these shenanigans.
Bitcoin has not been superseded. It may not be possible to superseded it because of its cryptoeconomic model. Every other SCP printed all the coins on day one, sold to insiders, sometimes mostly insiders. Proof Of Stake is bad for decentralization and censorship resistance. It also misses the point about externally verifiable consensus. I don't trust people, I trust math.
This is vastly vastly different than BTC mining, which was generated through vast energy consumption. It can never be replicated.
[1] https://www.bitcoinmining.com/bitcoin-mining-centralization/
...and everyone that owns (is "enrolled" in) AAPL is "incentivized to get other people to buy" Apple products. So Apple is a "pyramid scheme" right?
"Pyramid scheme" is a real thing with a real meaning. Someone posting "BTC to the moon!" on Twitter does not make BTC a pyramid scheme. Typically people are describing market manipulation, and they just don't know what a pyramid scheme is (your post).
Yes, to a mild extent and indeed they do, but for the most part Apple itself does this work, so the owners don’t have much extent.
With Bitcoin there is nothing other than the owners, and there is no product.
> "Pyramid scheme" is a real thing with a real meaning. Someone posting "BTC to the moon!" on Twitter does not make BTC a pyramid scheme.
No, it’s a symptom of the fact it is structurally a pyramid scheme.
> they just don't know what a pyramid scheme is (your post)
Or they do, and they can see that in the context of decentralization, Bitcoin in fact is one.
The no true Scotsman fallacy doesn’t work here.
Thank you for agreeing. So your definition is so bad Apple qualifies as a pyramid scheme under it. That makes it appear that you have no idea what a pyramid scheme is.
> so the owners don’t have much extent
...but "to a mild extent" they do, so your definition calls this a pyramid scheme. The no true Scotsman fallacy doesn’t work here.
> [BTC] is structurally a pyramid scheme
The decentralized blockchain? You haven't posted a specific reason to say this that isn't abstract, despite two desperate tries. There are no recruiters, there's no one actively distributing funds for getting new recruits.
Just curious, do you know the difference between market manipulation and pyramid schemes? Pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes? Pyramid schemes and other MLM schemes?
Or you just use them all interchangeably because you have no idea what they mean?
If you weren’t misrepresenting me, you’d be able to quote where I agreed AAPL qualified as a pyramid scheme.
I understand that what people think of Bitcoin is of great importance to you, but it’s easier to discuss this if you stay away from ad hominem and misrepresentation.
Sure thing, here ya go (it's right there if you scroll up):
> > So Apple is a "pyramid scheme" right?
> Yes, to a mild extent
...you qualify it with "the owners don’t have much extent" unfortunately the no true Scotsman fallacy doesn’t work here.
> I understand that what people think of Bitcoin is of great importance to you
Sure isn't. Weird shift to a personal attack, but what else do you have left after failing so badly?
It’s easier to discuss this if you stay away from ad hominem.
>> I understand that what people think of Bitcoin is of great importance to you
> Sure isn't.
Ok.
> Weird shift to a personal attack, but what else do you have left after failing so badly?
You seemed to care about what people think of Bitcoin. Now you say you don’t. I’m surprised given the level of zeal you are displaying.
I’m curious why would you take it as a personal attack to point out that you care about Bitcoin?
You've said that both apply to Apple. So Apple is a "pyramid scheme" right? Or does the No True Pyramid Scheme fallacy mean Apple is excluded?
Is there a reason you can't explain the difference between pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes, other MLM schemes and market manipulation? The most reasonable guess would be that you don't understand the difference.
This is not an argumentum ad hominiem, it's an explanation for why you're so wrong, and why BTC's not a pyramid scheme.
> I’m curious why would you take it as a personal attack
We're discussing BTC, not me. It’s easier to discuss this if you stay away from ad hominem.