[cloakandswagger]

Nope, it still seems as hostile as ever. Every top voted comment on a thread concerning crypto will be people cheering its inevitable demise and mocking its naive supporters.

I can only imagine it's a mixture of jealousy and sour grapes from missing out on crypto's rise, but it feels strange that a forum dedicated to tech is so angry and dismissive towards a really interesting new technology.

[and0]

I think it's incredibly interesting and the the tech / concept is extremely impressive. (We still don't even know who thought this up, do we?)

That being said, I'm one of the people who have always mocked bitcoin. There are so many obvious problems with it, and some of the people in the cult built around it lack a hilarious amount of self-awareness.

Congrats to those who speculated successfully regardless. I'm not salty about people who jumped on $AMD over a year ago, or any tulips throughout history.

[wyldfire]

> That being said, I'm one of the people who have always mocked bitcoin. There are so many obvious problems with it, and some of the people in the cult built around it lack a hilarious amount of self-awareness.

Don't lump supporters in with a "cult." Just observe: it's been here for a long time and if there were a way to turn it off it would've happened by now.

IMO it's never going away. ICOs will come and go. Altcoins will come and go. Bitcoin is here to stay. It's not tulips, it's not a ponzie scheme.

Will it obsolete credit cards or cash? No, that's unlikely.

Will it obsolete precious metals? No, that seems unlikely, too.

Will its value stabilize against fiat currency and become a real safe store of money? That's unlikely to happen soon IMO but maybe in some decade or two?

Bitcoin is new and the use cases don't completely 100% overlap with cash, credit cards, bearer bonds, stocks, precious metals, contracts. But it does line up really well with some uses of each.

The defeat of bitcoin would only happen if its mathematical or functional model collapsed. For example: transactions execute Too Slowly, disk space required for node operation became Too Large, node operation became Too Expensive, hashing algorithm no longer considered Safe. Transaction speed, disk space, computation -- for the most part these are all fairly negotiable/reconsiderable by the humans who see some value from bitcoin's continued operation. If global changes make these things not work, the market will find a balance. See all of the recent pushback regarding transaction speed/cost and how best to solve the problem. Even if we end up with Bitcoin[0], Bitcoin[1], Bitcoin[2], I would argue that each of them Are Bitcoin and individually and collectively continue to illustrate bitcoin's success.

EDIT: actually one huge risk could be united global censorship by treaty -- this would destroy a lot of its value and utility (but the network would never stop, it would serve the black market exclusively).

[leereeves]

> but the network would never stop, it would serve the black market exclusively

All the computers required to keep Bitcoin running would be an easy target for law enforcement.

[wyldfire]

shrug, difficulty adjusts, asics get smaller, cooler, enclosures designed differently, miners hide them in drywall or wherever we hide prohibited stuff these days.

[and0]

Imagining the scene from the end of Goodfellas, with Lorraine Bracco flushing handfuls of asics down the toilet.

[leereeves]

If Bitcoin becomes such a fringe currency that only criminals use it, what value will it have? Even criminals need to trade for legitimate goods.

[owebmaster]

Criminals have customers so their customers would exchange his money for BTC with another criminal before. I guess it is pretty much like how it works today.

[stale2002]

So now law enforcement has to shut down every Bitcoin node in the world, including the ones that are run exclusively on tor in 3rd world countries, AND shut now any new ones that pop up?

[smokeyj]

> or any tulips throughout history.

Not salty huh LOL

This must be infuriating to you. All these ideologically driven libertarians, creating the future of finance and trade, while making a ton of money - and totally not caring what Statists think. #WINNING

Edit: Crypto works because people opt-in. People see value in voluntary trade that can cross borders without being shaken down. The petro-dollar works as long as the US has a gun big enough to threaten the world with. That won't last forever.

[rothbardrand]

Consider that those "obvious problems" (which you don't name) may be misunderstandings on your part, of the technology, or how economics works on a global scale.

Bitcoin is a very well designed crypto-economic system. It took smart work from people with backgrounds and understanding in both.

It's easy to mock because it's different from the standard quo and Statists seem to think that Only government can do money properly (which is kinda funny when you think about it) and so the criticism of bitcoin that I've seen has never been very good.

[mikeash]

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are extremely interesting, for sure.

Technologically, they're interesting because they're a clever solution to difficult problems, and there's a lot to learn from how they work.

Sociologically, they're interesting because they seem to attract a lot of "move fast and break things" people to an area where that attitude works poorly, and the result is an ongoing stream of scams, heists, and other failures. There's a lot to learn here in terms of what not to do.

The technological side seems to be fairly well understood at this point, but the sociological side constantly comes up with new ways to be ridiculous, so naturally the discussion now focuses on this.

[and0]

I didn't name the obvious problems because they've been talked over to death at this point, typically in that most-upvoted first post you mentioned initially.

I think the largest issue with Bitcoin is precisely what you probably admire it for, judging by your description of its detractors: I don't think the average consumer wants an unregulated currency. People like having a central authority that enforces laws around their currency. People enjoy the benefits of a dollar that doesn't fluctuate wildly in value. People enjoy the conveniences of modern banking systems.

There's a tendency for libertarians to ignore very obvious examples of contradictions in their world view, because any of these examples can be dismissed using random ideological purity tests. Namely, the idea that the market is entirely separate from the government, or that a government formed by (often very imperfect) representative democracy or even brute force is any less pure of a "force" than market forces.

Modern financial systems developed largely because people wanted them. Consumer protections laws were implemented because people voted for them and would be very upset if they were taken away. People who step into voting booths are still "rational actors". People who disagree with your world view (just about literally everyone) are still rational actors.

At the end of the day advocates of cryptocurrency have tried everything to get people to start using or accepting Bitcoin and no one has, despite no real government intervention. Hell, the whole point of your original post was to lament that the most popular opinion is that cryptocurrency is dumb. The market has said no, why have you not started listening?

(Also: Mining is massively wasteful. Transactions are expensive. It's overtly complicated and unpleasant to handle. A lot of people lose all their money because sites get hacked. Also, all the issues brought up by this whole forking incident.)

[wyldfire]

> I don't think the average consumer wants an unregulated currency.

Ok, so it will continue to apply to just the niche that's okay w/unregulated currency.

> People like having a central authority that enforces laws around their currency.

I will concede that this is a risk. Every time a theft occurs, there's temptation to try to "solve" the problem of thefts. Once a powerful state endorses a black/grey list of coins tainted by theft (even if it's offered as a "hey this is opt-in, we won't legislate this list"), it will start us on a slippery slope towards centralization and perhaps prohibition/censorship.

> People enjoy the benefits of a dollar that doesn't fluctuate wildly in value.

Yes, bitcoin may continue to be stuck in a niche like equities or something other than currency.

> People enjoy the conveniences of modern banking systems.

Yes, and bridging the gap between human/trust/legally secured systems with mathematical ones like bitcoin is a challenge. And yet, businesses have arisen to handle this challenge.

Ultimately, the "but it's not really suited for what that guy Fred said it could do" arguments are orthogonal. It doesn't matter that what Fred said was an exaggeration or completely false. Bitcoin will keep churning out new blocks regardless. And yes, people may eventually say to themselves "oh hey if it will never do that then I should sell!" And the value will drop. But what if it were back to USD parity? Would that be bad? Or just the new norm? I contend it's the latter.

[and0]

I would agree the existence of cryptocurrencies is a net positive, aside from the environmental waste of mining them, though that's an impossibly tiny blip compared to anything else humanity does.

I enjoy watching developments related to cryptocurrency, my big post there was mostly in response to flawed (and often outright ironic) claims by it's defenders along certain ideological lines.

[MarkPNeyer]

> People like having a central authority that enforces laws around their currency.

I think most people don't give a damn about this or think about it one way or the other. It's too abstract for them to think about. Most people use dollars without thinking about what they are or where they come from.

> People enjoy the benefits of a dollar that doesn't fluctuate wildly in value

Yes, this much is true. Of course, if you hold bitcoin constant, you could claim it's the dollar that fluctuates wildly. If reality itself is unstable, than a stable currency starts to look more like a clever trick than something that is real and maintainable.

If you told people "the dollar is stable, but at the small cost of rapid centralization of wealth under the control of extremely powerful actors who aren't accountable to the law", they might see things differently.

What if all our political stability has, at its root, become a result of volatility moving out of the financial sector and into basically every other facet of human existence?

> . People enjoy the conveniences of modern banking systems.

I think you underestimate how much people hate modern banking, which does not give a shit about consumers. They're sick of paying fees to access their own money.

> At the end of the day advocates of concurrency have tried everything to get people to start using or accepting Bitcoin and no one has, despite no real government intervention.

I don't think you really understand the goals of this group. Many of these people don't give a damn if others use bitcoin for transactions, and they have no real interest in using it themselves. Yes, some people want it to replace the dollar in day to day transactions. Others are content for a store of value that has a tendency to appreciate over the long term.

> The market has said no,

Transaction volume has grown tremendously in the past few years. How is this the market saying "no?"

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all

Do you think "there's just a bunch of greater and greater fools, all passing around a potato that surely will blow up any day now?"

It's honestly hard to understand your perspective here. If it's still around in a few years, will you still think it's all fools speculating? What kind of evidence would change your mind on this?

[t0mbstone]

> They're sick of paying fees to access their own money.

The average fee per transaction with bitcoin recently spiked as high as $5.5 USD. That is utterly absurd for a currency that is supposed to solve the fee problem that all of these people are so sick of.

See: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...

The worst part is that the fees are only going to keep going up, the more popular bitcoin becomes!

[and0]

Most people don't think about the value of the dollar or the conveniences of modern banking because it's become such a transparent part of our daily lives. That would very obviously change if it went away.

I also lament the "rapid centralization of wealth" but fail to see how Bitcoin or your worldview in general (as the opposite of a "Statist", I'm assuming) would do anything except accelerate this process.

Most people don't hate modern banking. Most people also don't pay fees to access their own money, except ATM fees (which are often reimbursed). This is a problem with banks anyway, aka the free market, not fiat. If banks are "too abstract for [most people] to think about" I don't see how they could figure out managing bitcoin, and would likely defer to private banking institutions for Bitcoin as well. Hell, they people already do store Bitcoin wallets in centralized systems, with often hilariously poor results.

Pro tip: when your arguments are to literally start questioning reality, you've lost. However it is refreshing to see a libertarian actually admit the sort of mental gymnastics their worldview requires.

Also, judging by the wild fluctuations in transactions day-to-day, I'm assuming this is all trading volume. I remember when a few legitimate businesses started accepting Bitcoin (Newegg, and uh.. that one taco place?) and I'm not seeing any real correlation where it should matter.

[MarkPNeyer]

> Pro tip: when your arguments are to literally start questioning reality

Saying "reality isn't stable" is a description of the dynamics of reality, not a claim that realty doesn't exist.

> However it is refreshing to see a libertarian actually admit the sort of mental gymnastics their worldview requires.

I've yet to see any evidence you think would change your view.

The evidence that would change my view on this is simple: bitcoin fails completely, with a price going to zero.

Is there evidence that would change your view?

[Retric]

The central problem is non reversible transactions and storage on PC's. Computer security means the value can drop to zero at any time and using a 3rd party to store your value means you A lose any benefit of coinX vs. WoW gold or whatever, and B run the same risks as their security can fail at any time.

Now sure people can and have made (and lost) a lot of money, but in terms of actual usage it's never going to see mass adoption without first solving the computer security problem.

PS: However, what I think bothers people is it promotes people pumping coinX in the same way they would time shares. That's simply a drag on any online community.

[cloakandswagger]

The vast majority of fiat currency are 1s and 0s stored on computers, the only difference being:

1) Bitcoin is tracked by a global, immutable ledger, whereas you have no idea what kind of potentially krufty, in-house software your bank is tracking your money with.

2) There is a finite number of Bitcoins that can ever exist, whereas 100 trillion new units of your fiat could be created at the push of a button.

[Retric]

My arguments are in no ways limited to bitcoin. They directly related to all crypto currency's. Anyway...

1) US federal reserve keeps track of all US currency held by banks and the transactions between banks. The banks you use are a separate layer on top of this system, but because of the FED's ledger transactions are ultimately reversible.

2) The actual number of bitcoins that currently exist is in practice not really known. If Satoshi Nakamoto's wallet did a transaction there would suddenly be a lot more bitcoins in play, devaluing the other coins. So, effectively the number of bitcoins can increase at any time.

Further, the number of existing dollars means there is no meaningful way to suddenly devalue them. At worst inflation can rise, but you can swap currency before that ends up costing you 2% thus making it irrelevant.

[lz400]

I don't know about others but to me anyone that uses a term like "statist", "cuck", "libtard" and stuff like that automatically makes me disconnect.

[cloakandswagger]

Note to other readers: The comment in question only used the term "statist", this poster just implied the usage of the 4chan ad hominems for increased effect.

[lz400]

Yeah, statist carries the same kind of close minded biased teenage baggage as "cuck", at least to me.

[gnaritas]

> and Statists

Your bias is strong, it's far more likely you're the one with misunderstandings than the OP. The unbiased don't go around calling people statists; nation states are the norm in the world, they're properly just called people. As the anti-statist and the one who isn't the norm, the label more appropriately belongs on you. Humans are tribal animals, always have been and always will be, nation states are merely the current expression of this normal natural human behavior.

Bitcoin is simply not attractive to the ordinary person because they don't have this anti-state bias that makes it so attractive to you. The dollar is incredibly stable, that stability comes from a central authority who actively manages the currency to keep it so, and people like it that way. As a currency, Bitcoin is terrible and doesn't come close to approaching the utility of the dollar. Bitcoin is little more than a speculative tech commodity attractive to a small minority of people who think they can either make money or escape the state. It has a place, a small one.

[njarboe]

Murder is also a "normal natural human behavior", especially when one has a strong tribal bonds and are dealing with those outside the tribe. Suppressing or sublimating some normal natural human behavior with culture is probably a good thing. Choose wisely.

[and0]

Murder isn't really a "normal natural human behavior". Deferring to people's desire for a stable currency in a modern economy does not mean normalizing murder.

Seriously: what?

[njarboe]

I am not advocating for murder or the fall of the state. I was suggesting one think about normalizing tribal behavior. "Choose wisely". Death rates due to violence vary dramatically in non-state societies[1], up to 60% is some cases. I was just pointing out the problem with saying that just because things are "natural" (however one would define that), they are the best way of being. With such a sensitive subject I guess one must be much more clear about intentions.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-e...

[paulmd]

A huge amount of capital-L Libertarian philosophy centers around advocating things that can be broadly defined as "antisocial behavior". For example, Rothbard was highly in favor of total parental ownership of children as chattel slaves (including sale), and assassination markets are a recurring theme in such ideologies. It's a fantasy Mad Max scenario where everyone can imagine themselves as the warlord and not the slave begging for a cup of water.

(whereas soft libertarianism tends to be "Republicans but with legal drugs")

And more generally speaking Libertarians tend to take a "try and stop me" philosophy to all such problems (including any tragedy-of-the-commons situations). And of course they insist that you stop them without using your "statist" laws, so this becomes a de-facto argument for anarchy or rule of the richest/strongest. It's deliberately creating a scenario in which nobody will be able to stop whatever travesties occur and rationalizing that it should happen because that's what the market decides.

Obviously this example pre-dates modern Libertarianism a bit, but nothing epitomizes Libertarianism quite as well as Crassus. Crassus owned a fire brigade back in Roman times, and when your building caught fire he'd make you an offer. You can either sell your property to him for pocket change and his brigade will put it out, or you can watch it burn to the ground. Unsurprisingly people usually chose the "pocket change" option over "nothing", and he became immensely wealthy.

Libertarians tend to imagine themselves as Crassus and think this sounds like a great idea - many of them are probably excitedly muttering about free-market fire brigades and fire insurance at this juncture. But past people weren't stupid, they reacted to the same pressures we do. The same drives to take long-tail risks that are improbable but have huge downsides exist today. And in the horrible statist world this is a completely solved problem - you pay property taxes that fund the fire department and nobody loses their house to a freak accident, or gets ripped off at a moment of disadvantage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting

You can see a modern example of this today in Colorado Springs, where Libertarianism is huge and taxes are so low they can't fund basic services. Now you have to pay to turn your street lights on. Same thing is happening with fire brigades in some areas - if you don't pay a separate premium the fire department won't come put out your house.

So yeah, welcome to Libertopia, coffee is over on the left, sex slaves are down the hall and on your right. Don't worry, the sex slaves definitely aren't going to be you or any of your loved ones. If they are, the transaction was probably approved by their new owner's friendly neighborhood Arbitration Corporation as repayment for your debts. Don't worry, you'll always retain the option of a "kinetic appeal" of your case from Blackwater - if you've got the cash.

This sounds like a great idea to Libertarians because there's no force or coercion at all, since Libertarians uniquely define force/coercion as coming from the state. Whereas having to pay tax is like ten megahitlers on the oppression scale.

People have hated paying taxes since time immemorial. Even Jesus had to tell people to shut up and pay their taxes. Libertarians are just pretentious enough to try and build a whole philosophy around it, with hookers and blow (literally: it's not a coincidence that Libertarian philosophy spends so much time on slaves and legal drugs).

[gnaritas]

No, murder is a rare human behavior practiced by a tiny tiny minority of people and is considered quite abnormal. Normal human behavior is to not murder others. Normal is a synonym for typical, does the typical person you know go around committing murder?

[abrkn]

I've been exclusively working with Bitcoin related startups since 2011. I do not find the HN discussion hostile. Cryptocurrency is barely at beta quality. Skepticism is healthy.

[wyldfire]

I'm not seeing the same thing you are.

It seems mostly positive to me. Stories about cryptocoins get upvoted. Good discussion is generated, it seems like the audience is much broader than /r/bitcoin (and related subreddits). It's a great opportunity for HN to learn more about cryptocoins.

IMO it's totally appropriate to talk about: worthless altcoins, worthless ICOs/assets/tokens, skepticism about ethereum (especially wrt centralization).

[opportune]

I wouldn't say hostile, more skeptical. I think bitcoin and some altcoins (siacoin and ethereum in particular) are really cool technology. But I don't have faith in cryptocurrency as anything more than a digital remittance system with side applications in money laundering, the drug trade, etc. And as of right now I have yet to be proven wrong about this. Bitcoin in its current state won't be able to replace normal transactions due to fee and speed issues.

I've also seen a shifting of goalposts within the bitcoin community from the utility of bitcoin being a censorship-free digital currency to a digital store of value. Personally I am not at all interested in the concept of "digital gold" because there's nothing inherent about bitcoin that makes it better digital gold than other altcoins.

Of course, there's also the fact that new altcoins seem to constantly be improving on each other. This is good in general, but as a side effect it makes comitting to one single coin seem like a short-sighted move.

That said, I would love for a cryptocurrency to be able to scale to the point that it becomes a viable part of the global economy. It would be amazing for privacy and anti-authoritarianism. At present, bitcoin cannot scale to this level, though.

[zamalek]

Opposing opinions make for good discussion and having such opinions does not make you a jealous sour grape. Yours is likely the first hostile comment I've seen surrounding cryptocurrency on HN.

[cloakandswagger]

Look further then. These comments are abundant, and they aren't intelligent discourse so much as celebrating failures in crypto and mocking its supporters.

[zamalek]

> celebrating failures in crypto

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. Crypto and algorithms do not have feelings.

Regardless, discussions about discussions do not make good discussions.

[maxerickson]

You should call em cybers.

At least there the existing usage didn't mean anything. And it would still sound stupid and check all the boxes like that.

[shallot_router]

I feel like I've seen a lot more "why are we wasting huge amounts of electricity calculating *-illions of SHA256 hashes for an imaginary currency used to buy drugs and guns" type comments lately. They're almost as annoying as the "Bitcoin will replace fiat and bring about the new libertarian-formalist era!" people.

[owebmaster]

> I can only imagine it's a mixture of jealousy and sour grapes from missing out on crypto's rise

If it was this, we would jump the wagon now. Now why do you think that this isn't happening is what makes né curious.