Quote from: JorgeStolfi on January 18, 2016, 03:12:33 AM

Quote from: cbeast on January 18, 2016, 02:20:22 AM

You made a declarative statement. Do you care to explain why you say "I could like it again if it somehow returned to the original plan -- with 10 times as many users perhaps than it had in mid-2010" and "I cannot like the monster into which it has mutated." What has changed that you don't like?

I wrote that too before: it became a pyramid investment scheme and a tool for crime.

Both developments were bad for mankind, and it is hard to tell which one will be more harmful in the end. But the first one also ruined the technical experiment: it attracted a horde of scammers and unsavory characters, encouraged hoarding, created volatility that all but destroyed its usefulness as currency, made mining into a fabulously lucrative industrial activity that was inevitably centralized, gave birth to Blockstream and their plan to sacrifice bitcoin's original goal to the spurious goal of inflating the price, and more...

Well I can't argue against that being a Resource Based Economy devotee. All I can say is that this speculation phase is temporary. I don't know why you think such a small economic tool has any significant effect on global crime, but in principle perhaps it is actually decreasing overall crime by showing that crimes can't always be covered up by big banks.