Ever heard of astroturfing/cyber shills/paid trolls? On top of that, you have people who suffer of cognitive dissonance every time they hear about Bitcoin and what it fixes. They are too mentally and economically invested in the status quo. To make things worse, most people don't even know what cryptography is. Explaining Bitcoin is hard.
I find it hilarious how Bitcoin haters (like the ones we have here on HN) say it's never going to work, but then they spend hours every day trying to talk people out of using it.
I find it hilarious how Bitcoin cheerleaders say there aren't any downsides, and then spend hours every day posting "chargebacks aren't important" and "merchants will obviously pass all the savings on to consumers". YMMV.
What do chargebacks have to do with a currency? Chargebacks is something offered by services built on top of the currency, not the currency itself. Else tell me how to chargeback USD bills.
If you think chargebacks are the most important thing mentioning when attacking Bitcoin, then it seems like it does have a bright future.
> What do chargebacks have to do with a currency? Chargebacks is something offered by services built on top of the currency, not the currency itself.
Chargebacks have to do with bitcoin because one of the selling points frequently cited for use of bitcoin, a non-legal-tender currency, is that it is a consumer transaction mechanism that is better than legal-tender currencies and the transaction mechanisms provided on top of them by the financial services industry.
The value of these things is a Keynesian beauty contest. If enough people decide that Bitcoin is a valid currency then it is a valid currency (just like baseball cards).
I think that would be bad for society. Any new value in the bitcoin ecosystem increases the value held by the early adopters - who are mostly drug dealers or other criminals, and the rest are the miners who enabled them. (bitcoin does have some advantages for some legitimate use cases, but the biggest advantages were for the criminal use cases).
This is false. And you have no source to prove it. I know a lot of early adopters through various channels. They are geeks, crypto nerds, cypherpunks. Think guys like Hal Finney, Wei Dai, etc. Nice guys who like to explore new ideas.
Maybe you are just upset that you "missed the boat" on bitcoin or something. But you've got to stop believing every Bitcoin user is a criminal.
The bitcoin community is tremendously ignorant of critical social theory and proud of it, which is a cause of concern. Some people care about more than themselves believe it or not.
How is that law morally wrong? Couldn't they forcing you to breathe smoke be seen as an aggression? The same way they blasting you with very loud noise would be an aggression. Just because it's invisible or not solid it doesn't mean it's not violence. Let alone the danger of literally playing with fire in a closed space.
Because people want them. And why do people want them? Because they find them useful for transferring wealth (see the remittances market: people no longer have to pay 10% or more to Western Union and banks), and as a store of value. It doesn't matter that you don't find them useful, or that you write angry comments. If you don't like Bitcoin don't use it, just like you don't use many other things. Unlike fiat currencies, Bitcoin is 100% voluntary, there's no violence involved.
Because they find them useful for transferring wealth (see the remittances market: people no longer have to pay 10% or more to Western Union and banks),
Are people actually using bitcoin for remittances anywhere on a large scale? It seems the hassle of converting to and from bitcoin in the areas remittances are typical doesn't outcompete the X% fee until bitcoin is much more widely accepted.
If bitcoin was accepted everywhere or it was perfectly easy to convert to another currency, yes it would be great for remittances, but as things stand what advantage does it have in most cases?
Also, western union uses computer networks too, they don't actually physically transport cash.
Ah, the good old "if no one uses it as a currency it will die, so you have to spend it!" argument. The answer is that we are using it: as a store of value. But every time we explain this, detractors will invariably reply either that it's not a good store of value because it went down in <insert cherry-picked timeframe>, or that saving is bad for the economy because central bankers say so.
For these sort of questions, simply compare it to gold: Is it dying because "no one is using it" to buy groceries? Does it sometimes go down, and yet a lot of entities, including central banks, consider it a great store of value?
With regard to 'store of value,' there are two sides to the coin, if you will.
For something to work as a store of value, there's got to be some other aspect of it that has a value/utility in another way. For gold this is it's resistance to corrosion, millennia of history, for the usd it is its broad acceptance as a medium of exchange, I could even store value in something like canned goods, or toilet paper, or firewood, or soap, or solar panels...
With bitcoin the case could be made that the structure of its network is this other side of the coin, intrinsically valuable aspect of it. That might bear out and more people might gravitate toward that, but that is far from a given at the moment. (do keep in mind that this aspect of it is endlessly replicable open source software, so it really boils down to the community, brand, ethos... that is built up around a given cryptocoin network. Another differentiating aspect I suspect we will see more of is innovative distribution/mining models. And then the other thing that establishes a currency is that it has to be the sole coin of the realm in a given realm/economy no matter how small, which we have seen you could say in the darkmarkets, but I think something along these lines but a little more 'legit' is what is really needed to see a cryptocoin take off.)
So it's my view that by saying it is being used as a 'store of value' before it has established utility/gained currency in a significant way in other realms is putting the cart before the horse. And that's why I'm asking if all the people that are just sitting on it, so sure it's going to take off in one way or another, how is it going to take off? What is it going to being used for? Also, that sounds less like a store of value and more like a calculated risk/speculative purchase.
As mentioned in my previous comment, I also see its current primary use as a 'store of value,' i.e. a land grab in attempt to profit from speculative future uses, as being a hindrance to its use in any of those speculative future uses.
Almost everyone using gold does it for it's symbolic value. Those uses cases involve tiny amounts compared to the monetary one.But that symbolic use is so old and it fulfills such an important need of humans that it's momentary value is guaranteed. Albeit something "like more worth than most materials".
>The answer is that we are using it: as a store of value
Money serves no purpose beyond a convenient means for economic transactions and paying taxes. There is no magic behind it, nor is it meant to be a long term store of value. It has to turn over to be useful. So if you're holding Bitcoin as a store of value (relative to what?) then there is no point comparing it to money.
There's also a difference between "saving" and "hoarding".
See the Capitol Hill Baby Sitting Co-op[1] for how real life hoarding of stores of values mean that exchange completely stops. It is a classic currency story.
I don't believe I said that. My comment was a glib attempt to imply that gold has other uses aside from being a token of purchase power that also contribute to its worth/cost: jewelry, manufacturing, electronics/microprocessors, I believe even some lubricative uses in aerospace, pigmentation, medical, and probably many others.
