So, what do you think about BitCoin?

[roadworx]

the worst thread to necro

 

6 hours ago, AndrewB said:

 

Have you ever heard of the phrase "give credit where credit is due"? My predictions were made on these forums many years ago, and have been extremely accurate.

your predictions have yet to come true, actually - bitcoin has yet to reach 100k per coin, though i do suspect that it may in the future. however, even if they had become true by now, your prediction in this thread is still both absolutely absurd and completely detached from reality for a number of reasons.

[Mr. Freeze]

Bitcoin is an inherently deprecating asset- it will hit 100k it's just a matter of when. That doesn't excuse the fact that by the time it does Earth will be a barren husk. 

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

On 1/8/2022 at 11:03 AM, AndrewB said:

Bitcoin will replace the US dollar as the world's currency. It could be an ugly transition, with wars and attempts at banning and regulating it, but ultimately the world will be forced to give in and accept it. And it will an usher an era of prosperity and world peace.

This is easily the most ridiculous thing I've read this week. Do you think the world is a Michael Bay film? Get a grip.

Edited January 9, 2022 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[kristus]

Since my last post in 2019 I've learned more about it and it is pretty much just a load of wank. 

[SOSU]

Bitcoin bad vs Bitcoin good

A 6 year long Doomworld debate :o!!

I only know that with how things are going Crypto will be just like Chinese history, when China unites (Banks) it will later be divided (Decentralization) and then it will be united again (Some "Big Coin", either Bitcoin or some other one that isn't as popular or doesn't even exist yet that will take the world by storm) and then the cycle beigns anew.

[printz]

The topic of blockchain disgusts me (especially when it takes over all the mainstream computing topics), but in the interest of not becoming an old fart, I really should plan some time to learn about it all.

[Major Arlene]

until I can buy things like my groceries with it, I'm going to consider crypto as a whole as an item looking for a use case, because all it's generally been used for as of now is money laundering. decentralization/unregulated currency always sounds great until some rando blockchain wallet steals your stuff and then there's nothing you can do. or you lose the password to your wallet, or....

[Astronomical]

1 hour ago, Major Arlene said:

until I can buy things like my groceries with it, I'm going to consider crypto as a whole as an item looking for a use case, because all it's generally been used for as of now is money laundering. decentralization/unregulated currency always sounds great until some rando blockchain wallet steals your stuff and then there's nothing you can do. or you lose the password to your wallet, or....

Crypto has found a use case, you listed it above.  Calling Crypto Currency a "Currency" is a misnomer, it's just retail stock trading for people who unironically wear fedoras post 2012.  The US dollar doesn't randomly crash The US dollar is stable enough to be used as a currency, imagine if as you are buying gas and in the middle of the transaction you find out that you didn't pay enough money because the 20 dollar bill you handed the Clerk is worth the equivalent of 50 cents now.  That would be what buying things with crypto will be like until mass adoption that will never come because no one wants to invest until it's safe, but it won't be safe until enough people invest. 

 

Also as much of an issue as I have with the American Dollar, using it doesn't actively destroy the environment in the same way crypto does.  

[AndrewB]

2 hours ago, Major Arlene said:

I'm going to consider crypto as a whole as an item looking for a use case

 

People were saying the same thing about email in the 80s and 90s. "Sure, it sounds good in theory, but what can you actually do with it?" A major difference is that you can place your bets directly on its success this time around; this wasn't the case with email.

 

But I think its use case its basically this: A better scoreboard to keep track of who's rich and who's poor.

 

Only in the next few years will many people realize how important this is.

[Gez]

46 minutes ago, AndrewB said:

People were saying the same thing about email in the 80s and 90s.

No, they weren't. Email was already widely used professionally in the late 1970s. The 1980s and 1990s are when it started to become adopted for personal use.

[AndrewB]

Whenever it was, mainstream attitudes toward disruptive technology early in their life are generally the same "Sure, it sounds fancy, but what can you actually use it for? I don't think it's going to work."

[Astronomical]

7 minutes ago, AndrewB said:

Whenever it was, mainstream attitudes toward disruptive technology early in their life are generally the same "Sure, it sounds fancy, but what can you actually use it for? I don't think it's going to work."

"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” 

[Biodegradable]

Andrew does have a point when it comes to newfangled technologies being scoffed at when they first came about only to become widely-used later. There is a possibility that cryptocurrency could become far more commonplace rather than as just a weird electronic token that bored rich pricks use to scam people with. After all, the technology is only just now beginning to catch fire among the masses and the validity of it being a useful alternative currency to the average person has yet to be fully realised at this point. Who knows where it might go in the next few years. However, I sincerely doubt it'd ever replace ordinary, government-regulated money. You'd have a very hard time trying to convince countries like the US that have currency sovereignty to just give up that kind of power.

Edited January 10, 2022 by Biodegradable

[Gez]

See, the trick about disruptive technologies is that they introduce a more efficient way to do something. Email is faster than paper mail. Bitcoin and friends, on the other hand, are deliberately inefficient by design. The only thing they disrupt is attempts to avoid wasting energy pointlessly.

 

I guess what it is more efficient for, is managing a Ponzi scheme. The value of the Bitcoin comes from the demand for it, and the demand for it comes from people convinced by early adopters that it's cool and good and the future. Every Bitcoin adopter becomes a Bitcoin proselyte, and this can keep working for a while but we've yet to find a Ponzi scheme that can last forever.

[Kristian Nebula]

Crypto will do to all asset classes what the internet did for media. At first, internet was thought of as a separate media besides radio, tv. etc. Fast forward 25 years and what happened? It absorbed them all and now they are all more or less dependent on it. Crypto will do the same for all asset classes - everything ends up being tokenized and recorded into a blockchain. There will be separate networks, that will be connected with different blockchains acting as bridges between the various "walled gardens".

 

Platforms to tokenize real estate via NFT's are being built. Same thing goes for crypto-to-stock-to-crypto. Tokenized stocks will allow you to buy a 0,1 of an Amazon share if you can't afford a full one. Cross-border payment- and settlement layers are being tokenized. Industrial blockchains are being built to verify authenticities of products. Voting platforms to prevent voting fraud are being built on the blockchain too. Central bank digital currencies are also on the way and being tested in various countries. China has their digital yuan already in use, and is slowly replacing cash by first existing with it while cash is slowly being used less and less. These are all very different type of technologies than what bitcoin is, their energy usage is minimal and they don't need and ever-increasing amount of resources to keep the network up & running. 

 

This is the fourth industrial revolution and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Best to try your best to get your share of the ride!

Edited January 10, 2022 by Kristian Nebula

[AndrewB]

1 hour ago, Gez said:

Bitcoin and friends, on the other hand, are deliberately inefficient by design. The only thing they disrupt is attempts to avoid wasting energy pointlessly.

 

Proof-of-work systems like bitcoin are "inefficient" in the same way that militaries are inefficient. Nations spend considerable portions of their GDP to build up massive armies and fleets, only to never use them.

 

The "wasting" of energy on bitcoin is for one purpose and one purpose only: To guarantee and protect the 21 million bitcoin limit against any and all attempts to change it (to counterfeit new bitcoins into existence). To this end, the security of bitcoin is absolutely unrivaled by any competing system that humans have ever discovered. The details on how and why this works is an entire essay in itself, but the best way of summarizing it is that bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm is the only known way to convert real-world scarcity (energy) into digital scarcity. The rationale behind this is that digital scarcity can never truly be guaranteed in itself, as there will always be some creative new way to defeat copy protection. Therefore, true digital scarcity must come from the physical world. This was the missing piece, and the key reason why attempts at creating a digital super-money before bitcoin had all failed.

 

 

1 hour ago, Gez said:

this can keep working for a while but we've yet to find a Ponzi scheme that can last forever.

 

The reason why bitcoin isn't, and can never be a ponzi scheme, is that a ponzi scheme at its core requires that promises be made that can't be kept indefinitely, paying returns of early adopters using capital of new adopters. For this reason, a ponzi scheme must continue to rise in value in a stable and continuous manner, and can't tolerate even small setbacks without collapsing. This is clearly not the case with bitcoin, as it has survived and recovered from many enormous crashes of 80% and 90% in its earlier years.

 

Bitcoin can never become a ponzi scheme because it promises nothing. Sure, some of its supporters might promise pie-in-the-sky returns, but the asset itself does not. Bitcoin could turn out to be a passing fad, but passing fads are not ponzi schemes.

 

However, there can be ponzi schemes built around bitcoin, in the same way that Madoff's scheme was built around dollars. One example of a possible "bitcoin ponzi scheme" that might already be in operation right now is the crypto.com token (CRO).

Edited January 10, 2022 by AndrewB

[Mr. Freeze]

1 hour ago, Astronomical said:

"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” 

 

Don't do Bozo dirty like that, he provided entertainment unlike NFTs. 

[holaareola]

 

10 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

Andrew does have a point when it comes to newfangled technologies being scoffed at when they first came about only to become widely-used later. There is a possibility that cryptocurrency could become far more commonplace rather than as just a weird electronic token that bored rich pricks use to scam people with. After all, the technology is only just now beginning to catch fire among the masses and the validity of it being a useful alternative currency to the average person has yet to be fully realised at this point. Who knows where it might go in the next few years. However, I sincerely doubt it'd ever replace ordinary, government-regulated money. You'd have a very hard time trying to convince countries like the US that have currency sovereignty to just give up that kind of power.

That last bit is the key point for me. People seem to vastly underestimate state power. I find it very hard to imagine the state not using that power if virtual alternative currencies ever truly become a threat to the banking system or sovereignty.

 

Just now, Gez said:

See, the trick about disruptive technologies is that they introduce a more efficient way to do something. Email is faster than paper mail.

And cryptocurrencies being more like email is a core argument from the crypto camp. It is in some ways already email to the traditional banking system's paper in terms of operational efficiency. SWIFT is quite shit even now, the stories of someone I knew who used to work there were surprisingly bad. International bank-to-bank transfers are nowhere near where they should be in the internet age. Agree however with you re. energy inefficiency and ponzi dynamics.

 

18 minutes ago, Kristian Nebula said:

Crypto will do to all asset classes what the internet did for media. At first, internet was thought of as a separate media besides radio, tv. etc. Fast forward 25 years and what happened? It absorbed them all and now they are all more or less dependent on it. Crypto will do the same for all asset classes - everything ends up being tokenized and recorded into a blockchain. There will be separate networks, that will be connected with different blockchains acting as bridges between the various "walled gardens".

 

Platforms to tokenize real estate via NFT's are being built. Same thing goes for crypto-to-stock-to-crypto. Tokenized stocks will allow you to buy a 0,1 of an Amazon share if you can't afford a full one. Cross-border payment- and settlement layers are being tokenized. Industrial blockchains are being built to verify authenticities of products. Voting platforms to prevent voting fraud are being built on the blockchain too. Central bank digital currencies are also on the way and being tested in various countries. China has their digital yuan already in use, and is slowly replacing cash by first existing with it while cash is slowly being used less and less. These are all very different type of technologies than what bitcoin is, their energy usage is minimal and they don't need and ever-increasing amount of resources to keep the network up & running. 

 

This is the fourth industrial revolution and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Best to try your best to get your share of the ride!

Agree the underlying technology has a big future (fourth industrial revolution hype much though!). I was surprised to notice I'd already posted on the previous page pre-necro and still pretty much agree with what I wrote: blockchain, not crypto. Everything you are describing could be implemented without an ever-appreciating virtual currency.

[Astronomical]

34 minutes ago, Gez said:

I guess what it is more efficient for, is managing a Ponzi scheme. The value of the Bitcoin comes from the demand for it, and the demand for it comes from people convinced by early adopters that it's cool and good and the future. Every Bitcoin adopter becomes a Bitcoin proselyte, and this can keep working for a while but we've yet to find a Ponzi scheme that can last forever.

This is why I am so critical of Bitcoin, I don't want anyone left holding the bag in that regard.  It's easy to be critical of Andrew here, but he is a potential victim of Crypto.  

 

6 minutes ago, Kristian Nebula said:

Crypto will do the same for all asset classes - everything ends up being tokenized and recorded into a blockchain. There will be separate networks, that will be connected with different blockchains acting as bridges between the various "walled gardens".

The reason why the internet took off was it's practical benefit and universities seeing the utility, adopting it.  Accepting crypto as a currency is like accepting stock as a currency.  The Gas analogy is shows the problems with that.  Ultimately it has no purpose other than to create bubbles and is the greatest piece of satire of the modern economy.

 

 

[RonLivingston]

I would really want to try investing in bitcoin but i dont know how to do it

[Bridgeburner56]

On 1/10/2022 at 3:48 AM, AndrewB said:

 

Have you ever heard of the phrase "give credit where credit is due"? My predictions were made on these forums many years ago, and have been extremely accurate.

Easy there Alex Jones

Bitcoin (or any crypto) is not a currency and is highly unlikely to ever be used as one. At the moment it is a speculative asset class at best and until the value stops wildly changing that the drop of a hat this is not going to change. The irony is that the only way that crypto currencies will become widely used in everyday transactions is if they are backed by a central authority, ie become centralised. 
Until things like this stop happening "The crypto lost about $10,000, or more than 17%, in a 24-hour period from Friday to Saturday" it will remain relegated to scams, money laundering and trading illicit/illegal goods (in terms of actual purchasing power). 

[Gez]

1 hour ago, AndrewB said:

Proof-of-work systems like bitcoin are "inefficient" in the same way that militaries are inefficient. Nations spend considerable portions of their GDP to build up massive armies and fleets, only to never use them.

Have you read the news at some point during the last, I don't know, ten thousand years? Try to find a year without armed conflict within the last decade. Or the last century.

[Kristian Nebula]

51 minutes ago, Astronomical said:

The reason why the internet took off was it's practical benefit and universities seeing the utility, adopting it.

This is a good point, the mass adoption of blockchain technology is what I described there earlier. Crypto assets are another iteration of blockchain technologies, and the use cases are many, only some of which I've described in my previous post. The tech has so many different valuable use cases than just a simple pump & dump currency -type, which will eventually be regulated away anyway. The native tokens of each chain are crucial for the existence of the blockchains themselves for transferring value in & out of and between the chains. It's very easy to misunderstand "crypto" as a buzzword just as the currency use case, but the meaning is much, much broader than that. When these new technologies are implemented in existing structures of industry and trade, seemingly nothing changes to the everyday joe regarding assets and trade of assets, but the underlying structures that are used for different asset classes will run on blockchain instead of conventional systems because of the many benefits of the tech. Sort of like a new digital sewage system where all the value moves in real time, frictionless unlike many of the current systems like SWIFT, that are antiquated. Crypto is part of the much broader digitalization of society (IoT, IoB and other transhumanist crap). 

 

Bitcoin was the first, and for some reason it's the most talked about in mass media and most known too because of it's notorious volatility and long history and all other things conversed in this thread already. However, there are much more advanced technologies that are faster, very low energy cost (read: sustainable) and based on totally different code and algorithms, with their own native tokens that have utility in the networks they are used in.

[Bridgeburner56]

4 minutes ago, Kristian Nebula said:

The tech has so many different valuable use cases

Blockchain has been around for a decade and I've yet to see a viable, genuinely useful use case for blockchain. Humans (for all their faults) are pretty good at innovating and the fact that no blockchain related tech has become ubiquitous speaks volumes. I do think that something useful can come out of it but it's hardly the panaea fans tout it to be.

[Astronomical]

8 minutes ago, Kristian Nebula said:

Bitcoin was the first, and for some reason it's the most talked about in mass media and most known too because of it's notorious volatility and long history and all other things conversed in this thread already.

It's because early on bitcoin had a use, buying drugs back when it was 18 cents a coin was valuable for for people, no blockchain monopoly money has been able to do that, and now just exists to hog electricity and for people to speculate on it.

[Kristian Nebula]

Just now, Bridgeburner56 said:

Blockchain has been around for a decade and I've yet to see a viable, genuinely useful use case for blockchain. Humans (for all their faults) are pretty good at innovating and the fact that no blockchain related tech has become ubiquitous speaks volumes. I do think that something useful can come out of it but it's hardly the panaea fans tout it to be.

 

I recommend researching deeper on the subject, you might be amazed at all the different projects with use cases in development. Of course it's like looking for a needle in a haystack if you start going through the 12,200 or so different crypto projects at Coinmarketcap. After regulation there will most likely be much less, as the many scams will simply go away after they don't have access to exchanges. World Economic Forum recently listed a bunch of projects in their crypto paper that they released late 2020, mainly for use cases in different banking systems. Looking at the top 100 at Coinmarketcap and going through their white papers gives an idea for sure. But like with the internet in 1990's, we are still rather early and most likely many of the promising projects of today won't be remembered in the next decade. Something's cooking under the lid for sure anyway, and only time will show what it is. :)

[Major Arlene]

52 minutes ago, Kristian Nebula said:

After regulation there will most likely be much less, as the many scams will simply go away after they don't have access to exchanges.

lmao

edit: to clarify, there's a lot of reasons I don't believe this but one of the main ones is that you have folks like this pushing rug pulls that happen every hour of the day in crypto. and no one does a thing to stop it. This is a video I found that pretty well explains this sort of behavior. 

 

 

[PsychEyeball]

The only thing I take out from Bitcoin is that it drove up the prices of PC parts like a geyser and as a result, Bitcoin can eat my butt. All its doing is waste away valuable electronics and electricity that lots of people could benefit from just so that a few select people can get rich. The common people do not benefit from Bitcoin at all.

[Doomkid]

In an era where any nation with two brain cells to rub together is trying to reduce their carbon footprint, a currency that is tied to raping Earth just doesn’t make sense. Even if it DOES blow up big and is mainstream in 20 years, it will be right on the cusp of the moment where the last fucking drinkable glass of water on the planet becomes acidified, lol. What’s the point of pursuing the path of decentralised currency all the way to the point of self-destruction? If it used 1/10th (or less) of the power it does now, I could kinda, maybe see an argument for looking past it, even though I still wouldn’t agree..

 

When you invent a new technology that burns fossil fuel faster than we can frack (and thus add yet another turd to Our Catbox Earth), all the little “yeah but this other aspect is super cool guise!!” stuff falls to that wayside.

[PsychEyeball]

Off topic @Doomkid but I like your new Zappa avatar. Now if there was one other person who'd ramble on to no end about that it would be him.

 

On one hand, I'm sad he left us so soon but on the other, I'm glad he's not seeing the stupid as fuck things that are happening right now. The torture never stops indeed.