Quote from: Truthful on September 07, 2014, 08:54:25 AM

Read this

http://www.positivemoney.org/2014/04/bitcoins-fatal-design-flaws/

I don't have a dog in this fight, but if you're making an argument based on the content of that article then you clearly know feck all about cryptocurrency. It cites three things that it claims are major flaws?

1. It's a prototype, you know, like the first aircraft was, and that got replaced by better aircraft, so bitcoin is doomed.

Except, of course, if you want to compare it to the first aircraft then you have to accept that the very first aircraft is then going to, over time, be turned into a Boeing 777. One and the same aircraft evolving. That is what is happening to bitcoin by way of constant development. Bitcoin bought and held in your wallet from 2012 is not being superseded by a new currency, the same bitcoin is still there in 2014 when the software has already gone through development and evolution.

2. The rate of money creation is too slow and limited and the 'fact' that people won't spend it because they want to hoard it.

The first claim is that there are not enough bitcoin to go around. So the author of that article knows nothing about the 8 zeros after the decimal point and, what is more, makes an assertion that nobody will use it, they will just hold it. Try telling that to the many online businesses that have started accepting bitcoin and found it to be one of the best decisions they have ever made, with some even starting to accept altcoins as well because of the increase in business they have been getting.

3. Bitcoin is less secure than National currencies and people will steal it from your computer

Bizarre comparison there with the idea of a National fiat currency being more 'secure'. How does that work? The cryptographic process that bitcoin works with is rock solid and fiat currency can be, and is, forged on a regular basis. As for people stealing your coins, the argument is that because you're too stupid to look after your own money, then everybody is and so we have to have banks protecting us from our stupidity, for a cut of every single payment we send or receive, plus ongoing account fees of course. When they fail we bail them out because we need them to look after us, right? To then reference the guy who threw his hard drive away with the wallet on it is nothing to do with a weakness with bitcoin and Gox, again, was no more a weakness with bitcoin than it was a badly-run centralised service that, allegedly, was hacked. Not the currency, the exchange service.

The entire article is ignorant, ill-informed nonsense and, therefore, I am at a loss as to why you even posted a link to it and told people to read it.