I absolutely agree about the distribution, but for basically every other argument you can find reasonable people disagreeing on both sides. You could have said many of these things about the internet: it's an unregulated thing for the rich that enables nefarious transactions. The more I have learned about bitcoin, the less I see it as a thing, and the more I see it as an inevitable evolution in transactions, like the internet was for communications. This might not be the protocol that eventually establishes global dominance, but something like it will.
i just replaced Bitcoin with "Wal Street" and it read the same.
I'm not sure about Bitcoin being "untraceable, and very easy to hide," since Bitcoins take the form of a public ledger, so they're actually more traceable than cash. In theory you can thwart it by using a mixing service (you deposit into the service along with many others, then withdraw the same value but not the same coins), yet there's stories like this that suggest an aggrieved party (say someone who had coins stolen from them), can trace the money by sending micropayments that effectively tag it. (The Bitcoin equivalent of "slightly irradiated bills"). Each transaction in the ledger is also recorded and publicly viewable for all time, so even if the software for tracing transactions and matching them to real entities doesn't yet exist, the data will wait until it is.
keep in mind that bitcoin mixers make a point to not necessarily give you back the same coins that went in. tagging the coins would only reveal that they were in the mixer, and the person they end up with is only connected in the sense that they used the same mixer. yes, you have a problem when your input to the mixer severely dwarfs the rest of the pot, but as bigger mixers are implemented i imagine they'll keep a large amount of funds tumbling within the mixer at all times to mitigate that. and things like zerocoin solve the problem entirely.
What happens to bitcoins when people die. my bank account (if I had one) could be divied out by my will. as would stock etc. if someone dies sitting on millions of dollars in bitcoin and doesn't pass on the password?
Same thing that happens when someone buries a bar of gold someplace random and then dies before telling anyone where. It's very likely never going to be seen again.
Except buried gold is found / find-able I think bitcoin's shrink will at some point be its ending.
Passwords and lost hard drives can be found too. I'm not seeing a real difference here.
Tut's gold was lost (from the economy) from 1323 BC to 1922 AD.
would a thumb drive or password last that long? Lost bitcoin is essentially lost forever.
In this interview the founder of Coinbase talks about that very problem and about how it's a feature they plan to implement.
Nice. I was going to post my own 'rant' on hubski about why bitcoins should be avoided by everyone, but this guy hit my main beefs with it - being that is is meant for nefarious purposes (large drug deals, slavery, etc) and all the 'innocent' investors and legitimate uses only make it harder to nab the bad guys, and two - the carbon footprint thing. I'd describe bitcoins as "a representation of value destruction." Whereas dollars/Euros/Yuan/etc are representations of value creation (GDP.) Bitcoins are created by using electricity and valuable computing power (lost opportunity to fold proteins, predict weather, whatever.) Any argument about how digital coins are great for commerce are moot with respect to bitcoins. You all know that you can do e-commerce of all sorts with pretty much any national currency. Bitcoin adds a layer of complexity to transactions. So, yes, I also hope Bitcoin dies in a fire, and I will never help to legitimize it as a currency.
The carbon footprint point was based on false data. Energy requirements of BTC were greatly exaggerated. It is based on untrue 'research' published by the site bitcarbon.org, which is referenced by the source article you link to. Bitcarbon based their entire calculation on a wildly-inaccurate, very outdated guesstimate of power consumption they found at https://blockchain.info/stats Clearly neither Bitcarbon, nor the source, made any effort to verify this number (despite a note at blockchain.info pointing out that it is probably not reliable). This totally undermines their data and brings all of their claims into question. The fact is that the hardware that Bitcoin transaction processors are using today is 50-100x more efficient than it was a year ago. Although the difficulty of the work is increasing, the power consumption is not. In addition, far less power is being lost as waste heat.
So, I shouldn't have a gun because often times guns are used by bad guys And me having a gun makes it harder to identify the real bad guys? I shouldn't have a recreational amount of marijuana because bad guys carry drugs and by having drugs I potentially divert attention from the real bad guys? I shouldn't buy things off (for examples sake. I know it went down) the Silk Road like clothing or furniture or the other legal items that used to be available there because "the bad guys" use Silk Road too and I'm just making it harder for the authorities to identify who they are ? I thnk not Edit: Some more, better examples, generated when I wasn't still scratching the gunk out of my eyes this morning: - craigslist missed connections/casual encounters/entire dating section are often used by sex workers to generate clientele! that's illegal! does that mean that no one should use this section so law enforcement can properly identify who's breaking the law? - say that mostly criminals drive a certain type of car. I don't know. A Neon. Or a Gran Torino. Are you going to turn around and say that no one who is using a car for a legal purpose should buy either of these cars because "mostly bad guys" use them? The essense of my point is this: If your "good guys" or law enforcement are so inept at properly identifying criminals that the only way for them to do so is for no one else to use a given product, then you need better "good guys." It's not appropriate to say "This is mostly used for crime, so therefore anyone who's not using it for crime should just not use it so we can find the criminals!" You need a much better law enforcement strategy than that - plus at that point you are advocating for usage of products to be banned or regulated just so we can catch "the bad guys." That's, frankly, ridiculous.is is meant for nefarious purposes (large drug deals, slavery, etc) and all the 'innocent' investors and legitimate uses only make it harder to nab the bad guys
I think silk road falls into the same category. Why buy and sell on that when you could do the same with other sites? I get the libertarian thing, but I don't see why anyone would want to surround the nefarious dealings of silk road with a bunch of innocuous transactions. If there are inefficiencies in the other markets (ebay, craigslist, whatever), why not just start another one that is 100% legit and more efficient?
Maybe Silk Road has an item you haven't been able to find on other sites. It's an auction site, like eBay, like Craigslist. Does everyone who posts an item they have for sale on one site also post it on every other site? No. I'm not libertarian, so I'm not sure why that's coming into the discussion. I don't think that's possible, because of the aforementioned fact that users vary. You can't create one auction site, present it as "perfect" or at least "more efficient" and expect everyone to hop over just for that. eBay and SilkRoad both allow users to be rated based on their effectiveness and the quality of their merchandise. Perfectly legitimate users from both sites aren't going to be willing to throw away reputations they've spent years building. Also, eBay's been used for nefarious purposes as well. Or if not nefarious at least unsavory, like selling girl's virginities. So we are just supposed to build a website and expect/require that all users keep all transactions above board? That's not enforceable/policeable. That's exactly why websites aren't held accountable for what's posted in their comments section/in their threads (although they can be held socially accountable, as occurred with Reddit and r/jailbait). There is an extent to which something can be policed but you can't monitor for 100% legality 100% of the time, you have to depend on your users. And let's face it; 100% of humanity is not going to abide by the law. Hell, Kinder Eggs are illegal to ship/have in the U.S.why not just start another one that 100% legit and more efficient?
Even though you're using some red herring arguments, I'll still concede half the point to you. If there is a "non-evil" use for something, you should be able to use it that way. An no, you shouldn't ban everything that has a possible evil use. I agree.
However, if you can do the same thing with something else that's more effective, why use the dodgy thing? Let's use this analogy: mustard gas. So, this was conceived to do harm (though in the idea of a perceived greater good), but maybe there are some positive uses for it. Say, as a spray to deter would-be rapists. So yes, we should be open to re-purposing something bad into something good. However, is there an alternate product, something that could do the same good thing, without making it easy for people to do bad things with it? If so, then there's really no need to make mustard gas easily accessible and "legitimate." Bitcoins: Hey, look at all the perfectly normal commerce transactions I can do with my bitcoins! Great - hypothetically, could you do those with another, established currency? Yes. Are the other currencies more efficient to use? Yes. So, why do you want to use the less efficient currency, again? Question (serious question): What do you NEED bitcoins for? What actual need do they satisfy? A: Things you can do with bitcoin that you can't do with other currencies: 1) Carry over $10,000 worth across international borders without declaring them. 2) Buy a metric ton of heroin. 3) Buy 30 slaves I'm sure there are other things you can do with bitcoins that you can't do with other currencies, but I'm not sure - need some coffee. Please let me know what you can do with bitcoins that you can't do with other currencies.
Besides the point that it wouldn't be possible to use mustard gas for this purpose: Regular pepper spray can be used to deter would-be attackers. (Let's downgrade this to "attackers," make it a little less open to a sympathy/emotional argument. Besides, why limit it to rapists, why not all potential attackers when you're hanging out in a less-than-safe place at night?) It can also be used as a weapon by "bad guys." Can you name a single thing that can be used to deter an attacker that can't also be used by an attacker? Maybe, like, a dog? But a would-be assailant could always train an attack dog as well. Bitcoins - I don't use them. But I feel your entire argument discourages innovation and discovery. Why do I "need" to have something in order to justify its existence? I can't justify my own existence. I am just lucky enough to be on this earth. Do I need to prove in some way with my life that I "deserve" to exist? (Answer: No.) Bitcoins are an innovation, an experiment. A "let's see what happens if we poke this thing" sort of situation. You are basically saying that if something exists that fulfills a purpose, why create a second thing that can also do that thing? My answer is: why not? You don't know how you can improve upon an existing product unless you try new things. That includes creating failures. And, by the way - initially, you could get bitcoin for no cost or (really) for very little work, which was done by your computer. Can't do that with other currencies. We should be able to experiment and we shouldn't have to justify our experimentation with "efficiency" and "purpose" and "reasons to justify its existence." Consider Bitcoins a piece of economic art, if you must.
I'm not at all saying that if you have one thing that works - don't innovate. I am saying "don't adopt." I'm already a bit gun-shy about using any parallel example, as they (the examples) will be picked apart, and not the actual topic - but here goes... If you have DVDs (and DVD-R, etc) and someone invents VHS, then it shouldn't be the next big thing. Especially if VHS was invented for creation and distribution of child porn. Yes, you can record Night Court on it, too, but the quality is just not as good - so why adopt? I know it sounds like I'm trying to sit on some moral high horse here, but I guess what I'm saying is I just don't see the point. I think the only people who should be using bitcoin are the people who need to use it. Everyone else should carry on with using something else or driving further innovation.
Your analogy is flawed. Bit coin was created as an economic experiment, not solely so people could buy drugs off the Silk Road or anywhere else. The crux of the biscuit here appears to be that you think bit coin was created specifically for nefarious purposes when it was created as an economic experiment. It's much more akin to VHS created and then someone decided to use for CP than your example where it was created with that use in mind.
OK, perhaps I did have some bad intel on the why it was created. I thought I had read that somewhere. Maybe that was why Silk Road was created, rather than Bitcoin? Or maybe neither, but that's why one or the other got "picked up." I can't find the article now (I read it over a year ago.) Anyway, I'm still baffled that Bitcoin is getting any traction in the mainstream. Digital fool's gold.
capitalism is less about what's right and more about what's profitable. it's more advantageous from an individual standpoint to spend computing resources on bitcoin than folding or whatever. and sure, it's an additional layer of complexity now, but only because you typically receive your income in other currencies. if you received your income in bitcoin, translating to state-backed currencies would be the added complexity. eventually you may not really have a choice.So, yes, I also hope Bitcoin dies in a fire, and I will never help to legitimize it as a currency.
I'm just sitting here wondering if bitcoin is going to level off, if this 600 dollar drop is actually a good thing. Stability probably wasn't going to happen at $1200, esp. with everyone and their mother having an opinion about bitcoin's speculative properties, but if it could stabilize at something lower and gain back some credibility...
They say past is not an indicator of the future but so far bitcoin bubbles have held up pretty well with trends. Even the news trends are complete repeats of previous bubbles. It's like watching a roller coaster where people who are going downhill think they're going to crash and burn and people going uphill think they're immortal. It has stabilized ten times (pulled that number out of my hat) before, the odds are in favour its going to stabilize again. And once/if it does, it's ready to go for the next bubble. Of course, it can't keep going on like this forever, can it..? :-)