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by jeezfrk 1186 days ago
magical thinking about very un-tethered and highly manipulated currency is not a help.

imagining it will change for an entire economy ... is quite irrational.

no magic will make a constantly shifting ice floe into boring bedrock.
1 comments
shagymoe 1186 days ago
The current system is more irrational, unless you're benefiting from the corrupt system. Bitcoin is democratic and you vote with a node.
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roarcher 1186 days ago
Yes, and its voters vote for their own profits, which makes it swing wildly. Being "democratic" doesn't make something immune to greed.
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shagymoe 1186 days ago
It's clear you don't understand how nodes or "voting" works. There's no mechanism there which would induce wild swings.
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roarcher 1186 days ago
I do, actually. I never said there was a mechanism that induces swings--there doesn't need to be one. The users do it through speculation, just like with any other asset, only it's worse with Bitcoin because it isn't tied to anything of real value, even theoretically (unless you think wasted CPU/GPU cycles are valuable). Being "democratic" doesn't magically safeguard against that.

I'm not a fan of the fed and I think some sort of decentralized currency would be great. Bitcoin was a good idea and I'm glad we're experimenting along those lines, but it's a failed experiment. It's never going to work as a mainstream currency. Maybe some future iteration of the cryptocurrency idea will be the solution, but Bitcoin ain't it.

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latchkey 1186 days ago
Bitcoin has been using ASICs for over 9 years now.

Maybe you're thinking of Ethereum, which just moved off GPUs last year and as a result, destroyed the economics around mining with GPUs. So, that whole wasted cycles argument doesn't really hold up any longer.

Bitcoin is a store of value. I can borrow against it as collateral, which gives it real value in finance.

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roarcher 1186 days ago
> Bitcoin has been using ASICs for over 9 years now.

Uhh...okay? My point is obviously that it's a waste of energy. If someone manages to mine it using vacuum tubes powered by an ox on a treadmill, do I have to mention that too?

> Bitcoin is a store of value. I can borrow against it as collateral, which gives it real value in finance.

I'm not disputing that some people are foolish enough to agree to park their money in it. That doesn't make it a stable place to do so, which is, you know, a slightly important quality in a currency.

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