Does this mean that Brendan's toenails are utterly worthless make believe? @Brendan Burgess - probably best not to make any travel plans to either China or India (although if you have a word with the Duke, he might be able to smooth things over with his CCP comrades).
Key Post Bitcoin is a clearly identifiable economic bubble
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Duke of Marmalade
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Bitcoin has 10,000 kopykats. If gold had 10,000 kopykats what would it be worth?
It doesn't. It has one or maybe two, and those have perverted the original idea of bitcoin to enrich the founders and have undermined their foundations. They are all doomed to fail.
Crypto is not bitcoin. Crypto is a scam. The only thing crypto has in common with bitcoin is the blockchain and some of them don't even have that. All of them will hit zero eventually (it may take a LONG time as some of them have so many people mentally and financially invested inthem.) None of them has value independently of bitcoin. Sometimes they rise faster than Bitcoin but when bitcoin falls they fall. They have no inherent value. Web3, defi, nfts are all bs. The crypto market exists because people think they missed out on bitcoin.
Gold is a commodity. There are thousands of commodities. Not sure of your point. Maybe a comparison: Bitcoin is gold, the latest and greatest crypto is sand.
Buy a handful of sand and I'll "yield" you 10% more sand every year. I can do this because there's an almost limitless amount of sand.
As someone once said altcoins are just a way of people stealing your bitcoin.
I completely understand the scepticism. It's healthy. What I would say is separate bitcoin from crypto in your thinking. Crypto is a CONtagion.
I bought it years ago at under $300 and I'm looking at the price now and wishing I had money to spend. Read the bitcoin standard it's by a serious chap.
Duke of Marmalade
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Ah! The One True Faith and originated by a man of course. Where did I hear that before?
So let me list bitcoin’s divine attributes according to the gospel by @tecate
Limited supply
Decentralised
Trustless
Censorship free
Fast transfer across borders
And let me pluck another sect at random and ask does it pass these tests (I don’t know) Ripple
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Duke of Marmalade
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Dearie me! You do have to spell things out on the internet.
I meant things that are metallic, heavy, malleable, non corruptible, glitter and basically very attractive to the human senses (like gold).
newirishman
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Well I've seen enough parallels even on this thread alone so I somewhat fail to be surprised by this.
It is all about the 'belief' innit !?
The People Who Are Finding God Through, and in, Bitcoin
It is all about the 'belief' innit !?
The People Who Are Finding God Through, and in, Bitcoin
Duke of Marmalade
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Hole smokes!! There is so much in that link worth quoting. Let's start with:
Note again that the divine saviour was a male.
And @tecate accuses me of being insulting in calling it a cult. And I think the cult status is unique to bitcoin. I doubt there is a Church of Ripple.
But, I have revised my original prediction. Bitcoin will not go to zero in my lifetime. Because these bitcoin evangelists have vowed not to let it - they will always pay something to keep the religion (this is more than a cult) alive
Who are you, God? (and we'll get to that in a second
). He said it was a commodity - and he's quite right to say that. The comparison is completely valid. As for a list of precious metals, here you go -> Iridium, rhenium, ruthenium, palladium, osmium, platinum and silver.You say there are 10,000 copycats. Of all of the other crypto projects only a handful pursue the use case that Bitcoin has cornered. They're entirely different (akin to the difference between garden variety commodities and precious metal-based commodities). So now we're down to a comparison between Bitcoin and maybe 5 or 6 other projects. Relative to Bitcoin, they've lost that race - and have been losing ground consistently to it.
I've told you before - you can go out and copy the Bitcoin codebase tomorrow and spin up MarmaladeCoin as a direct clone. And yet before we even consider network effect, it will be inferior. The Bitcoin blockchain is the most secure network out there. Spin up MarmaladeCoin and it can be undone from a security point of view. Bitcoin had the luxury back in 2009/10 - to slowly develop. It could have been taken down - but nobody cared about it. Now that it's of scale as a network, it can't be torn down. Lets consider that somehow MarmaladeCoin manages to muster a bit of interest - and starts to hold a bit of value. The minute it starts to accumulate a bit of value, it will be attacked and compromised.
I am open to the possibility of Bitcoin being usurped - but the chances of it happening are highly unlikely - although I'll keep that under ongoing revision as it's the healthy thing to do.
The only way I can foresee Bitcoin being usurped in the role its serving is by a blockchain network that offers 10x improvement. Back in 2016/17, there were a whole host of projects that said 'we're better'. At first glance, they may have improved on one aspect. But upon further inspection, they were then found to be lacking in so many other areas. Everything comes with tradeoffs. So then what's left is consideration of a brand new project that is somehow going to blow it out of the water. For it to get the upper hand on Bitcoin's network effect at this point, it will have to improve upon it 10x .
You spinning up MarmaladeCoin would be akin to someone leaving Facebook/Google with all the IP - copying those businesses precisely - but its not reasonable to expect that they can be usurped without a challenger being 10x better.
I'm glad someone has written some clickbait that satisfies your cognitive bias such that you believe that anyone who is enthusiastic about Bitcoin belongs to the extreme examples that they managed to find and feature in this article.
Damn right I do - and I will continue to do so - because the accusation stands. This is the way with everything claimed in the naysayer camp vis-a-vis Bitcoin. Take the most extreme examples and then tar and feather everyone that is in anyway associated with either Bitcoin or crypto on that basis. We had precisely the same nonsense when someone posted up that Guardian article of some drink and coke addict that engaged in latent gambling on poocoins with no idea of what he was trading.
There are thought to be 180 million Bitcoin users or wallet holders globally right now. Imagine you've now taken some clickbait story about some clowns that have a Christian Bitcoin church or some nonsense (if anyone has ever spent any time in the US, we know that there are oddball 'Christian' groups for all sorts of nonsense ...Christian gun owners, and all sorts of clownery). Now you take this nonsense and very conveniently tar and feather anyone associated with the space on that basis. There are degenerates associated with this space but what won't suit your narrative is to admit that there are incredibly intelligent people working in it or implicated in it - to some degree or other. That doesn't make everyone 'religious' and it doesn't make them 'cultists'.
I have always said that I am open to the notion that Bitcoin could fail. There's no way that I could hold that view if this was a case of blind faith. Meanwhile, yourself and @Brendan Burgess refuse to acknowledge even the outside chance that you could be wrong and that Bitcoin continues to develop. There's every reason that will come back to haunt you. As I mentioned before, there is nothing wrong with being wrong. In fact, we should expect to be wrong all the time. It's entirely normal. However, to express views in absolute form with no consideration (however unlikely) that you could be wrong lacks intelligence and smacks of arrogance.
I could cite a long list of examples Duke of people you have classed as 'cultists' who have little in reality to do with the Bitcoin space - but to qualify them for that tar and feathering, all that was necessary was for them to have said something supportive of Bitcoin. But keep it up, other than calling it what it is, I don't mind - because I've known from the outset that your objection to Bitcoin isn't pragmatic - it's ideological.
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Ripple (XRP) is a security.
Doesn't sound very decentralised to me.
Ripple is a corporation, Bitcoin is not.
Gensler labels bitcoin a 'commodity' as crypto prices stabilize
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said Monday that bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency he was prepared to publicly label a commodity,...
www.marketwatch.com
Duke of Marmalade
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Ok, I'll drop the kopykat argument. @tecate had given an even more persuasive line that Marmalade Coin could have the attributes I cited above but would not have bitcoin's adoption. So bitcoin is as unique as Coca Cola - no problem copying it, big problem rivalling it.Ripple (XRP) is a security.
Doesn't sound very decentralised to me.
Ripple is a corporation, Bitcoin is not.
Gensler labels bitcoin a 'commodity' as crypto prices stabilize
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said Monday that bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency he was prepared to publicly label a commodity,...
DazedInPontoon
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It's more than that because network effects are involved. While there is a brand component with coke, ultimately if I decide, in isolation, to drink something else instead I don't need others to also switch with me.
Imagine instead someone launching askaboutmoney2.com as Ireland's consumer forum. It starts as an empty forum. Why does anyone use it instead of the orginal AAM? Even if someone does want to use it, maybe they've been banned here, or dislike Brendan, they can't switch in isolation, they need other users to switch too before it's any use at all.
The utility of a coke is the same to you, regardless of how many others drink coke. The utility of a network to you is a function of the size of the network.
Brendan Burgess
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That is a good comparison.
If someone launches a better or more popular version, then it will grow bigger and askaboutmoney will decline.
I play backgammon online. The first server was called FIBS. It dominated the market. Then a better one came along, GamesGrid/GridGammon. I think FIBS is gone. Then in the last few years, two new servers have been set up which are now dominant.
If someone sets up a better crypto than BTC, then it will probably take over. BTC might continue as a Ponzi Scheme for a while , but it will have no use as a currency.
That is both the protection and challenge for Bitcoin. It also has this issue to overcome itself in terms of adoption. Some folks have challenged its lack of progress when it comes to various use cases but particularly payments. Not only do we have fiat currencies with network effect, we have governments enforcing their use.
What issues with BTC do you believe could be improved upon by another crypto* to effect this change?
*with the crypto still actually being a decentralised crypto and not trading off other aspects like network security, etc.
There has been an assumption made that because Bitcoin was the first, then we've seen this movie before - it will be Myspace and not
Facebook. What's not widely understood is that Bitcoin was not the first - there were many others before it. While none of them got any traction, they were reasonable efforts from a technical point of view. Bitcoin took matters much further with a breakthrough in cryptography. And in the MySpace to Facebook example, MySpace peaked at a $12 billion valuation while MySpace was desktop-focused and Facebook was mobile-focused at a time when mobile was taking off.
lol.
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Duke of Marmalade
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Yes that makes sense. A key word in there is "utility".
The utility of Coke is its taste. It does not rely on network effect.
The utility of AAM is to get a good ding-dong with an @tecate
The utility of bitcoin is ???
What you're arguing only makes sense if the utility is medium of exchange. In fact the network of bitcoin users are not in the least interested in knowing how many retail outlets they can spend it in - they are holding it as a bauble of speculation. Without any meaningful utility it must be doomed as Satoshi herself recognised.
And if there was nothing there, then that would have meant that your thesis in 2017 would have been correct i.e. a classic boom to bust and Bitcoin pronounced dead at the end of it and a distant memory at this point. But that's not how this is playing out.
Its utility ->
Censorship resistant money that cuts out counterparties
Ability to self custody - meaning no issuer/government risk, no bank risk, no intermediary risk.
Facilitates near instant settlement - whether that's for a billion dollar transfer or micropayments via lightning network.
Digital gold/store of value use case (and yes, this continues in development as Bitcoin goes through the phases in terms of adoption).
Transparent, supply-capped, hard money - with programmed in monetary policy. No Cantillon Effect - as occurs with fiat.
A truly global money not tied to the economic performance of any one nation state.
Native currency that the internet has been lacking since its inception.
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DazedInPontoon
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But it's unlikely to be more popular at launch time. It would have to become more popular for good reasons. Even if it offered extra features like profile pics or whatever, you could always add similar to AAM.
Of course it is possible though. Things that have network effects get surpassed, but it's generally for good reasons and and it gets more difficult the bigger the network is. There is arguably a point of critical mass where it basically becomes extremely unlikely except in extreme circumstances.
It can happen when the leader screws up badly (as myspace did to open the door for facebook) or perhaps when there's a huge technical advancement over the incumbents - Tiktok's threat to Instagram might be one of the few recent examples of this. But generally we're not seeing very large networks get usurped very often.
For example, originally there were various search engines, and the leading one changed frequently. There was excite, yahoo, altavista, ask jeeves etc. Then there was Google and it reached critical mass and that was it. 20 years and counting.
I imagine the backgammon sites are all small, as it's a niche interest, which makes it easier for a new entrant. The backgammon reddit has 7000 members, versus 4.4m for the bitcoin reddit for example.
Another aspect is that I think it's even tougher in the arena of open systems. There might only be a handful of backgammon sites, but there's already 1000s of cryptos all competing with each other first and foremost. Even if a 'better one' is among them it might not get noticed at all. They are crabs in a bucket each stealing attention and resources from each other and making it extremely difficult for any one of them to get the resources and attention it needs to surpass bitcoin. It seems Bitcoin had a huge advantage in being first, and that aspect can't be replicated.
I don't rule it out entirely, I just think it's very difficult for it to happen.
Duke whether bitcoin has utility is obviously an entirely different issue, and not one I have anything new to say on, so I'll save my breath.
Duke of Marmalade
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Maybe we are getting confused with semantics. The value of a "network" depends on what the underlying is used for - its utility. Now the network of a telephone system is everything. A network of Coke users (The Real Thing not that illicit stuff where network probably does matter) is irrelevant. A network of other posers is needed for a site like AAM. A network of retail and other outlets is essential for a currency qua medium of exchange.
Now I have no problem in accepting that bitcoin is the queen of the cryptos and that it most likely will remain so and that is because it has the largest "network" if by that we mean holders. But so what if bitcoin has the most holders? How does that give it any worth?
DazedInPontoon
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It depends on the size of the network. The fact that people are members of the network implies it has use to them, or else why are they members of it?
You can tell me bitcoin serves no use to me, and I can tell you it does, and we'll just go around in circles. But ultimately I consider myself the sole judge of what I find utility in and not you.
DazedInPontoon
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In short: holding bitcoin involves obtaining bitcoin which creates demand for bitcoin. Demand of something limited in supply creates a non-zero price on the open market.
We can continue, but we're just going to end up disagreeing about the subjective theory of value as usual.
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Duke of Marmalade
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Network sounds impressive. I suggest that the vast majority of bitcoin holders are not there because of its network effect. They are having a punt.