BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: luckybit on November 29, 2014, 02:23:15 am
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http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-podcast/unfortunate-future-bitcoin
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This supports the value of POS
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I don't put much store by this commentary.
Dowd (along with others) dismisses so many elephants in the room with this view that it borders on the foolish.
First of all, Bitcoin is still here and gaining huge traction with every week that passes. There is an entire industrial sector evolving around it including retail technologies, financial derivatives and more.
Dowd (and others) are highly selective in picking out a single dimension of Bitcoin's existence and projecting that into a catastrophic challenge that's insurmountable. It's not insurmountable. To me they are a bit like the people back in 1994 who said the internet wouldn't take off because http protocol is no use for video. Or it would die because it was it was impossible to find anything. All that happened was that Google got invented.
Secondly, dismissals of Bitcoin's viability based on hypothetical scenarios like this completely discount the concept of a "rights of passage" phase that a technology such as this has to endure to become trusted. Bitcoin "warts an' all" is becoming the accepted reference standard for cryptocurrencies *because* of it's troubles, not in spite of them. People are seeing that it's survived hacking attempts, a near-death by a 'media storm' of fud, competition from a flotilla of alt-coins numbering in their hundreds if not thousands, competition from more advanced blockchain technology.......and survived with barely a dent. After all that, the nearest competitor does not even exceed 1/30th of Bitcoin's marketcap.
All in all, these are hypothetical - not catastrophic - issues which just get solved the more people have an interest and a stake in its future.
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I don't put much store by this commentary.
Dowd (along with others) dismisses so many elephants in the room with this view that it borders on the foolish.
First of all, Bitcoin is still here and gaining huge traction with every week that passes. There is an entire industrial sector evolving around it including retail technologies, financial derivatives and more.
Dowd (and others) are highly selective in picking out a single dimension of Bitcoin's existence and projecting that into a catastrophic challenge that's insurmountable. It's not insurmountable. To me they are a bit like the people back in 1994 who said the internet wouldn't take off because http protocol is no use for video. Or it would die because it was it was impossible to find anything. All that happened was that Google got invented.
Secondly, dismissals of Bitcoin's viability based on hypothetical scenarios like this completely discount the concept of a "rights of passage" phase that a technology such as this has to endure to become trusted. Bitcoin "warts an' all" is becoming the accepted reference standard for cryptocurrencies *because* of it's troubles, not in spite of them. People are seeing that it's survived hacking attempts, a near-death by a 'media storm' of fud, competition from a flotilla of alt-coins numbering in their hundreds if not thousands, competition from more advanced blockchain technology.......and survived with barely a dent. After all that, the nearest competitor does not even exceed 1/30th of Bitcoin's marketcap.
All in all, these are hypothetical - not catastrophic - issues which just get solved the more people have an interest and a stake in its future.
+5% +5% +5% lets not forget "print is dead", NOT
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I don't put much store by this commentary.
Dowd (along with others) dismisses so many elephants in the room with this view that it borders on the foolish.
First of all, Bitcoin is still here and gaining huge traction with every week that passes. There is an entire industrial sector evolving around it including retail technologies, financial derivatives and more.
Dowd (and others) are highly selective in picking out a single dimension of Bitcoin's existence and projecting that into a catastrophic challenge that's insurmountable. It's not insurmountable. To me they are a bit like the people back in 1994 who said the internet wouldn't take off because http protocol is no use for video. Or it would die because it was it was impossible to find anything. All that happened was that Google got invented.
Secondly, dismissals of Bitcoin's viability based on hypothetical scenarios like this completely discount the concept of a "rights of passage" phase that a technology such as this has to endure to become trusted. Bitcoin "warts an' all" is becoming the accepted reference standard for cryptocurrencies *because* of it's troubles, not in spite of them. People are seeing that it's survived hacking attempts, a near-death by a 'media storm' of fud, competition from a flotilla of alt-coins numbering in their hundreds if not thousands, competition from more advanced blockchain technology.......and survived with barely a dent. After all that, the nearest competitor does not even exceed 1/30th of Bitcoin's marketcap.
All in all, these are hypothetical - not catastrophic - issues which just get solved the more people have an interest and a stake in its future.
Ripple is 1/4th of bitcoins market cap if you consider total network volume. I know it's a terrible way of comparing them since so much XRP is locked up with ripple labs, but if you want to compare active tokens only you also have to discount satoshi's coins and the lost coins from bitcoins market cap.
Also there is clearly no interest in improving bitcoin within the community. Because the process with which bitcoin upgrades itself is so slow, cumbersome and uncompetetive, bitcoiners have this cognitive dissonance that causes them to claim that bitcoin is already perfect and should not be improved further. So instead of looking at the best features from altcoins and trying to copy them (which was what most people thought would happen back in the early days), they simply spam SHITCOIN 5000 times, convince themselves it is not a threat, and forget about it.
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I don't put much store by this commentary.
Dowd (along with others) dismisses so many elephants in the room with this view that it borders on the foolish.
First of all, Bitcoin is still here and gaining huge traction with every week that passes. There is an entire industrial sector evolving around it including retail technologies, financial derivatives and more.
Dowd (and others) are highly selective in picking out a single dimension of Bitcoin's existence and projecting that into a catastrophic challenge that's insurmountable. It's not insurmountable. To me they are a bit like the people back in 1994 who said the internet wouldn't take off because http protocol is no use for video. Or it would die because it was it was impossible to find anything. All that happened was that Google got invented.
Secondly, dismissals of Bitcoin's viability based on hypothetical scenarios like this completely discount the concept of a "rights of passage" phase that a technology such as this has to endure to become trusted. Bitcoin "warts an' all" is becoming the accepted reference standard for cryptocurrencies *because* of it's troubles, not in spite of them. People are seeing that it's survived hacking attempts, a near-death by a 'media storm' of fud, competition from a flotilla of alt-coins numbering in their hundreds if not thousands, competition from more advanced blockchain technology.......and survived with barely a dent. After all that, the nearest competitor does not even exceed 1/30th of Bitcoin's marketcap.
All in all, these are hypothetical - not catastrophic - issues which just get solved the more people have an interest and a stake in its future.
Ripple is 1/4th of bitcoins market cap if you consider total network volume. I know it's a terrible way of comparing them since so much XRP is locked up with ripple labs, but if you want to compare active tokens only you also have to discount satoshi's coins and the lost coins from bitcoins market cap.
Also there is clearly no interest in improving bitcoin within the community. Because the process with which bitcoin upgrades itself is so slow, cumbersome and uncompetetive, bitcoiners have this cognitive dissonance that causes them to claim that bitcoin is already perfect and should not be improved further. So instead of looking at the best features from altcoins and trying to copy them (which was what most people thought would happen back in the early days), they simply spam SHITCOIN 5000 times, convince themselves it is not a threat, and forget about it.
Indeed. I keep wondering if once Bitcoin is actually threatened seriously they'll get off their tails and go for more real upgrades. Of course, by then it might be too late anyway.
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Also there is clearly no interest in improving bitcoin within the community. Because the process with which bitcoin upgrades itself is so slow, cumbersome and uncompetetive, bitcoiners have this cognitive dissonance that causes them to claim that bitcoin is already perfect and should not be improved further.
It isn't bitcoin's role to provide advanced functionality - at least not as far as its valuation is concerned.
They could leave it just as it is for a couple of decades and it would still accrue in value because its role (increasingly) is to act as the reserve reference for the entire crypto currency economy. It doesn't need to do anything fancy, it just needs to exist, exhibit rock solid blockchain security and be reasonably accessible.
A 20-30 minute block time is just fine in this regard. Meanwhile, the rest of the alt coin world can get on with providing the singing and dancing wherever it's needed in specialised sectors such as Point of Sale, ultra-anonymity, equity management and decentralised exchanges.
As long as everything else continues to be priced in the BTC reserve, developments in alts will continue to attract capital to bitcoin itself without it having to justify its existence in terms of technological bells and whistles. Bitcoin isn't in competition with alts anymore - it's value is a proxy for the entire cryptocurrency economy the same way as the dollar reserve represented the entire western economy under the Bretton Woods system.
(P.S. Similarly, gold didn't loose its value when Visa and Amex were born. It just sat in vaults doing its "thang").
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Also there is clearly no interest in improving bitcoin within the community. Because the process with which bitcoin upgrades itself is so slow, cumbersome and uncompetetive, bitcoiners have this cognitive dissonance that causes them to claim that bitcoin is already perfect and should not be improved further.
It isn't bitcoin's role to provide advanced functionality - at least not as far as its valuation is concerned.
They could leave it just as it is for a couple of decades and it would still accrue in value because its role (increasingly) is to act as the reserve reference for the entire crypto currency economy. It doesn't need to do anything fancy, it just needs to exist, exhibit rock solid blockchain security and be reasonably accessible.
A 20-30 minute block time is just fine in this regard. Meanwhile, the rest of the alt coin world can get on with providing the singing and dancing wherever it's needed in specialised sectors such as POS, ultra-anonymity, equity management and decentralised exchanges.
As long as everything else continues to be priced in the BTC reserve, developments in alts will continue to attract capital to bitcoin itself without it having to justify its existence in terms of technological bells and whistles. Bitcoin isn't in competition with alts anymore - it's value is a proxy for the entire cryptocurrency economy (the same way as the dollar reserve represented the entire western economy under the Bretton Woods system).
(P.S. Similarly, gold didn't loose its value when Visa and Amex were born. It just sat in vaults doing its "thang").
At the moment this is true, but I think that's largely because of a shortage of non-BTC gateways. Once there are more gateways that bypass Bitcoin, there will be no need to price all crypto in relation to BTC.
At that point, Bitcoin can't just sit there like gold can, because "just sitting there" requires massive mining expenditures.
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At the moment this is true, but I think that's largely because of a shortage of non-BTC gateways. Once there are more gateways that bypass Bitcoin, there will be no need to price all crypto in relation to BTC.
At that point, Bitcoin can't just sit there like gold can, because "just sitting there" requires massive mining expenditures.
I appreciate non of us can know how everything's going to go, but thats not the way I see things at all.
Whatever number of fiat gateways exist, there'll always be the need for a cryptocurrency reserve. The ALT / BTC ratio has become a universal standard for measuring relative values in the altcoin market independently of the variations of fiat currencies.
I only see that situation consolidating - not least because so much of the trading volume is intra-crypto rather than fiat to crypto. Also, it's far easier for exchanges to set up BTC markets than it is to set up fiat markets because in the latter case there's the slight problem of a great big counterparty getting in the way known as a bank.
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At the moment this is true, but I think that's largely because of a shortage of non-BTC gateways. Once there are more gateways that bypass Bitcoin, there will be no need to price all crypto in relation to BTC.
At that point, Bitcoin can't just sit there like gold can, because "just sitting there" requires massive mining expenditures.
I appreciate non of us can know how everything's going to go, but thats not the way I see things at all.
Whatever number of fiat gateways exist, there'll always be a need for cryptocurrency reserve. The ALT / BTC ratio has become a universal standard for measuring relative values in the altcoin market independently of the variations of fiat currencies.
I only see that situation consolidating - not least because so much of the trading volume is intra-crypto rather than fiat to crypto. Also, it's far easier for exchanges to set up BTC markets than it is to set up fiat markets because in the latter case there's the slight problem of a great big counterparty getting in the way called a bank.
What about using bitUSD/bitGLD as a reserve currency? No price fluctuation or price manipulation, pegged to the market value of their "real world" equivalent, no fiat involved, and on top of that the yield will likely cover for inflation (depending on adoption and volume of transactions). Can Bitcoin provide that much?
Current network effect gives the edge to Bitcoin, but take it out of the equation, and in time you might see a change in perception from the general crypto community regarding this edge.
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How many people have predicted the death of Bitcoin?
A funny thing to consider is that in 1995 Bob Metcalfe himself predicted the death of Internet for 1996.
I predict 2015 will be the last year where people will still dare to call the death of Bitcoin. By 2016 it will become self-evident that talking about a future without Bitcoin is nonsensical.
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How many people have predicted the death of Bitcoin?
A funny thing to consider is that in 1995 Bob Metcalfe himself predicted the death of Internet for 1996.
I predict 2015 will be the last year where people will still dare to call the death of Bitcoin. By 2016 it will become self-evident that call its death is nonsensical.
It would be premature to predict the death of Bitcoin. But it would also be premature to assert that it will be the crypto currency that will stay on top for several years to come. Bitcoin might prove resilient, it has advantages and a lot of VC funds have invested massively in the endeavor. The market for crypto currency/equity will be huge, blockchains are the future. Bitcoin will survive and probably prosper, as well as many others.
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What about using bitUSD/bitGLD as a reserve currency? No price fluctuation or price manipulation, pegged to the market value of their "real world" equivalent, no fiat involved, and on top of that the yield will likely cover for inflation (depending on adoption and volume of transactions). Can Bitcoin provide that much?
A pegged currency can't be a reserve currency by definition. The two concepts are in contradiction.
The reason Bitcoin is volatile is because it's *base money*. In other words, seen from Bitcoin's perspective, it's everything else thats volatile and it's static.
Also, when you say BitUSD has no fluctuation, it's not actually true in general - only with respect to a specific, arbitrary fiat currency. In the Bitshares world, it's BTS that is the base money. It could theoretically act as a crypto reserve but it's designed for a specific vertical market. It has its own priorities. That's the beauty of Bitcoin - it's the mothership which is general enough to represent everything else. (Ask yourself this, for example, when you read the price of BTS and draw satisfaction from the fact that is has risen, what are you actually gaining ? Answer: Bitcoin).
Anyway, there is no need for new reserve crypto. We've already got a perfectly good one that's well past its "rights of passage" stage and which has a proven resilience against almost every type of competition that could be conceived.
I don't see that situation ever changing now that the alts have been "seen off". Litecoin came the closest but it's dropped way back from its all time high against Bitcoin a year ago. Ripple maybe has a high market cap but there's not a single market that I know of where anything's priced in Ripple.
Also, look at it this way. We are ants living inside the "cryptocurrency barrel". We are aware of the full spectrum and the subtle differences between currencies. But 99% of the general public - what represents crypto's future market - is outside the barrel. It just sees a single big barrel and the label on it says "Bitcoin".
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What about using bitUSD/bitGLD as a reserve currency? No price fluctuation or price manipulation, pegged to the market value of their "real world" equivalent, no fiat involved, and on top of that the yield will likely cover for inflation (depending on adoption and volume of transactions). Can Bitcoin provide that much?
(Ask yourself this, for example, when you read the price of BTS and draw satisfaction from the fact that is has risen, what are you actually gaining ? Answer: Bitcoin).
BTS is liquid mostly in CNY, not bitcoin. XRP isn't traded much in bitcoin either. Bitassets, the tokens that will actually be used for trade, cannot be backed by bitcoin. Without an upgrade bitcoin will have no function other than being the symbolic first blockchain.
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Without an upgrade bitcoin will have no function other than being the symbolic first blockchain.
:o
Have you looked around lately ? Australia Bitcoin hearings, Canada senate hearings, Circle, Paypal, Overstock, Dish....
Take a look at this feed every couple of days... it's becoming a deluge of infrastructure development - all around Bitcoin http://www.thebitcoinchannel.com
I'm not saying that other alts like BTS aren't going to be successful as well - if I had thought that I wouldn't have sunk the biggest ever chunk of my BTC holdings into a risk asset. Some of them might even surpass BTC's marketcap at some point.
I'm just saying that, barring some catastrophic disaster like a show stopping hack or bug, Bitcoin's here to stay. It's far too dug in for newcomers with big risk capital to be going against the grain now.
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Without an upgrade bitcoin will have no function other than being the symbolic first blockchain.
:o
Have you looked around lately ? Australia Bitcoin hearings, Canada senate hearings, Circle, Paypal, Overstock, Dish....
Take a look at this feed every couple of days... it's becoming a deluge of infrastructure development - all around Bitcoin http://www.thebitcoinchannel.com
I'm not saying that other alts like BTS aren't going to be successful as well - if I had thought that I wouldn't have sunk the biggest ever chunk of my BTC holdings into a risk asset. Some of them might even surpass BTC's marketcap at some point.
I'm just saying that, barring some catastrophic disaster like a show stopping hack or bug, Bitcoin's here to stay. It's far too dug in for newcomers with big risk capital to be going against the grain now.
I agree there is lots good news, but none of it is inherently tied to bitcoin. Every business can and will switch to a different blockchain the second they consider it in their own interest. This especially goes for merchants. There are pretty much none that accept bitcoin directly, they all go through processors and these processors could seamlessly begin supporting e.g. bitUSD, instantly stripping bitcoin of its biggest advantage.
Don't get me wrong though, the symbolic value of being the first blockchain is significant, and I agree that bitcoin will probably never become worthless. But digital assets will be backed by a 2.0 token, most likely bitshares, because that's the only way it can be done in a decentralized manner.
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There are pretty much none that accept bitcoin directly, they all go through processors and these processors could seamlessly begin supporting e.g. bitUSD, instantly stripping bitcoin of its biggest advantage
Well, I'd agree with you there that a pegged crypto (for the moment at least) has the advantage that they don't need to keep dumping and converting in theory. Thats one of the things I liked about the BitAssets.
Unfortunately, markets are fickle things. They don't always do what you expect. If the market decides that it has confidence in bitcoin and not much else then retailers will just have to swallow that, regardless of what "should" be the ideal solution.
Thats what makes this whole thing quite exciting IMO. We're watching evolution play out in realtime at a 1000x accelerated rate right in front of our eyes.
What's most exciting about it all is observing the ultimate fate of fiat currencies. It's kind of eerily coincidental that cryptos are evolving into an industrial strength worldwide financial network just at the time when central banks are busy pouring acid into the foundations of the fiat world.
The timing is uncanny.
What happened in Japan 3 weeks ago was the beginning of the end it seems to me. They basically threw in the towel and Abe said as much when he called an election and challenged anyone else to "see if you can come up with something better because I can't".
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What about using bitUSD/bitGLD as a reserve currency? No price fluctuation or price manipulation, pegged to the market value of their "real world" equivalent, no fiat involved, and on top of that the yield will likely cover for inflation (depending on adoption and volume of transactions). Can Bitcoin provide that much?
A pegged currency can't be a reserve currency by definition. The two concepts are in contradiction.
The reason Bitcoin is volatile is because it's *base money*. In other words, seen from Bitcoin's perspective, it's everything else thats volatile and it's static.
Also, when you say BitUSD has no fluctuation, it's not actually true in general - only with respect to a specific, arbitrary fiat currency. In the Bitshares world, it's BTS that is the base money. It could theoretically act as a crypto reserve but it's designed for a specific vertical market. It has its own priorities. That's the beauty of Bitcoin - it's the mothership which is general enough to represent everything else. (Ask yourself this, for example, when you read the price of BTS and draw satisfaction from the fact that is has risen, what are you actually gaining ? Answer: Bitcoin).
Anyway, there is no need for new reserve crypto. We've already got a perfectly good one that's well past its "rights of passage" stage and which has a proven resilience against almost every type of competition that could be conceived.
I don't see that situation ever changing now that the alts have been "seen off". Litecoin came the closest but it's dropped way back from its all time high against Bitcoin a year ago. Ripple maybe has a high market cap but there's not a single market that I know of where anything's priced in Ripple.
Also, look at it this way. We are ants living inside the "cryptocurrency barrel". We are aware of the full spectrum and the subtle differences between currencies. But 99% of the general public - what represents crypto's future market - is outside the barrel. It just sees a single big barrel and the label on it says "Bitcoin".
I really like reading your posts, very interesting!
I don't think Bitcoin is it though, that $5 billion valuation is actually really low imo, considering the shitstorm of fiat collapse that is approaching. I think it can be replaced by something better easily.
I think BitShares will pass it in value thanks to BitAssets, it won't be the crypto reserve currency though as BitShares is a crypto-equity. So I think there is a market for a crypto-currency Bitcoin replacement too.
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Unfortunately, markets are fickle things. They don't always do what you expect. If the market decides that it has confidence in bitcoin and not much else then retailers will just have to swallow that, regardless of what "should" be the ideal solution.
I think merchants have clearly shown that they will not swallow bitcoins volatility no matter how much they save on fees, since they are only using bitpay and dumping 100%.
Thats what makes this whole thing quite exciting IMO. We're watching evolution play out in realtime at a 1000x accelerated rate right in front of our eyes.
What's most exciting about it all is observing the ultimate fate of fiat currencies. It's kind of eerily coincidental that cryptos are evolving into an industrial strength worldwide financial network just at the time when central banks are busy pouring acid into the foundations of the fiat world.
The timing is uncanny.
This is one of the things that always mystified me about Satoshi. It's amazing that he happened to appear right as the old system really started to show that it has reached its limits. If a human hadn't invented the blockchain before a total meltdown, then who knows what would have happened to us. I don't think we're in risk of a total meltdown in the near term though, but we will probably see another "crisis" when it becomes clear that the bankers are behaving just as dumb as before.
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I think BitShares will pass it in value thanks to BitAssets, it won't be the crypto reserve currency though as BitShares is a crypto-equity. So I think there is a market for a crypto-currency Bitcoin replacement too.
I'm quite fascinated to see how the BitAssets thing goes.
It kind of blew my mind when I first discovered it to think of the vast potential. In particular, the capacity that BitAssests have for capitalising BTS indirectly. At the same time, I've got this cynical, kind of "too good to be true" notion bubbling in the back of my mind, so I think I have my feet on the ground about it.
My point about bitcoin isn't that nothing else could surpass it in marketcap, but rather that all alts wlil continue to be priced in BTC which gives it enormous status. For example, oil is a huge market that dwarfs the marketcap of the US dollar, but the dollar is still *the* reserve currency (well, in theory - rapidly diminishing).
I don't know if you stumbled across my other thread where I worked through a notional real world macro-economic application of the BitUSD concept....
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=11784.0
EDIT: oops ! I just realised we're already corresponding over on that thread ! ;D
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I think bitcoin will eventually end up becoming Gold v2.0. It will be the historical store of value crypto, with value given to it because of its history and the mythology surrounding its creation. It will eventually be worth a lot more than it is now, but not all the way to the epic amounts that bitcoin believers imagine it will be.
The altcoin or altcoins with the best technology will end up becoming the major currencie(s). As of right now this picture isn't clear yet. Ripple? Bitshares? Ethereum? Coins that dont exist yet?
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What advantage does a centralized Bitcoin have over Paypal?
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I think bitcoin will eventually end up becoming Gold v2.0. It will be the historical store of value crypto, with value given to it because of its history and the mythology surrounding its creation. It will eventually be worth a lot more than it is now, but not all the way to the epic amounts that bitcoin believers imagine it will be.
The altcoin or altcoins with the best technology will end up becoming the major currencie(s). As of right now this picture isn't clear yet. Ripple? Bitshares? Ethereum? Coins that dont exist yet?
If even one PoS coin succeeds, then how can it be true that Bitcoin would become the new gold? It depends on a constant influx of new money just to hold the same position.
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I understand why PoS is better than PoW for a "company", but is PoW better than PoS for a currency, despite the higher waste? Maybe it gives more robustness around supply, and locks out competitors more easily with the network effect.
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I understand why PoS is better than PoW for a "company", but is PoW better than PoS for a currency, despite the higher waste? Maybe it gives more robustness around supply, and locks out competitors more easily with the network effect.
If "money" is a good in a free market and not enforced on people by a government the distinction between currency and company vanishes. All money then behaves like a company or like the products of company.
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I understand why PoS is better than PoW for a "company", but is PoW better than PoS for a currency, despite the higher waste? Maybe it gives more robustness around supply, and locks out competitors more easily with the network effect.
If "money" is a good in a free market and not enforced on people by a government the distinction between currency and company vanishes. All money then behaves like a company or like the products of company.
And next up are the latest news from the gold shareholder meeting! They've decided to start attack ads against silver.
But I agree with you, and agree that even now bitcoin is basically a company which only exists to keep track of its own shares.