[shredfvz]

I'm sorry, but your comment seems blinded a bit by ... I'm not sure what the right word is? angst, self-hatred, jealousy? There's a lot of negativity in general coming from the HN crowd towards BTC, I'm guessing because everyone here was more than capable of installing the original Satoshi client and mining early on, but chose not to or didn't hear about it. With BTC now on the rise, of course it all seems so obvious, and oh so unfair.

Everyone had the chance to mine in the earliest of days, that's certainly true for me and I sometimes kick myself about it. Hindsight is 20/20.

[antiscam]

Well, rather than armchair psychology, you could consider the points I made themselves. Do you think there is a good reason for the world to transfer massive wealth to those who currently own bitcoins, rather than setting up an alternative (assuming that the fascinating technology of Bitcoin solves a problem that anyone except ideologues have in the first place)?

[shredfvz]

I considered your points. You pretend as if the claims of early adopters are to blame for fueling the recent "frenzy". Really? Are you really saying a group of early adopters are entirely to blame for a market appraising a formerly unknown asset?

If you lacked the vision, the luck, the timeliness, etc. of an early adopter, fair's fair. Pay them their respects. I still kick myself for not having my wits about me when I first heard about Bitcoin.

As for your alternative, I don't see why not. You could create a clone of Bitcoin today, why not do it yourself? They did that with Litecoin, too. In fact the author of Litecoin created it because he felt "wronged" the same way you do now. He felt as if too many people missed the boat with Bitcoin, and clearly people should have a second chance of early adopting such a revolutionary concept.

I don't feel the same way.

[antiscam]

As you'll see from my comment history, I was playing with significant money in Bitcoin early on. I have at least paper gains that are quite satisfying. Nothing I'm saying is personal or is based on any kind of jealousy. It's weird of you to assume that it is.

[jnbiche]

I call BS here absent a Bitcoin signature proving your supposed ownership of "significant" Bitcoins. If anything is weird, it's that someone who was supposedly interested enough in Bitcoin to buy or mine a significant amount "early on" has spent the vast majority of your past umpteen comments bashing Bitcoin. I think it's sour grapes, and it surprises me that so many on HN, who cheer on every Instagram knock-off that's sold for millions of dollars, are so bitter toward the person or persons who invented and built a truly revolutionary technology that has the potential to vastly change the way we do business.

[antiscam]

I'm not "bitter" at Satoshi Nakamoto, or really at anyone. I'm trying to do what I can, as I have from the beginning, to prevent people from falling for a scam. I'm not alone in doing this, and many other good analysts are doing the same thing. Is it worthwhile to try to apply arbitrary, amateur, and frankly embarrassingly bad psychology to all of them?

I sign onto most of what is written here: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_ch...

[Andrew_Quentin]

It is unfair of jnbiche to close discussion by simply saying sour grape, but you seem to be too determined - maybe even evangelical looking at your nick - perhaps its something to do with leftist ideology?

In any event, the article raises two points.

1 - the currency is deflationary.

I'd argue that it is an inherently stable currency no different than gold. Many economists may say that a hard currency is not a good basis for an economy, but many economists say it is. That includes Hayek who won a Nobel for his theory of how best to allocate resources.

So to say that bitcoin will fail because it is deflationary is at best an opinion. You're free to hold it but that hardly makes bitcoins a scam.

2. Something better may come along.

That is basically saying bitcoins may fail, therefore it is a scam. In that case, most of the companies YC funds are a scam. They too disproportionately reward the founder and the first employees. You may say but they create a hard product of value or offer a service. Firstly, I'd say bitcoins is a product. It is not tangible, it is only 0s and 1s, but it is a product created out of applied mathematical theories and formulas and computational power. I'd also say it is a service for obvious reasons.

Even assuming you disagree with the latter points, lets go back to the YC funded company. Lets say they create something like google - a service - facebook - a service - wordpress - a product. Lots of people invest in these - making the founder and first employees rich beyond means - then something better comes along. Are you suggesting google is a scam? Oh but google has value. Say who? It provides a service - so does bitcoin.

[Andrew_Quentin]

The world already has done so. And of course there is a good reason. Like with every creation, they made this possible, they took the risk, maybe even high risk since the government could have gotten involved, and now they are rightly being rewarded for it.

What do you suggest, we tax them 90% so that we can all be equal?

[rdl]

My dislike of BTC is if it prevents an anonymous cryptocurrency from being deployed -- either by displacing it (like craigslist displaces better alternatives), or by collapsing and scaring everyone away.

If it's just a proof of concept of cryptocurrency in general, it's cool. It might remain a decent currency for certain uses in addition to other more transactional currencies, though.