[Octokiddie]

The strong anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN is still amusing. It goes way back - 13 years or more.

Having read many of these negative comments, I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. Just this thread has examples. It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year.

If that shoe were on my foot, in addition to being annoyed I'd be curious about what I was missing.

Bitcoin doesn't have to do something useful for everyone to survive. It doesn't have to "replace fiat." It doesn't have to be a payment system. It doesn't have to "go to the moon." It doesn't even need an ETF. Bitcoin just needs to fill needs (or wants) not met by anything else. They don't even have to be your needs or wants.

Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true.

I think that's the point that a lot of hostile commenters might be missing.

[neilv]

> I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin.

I thought cryptocurrency was an interesting and promising idea. But I got away from it around the time it became clear the entire space was overrun by wall-to-wall scamming. And it's safe to disregard anyone who doesn't acknowledge that.

If someone says "Yeah, it's wall-to-wall scamming, and other than that, the main use of it is for organized crime transactions, but there's this silver lining of X", then I might listen to X briefly, even though it seems irrelevant at this point.

If someone doesn't phrase their advocacy with acknowledging the massive BS, then I assume the person is just another scammer (and they might be even if they acknowledge it).

[dcolkitt]

I guess what exactly do you define as scamming? In terms of outright fraud, I agree there's a lot. It shouldn't be super surprising that scammers tend to prefer decentralized permissionless financial rails, for the same reason that political extremists and pornographers were some of the biggest earliest users of the decentralized permissionless publishing rails of the early Internet.

But I wouldn't characterize all, or even most of crypto as scams. Gambling, maybe. Are memecoins a scam? I would say they're more like a massively multiplayer form of gambling. Which you might argue is a bad thing, and certainly is dubious from a social standpoint. But if the code is openly public and autonomous, and there's no outright deceit, I don't think gambling is really gambling.

Even beyond that, there's a lot happening in crypto that most certainly isn't scams. You have stablecoins and payment rails like USDC, stores of value like Bitcoin, smart contract chains like Ethereum, decentralized finance applications like permissionless exchanges and lending markets, social applications like farcaster, decentralized AI, and gaming.

Now you might argue that all of these things are stupid and pointless and wastes of money, but that's a separate debate. Of the large projects in these categories almost none are outright scams. They're teams experimenting with new ways to run financial markets or move payments or train models or hedge inflation. Like most technological experiments most will fail. But if that was the criteria for "scam" then the entire startup sector is also wall-to-wall scams.

[lmm]

> Are memecoins a scam? I would say they're more like a massively multiplayer form of gambling.

They're practically indistinguishable from penny-stock scams, and they almost always involve a bunch of outright lies in their promotional materials; the only reason you can argue that many buyers aren't deceived is because lying is so rampant and expected in that space that people take it as given that the claims are going to be lies, which is hardly an argument that it's a healthy activity.

> Even beyond that, there's a lot happening in crypto that most certainly isn't scams. You have stablecoins and payment rails like USDC, stores of value like Bitcoin, smart contract chains like Ethereum, decentralized finance applications like permissionless exchanges and lending markets, social applications like farcaster, decentralized AI, and gaming.

All of which still fails to add up to anything actually working and useful, 15 years in. The best cases people can come up with are sympathetic criminals like people evading capital controls. What minimal practical use of cryptocurrency there was is already in a clear decline; fewer and fewer stores are accepting it for payment, the few efforts at interesting crypto games have already collapsed...

> Like most technological experiments most will fail. But if that was the criteria for "scam" then the entire startup sector is also wall-to-wall scams.

There's a big difference between "most" and "all". The startup sector as a whole has enough successes to balance out the failures and end up as positive ROI (and even then, a lot of startups really are scams - just not all of them).

[dcolkitt]

> All of which still fails to add up to anything actually working and useful, 15 years in.

The first packet switched network came online in 1969. Fifteen years by 1984 almost all the use cases were hobby, and it'd be another ten years before the Internet really started changing life.

Decentralized consensus is a fundamentally new computing primitive, similar to packet switched networks. Developing applications on top of new primitives is hard and long, and there will be a lot of time required just to build out usable infrastructure.

Turing complete smart contracts are only 7 years old. Layer 2 scaling is only two years old. Decentralized exchanges and other on-chain financial contracts about four years old.

[ivancho]

Except with packet switching networks I can immediately point to the problem they are solving and can also make a guess how things will change when we create 000s of bigger and better ones. And the timeline is definitely not what you are making up here - the 70s had immense development of networks and protocols, every telco was building new networks across the country, it was most certainly not hobby stuff, there just weren't that many computers until the 80s.

What problem are we solving with decentralized consensus? How will things improve if we have a giant one? Say every mobile phone was a part of the consensus mechanism, churning Turing-complete smart contracts. Billions of nodes. What do we get out of that?

[lmm]

> The first packet switched network came online in 1969. Fifteen years by 1984 almost all the use cases were hobby, and it'd be another ten years before the Internet really started changing life.

By 1980 CompuServe had thousands of paying subscribers, both home and business - and I suspect they'd invested far less getting there than the amount of VC money that's gone into cryptocurrency. You can say the home users were "hobbyists", but they were getting real value out of the network; online chat or games might not have had a clear business purpose, but they were fun, and that's real value.

I've seen literally one niche for cryptocurrency that people seemed to actually enjoy for its own sake rather than as a crime tool or get rich quick scheme, cryptokitties, and that seems to have proven itself fundamentally unviable (either your collectibles are too cheap to be interesting, or they're too expensive to be fun). Cryptocurrency is not merely wildly unprofitable to date, it's not generating value and there is no indication that it ever will generate value.

[the_gastropod]

This is comically ahistorical

[ivancho]

I meet some people in crypto occasionally, and it's hilarious that most of them no longer talk about technologies, projects, applications - all they discuss is sentiment. "Oh, there's a wave of positive outlook", or "new patterns of participation are emerging". At least it's honest, I guess, instead of pretending that we are changing the world with DAOs or whatever, they are just sizing up the next bubble.

[AlexandrB]

> But if the code is openly public and autonomous, and there's no outright deceit, I don't think gambling is really gambling.

But there's plenty of outright deceit. Many (most?) memecoins are some form of pump & dump. It doesn't really matter whether the code is openly public if the winners are chosen ahead of time by pre-allocating tokens.

Edit: Also actual gambling meets your criteria here. While the source code of slot machines is not public, it is typically audited to ensure it offers the odds that are advertised.

[obviouslynew]

I agree that Bitcoin is that perfect storm of technological and financial obfuscation that's made the ideal air cover for charlatans.

However, organizations contributing to this space are trying to extend the functionality and utility of these technologies. For example, check out Chainlink https://chainlinklabs.com/research,

But if you would like a less self-serving narrative, check out what the WEF https://www.weforum.org/organizations/chainlink/ & SWIFT https://www.swift.com/news-events/press-releases/swift-unloc... think about their decentralized tech.

Other forms of interesting decentralization applications look no further than IPFS & Filecoin. https://protocol.ai/

You're not wrong; there are scams and a lot of snake oil, but don't let that deafen you to what direction thoughtful applied use of the technology can produce.

[baobun]

And yet, you use e-mail?

[amjnsx]

And fiat...!

[Aunche]

I view Bitcoin the same way I view Herbalife. I don't have any issue with the product. I'm bothered by the misleading claims made by proponents to benefit themselves.

[dghlsakjg]

This is really what it comes down to.

I really didn't mind bitcoin before the price exploded, it was a curiosity and interesting experiment.

Since then, it has been used to transfer a lot of wealth using outright fraud, cons, and other criminal means.

I get paid a lot of money (fiat) to program digital payment systems, and have spent time understanding the underlying technology, as well as a holding a degree in economics. I get what crypto is and how it works, and I won't go near it.

Bitcoin isn't inherently dangerous, but the way that the crypto ecosystem convinces people to gamble on a zero sum game they don't understand is absolutely dangerous. For every bitcoin millionaire, there's someone that pumped real dollars into the system. Very real harms have, and continue, to be caused by bitcoin and crypto.

[toenail]

> For every bitcoin millionaire, there's someone that pumped real dollars into the system

Are you blaming bitcoin for gambling addiction and bad investing now? That's funny. There more of that with the USD, by several orders of magnitude.

[dghlsakjg]

> Are you blaming bitcoin for gambling addiction and bad investing now?

No. I’m explicitly not blaming bitcoin. I’m blaming the humans that take advantage of others using the technical complexity of the crypto ecosystem to convince people that it is something that it isn’t.

The fact that you can wreck your life in Vegas or day-trading on Robinhood using dollars isn’t something I like either.

The whole point of the sentence you quoted is that bitcoin isn’t some magical wealth creator as it is frequently sold as. It’s to point out that it is a zero sum game; for every dollar someone has gotten out of the system, someone else has put a dollar in.

[toenail]

> for every dollar someone has gotten out of the system, someone else has put a dollar in.

That's a feature and in the fiat economy the same is almost true. If Bitcoin is a "zero sum game" then fiat is a "negative sum game" for the vast majority of participants whose money is debased.

[mlcrypto]

For every boomer retiree there's a young person pumping new money into the S&P and social security

[dghlsakjg]

That’s not how stocks work outside of daytrading/short term holding.

My ownership of a stock is a claim on a portion of a company’s assets and future productive addition to the economy. The stock market is a positive sum game. If I buy a share of ABC Gold mining company, it’s because I expect them to dig some actual gold out of the ground and expanding the economy. They can distribute a dividend to me after then selling that gold. No one has added any money to the stock market, but I am wealthier.

[npoc]

Same applies to bitcoin - no more net value needs to be invested into bitcoin and the USD price will continue to increase at ~7%, which is the rate at which the USD is being devalued through supply inflation over the last 100 years.

If I lent my bitcoin to ABC Gold Mining like you have, then I could expect to additionally receive interest on my loan.

[obviouslynew]

Well Herbalife is a corporate entity, that has governing leadership that you can challenge its 'claims' because the corporate entity makes them, sells it to people who don't know better etc. Conceptually, that means that Herbalife gives people false information, they take that and perpetuate it in their MLM for their benefit.

Bitcoin, is piece of open source software that was released on the internet 13 years ago running all over the world. With no central governing entity, all driven by software consensus mechanisms.

Would you consider that you just don't like some of the organizations that have built themselves around this network making misleading claims? Rather than the technology itself?

[Aunche]

I used a leaky analogy, so I'll explain more precisely what I mean. When someone tries to sell their MLM, they pretend that they want to help you get rich, but it's obvious that they just want to help themselves. I get the same vibe from Bitcoin enthusiasts. For example, they'll claim that Bitcoin will help the poor in countries with hyperinflation but that seems disingenuous. Perhaps it's not fair to expect the regular Bitcoin holder to actively help the unbanked thousands of miles away, but there doesn't even seem to be a curiosity in the entire Bitcoin community about whether it's actually it's actually used that way, let alone how to encourage adoption and what the macroeconomic implications of this.

[cableshaft]

Perfectly valid view in my opinion. There are a lot of misleading claims out there, to be sure.

[LAMike]

Herbalife is a pyramid scheme... Bitcoin is an open source payment system. Delusional take

[chpatrick]

I think a big component is definitely the bitterness that comes from tech savvy people being aware of when it was just getting started and watching it go from pennies to tens of thousands without buying any. I remember when it was on Slashdot all the time in the late 2000s, the hivemind agreed that it would never lead anywhere, and so I dismissed it as well. There were even Bitcoin Faucet sites where you could go and just get 5 BTC for free, no questions asked.

I still don't own any and don't want to, but there is the demon at the back of my head telling me that I could've just mined some or clicked the button on the faucet. After all we all knew about it. I know that most people wouldn't have held onto it for 14 years, but it's not a rational feeling.

[wlesieutre]

The whole premise of burning energy just for “proof of work” is what I hate.

I work in architecture and year after year the industry is pushing to squeeze every last bit of energy efficiency out of everything. Meanwhile bitcoin is like “BURN SOME COAL TO ACCOMPLISH LITERALLY NOTHING USEFUL! AND KEEP DOING IT FOREVER!”

And the crypto people will always bring up “Mining gold just to make gold bars is a waste of energy too” but guess what I don’t buy gold bars either.

[jojobas]

That "nothing useful" bit is where you don't get it.

Is Taylor Swift useful? Sex and the City? Options trading for Tesla stock?

You could eliminate 80% of the US service sector for not being useful. "Somebody wants to pay for it" is the best criterion and bitcoin fits.

[wlesieutre]

If people want to say “I’m a bitcoin fanboy” to justify it that’d be one thing, but there’s always this insinuation that any day it’s going to find its killer use case that isn’t already solved better by a centralized system instead of only existing to buy in hopes of the price goes up

[738292748]

The killer use case has existed from day 1: remove the middleman. That is banks, or goverments. That's it. There's literally nothing else to it. Speculating on its value, while possible, has nothing to do with its purpose.

[AlexandrB]

And yet here we are, discussing a Bitcoin ETF, which involves plenty of corporate middlemen and has no benefit to the Bitcoin community besides increasing Bitcoin's speculative value.

[jojobas]

You reckon it's a charity to boost bitcoin holders' wealth? The purpose of this ETF is to extract profit, the rest is unintended.

[wlesieutre]

And I’m sure plenty of other people were buying and holding in exchanges like Coinbase already, instead of buying bitcoins in direct person-to-person cash transactions like the decentralization advocates imagine they will

[npoc]

Its purpose is to provide an escape hatch from fiat currency that steals people's wealth, available to everyone in the world, ultimately shutting down the global scam that is central banking.

It is the hardest money that mankind has ever seen, digital, with an issuance schedule that is set in stone - no select few people have the ability to effortlessly print it, stealing the wealth of the rest and corrupting the world at its core, causing third world poverty, endless wars, corrupt media etc.

[the_gastropod]

I think its purpose was to provide fresh blood to the John Birch Society. It seems to be working remarkably well, in that respect.

[jojobas]

For one, a bitcoin wallet can't be seized by fiat by any 3-letter agency of any country. A fair amount of it is speculative, but unlike a pure-speculative ponzi scheme it's rooted in some appreciation of intrinsic value.

[metw02024]

I'm confused by this comment. What do you mean "seized by fiat"? Custodial wallets can and have been seized by government agencies. Cold wallet storage devices can and have been seized. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, only imputed value.

[jojobas]

Nobody can order the bitcoin network to freeze assets of Johnny Wanted the way they can order banks and other financial institutions. Nobody can stop you getting paid even for non-criminal activities the way Mastercard/Visa do.

If you lose or surrender you private key - fair enough, but that's not the same.

[Klonoar]

The first two are pure entertainment and hardly a comparison to an attempt at a new banking system.

[stickfigure]

Not just mining gold - think of the security required to simply hold gold. Those Brinks trucks aren't free.

[LAMike]

Bitcoin is doing more to accelerate the adoption of wasted energy than any corporation on the planet. It is the buyer of last resort, open to anyone.

Compare that to the fiat system, do you get to vote for who runs the Federal Reserve? Can you verify the current supply of the US dollar or the maximum limit of dollars that can be printed?

Very privileged take to assume Bitcoin doesn't "ACCOMPLISH LITERALLY NOTHING USEFUL", when millions of people are using it to save and send for 15 years, and over 100 TRILLION dollars has been settled on the network.

[latchkey]

> I work in architecture and year after year the industry is pushing to squeeze every last bit of energy efficiency out of everything.

So is the entire bitcoin mining industry, it is built into their ROI. Have you not noticed the J/Ghash ratio over the years?

[AlexandrB]

> Have you not noticed the J/Ghash ratio over the years?

This is completely irrelevant because the protocol is designed to scale difficulty with the hashrate. The only benefit of improving J/Ghash is to get a leg up on other bitcoin miners.

[latchkey]

If my operation is earning more ROI, that's my benefit.

[AlexandrB]

The post you were replying to was talking about conserving energy, not maximizing ROI in a zero-sum game:

> I work in architecture and year after year the industry is pushing to squeeze every last bit of energy efficiency out of everything.

[latchkey]

Comparing two apples is boring, it is much more fun to throw an orange into the mix.

[Ekaros]

So the whole bitcoin network now uses less energy than when it started? As that is what efficiency means.

[738292748]

Its for keeping the descentralized network secure, which is of extreme value. So no, "literally nothing useful" is utter bullshit.

[mlrtime]

Architecture isn't useful, it's a waist of resources. Every building should be identical, we just need one type of each building usage type, then we can get rid of the architects.

[mlcrypto]

It's hard for humans to put ego aside and admit they were wrong. Also hard to put emotion aside and forget the pain of missing out from $100 to $45k.

I think there's still an easy 10X to match Gold and 100X is possible if it becomes the world's preferred reserve asset

[epolanski]

Imagine thinking you can prove that an argument is settled due to price movements.

Bitcoin may go to a billion and it won't change the fundamental premise:

You can have ALL the Bitcoin in the world, all of it, and if there's no buyer outside, nobody willing to trade anything for it you have nothing.

Now use the same argument with all the land in US, all the crop in India, all the fish in the Pacific, all the gold in Russia, all the wine in France, all the bakeries in Palermo, all the cars in Sydney.

You farm, you eat, you can make jewellery and tech, you drive.

And yes, it applies to US dollars too (albeit to a minor extent). If nobody wants it you can just stare at dead national heroes on paper, or burn it idk.

Wealth does not come from money, and of all the money, you choose to speculate on the exchange price of a virtual one.

The premise will never change and crypto cultists keep fooling themselves and finding many weak and illiterate to join their ranks.

But any price movement will not change the fundamental issue.

[mlcrypto]

Luckily Bitcoin can be sold on a Sunday afternoon at market price with plenty of liquidity in seconds. Good luck lining up a deal like that with the items you listed.

[toenail]

> Bitcoin may go to a billion and it won't change the fundamental premise:

Haha, bitcoin never even attempted to solve your "fundamental premise", and never made any such promise. Bitcoin is like fiat money in that regard, and different in other regards.

[LAMike]

SCOREBOARD

[AlexandrB]

> I think there's still an easy 10X to match Gold and 100X is possible if it becomes the world's preferred reserve asset

Whats the logic connecting BTC to gold? Why would the two prices be connected in the way you're suggesting?

[mlcrypto]

Since gold reached 10 trillion market cap I am very confident BTC will too. Mainly due to the inflation hedge trade

[danbruc]

Zero sum money transfer from suckers that think that Bitcoin will one day have a breakthrough or are driven by fear of missing out and greed - of course there is another factor of ten and you also can become rich without doing any work - to early[er] adopters. A pyramid scheme.

[TheCapeGreek]

>Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government.

If you start from scratch with a non-exchange wallet and get paid in BTC for something to it, sure. But if you want to get in with any fiat, you're going through an exchange, which means KYC, which means you definitely need the approval of the exchange (and by proxy your local government/tax authority).

It was a simple solve by governments to get crypto controlled centrally by proxy for most users this way.

[cesarb]

> If you start from scratch with a non-exchange wallet and get paid in BTC for something to it, sure.

I believe the original idea was that, to start from scratch, you would just leave the Bitcoin software running on your computer for a while, since that software not only hosted your wallet but also contained a miner. After a while, you would get lucky and receive 50 Bitcoins.

Of course, that stopped working once mining moved to FPGA and then to ASIC; even with GPU mining software, an individual user has no hope of mining any relevant amount of Bitcoin. That bootstrap mechanism is now completely dead, and the only way to get new Bitcoins is to get them from someone, buy them in an exchange, or invest lots of money in specialized Bitcoin mining hardware.

[LAMike]

> the only way to get new Bitcoins is to get them from someone, buy them in an exchange, or invest lots of money in specialized Bitcoin mining hardware.

Have you heard of this new technology called a "J.O.B"? It enables people to trade labor for currency.

The next ten years will be about how to earn Bitcoin through skilled labor, not mining on your PC.

[the_gastropod]

> It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year. If that shoe were on my foot, in addition to being annoyed I'd be curious about what I was missing.

There are MLM’s that have been around for over 100 years. I feel strongly that they’re all complete scams, yet they live on. Maybe I’m closed minded for not joining Amway. But I think I’m just being sensible, tbh.

[xpressvideoz]

What you're missing is something can be criticized even if it fulfills some needs. Drugs, gambling, crimes all satisfy some people's needs but most people have negative view on them.

[staplers]

  Drugs, gambling, crimes all satisfy some people's needs

I've seen the exact same people crying about Bitcoin's "drug use" then turn around and applaud marijuana and psychedelics for their medicinal effects.

I call bs on the "drug" scapegoat. People are salty they work in tech and don't understand bitcoin.

[chii]

> People are salty they work in tech and don't understand bitcoin.

i smell sour grapes from those people. They saw bitcoin very early on, and gave it the dismissal way back in 2008/9. That missed "opportunity" continues to bias them into thinking that their initial assessment must still be correct (for dismissing it early), otherwise they'd have to admit their dismissal as being hugely mistaken.

[kemotep]

Is it possible that you can understand bitcoin and still not like it?

[obviouslynew]

Sure as long as you realize its simply an opinion and not act like it's a fact that it's bad. Fundamentally it feels like every time these threads open up on HN 70% of it is bad faith, repeat arguments.

Don't like Bitcoin's Proof of work properties, check out Ethereum. Don't think that everything needs to be on one central ledger? Check out Polkadot. It feels like so many commenters here put their heads in the sand about an entire class of technology because they're caught up in their opinion as fact.

[kemotep]

An opinion backed by mainstream economic consensus but, yes an opinion. I do not need to utilize heterodox models to justify why a hyper deflationary monetary system is a bad idea. I can base this opinion off economic fundamentals and data points showing the negative impacts such a system would have. But you probably understand this, and have justifications for why the positives outweigh the negatives. I don’t reach that opinion and we likely won’t see eye to eye on that point. You probably made this account specifically to push back on the mainstream opinions of cryptocurrencies.

[staplers]

  why a hyper deflationary monetary system

Bitcoin is inflationary until 2044

[cesarb]

> Don't like Bitcoin's Proof of work properties, check out Ethereum.

Ethereum's move to a Proof-of-Stake system was the best thing to happen to the cryptocurrency world, from an ecological point of view; however, that does not change anything about Bitcoin's energy consumption.

Someone who objects to Bitcoin due to its excessive energy use will not stop disliking Bitcoin just because an unrelated cryptocurrency became better.

[lern_too_spel]

I object to Bitcoin on the fact that governments regulate money, so centralization is guaranteed. Wasting any effort on fake decentralization is objectively inferior because it adds to the cost with no benefit.

[staplers]

  Wasting any effort on fake decentralization is objectively inferior because it adds to the cost with no benefit.

Do you feel similarly about democracy?

[toenail]

Sure, then you're a person who doesn't like how some people solve some problems with bitcoin. That's fair, you don't have to like that.

[staplers]

Sure, that's not the people I'm referring to.

[etherael]

I understand it perfectly and loathe it, not for the reasons people typically do, but because what it pretends to be able to do it cannot, and actually does the opposite of.

[aurareturn]

I hate Bitcoin and weed.

[wsatb]

First, re-read the comment you're replying to. They weren't talking about Bitcoin being used for drugs, they compared Bitcoin to drugs and crime, as the OP said all it needs to do is fulfill a need.

Second, the "you just don't understand it" argument is as old as Bitcoin itself. It's tiring. It's not new, it's not crazy complex...it's understood. It's just useless and ripe with scams.

[block_dagger]

Drugs and gambling do not hurt others. Throwing “crimes” in makes your reasoning weak. Where are you getting your data on the first two? I’m not sure you’re correct.

[npunt]

> Drugs and gambling do not hurt others.

Please spend like 30 seconds of analytical thinking trying to poke holes in this. It's remarkably easy to disprove. The challenge is what if anything we choose to do about the harms that they can cause.

[chii]

Neither drugs nor gambling, in and of itself, harms anyone but the individual doing it.

However, said individual could harm others in the persuit of drugs and gambling when their own income or savings are unable to satisfy their own cravings. But how is that any different from any other forms of harm from crime conducted for other reasons?

[epolanski]

> Drugs and gambling do not hurt others.

They ruin families, neighborhoods, cities.

[Spivak]

If you ever need an example of how drugs genuinely ruin things on a large scale read absolutely anything about the opium wars.

I do contend that "ruining families" is not a thing we should base policy on because it implies both a crazy amount of government intrusion into individual lives and because it imposes rules on everyone to make the nuclear family work.

[quickthrowman]

> Drugs and gambling do not hurt others.

The bad things people do to other people to get money for drugs and gambling are included in the blanket statement “drugs and gambling”.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government.

But then can't you see the irony of writing that sentence when the article title is literally "Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC".

That's the thing that's so baffling to me - if you're saying BTC is so great that it doesn't need the support of government and social institutions, why the push so hard to get an ETF (multiple in fact!) when the rallying cry for crypto has always been "distributed, trustless currency".

[david_shi]

This is circular reasoning. It doesn't need the approval, what it shows is official capitulation to a "distributed, trustless currency".

That's the big news.

[metw02024]

On the contrary... bitcoin desperately needs this approval. The current (and future) price of BTC is absolutely predicated upon the greater fool theory.

The network is dependent on miners. Miners earn bitcoin but spend dollars to create it. They're dependent on price appreciation to provide the liquidity that sustains their business. Without this approval, who is going to continue to pay more for bitcoin?

[etherael]

Or what it shows is official acknowledgment that the rubes bought this narrative whilst if you look at the details, it's effectively a CBDC.

[psychlops]

It wasn't a push, it was a pull.

[epolanski]

> I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true.

Pointless challenge, those aren't good qualities. Also money is worthless, unless you like looking at pieces of paper depicting death national heroes, it's worthless, don't understand why are bitcoiners fixated giving money value.

It's just meant to be traded not hoarded. It had a value when it was pegged to gold. Rich people have companies, real estate, airplanes, art, jewellery, bonds, but relatively little money.

Anyway, literally any other cryptocurrency share these properties. Some even technologically better, yet completely ignored.

[LAMike]

> Also money is worthless

How do you live life if you think money is worthless?

[cornholio]

> Bitcoin just needs to fill needs (or wants) not met by anything else.

That want being, in this case, the need to evade financial regulators and easily move large amounts of money untraceable. There is basically no other thing Bitcoin does better than traditional electronic cash, especially with the transaction fees reaching current values.

Is it a legitimate want? It's a complex question involving personal and political values, but let's just say not everyone who objects about crypto does so because they don't understand its real uses.

[obviouslynew]

By your logic then, Signal is just a method for terrorists and child predators to communicate? Do you hold that opinion of Signal?

[cornholio]

So you are comparing communication privacy to financial privacy for very large money transfers? As I've said, it's a question of political values, but I think you will find the vast majority of people not sharing that point of view.

Also, unlike Bitcoin, Signal ads strong privacy on top of a very functional base product.

[lmm]

Signal definitely makes life easier for terrorists and child predators; the question is whether it has decent uses whose benefits outweigh that cost. (And, while I'm cautiously in favour of cryptography, I don't think that question is by any means trivial). Cryptocurrency has no such positive use cases; the only case where it has an advantage over regular payment methods is crime.

[chii]

> move large amounts of money untraceable.

paradoxically, bitcoin is the worse at this, since addresses are completely public. Unless you, like satoshi, keep the coin in the address and never spend it, any conversion to value that you can spend, such as cash, is going to be tracible.

> Is it a legitimate want?

yes. Unless you can prove criminality, there's the assumption of innocence.

[cornholio]

> addresses are completely public.

Addresses in Bitcoin are pseudoanonymous. Many criminals have evaded prosecution for years (for example, the MtGox thieves) despite moving billions in the clear on the blockchain. You are feigning ignorance about the true nature of Bitcoin which is quite obviously designed to enable very strong privacy, as noted by even by its inventor in the original paper; let's not even discuss things like Monero and ZCash.

[ivancho]

MtGox thieves evaded prosecution because no one was doing tracing back then. Chainalysis got started specifically to link all their activity and is now a giant graph connecting all the "pseudonymous" addresses. And the thieves laundered most of their stolen coin through exchanges, not chain transactions, strange how they didn't want that very strong privacy. There's none of that left on Bitcoin, it's been indexed, clustered and mapped.

Obviously there are technologies which enable complete privacy - and like tumblers, any that prove popular will be shut down, there's just too many negative externalities.

[cornholio]

The state of bitcoin mixers was also very primitive back then, especially given this volume. Today, criminals can use things like the defunct ChipMixer, which distributes private keys funded in advance. So by definition there is nothing in the blockchain to follow, because the handover is done off chain.

The fact that ChipMixer was busted in an international law enforcement operation should indicate to you the nature of the beast. Just like in the case of SilkRoad, there are a myriad copy cats which are still online. It's a small piece of computer code anyone can run. So money laundry on bitcoin to a nearly untraceable level can be done by any service that can setup some kind of network connection and run a bit of computer code.

This is unprecedented in the history of finance and the main practical benefit of Bitcoin other than speculation.

[ivancho]

I disagree with pretty much every point here, wow. ChipMixer provided a little bit of disconnect, but there was a research paper a while back that ran something like 5 transfers through it and managed to identify their mixing transactions with 90% precision. Law enforcement is most likely constantly tracking those, similar to how the NSA runs some significant percentage of Tor entry/exit nodes. Second, recognize the enormous amount of trust required here - that the mixer will actually do proper randomization, that there will be a large number of participants, that they won't keep the logs, that they won't just up and leave with all the money. There's plenty of examples of somewhat established mixers that fail on some or all of these, and you're telling me that instead people will just send their money to be mixed by anyone that can setup a network connection and a bit of code?

[clpmsf]

People will always have a want for more ways/things to bet/gamble on - it just seems to be something in our nature.

[elif]

The only losers in bitcoin are the ones that stopped. Any 5+ year holding has been ridiculously profitable.

In gambling, the longer you continue, the more certain it is that you will lose. Bitcoin is a uniquely ironic form of gambling if it's gambling at all.

[koolba]

We’re still below the all time highs of about $68K so will need 3 more years to see if that theory plays out.

[guiambros]

That's silly. Anyone who's dollar cost averaging bitcoin buys over a long period of time has been incredibly well rewarded. BTC is up 146% over the last 12 months, and up 15x (!) over the last 5 years.

Even if you were slow and naïve and only jumped at the 2021 all-time high, and kept buying during the next 12 months (as one should when an asset you like goes down), you'd have made your money back and then some.

[koolba]

Dollar cost averaging and “Any 5+ year holding” are not the same thing.

[guiambros]

I didn't say buy-and-hold for 5 years. Feel free to do the math; dollar cost averaging over 5 years would still be one of the best investments in modern times.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

I think timing may not work , but given the strict limited supply, this works in the long term.

Of course, this is highly dependent on the "coin"

[czl]

> Any 5+ year holding has been ridiculously profitable.

The more remarkable a short history the more likely it is not sustainable: Beanie babies, tulips, etc.

In a zero sum investment for every win there is a loss. Bitcoin however is highly negative sum. For every win there are far more losses. Who do you suppose pays hourly train loads of coal turned into CO2? How many years now?

[elif]

Your two examples, beanie babies(4-5 yrs bubble) and tulip mania (16 months) did not even last long enough for a 5 year comparison. Bitcoin is turning 15 this year.

[paulpauper]

Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true.

For it to be useful it does. How else does one convert from fiat to btc and back again?

[NicoJuicy]

?

Most of us don't see it as a replacement of cash.

This ETF doesn't mean it's a replacement of cash either.

Just so many people are holding it and there's a lot of money in it, but still less than it's peak. It will probably just go down again without news, as it did before.

It's not that the BTC futures ( since 2018) changed much, I expect a similar end result of this.

Note : I went out in 2017 as I didn't saw it's original purpose being fulfilled and it still isn't after 14 years.

Nobody is talking about paying things with crypto anymore, as far as I know.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_in_El_Salvador

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/why-bitcoin-failed-in-ca...

It should still be popular for criminal purpose though. But that's Monero and some other privacy coins.

[NicoJuicy]

And as expected.

There was so much hype for the ETF, that there's no interest anymore from others to actually buy crypto ( for now)

[jron]

"People want you to do well but not better than them."

[miohtama]

Hacker News was pro-crypto circa 2015 when Coinbase launched.

The change of the tone here is mainly because of the changed audience. Hacker News was originally a forum for founders and hackers. Now it is a general forum for salarymen software developers.

[mekster]

More like people are getting tired of being reminded of missing the boat year over year but they will always be missing the boat thinking it's the top this time. Or those people who suffered loss buying it at the top need reasons that Bitcoin should suck.

I have a feeling Bitcoin discussions can get quite more interesting in here if it had no monetary values but people can be sensitive when money is involved.

[tromp]

HN was pro crypto when it was still an interesting new technology. That changed when it became a speculative vehicle and breeding ground for scams.

[zubairq]

I didn’t know that the hacker news demographic had changed so much. Are there any stats on this anywhere or is it a general feeling that you have?

And if so then where do all the hackers hang out now?

[etherael]

> Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true.

This isn't actually true, BTC requires a certain amount of subsidy every ten minutes from the global economy. If that subsidy is not forthcoming it ceases to function. That subsidy is constantly increasing in terms of purchasing power.

Further, the regulatory authorities of the world have complete power over the transactions that take place on the ledger, and pretty much full visibility into and out of the ledger when it comes to their controlled fiat currencies.

Neither of the above hold true for many other cryptocurrencies, but I'm not interested in shilling for them, because the entire cryptosphere as a whole is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, largely because of attempts to force the above status quo from BTC onto the remainder, which given the multitude thereof, and the ability for them to endlessly replicate and spawn, is basically doomed to failure.

Note: I am well aware that the popular opinion of BTC is not aware of much of the above, but I didn't say "people believe x" I just said "x".

[LAMike]

> the entire cryptosphere as a whole is a wretched hive of scum and villainy

COPE

[yieldcrv]

HN should be a place where bitcoin improvement protocols are routinely discussed

There should have been taproot and schnorr discussions on the frontpage for years

What people are building as betas, there should be ordinals and inscription discussions about their technical implementation

But instead we get these surface level discussions about bitcoin or crypto for over a decade now. People completely missing that there are others who had the exact same information and said “okay this is how I can improve it to more closely fulfill that vision” instead of “harumph! that will never work and I dont like it so there’s that!

[stefan_]

It must be peak irony to write this on the topic of a Bitcoin ETF. None of the technology, all of the speculation.

[FactKnower69]

What Bitcoin is really missing before it can finally take off is yet another layer of fees and rent seeking; can't wait to pay 1.5%(!) of my portfolio every year in expenses :)

[mlrtime]

Blackrock's BTC ETF is .12% for the first year, SPY (The largest ETF) is .09%

You know, if all the BTC haters actually knew what they were talking about we could have intelligent discussions on HN.

[738292748]

This, 100%. Bitcoin has proven its value already, and it's the only tool we have against authoritarian governments that print money and steal as much as possible with taxes. You can ask people in Argentina or Venezuela about that.

[simonw]

What needs and wants is it fulfilling for you?

[latchkey]

I've favorited off this comment for a while now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410

[p4ul]

Thank you so much for sharing this! It's definitely an interesting and valuable perspective.

[killerstorm]

It provides an alternative to banks.

Once you realize that banks are very fragile and abusive, just having this alternative is important.

Banks can deny you access to your money on a whim. Compliance, glitch, failure, whatever. You can't use your money. You can't buy food. You can't pay rent. You can't buy tickets. You can't hire a lawyer.

It's nice to have something which is based on completely different principles.

[reaperman]

I think you'll be amazed at the extent to which BTC will be able to be controlled by strong central governments. I'd be shocked if in ten years there's not granular control over which wallets contain "tainted" bitcoin and cannot be converted to fiat except through actual money laundering. There's been a lot of consolidation of the exchanges in USA, tons of KYC controls in place now, and old-school options like localbitcoins.com or craigslist have disappeared or been nerfed beyond recognizability.

If people no longer "need" to convert BTC to fiat, this would no longer be a point of a control, but until then, governments can already and will continue to grow how much they can control BTC flow.

Some of it is currently very ham-fisted, but there's a clear intent to devalue off-exchange wallets: https://www.coincenter.org/new-crypto-tax-reporting-obligati...

[hackernudes]

What about the lightning network? Or Liquid sidechain? There are lots of people working on scaling bitcoin so that it can be used like cash (low fees and anonymous).

When a user receives a payment in Cash App or Strike over the lightning network there is no way to track where that bitcoin came from. I haven't really tested that out yet, but I find the idea that bitcoin can be the rails of transferring value pretty compelling. Most people can still transact in fiat but with trustless interoperability between banks and service providers. And of course if people are happy transacting in units of bitcoin it can all be done in a trust-minimized way (with tradeoffs available for convenience, etc...).

But to your point, the government could crack down on the app stores and service providers to not support this kinda stuff.

[killerstorm]

Well, it's been 15 years.

The question is more like: Are OK with government control?

Reminder - regulators reviewed SVB reports and found them adequate. Then apparently people found it's insolvent. Does it look adequate?

Do you like a system if bank can become insolvent if people withdraw their money?

That's presumably one of most competent countries in the world.

[reaperman]

> The question is more like: Are OK with government control?

I simply doubt that my opinion, or even that of the majority of the public, would change the outcome of what the government decides to do. They seem to be on a pro-KYC/AML/FINRA/IRS path regardless of public opinion.

[killerstorm]

People who lived under totalitarian/authoritarian regimes often thought their opinions do not matter and everything is already decided.

But, not all people, and many such regimes have crumbled.

Somehow you found energy to spread FUD on this forum, but you don't have energy to form an opinion and defend it. Sad.

[AlexandrB]

I remember seeing articles related to this from a few years ago. I wonder what's going on under the hood at places like Coinbase.

https://news.bitcoin.com/industry-execs-freshly-minted-virgi...

[aurareturn]

That’s a small fraction of BTC holders. The majority don’t care and leave their coins on exchanges, which act like banks but unregulated.

[killerstorm]

People can still choose different jurisdiction, or move when they want, etc, etc.

It might surprise you, but it's way easier to open an exchange account than a bank account.

[ericd]

Many governments attempt to force their populations to keep their savings in the nation's currency, while aggressively devaluing the currency. The richer people in those countries tend to try to get out of it via other currency holdings in offshore accounts or real estate, but the poorer set don't generally have that option. The ability to opt out of that in a way that's harder to confiscate than eg physical gold/USD is very helpful to those people.

[MuffinFlavored]

Me guessing (as somebody who is anti-crypto): they like how it returns ~50-100% year over year pretty much.

I swear I saw some super highly upvoted comments that read as normal + level-headed in r/CryptoCurrnecy that was like "if it goes from $45k -> $100k this year it isn't even that much"

Do you ever hear Warren Buffet saying "122% yearly returns are meh"?

[Timber-6539]

Yep, crypto bros will get in bed with the same banks that screwed them over in 2008 if the end goal means that the price of their coin (ahem) bags.. go up.

The whole Bitcoin 'manifesto' and sticking it to the man is just a ruse.

[obviouslynew]

Or the technologists that push these open source projects forward were abandoned by the very communities that used to celebrate disruptive technologies.

[rafaelero]

Bitcoin is wealth in the cloud. There's immense utility in being able to digitalize your wealth, including higher mobility and, since it is a decentralized network, assurance that it won't be inflated, confiscated and that you will have the freedom to transact it with whoever you want.

[vasilipupkin]

What does that mean ? Most wealth is in the cloud, you don’t need Bitcoin for this. I don’t have any paper stock certificates.

[TimJRobinson]

And yet if you were to visit Iran and attempt to access that wealth you'd quickly discover how little of that wealth is actually yours.

It's not just that it's in the cloud, it's the only form of wealth you can keep digitally AND only you have access and control over it.

Maybe that's fine because you're a good citizen who follows the rules, but some people are born into places where they don't get the privilege of a fair financial system, or the system changes on them.

[vasilipupkin]

But all this is circular logic. You can’t say something is valuable because it’s digital. Why is it wealth in the first place is the question. Wealth is something that represents concrete value.

[rafaelero]

Not really. Most wealth is based on physical stuff like houses, factories and offices.

[epolanski]

Cool.

Going on GitHub and downloading core code and deploying a new coin based on Bitcoin or some other crypto.

I'll call it HackerNewsCoin.

Didn't know it was that simple to create "wealth".

What a foolishness to think that something that has no intrinsic value can constitute wealth. Don't confuse price with value.

It really is true crypto combines all that people don't understand about economy with all that people don't understand about technology.

[WXLCKNO]

Plenty of people have done that and captured some value. Bitcoin has the most secure network of its type and that has inherent value, it's also perceived to have value by millions of people around the world as opposed to your random fork.

Not sure if you see that it's your understanding of the world that's off here.

[epolanski]

You're simply describing consensus, which was the point you missed in my previous post.

Currencies are not wealth, none of them, cryptocurrencies even less.

Money is worthless, rich people don't have money. They have art, companies, land, bonds, cars, boats, airplanes, but very little money.

The financial illiteracy of crypto cultists really has no end.

[jonkho]

Money is a social construct. Other social constructs are countries and borders. They only exist due to social consensus and is a pure social construct. Social constructs do have real impact on your individual well-being though and should not be trivialized.

[mxsjoberg]

art is also worthless. crypto and art is basically the same thing

[rafaelero]

> What a foolishness to think that something that has no intrinsic value can constitute wealth.

Honestly, I am also amazed that humans make something like that happen. But we do. Otherwise gold wouldn't have so much value.

[epolanski]

Gold is crucial in electronics, jewellery, biochemistry.

Also, can't be forked, cloned or replaced by some gold 2.0 with smart contracts or bigger block size.

Seriously, imagine comparing a currency, let alone a cryptocurrency to gold.

Foolishness never ends.

[rafaelero]

Gold was a currency and a store of wealth for a long time for multiple societies (even when most of those use cases you listed didn't exist). If only they had the knowledge and wisdom of epolanski from 2024 they wouldn't have made this mistake...

[cesarvarela]

You can also print dollar bills, and they will have no value either.

[ericd]

BTC's value is the massive network securing it, and the trust in the brand's security and resistance to debasement. Its value lives in peoples' head, similar to many other assets.

[mistercheph]

> combines all that people don't understand about economy with all that people don't understand about technology

I agree 100% with this but it is describing you.

[epolanski]

And you've done an amazing job educating me on where I'm wrong or debating any of my points, haven't you?

[gknapp]

These are some interesting points around its value, but it can absolutely be inflated, no? Given that most of our standards of value are tied to fiats, and that Bitcoin's exchange with said fiats is highly variable, the value of your crypto wealth can totally be out of your control.

Fortunately for most bitcoiners who got in early, it's been variable in a positive direction... But not for everyone.

[rafaelero]

Value fluctuation is not the same as asset inflation. The first relates to how much confidence people have on using BTC to represent their wealth in a given moment. The second is a decreasing of the asset's value keeping overall confidence constant.

[david_shi]

The OG hacker spirit is still alive in the crypto community

[AlexandrB]

The cryptography community, yes. The cryptocurrency community is a bunch of Wall St. bros looking for a new pay day.

[david_shi]

The two are more interconnected than you might think.

[NicoJuicy]

> Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government.

That's only a good thing in dictatorships, not in democracies.

=> I really don't care. It's not a pro in my life and my continent ( Europe)

Additionally, Bitcoin is super duper easy to track

[LAMike]

> That's only a good thing in dictatorships, not in democracies.

Yes, Bitcoin allows you to be a dictator of your personal finances, compared to fiat, a "democratic" system, where people you never voted into power get to press a button and print as much money as they deem necessary to "stimulate" the economy.

[NicoJuicy]

Ugh.

Ok. So when nothing special happens in your perfect currency, it divides by 3 or 4 in value in a year.

Yeah, that seems great! Go for it!

[LAMike]

> Yeah, that seems great! Go for it!

I mean, it is the best performing asset of the last 10 years, so yeah, it seems pretty great to anyone who has a brain.

A 98% cash and 2% Bitcoin would beat the SPY returns for any 4 year period since inception. When making investments, its important to have a long term outlook. Do you just live day to day without any planning?

[LAMike]

> Additionally, Bitcoin is super duper easy to track

Could you tell me who Satoshi is?

Could you explain how you can track who paid you a Lightning Network invoice?

Have you ever written down a seed phrase or made a Bitcoin transaction on chain?

[NicoJuicy]

> Could you tell me who Satoshi is?

Nope, because he's been inactive for 14 years. ( 70% of all accounts are inactive anyways - https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/23/bitcoin-supply-i... )

> Lightning Network

You mean the SQLite database at third parties in some cases? Or the ones hosted at the cloud providers? https://watcher.guru/news/amazon-google-cloud-host-49-of-bit...

I'm not a government, in case you were wondering. I can't track the edge-cases. I don't have access to KYC

Fyi, noticed the mixing services going offline? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash

[LAMike]

> Nope, because he's been inactive for 14 years

If Bitcoin is so easy to track people why don't you find him?

> You mean the SQLite database at third parties in some cases?

Didn't answer my question, but you know you can run a lightning node at home, right?

> Links to an ETH project

What does that have to do with Bitcoin?

[lern_too_spel]

Nobody ever said that regulators move quickly. Bitcoin's only advantages come from temporary underregulation. After the regulation catches up, all that is left is the disadvantages.

The idea that Bitcoin can continue to operate with the disapproval of a functioning government is naive.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

There's probably more comments promoting and defending Bitcoin on HN than ones questioning it.

The question I have is why do commenters feel the need to respond to any comment about Bitcoin that is not a (sometimes subtle) promotion or defense of it.

A reasonable person might think it's because Bitcoin is only valuable if increasingly more and more people buy it. If it's not increasingly popular or if, God forbid, everyone holding Bitcoin were to try to sell, all at once, it's Game Over. (Some folks will lose money and all Hell will break loose.)

If the first statement is false, and Bitcoin is valuable if it's unpopular, then there should be no logical reason why anyone would try to "defend" Bitcoin on HN. Why would anyone care. It's valuable even if no one is buying, right. If it lacks popularity, then this is of no consequence. Ignore it.

Alas, there is no way to test if second statement is true, i.e., it is Game Over if everyone cashes out their Bitcoin, other than this actually happening. Even still, there is no logical reason anyone would need to "defend" Bitcoin on HN if someone else believes this to be true. Why would it matter if other people hold or sell their Bitcoin.

And yet, there are consistently HN voters and commenters who seek to "defend" Bitcoin from anyone who has doubts or asks questions. That, in and of itself, may raise suspicions even more.

"Bitcoin doesn't have to do something useful for everyone to survive. It doesn;t have to "replace fiat". It doesn't have to be a payment system. It doesn't have to "go to the moon". It doesn't even need an ETF."

But somehow it needs to be constantly defended in every electronic discussion. It needs constant promotion. It needs hype.

No one can simply state "I am not interested in Bitcoin" in a discussion without triggering some "response". Regardless of the merits of Bitcoin, or absence of them, that is fscked up. Red flag.

In case anyone gets confused, I am not suggesting that any commenter literally states "I am not interested in Bitcoin" and nothing else. I am using a hypothetical example of a seemingly benign statement to illustrate the idea that _all_ comments about crypto which are not positive are quickly "countered" by Bitcoin true believers. Here is perhaps a better example. Someone states, in so many words, that Bitcoin requires large amounts of electricity. Is this untrue. It is explicitly negative. It seems quite benign yet this sort of comment will almost invariably trigger a "defense". To some, that is a red flag that there is something suspicous about these "arguments" that people feel compelled to make about Bitcoin.

Check out the film "Bitconned" if you can. Slow start but hilarious in the end. What happens when some petty criminals accidentally come in contact with hordes of "true believers". online. If I am not mistaken this was the SEC's first successful prosecution re: crypto.

[samsin]

>No one can simply state "I am not interested in Bitcoin" in a discussion without triggering some "response". Regardless of the merits of Bitcoin, or absence of them, that is fscked up. Red flag.

If the topic is some positive news about a technology (Bitcoin or otherwise), and your only contribution is "I am not interested in this" then you'll probably trigger a response. Might also be time to revisit the commenting guidelines.

[TapWaterBandit]

> No one can simply state "I am not interested in Bitcoin" in a discussion without triggering some "response". Regardless of the merits of Bitcoin, or absence of them, that is fscked up. Red flag.

Lol this is ridiculous. If you popped up on a hacker news thread about abortion rights and said "I am not interested in abortion rights" would you also say it is a "red flag" regardless of the merits (or lack of merits) of abortion?

If you truly have no interest then lurk. But if you choose to talk (noone is forcing you to!) then don't be surprised at responses.

[738292748]

Well yeah, there's no need to defend it. Literally nothing would change. I'm just against bullshit arguments such as

"any random shitcoin did this, therefore BTC goes in the same bag," or

"no! We should absolutely live in a totalitarian dystopia and have governments that track every move we make. God forbid <money launderers> <terrorists> <some other bullshit>"

[AlexandrB]

> no! We should absolutely live in a totalitarian dystopia and have governments that track every move we make.

Ironically, cryptocurrency will usher in governments tracking every penny we spend since it's all public on a distributed ledger.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

More likely, so-called "tech" companies will be the ones most interested in tracking every move/transaction, a practice already familiar to them, as they can put that information to commercial use, selling online ad services. Unlike the government, they have invested in the infrastructure to gather personal information about citizens and use that information _for profit_. Nor are they bound by the same restrictions on use of collected data from citizens and laws that can potentially protect citizens against government spying. If a government wants the data from "track every move" it's guaranteed they will, to the extent they feel the need, try to have Big Tech provide them with the information they seek. History has shown they have already been quite successful at getting the information they want with Big Tech's assistance. It's only going to get continually easier as more and more information becomes centralised in a few Big Tech companies.

[PascLeRasc]

You don't seem as curious as you say you'd be, framing all criticism as hostility or simple antagonism. I don't think you've considered what you're missing not trying to understand why people don't care about bitcoin.

[mlrtime]

They care enough to enter every HN thread that has positive news on the industry to shit on it. Valid criticism is fine, but insightful crypto criticism on HN is rare.

Fine, you don't like crypto. Say something new or insightful or skip the comment section.

[cowthulhu]

My struggle with it is mainly that it doesn’t seem to accomplish any of its goals very well, while having really big downsides. A few examples:

It’s difficult to use it for circumventing government controls, since so many of the on and off ramps are subject to regulation and it’s difficult (and expensive) to transact truly anonymously.

It sucks as a store of value since it’s so volatile.

Similar to the point above, it’s increasing subject to government regulation (namely the US) in a de facto sense.

The UX sucks, and mistakes can be super punishing. If you make a mistake then you have no recourse and everyone will applaud the code working as intended, unless the mistake is really big in which case the “code as law” folks will fork the network to rollback the mistake.

In the same vein as the item above, scams are rampart and there is very little recourse once scammed. As a result, it’s tough to see actual widespread adoption as a currency (and not just a speculative asset sitting in a brokerage account somewhere) since the level of technical sophistication needed to use it as a currency without risking wiping yourself out puts it way out of reach of most people.

It sucks for transactions, since the fees are so high and make small transactions bit feasible.

Proof of work sucks and is super wasteful.

There are probably plenty of other ways it misses the mark I’m missing as well. It frustrates me because it feels so fatally flawed, but people take it so seriously. If popular sentiment was that BTC was just a fun thing to speculate on, in the same realm as TSLA or buying short dated calls on the VIX, I would be totally on board! But trying to act like it’s a serious currency that can compete with USD or whatever just seems somewhat delusional. I think blockchain and ETH style smart contracts are super cool tech, and could have super productive applications that legitimately make the world a better, more efficient place, but BTC in its current form doesn’t check that box for me.

[demondemidi]

Nah. You’re over speculating. The real reason for the negative sentiment is that HN is mostly smart people.

[lkt]

That's absolutely not the case, HN is mostly people who think they're geniuses because they can program computers. Read the comments on any post about a topic you know a lot about and you'll see it's full of people talking very confidently about things they know very little about. There are of course some very smart people mixed in, but it's hard to pick those people out from the noise.

[CPLX]

Not really.

Most people who are observant are well aware that there’s deep and enduring demand for ways to gamble and speculate.

It’s really easy to recognize Bitcoin filling that role like the neighborhood numbers game, pachinko, online poker, and tulip investing all have at various times in history.

We just don’t like it.

[waprin]

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

[ric2b]

The tulip bubble is wildly misunderstood, it's actually quite an interesting story about the origin of futures contracts.

It lasted only a few months, there was no long term investing on tulips.

[seydor]

hn is all about the vc ecosystem which deals in dollars, so this is understandable. same with banks

[gonzo41]

Real money, like USD or Pounds etc are social in their construct. People trust them. And they don't like, but will trust banks. btc and other coins are 'trustless', yet hostile to use, and the ecosystem is filled with the most shady people on the planet all looking to scam our parents.

No one really trusts bitcoin. And that's on of the big bitcoin problems.

Also, it doesn't live up to any of it's hype. But others have enumerated all of those faults.