[wonkus]

No. Normals are easily pwned. You remember all those botnets that steal normals' internets? They will now stead their bitcoin wallet instead. Normals will lose their bitcoin to theft and never trust it again. End of story.

The only thing you accomplish with bitcoin is wasting electricity and making global warming worse. Please stop destroying the planet.

[eof]

"end of story" so so silly. this thing is 5 years old and tens of millions of dollars of wallets have been stolen. the story is currently peaking, not ending. the real way the story will play out is that solutions will come into existence so the 'normals' don't get pwned as much.

[glesica]

You mean like currency that is centrally controlled and physical and can be kept nice and safe in a bank? Oh wait, already have that, people call it "money".

Most people don't want to live in the wild west, that is a fact, and that's why the wild west went out of existence. There will always be some people who want to live dangerously / adventurously, but their experiences and preferences do not generalize to the entire population.

[eof]

the problem with your counter argument is that it ignores the basic, undeniable fact: what you are referring to as "money", presumably government fiat: euro, dollar, yen, etc.. has certain flaws that bitcoin does not (not to say bitcoin doesn't have it own, different flaws), namely: government fiat, historically, has always been deflated; with the vast majority of fiat currencies eventually becoming worthless due to the government abusing the currency or losing their power; and, contemporary "money" is subject to restrictions, capital control laws, etc.. which some people find to be too cumbersome.

bitcoin has answer for these undeniable flaws; and besides.. no one is saying that "the entire population" needs to do anything. bitcoin can (and at this point, almost certainly will) exist right along side all these "real" monies you refer to; and people can choose, or not, to use bitcoin (and part of what is appealing to me, and likely others.. is that regardless of what any laws say, I can still "choose" to use bitcoin even if some jurisdiction delclares it illegal--unlike fiat.. where if the government decides i shouldn't have access to my money they can simply shut me down with zero recourse if the courts (or despots, depending on jurisdiction) don't see my side.

[glesica]

Value in government money gets inflated away. Sure, someday that will probably happen. Someday, our entire civilization will collapse (every civilization in history has done the same). Unless you think we're close to a total collapse of the global financial system, your money isn't going anywhere, especially if you put it into non-currency investments. If you do think we're about to fall off a cliff, then your Bitcoins will be basically worthless because we're about to enter a period of relative lawlessness with greatly reduced access to information and the Bitcoin network probably won't survive (or the Bitcoins will be plundered by rogue information-pirates or something weird like that).

If you want to mess around with Bitcoin, awesome, but please don't see it as more than it is: a toy for the privileged.

[chm]

> "has always been deflated"

I think you meant inflated.

[MaysonL]

Whereas bitcoin is computational fiat money.

[eof]

i'm not sure fiat means what you think it means

[mtgx]

How did the "wild wild west" go out of existence? By becoming civilized. That's what will happen to Bitcoin, too.

Also, there is no distinction between "money" and "Bitcoin". Bitcoin is just another currency like USD, euros, yens, etc. It's people's choice all over the world in what currency to keep their money in a "bank".

[glesica]

If Bitcoin becomes "civilized" then why would anyone use it? The whole argument in favor of Bitcoin is that it is the "wild wild west" of currencies.

[ekianjo]

> Please stop destroying the planet.

That has to be the worst argument against Bitcoin I have ever seen. Why stop at the planet, you could have said "Please stop destroying the known universe", that would have made just as much sense.

[lukifer]

> wasting electricity and making global warming worse

We do plenty of this already with conventional currencies (micro-trading algorithms for stocks and currency speculation, for instance). Doesn't make either okay, just want to maintain perspective.

I'm not going to claim that BTC is good or evil, but it's for damn sure both disruptive and interesting. I think we'll also have gold and petro-dollars for quite some time, though.

[wyager]

If you're worried about the environmental impacts of Bitcoin mining, you may want to consider a priority re-evaluation.

[mscarborough]

Pretty much. Once you get past having kids, eating animals, driving cars, or even riding a bike 24/7 you're pretty much using more energy than some bitcoin miner.

[sliverstorm]

Personally I expect if "normals" are to use bitcoins, it will probably be structured with financial institution(s) holding the BTC much like a bank holds USD. As we move further away from cash, ordinary folk could very easily just have a BTC debit card, and never worry about bitcoin wallets and bitcoin clients.

[MaysonL]

But why the fuck would they bother?

[sliverstorm]

In an attempt to get free of the manipulation of the USD by the Fed, for example. (Whether that is wise is another debate)

[Geee]

There will be hardware devices that sign Bitcoin transactions securely. Your private keys will never leak or become compromised. See Trezor: http://www.bitcointrezor.com/