[stuffbyspencer]

Someone created Bitcoin. It was a neat idea and people played with it. When the first pizza was bought with Bitcoin, I wonder how the creator felt? "Oh cool, real world use!"

Then Bitcoin bubbled. People panicked and jumped on board without researching, Bitcoin went up a bazillion %. I wonder how the creator felt? "Oh wow... Lots of people want this!"

Then the bubble burst, price went down, people got mad, but, most importantly, Bitcoin inspired others. I wonder how the creator felt? "Oh huh... This is really changing the world..."

Now, the problems are rearing their heads. Energy consumption, 51% attacks, scalability issues, etc. I wonder how the creator feels? "Oh dear..."

[ this is, of course, assuming the creator is still alive ]

It just boggles my mind that this weird internet currency exposed something so powerful in society: The intense desire for personal wealth that one truly owns.

[lumberjack]

> The intense desire for personal wealth that one truly owns.

Not at all. It's the desire to get rich quick without lifting a finger. Also philosophically speaking, "wealth that one truly owns" as in "wealth that is not dependent on others" is not a thing. If your wealth is in Bitcoin, you are trusting in fellow Bitcoin users and your wealth is entirely dependent on their feelings about the cryptomarket. That is hardly a better safer store for your wealth.

[stuffbyspencer]

> Not at all. It's the desire to get rich quick without lifting a finger.

I disagree with that. Bitcoin did not start off with get-rich-quick schemes. It started off with a core bunch of people who wanted independent options to wealth. One of the major issues we're going through today [ in terms of tech-misinformation ] is how everyone assumes cryptocurrency & blockchain are just buzzwords that people only got interested in to make money & scam. Not true. Bitcoin started off with a completely different ideology among the early adopters before it got to where it is today. Don't look at the current trend of youtube """educators""" [ read: hype-beast / scammers ] and think that's what drives the development.

> "wealth that is not dependent on others" is not a thing

That's actually a very good point! I wouldn't necessarily agree to your ending statement of whether it is / isn't a safer store for one's wealth, but I do agree that wealth needs dependencies. I guess I should have made my statement to be more along the lines of: "Independent wealth OPTIONS where users can control their dependencies."

[lone_haxx0r]

I prefer depending on the market instead of the state dictating how much my money is worth.

[aidanlister]

Why? The market is dumb (in a technical sense). The state is constantly monitoring and adjusting. It’s like saying you trust a car with a brick on the accelerator over a self drive Tesla.

Sure the Tesla makes mistakes and kills someone every now and then, but I’d take that over the brick.

[lone_haxx0r]

> Why? The market is dumb (in a technical sense). The state is constantly monitoring and adjusting.

The market is relatively 'dumb', but its decisions are based on human expectation and applied peacefully through voluntary transactions. The state is relatively 'dumb' too, but it's also evil most of the time, and its decisions use violence to be committed.

Also, when the market is wrong, some people may lose money (specially those that were the most wrong), but the system corrects itself. When the state is wrong, the error accumulates because the system can't self-correct.

>It’s like saying you trust a car with a brick on the accelerator over a self drive Tesla.

The market is much like a machine learning algorithm. I say the market is the Tesla AI and the state is a drunk driver.

[ubersync]

The Bitcoin "bubble" has "burst" at least 6 times now. Which one were you refering to? Every time it recovers and reaches another all time high in a couple of years. Being the nascent but potentially world changing technology, it might take a few years to realize its true market cap. And along the way, we will see a few pumps and dumps. Its just normal.

[googlemike]

I've yet to see a single legal use case for bitcoin.

[mikekchar]

Bic Camera in Japan at one point used it as their "point" system. Unfortunately you had to have one of their wallets, but essentially if you bought stuff with them and you had registered for the bitcoin rewards, they would give you some bitcoins. You could also transfer your own bitcoins into the wallet. You could then buy stuff at the store with it at some nominal rate. I thought about buying a computer with bitcoins because when you could still mine with CPUs, I heated my apartment mining bitcoins (then I lost interest ;-) ). Honestly, this is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping bitcoin would turn into. When Japan outlawed crypto currencies, the Bic Camera thing disappeared (or it's possible it disappeared earlier... I wasn't paying much attention).

[michaelscott]

An alternative form of payment in countries with hyperinflated currencies, a means to make fast international payments (far faster than Swift), an investment (debatable) vehicle that exists outside the control of the finance sector, certainly an upward social mobility tool for many miners in developing countries, and a general store of wealth vehicle (in no way different to gold in this regard).

[kspp]

How is all of this possible when the network is barely able to support half dozen transactions a second? It's not even enough to cover one shopping mall, let alone some "countries" or the whole planet.

[michaelscott]

I didn't say it could run a country's currency supply. I said it was an alternative to a country's hyperinflated currency, and it would be one of many. What normally happens on the ground in such a situation is that the average person will use an array of different currencies that are accepted in their environment in order to make up for the country's standard (so in Zimbabwe for example, people will use a mix of the USD, ZAR and a number of other currencies in their day-to-day lives).

Bitcoin is just another alternative. Yes you're not buying a loaf of bread at the corner store with it, but it's definitely useable (and is used) for other types of payments.

[aidanlister]

FYI Swift v4 is in trial and has realtime payments.

[stuffbyspencer]

I'm referring to the most recent one that I believe most are familiar with: when Bitcoin reached ATH of $20,000 and then plummeted to $4,000 [ I think that was the lowest... ]

I'm not against BTC, and I'm not saying it's dead, I'm just pointing out the obvious crash that recently happened :^)

[jdijdhud]

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks[

[arisAlexis]

wow what a hate comment really. you totally miss all of the pain points that Bitcoin addressses

[stuffbyspencer]

lol, I think you need to re-read what I wrote and not have that "hate" implication going through your mind.

I'm not against BTC, I love blockchain & decentralization, I toy around with many cryptocurrencies myself. I'm not ragging on anything with my comment, just making an observation about events and attaching how I would feel if I were the creator / catalyst for said events :^)