Post
Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Your first reaction to the concept of Bitcoin?
by
tophattingson
on 16/12/2013, 23:21:01 UTC
My first reaction was disapointment that it's main advocates are Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists. I feel that their loudness and dominance in the community is actually a small factor in why it wasn't adopted further. Ideologues certainly make me distrustful of concepts. I now don't see bitcoin itself as particuarly useful as a currency largely due to a long list of limitations that prevent widespread currency use in the daily lives of millions, but I have drafted some fixes for it based on equating coins per block to difficulty and throwing in a bit of moore's law.

The mathematics of it would be something I would be discussing were it not for this newbie time.

Limitations for those who haven't learned of them yet:

  • Excessive rewards to early adopters looks like a pump and dump (and some will accuse it of actually being a pump and dump)
  • Deflation rate is so large that spending effectively halts
  • Above two factors mean people are treating it as an investment, not a currency
  • The huge network currently existing can barely handle more than 10 transactions per second

There is of course more, but really these are the main issues between Bitcoin and becoming a widespread currency.