[pmarreck]

First of all, it’s spelled “Bitcoin.”

Second of all, there are many many cryptocurrencies at this point and they are all thriving/competing with one another across various measures. Since fiat is incapable of competing with anything except on relative value, fiat is doomed to fail.

[ben_w]

Fiat currency is competing very well in a category I really care about: “things which have existed for more than 15 years and which I can expect to still be around 15 years from now”.

Sure, fiat currencies can hyperinflate with less than 15 years’ notice, but 15 years from now I expect most fiat currencies will be similarly valued and most cryptocurrencies to be as gone and forgotten as a geocities homepage.

[bonestamp2]

@ben_w

You think bitcoin will be gone in 15 years? It's already been around for ~10 years and it's just starting to reach mass awareness. If it survived ~10 years in relative obscurity, please explain how it's going to be be gone in 15 years now that it's well known?

[duozerk]

Yes, it has reached mass awareness and now maintaining the network consumes more electricity than Ireland (https://powercompare.co.uk/bitcoin/). If the current rate continues it'll consume all the world's energy by 2020.

I don't know if it will be gone but something's got to give at this rate.

[fullshark]

It’s failing to serve its primary use case as a currency. It’s now a speculative investment vehicle with exorbitant transaction fees. I struggle to see how that’s going to last.

[testvox]

Couldn't you say the same thing about gold? It manages to survive.

[fullshark]

Good point. I don't have a strong refutation of it. The main advantage of bitcoin over gold is that you can transfer it anywhere in the world to a potential anonymous recipient, which is why its main success stories so far have been in shady businesses. The current main advantage(s) of gold over bitcoin is it's still a lot easier for the average person worldwide to acquire and sell it, cultural tradition, there's been a few recessions where gold has at least held firm so it's trusted as a store of value.

So if bitcoin's competition is Gold (and not your local currency) it would need to get a lot easier for laymen to acquire and sell (I'm not just talking bay area engs, I mean like the Venezuelan farmers, which is why bitcoin enthusiasts trump up any and all reports of the like). The segwit x2 fork was at least an attempt at that, and coinbase has done good work reducing frictions. The 2nd and 3rd will take years but could happen.

I just feel like at this point all of bitcoins gains in the past year have been driven by wild speculators looking to make a quick buck, which tells me that when the recession hits they will dump their holding and btc will tank. This will make people less confident in btc as a store of value, and will consider it instead to be a wildly risky investment vehicle, which it is. At that point, it will default to its only proven use case thus far: anonymous worldwide financial transactions.

disclaimer: I have a smallish % of my portfolio in both gold and btc.

[CydeWeys]

> The current main advantage(s) of gold over bitcoin is it's still a lot easier for the average person worldwide to acquire and sell it

I don't think this is true at all? All I have to do to acquire Bitcoin is sign up for an account at an exchange, link my bank account, and then hit the buy button. It's exactly as easy to acquire as stocks.

Contrast with physical gold, which I wouldn't know where to acquire.

[ben_w]

In the third world, quite a lot of people don’t have a bank account, or at least not a conventional one as we would understand them. A common alternative is M-Pesa, which is phone based, and I don’t mean smartphone: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

[fullshark]

It's very true for most people, especially in the third world. And you can do exactly what you described for e-gold as well.

[Scea91]

If your logic was sound, it would basically mean, by argument of induction, that anything that exists for some time will exist forever.

[soVeryTired]

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

[bonestamp2]

I'm not suggesting it will last forever, I'm just saying it has already survived far longer than most people realize and therefore it's more resilient than people probably realize.

That said, I think saying that bitcoin will be gone in 15 years is a bit like those people who thought the internet was just a fad. People who "get it" understand its usefulness and as long as there are enough of those people then it will remain.

[Scea91]

It depends... I have no doubts that cryptocurrency will be around in 15 years. But Bitcoin? I am not so sure.

[ben_w]

Being “well known” solves precisely zero of the things which causes software projects to fail.

Being seen as a “low-risk-high-return investment” attracts developers, but only until it stops delivering that promise.

That said, my claim is that most will fail, not that all will fail. You may think that’s weasel words, but I will not accept a currency that even has a 10% chance of failing in 15 years (and if you think that’s harsh, imagine being a bank and taking a 10% risk of default on a relatively short 15 year mortgage), and judging by both http://deadcoins.com (looks like 600 entries, I stopped counting at 200) and the Wikipedia claim that there are over 1172 currencies, that risk is much, much higher than 10%.

[pmarreck]

http://www.rapidtrends.com/history-of-fiat-and-paper-money-f...

I see your list of cryptocoin failures and raise you a list of fiatcoin failures (granted, the latter list, which is much longer, was accumulated over a much larger timescale...)

[bonestamp2]

That's fair and you're probably right about most. I just wouldn't skip out on bitcoin because most other coins will go away.

Bitcoin is the google of cryptocurrencies... it's going to be the leader for a long time.

[ben_w]

I’d describe Bitcoin as the AltaVista of cryptocurrencies: an early lead, people will remember it, but not fundamentally all that great and liable to be replaced as soon as someone invents a good (and trusted) alternative.

It might survive… but there’s no way I’d risk money I couldn’t afford to lose the way I would with any G20 economy’s fiat currency.