Why laugh at someone's failure? They're trying to pull off a very different power structure. It has political issues they clearly haven't worked out, but how much time in the grand scheme have they had to do so compared to the standard ones?
It's always harder to do something than to sit around watching the people doing it. So I give you that. This is hard.
However, every time someone has interacted with the Bitcoin community and dealt with the assholes telling them "you just don't get it! this is the new economy!", it makes that someone smile a little bit each time there's bad news.
Well, because, frankly speaking, they're trying to pull off a very different power structure without getting buy-in from everyone involved.
Green U.S. money? At least, at the end of the election cycle, I can cast a vote for someone who will appoint a Fed chair I like. There's some tenuous link from the decision-makers back to me, an American voter.
The bitcoin people? They just said "here it is, oh and also we call all the shots, kthxbye". What if there's some feature of the new power structure I don't like? Where can I seek redress? Ask a bitcoin advocate, and what you get is crickets.
A new power structure should be more inclusive of people's voices, not less.
You can vote for someone that says they'll appoint that Fed chair. And even then the Fed chair could have reason to implement policy that is contrary to your interests.
In fact, the status quo is that your opinion and vote for that person is ignored. I'm reminded of the Princeton/Northwestern study suggested Congress passes laws that run contrary to the will of the people ~90% of the time.
So what's the value in your tenuous link when inputs are sent straight to /dev/null
With bitcoin, the election cycle is always happening. Every single block miners decide which rules they want to enforce, and which proposals they want to signal support for. You want to support 2 MB blocks? Run Bitcoin Classic, or point your mining software toward a pool that supports it. You want to support segwit? Run Core 0.12.1. Ultimately, the market decides what becomes of bitcoin, not some unaccountable, unelected bureaucrat.
Also, with bitcoin, all interaction is completely voluntary. There are no legal tender laws or taxation propping up the value of the currency.
> So, in this case, I welcome the failure.
I wouldn't hold your breath. Bitcoin has been through many incidents that are far worse than this, and it's only come out stronger for it.
And you and the other guy are illustrating really well what I mean about the bitcoiner anti-democratic point of view.
Running a piece of software isn't voting, and isn't "power to the people," but you guys get so stuck up on this wordplay about how running the software is the real, authentic "voting" that you really kinda miss the boat there.
So what does a real authentic vote look like to you, in a decentralized system?
Who calls for the vote? Who counts them? Who is allowed to vote? Who isn't? Who proposes ideas for a vote?
When the pool of people who understand what Bitcoin is gets totally overwhelmed by people who don't, what keeps really stupid decisions from being made?
When people vote for something that isn't already coded, who is responsible for coding it?
> At least, at the end of the election cycle, I can cast a vote for someone who will appoint a Fed chair I like.
With Bitcoin, you can "cast your vote" for what software the network is running too; you buy a miner and contribute to a mining pool that agrees with your philosophies. Of course, unlike a federal election (or maybe not...), more capital => more votes.
The core developers really don't have any power beyond that given to them by individual miners and mining investors.
Well, and that is simply not casting a vote. Voting isn't just, as I said elsewhere here recently, "inferring preferences from behavior". It's a regular process, a structured reassessing of power.
Maybe if you said "every year on March 1st, everyone shuts down their client and chooses a new one" and there were several well-maintained clients that had different policy choices encoded into them for people to "vote" with, then we'd be a little closer to a democratic power-in-the-hands-of-the-people kind of thing.
But as it is right now? No, there's no voting, nor democratic power-sharing, in Bitcoin.
What guarantees do you have the president you elect will do what he says? What is your recourse if he doesn't live up to your expectations?
Being able to change one's vote at any time regarding any issue seems preferable to everyone sitting powerless for four years at a time in between scheduled elections.
You and the other bitcoin advocates here are actually doing a really good job illustrating my point.
I'm saying, bitcoin isn't "power to the people," that it is anti-democratic by design, and you and the other guy here are trying to dodge and ignore that with language games about "the market decides" and irrelevant stuff about how politicians lie.
I get it, bitcoin is your chance to be one of the people "in the know" as it were, one of the powerful ones, and you don't want to give that up. Please spare us the rhetoric about how it's for our own good, though.
"Being able to change one's vote at any time regarding any issue seems preferable to everyone sitting powerless for four years at a time in between scheduled elections"
I'm not even addressing what the OP was telling you, that you don't vote and that the "votes" are all in the hands of a few people.
But, even if everyone was entitled to a vote, being able to change it anytime they like would make a for a very, very poor government system.
I can only imagine, 1st long term project the government had that didn't give you short term profit you would change your vote.
P.S.: Interestingly enough is exactly what is happening in Bitcoin right now: long term sustainability calls for changes to the block size, but short term profit calls for it to remain the same, so the few miners that control the network just go for the short term profit.
fwiw, many people don't agree with the "for sustainability" argument.
Increasing blocksize is actually a negative, because it lets people continue sending low-value transactions that they wouldn't actually pay for. It externalizes their costs to the entire network, making verification harder, etc.
When the required fee makes your current uses of btc unprofitable, either send larger amounts at a time or use a sidechain, etc. The fee is a DoS-prevention mechanism.
The undemocratic part was not that one. Like I said: "even if everyone was entitled to a vote and to change it whenever they want" and then carried out the argument based on that alternative scenario to bitcoin reality and explained why that would be a bad system.
The reality is that just an handful of people can vote in this system, the ones that control all the mining. All other people are left using a system in which they have no say.
That's a classical textbook Plutocracy and completely un-democratic.
That's really interesting as a libertarian to hear that sort of perspective. It's so reversed from how I see things. To me, you have a vote which has an infinitesimal chance of swaying the election, and then you hope that the candidate you voted for appoints a fed chair you like. Further, you hope that fed chair does a good job, and that their policies are correct. If not, you have to wait four years for to give the same input.
With Bitcoin, you just...don't use Bitcoin. If you're invested at the point somebody does something you don't like, sell off. Presumably the ones on top are heavily invested themselves and will feel a massive sell off in their bottom line.
All that said, the different power structure I was talking about is one where nobody has that kind of power to begin with. That there is somebody at the top at all is a failure, IMO.
> Where can I seek redress? Ask a bitcoin advocate, and what you get is crickets.
No, you've gotten countless answers: "Nowhere."
In the same way you can't reverse a transaction, you can't have a vote. It doesn't work that way.
> A new power structure should be more inclusive of people's voices, not less.
You've had a voice. We've seen your posts about how you're so ignored because nobody is writing a patch to release more coins. It's been heard, but it's a bad idea. If you like that type of currency, use your government's.
> Basically, what bugs me about bitcoin is that legitimate critiques are always brushed off with really absurd replies.
Have you posted any legitimate critiques? I haven't seen any...
> Or the deflationary economics of the system itself, and those aren't good either.
Yeah, that's an example. You don't know the system or the goals so how could you have valid comments, let alone legitimate criticism?
Because the attitude of some of the more hardcore Bitcoin people is a holier than thou, "We're the only ones who REALLY know about money and currency and financial policy. You idiots with fiat money don't know anything!" persecution complex which is really annoying.
Economist did the same thing Wired (Andy Greenberg) did last time Wright made his claims: investigate, find pretty damning evidence of deception, but still spin it to "but he might still not have faked everything". The Satoshi of the Gaps.
> ...to point out the fallacy of relying on teleological arguments for God's existence. Some use the phrase to refer to a form of the argument from ignorance fallacy.
Well, Gavin Andresen is a bitcoin core dev that according to this very news just got hacked.
It's logical to think that when a core dev of something as sensible as bitcoin get's hacked and you can't trust the code anymore, it takes a really big chunk of credibility from bitcoin.
I can't figure out the news story where Gavin got hacked or his access revoked. This is a giant ouroboros of everything linking in a circle. I'd almost suspect a practical joke of some kind if the major news organizations weren't invovled.
That's a common mistake, and BTW, in Spanish and French "sensible" is the word for "sensitive" (I infer from the name the parent could be of Spanish-speaking origin)
Because a) it's a seriously fascinating system from a technical standpoint, b) it has immense potential to solve a lot of problems — especially for those in areas with underdeveloped financial systems, and c) a lot of people are heavily invested in its success.
Regardless of whether or not you think it's overhyped, it's a really really cool experiment in economics and cryptography.
Additionally, it's an open-source security-critical product that has a lot of eyes looking at, discussing, and actively attempting to subvert the technology.
For security "nerds", which hn is full of, it's a veritable holy grail of technological security.
Stands to reason that the majority of issues Bitcoin has appears to be human, not technological. Since the technology works so well, bad actors appear to be targeting human vectors of attack- create controversy where there is none, drive wedges between key players, sow dissent among community (a day doesn't go by that r/bitcoin doesn't complain about vote manipulation).
Bitcoin's biggest security threat lies in it's governance, especially if there are subversive elements in its community. BTC leadership has to get their house in order.
> it has immense potential to solve a lot of problems
Very debatable and yet to be proven in any real way. Lots of things have "potential" but bitcoin seems to consistently fail at actually doing anything. Doubtful it will ever solve any problems outside its current scope of use.
I think it's clear we're talking about realized potential here, which is why I said it hasn't actually done anything yet. Beyond a few edge cases, it's gotten a lot of attention and hype but solved nothing so far.
I like to imagine Krugman and co pacing around their offices wondering why Bitcoin hasn't completely crashed - with the occasional murmur of "deflationary" and "libertarians" and "no it can't be".
Why would Krugman wonder why it did not crash? Bitcoin is a pyramid with an expiration date far in the future and currently everything but deflationary.
That explains why Steam now accepts bitcoins. Because nobody uses it to actually buy stuff... /s
In The Netherlands, you can order takeaway food at practically any restaurant with bitcoin. Overnight, this was the biggest expansion in the acceptance of Bitcoin to date.
Whatever your opinion is about bitcoin, it absolutely does not reflect the current reality, where Bitcoin is seen more and more as a serious alternative for payments.
How does the antics of some developers influence the credibility of a system they are one of many contributors to?
You can claim that Bitcoin is going down the toilet all you like, but by all metrics relevant to its purpose (namely value and popularity) it's doing extremely well.
Perhaps your mistake is that you only notice when something that could be construed as negative happens around Bitcoin. Such things are usually more entertaining than the relatively mundane improvements and victories that occur on a regular basis.
Sure, I was impacted by that. A while back, I noticed some movie tickets charged to my card in Australia. I called my bank, disputed the charges, they reversed them and sent me a new credit card. Took...maybe 20 minutes of my time? Max?
And from this I'm meant to learn I can't trust the current system? Honest question: Why?
Well, you can be pretty well sure that unless western civilization fails and your money is worthless anyway, that you can trust having your money in USD/EUR in a bank up to a certain amount (100K in the EU, not sure how much in the USA), even if they get hacked, skim and commit fraud. Same can't be said for Bitcoin and we keep being reminded of it.
The 100K is against bank default. If your account is hacked from your side, you might have trouble getting the bank to pay you. It would be on you to prove you were hacked.
In the US at least, the semi-governmental FDIC automatically publicly insures accounts, not banks, up to $250,000.
In addition most banks are privately insured against fraud.
I've dealt with an 8k fraudulent charge on my card before. The bank investigated, sent over a sworn affidavit to sign, and they refunded my money in less than 24 hours.
I had a $20 error charge on my card and it took a month for the refund. This is with the vendor stating in writing it was their error. I no longer bank there.
This is factually incorrect. If you didn't authorize the transfer, the bank is legally required to make you whole.
This only applies to personal accounts, not business accounts.
There is a reason why scammers work so hard to find someone to "cash checks" or "withdraw funds" or do that kind of nonsense. Electronically stealing funds is easy. Keeping those funds is hard.
> Well, you can be pretty well sure that unless western civilization fails and your money is worthless anyway, that you can trust having your money in USD/EUR in a bank up to a certain amount (100K in the EU, not sure how much in the USA),
Eh. Tell that to the Greeks. And it happened for much less than "civilization failing".
Greeks didn't lose money in the bank. There were temporary losses of ATM availability due to bank runs, but the account protection was maintained. Even in Cyprus the "bail-in" applied to over €150k only.
Wouldn't you agree that a multi-billion dollar market cap, millions of daily tx volume, and a pretty decent price of $400, all of which keep growing in the face of so much "credibility losing", counter it rather nicely?
Humans are folly but the technology speaks for itself.
