Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: The Bitcoin decimal issue
by
wingding
on 18/06/2013, 22:05:48 UTC
To OP:

you made a serious mistake by using such an allusive and condescending writing style. This is not the place to tell stories to the children.

Thus, if you want a honest discussion, then please come out of your cranny, and instead of talking in metaphors, put some clear arguments on the table!

  • what exactly are you criticising?
  • what are your presuppositions?
  • what are your conclusions?

A fair claim Ichthyo, but I think weisoq express my views perfectly well:


The first choice is to maintain the myths of Bitcoin for as long as possible, make what you will of good fortune to date, continue wasting good intellectual and capital investment in zero-sum endeavours where one group of techies screws over another, and therfore also waste an incredible opportunity for crytocurrencies to revolutionise finance and personal empowerment that would far surpass short-term personal gains (or at minimum waste a heck of a lot of time in getting to that point).

The second choice is to recognise that something has to change with Bitcoin because either:

1) Bitcoins are scarce in which case at some point those who do not already have any will rationally find something else to use instead of Bitcoin (see the rise of altcoins and alternatives as evidence of this). This phenomenon was predicted on these boards from at least 2010 when I started reading it, probably earlier, and will not end because it’s an inevitability, or

2) Bitcoins are not scarce because they may be replicated (for all intents and purposes with just a name change), in which case what is the value of a replicable and replicated digital asset offering no advantage over others?

Falling on either side of 1 or 2 without the existence of advantages or damn good reasons to prefer Bitcoin over alternatives (beyond marketing) therefore necessitates changes or precludes its demise beyond a blinkered niche. As to what changes are required, I will leave that to application of rationality and economics.
Quote
I never assume that anyone is an idiot until they've given me a reason.  In fact, if you read my posting history, you can see for yourself that I have a tendency to chastise people for underestimating the public (this comes up often in the many many threads about naming the fractions).
P.S.  Confusion does not imply idiocy.  Money is hard to understand, very few people really "get" it, but I suspect that most people can if they put in the effort.
Everybody “gets” it. Whether they are able and willing to admit it is another matter. Perhaps unlike the bulk of people on this forum I’d actually like cryptos to (be able to) replace state fiat not remain a token playthings between small groups. That’s not possible with Bitcoin unless it is changed. Rather than the continual trumpeting of any innate libertarian, free-market ethos to Bitcoin why isn’t there more appreciation that the natural evolution of private free money and autonomy is that the next person or group will come along, compete with and improve it, likely resigning the previous form to the dustbin.

Either Bitcoin adherents accept there are flaws and moves with the times, or any objective observer has to conclude it’s just a pyramid because it doesn’t work economically for the majority of economic participants who will rationally not adopt it when they work it out. And to be clear my perspective there is as simple as not discerning any great difference between one group of powerful cronies controlling the fortunes of everybody else and another - be that a government, us Bitcoiners or whoever. There is no special ‘Bitcoin State’ that rewrites the rules of monetary theory or libertarian ideology and to think otherwise is naive or corrupt.

Satoshi created a great thing as technology alone is considered. But he did not solve the problem of distribution, which is a a difficult one. On the contrary, his extremely deflationary rules for supply was the worst choice. Now, the greed of the early adopters that strives to preserve bitcoin unchanged, is what probably will prohibit mass adoption of bitcoin - and worse, delay the appearance of a free cryptocurrency for years.