[Nursie]

I tend to measure bitcoin by how its proponents sell it. It has failed at all of these things -

  Being a fast/cheap payments network
  Being a decentralised cash equivalent
  Being a store of value

The shift hasn't already happened - large businesses that have accepted bitcoin in the past have almost all stepped back from it citing a variety of problems, but mainly boiling down to it not being worth the effort, and nobody using it.

And why would they? It's inflationary in theory and speculative in actuality, anyone that actually thinks BTC is the way of the future would be a fool to part with it.

[Melting_Harps]

> ...anyone that actually thinks BTC is the way of the future would be a fool to part with it.

Namely these mainly Silicon Valley based Billionaires: Jack Dorsey, Peter Theil, Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz, Tim Draper. Add Mark Cuban in there, too if you want, but he's not SV based.

Seriously, if you want to put your money where your mouth is I can essentially prove your 1st/2nd points right now. The 3rd will take longer as a store of value is relative to the period you bought, so by default needs time to accrue value.

I'm game if you are, here is my address if you want to make it happen:

3FeN7m31dksxmGhXTMRM9ggxbEcPnfUDHy

[Nursie]

I have no bitcoin and would never give one red cent to the shabby, frequently fraudulent outfits that call themselves exchanges in order to obtain any.

You have fun now with all that name dropping. The track record of cryptocurrencies so far has quite thoroughly shown me and most of the world AFAICT that those points are a bust. It's worse than the systems we already have, in pretty much every way.

I note you don't actually address the points made either.

[Melting_Harps]

> I have no bitcoin and would never give one red cent to the shabby, frequently fraudulent outfits that call themselves exchanges in order to obtain any.

Not that I entirely disagree with your sentiment, but do you realize the biggest exchange in the US/World is actually a YC backed venture based in Silicon Valley?

You're the one that said they were 'fools to be parted with,' yet these are the very VC titans of the Silicon Valley most of you adore, I just took the time to name a few who you were referring to. I personally don't care, they're just like any other person to me.

> I note you don't actually address the points made either.

Not if I'm not paid to, no; I'm a professional, and I'm compensated for my labour/skill set, why would I bother to if I'm not compensated for my time/effort?

I wouldn't ask you to build me a iOS app that I think currently is not available because 'Apple sux, lol' and expect you to do so solely because of my views may contrast with your own. I know you are paid well for what you do, so why ask such an absurd request?

Moreover, I could just prove it to you in practice far more readily rather than just provide a written counter-argument. But you have declined.

Again, this comes down to not wanting to base any of your assumptions beyond anything than just simply stating them to be fact; there seems little to no foresight or effort in them and they seem mainly sensationalist and reactionary.

What's even worse is how broadly you guys generalize things, rather than say: right, I don't understand how this technology benefits me directly, but I can see how it would given the circumstances of someone else. That's my problem with most of these ill-informed criticisms, you cannot see beyond your own position and circumstances, often until it's too late.

Sidenote: Had you purchased BTC 8 hours ago when I made that post, the 'store of value' of your purchase would have yielded an increase in 8% in a matter of hours while everything else in the stock market and fiat currencies is tanking.

[Nursie]

> Had you purchased BTC 8 hours ago when I made that post, the 'store of value' of your purchase would have yielded an increase in 8% in a matter of hours while everything else in the stock market and fiat currencies is tanking.

Wow, now you're using the massive volatility as if it's some sort of benefit for something you're selling as a 'store of value'

If I'd bought a month ago I'd be down 50%.

You really are off on one.

Also that's hilarious "I won't address your arguments on the internet because I get paid for that, so I'm just going to tell you I already won the discussion without actually taking part".

LOL. Amazing.

The foresight you claim has had over ten years to play out now, and we've just had failure after failure after failure. The world has not been changed by it. It's time that the players in this space demonstrated real benefits or stopped the grandiose claims. Preferably both.

[ChainOfFools]

cryptocurrency is what alchemy would look like if it appeared in 2008 instead of the 13th century. Both are the work of people who work up ever more complex technical arguments from fundamentally invalid premises, who try to reify these prwmises by endlessly tweaking their implementation apparatus instead of rethinking their assumptions from first principles.

both phenomena even ascribe these first principles to color coded documents purportedly authored by mythical, pseudonymous departed sages, the emerald tablet of Hermes trismegistus and the white paper of Satoshi nakamoto.