undefined | Better HN

0 pointsBTCOG5y ago0 comments

You have many severely fundamentally misunderstood ideas about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is "money" and not a "currency." Bitcoin works very wonderfully as money.

Bitcoin is not very wasteful in energy, contrary to the pushed narrative by those that want everyone to believe this is truth. Bitcoin uses a tiny fraction, currently around 7-9% of the electricity that the global banking system currently uses. Bitcoin uses a very large portion of renewable energy sources, and will continue to balance it's energy use towards efficiency and optimizations.

Your part 2/3 etc, it's not a currency. Bitcoin is pure money. We also do not really ever use gold for currency. It is money. Bitcoin is a better money than gold. Once you stop drumming on the wrong path, you'll more easily understand the differences and stop banging your head about how it's a bad currency. It's not a great currency, while it is the very best form of money.

Your whole bit about meandering into defending it's value as currency or store of value, is just highlighting your total misunderstanding of the value of gold, or the new digital version of gold as money. Money IS a store of value.

Lastly, Bitcoin really has no fundamental problems. Nobody that knows about bitcoin gives a flying fuck about the price.

0 comments

Tenal5y ago

It's sad reading comments like this from bandwagoners who haven't read a single academic or technical whitepaper on the technology, let alone the hundreds of them that have emerged which prove / annotate / express / clarify, in exhausting detail, all of the "fundamental problems" that Bitcoin's PoW protocol have, as well as far superior approaches that are in the process of being implemented.

But it's cute. You like Bitcoin. You're a good cheerleader.

BTCOGOP5y ago

I've actually read every single paper on Bitcoin, on Proof of Work, and on Proof of Stake I've ever found. I've been involved in Bitcoin since mid 2010. What is sad is that you wrote what you just did as if that dismisses me, or as if you are in any way authoritative on the subject. Your snide passive-aggressive writing is not cute. I am not a Bitcoin cheerleader, and I'd just prefer not talk to anyone about Bitcoin. It's been years since I have done so, I no longer go to conferences or even talk to family members about Bitcoin, and it's much the same way I quit telling people about linux maybe a decade ago. HFSP.

mediaman5y ago

Sometimes you come across communities that look, from the outside, like a Disney theme park. You enter the gates and you're in a different reality. Everyday words have different meanings, and there are stories built up about their definitions, completely divorced from whatever happens in the outside world. Paid actors learn to complete this comprehensive alternate reality. But as you exit the gates, reality returns, and words reclaim their conventional meaning.

It's like that with Bitcoin fanatics.

"Money" and "currency" do have definitions built up over time by economists and financiers over the past centuries. They are not the same as is used, apparently, in the Bitcoin-Disney fantasy park.

Conventionally - and by conventionally, I mean as it is used by all economists and financiers for centuries - currency is a subset of money. A currency is the dollar, the Euro, the yuan. It doesn't have to be fiat, but today usually is. Money is any type of highly liquid asset typically used for the payment of debts, which includes currencies but can include short term bank notes as well. Although there have been times in history where gold was used as money, it is generally not used as money now, although like most assets it can be converted into money. Bitcoin can be money too, but it's a crappy money, for the reasons I described above. Generally, economists don't spend a lot of time splitting hairs about money and currency, because they're very similar concepts.

"Money" is not a synonym for "store of value." You will not find that in any economic textbook, or even Wikipedia for that matter.

Even if you wanted to use the fantasy park definition of money as anything with a store of value, you chose not to even defend Bitcoin as a store of value. Possibly because it's a terrible store of value.

Again: this is just Bitcoin. Crypto can be designed better. The fact that Bitcoin fanatics obsess over Bitcoin in particular is just proof that they're talking their book.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse