Bitcoin Forum

I just stumbled upon this article that The Guardian published today, I think it's the best ever written on bitcoin, really good sum-up about blockchain and bitcoin: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/05/bitcoin-is-based-on-the-blockchain-pipe-dream

Go on, don't be shy, give a quick summary of what you liked in this article.

All I see is another case of author building a strawman arguments: "Future of Bitcoin depends on global implementation of blockchain tech" + "blockchain tech is superior in every way to traditional systems" and then fighting them. Easy win.

I like how he's praising centralised services such as SWIFT without mentioning they got successfully attacked at least twice in 2015-2016 losing ~$160 millions (iirc). What's even more funny, SWIFT is actively exploring blockchain technology to improve their services.

From the article:


From Swift own website:


Yeah, journalism at its finest.

If bitcoin is worthless then why is the author writing an article and his praising decentralization? If bitcoin is worthless then every other form of money be it gold, dollars, yen, pound are all worthless because we human being create value for them. American want to make a paper that should serve as a medium of exchange for goods and services and that is why we are having values for dollars nothing more and notting less and if we all create value for bitcoin it will become something worthy!

LOL. It earned the author some money!

Of course bitcoin isn't worthless. Last I checked it was worth $10,933, which is great considering that this time last year it was worth about $900.

I could not agree with this author more. Blockchain technology itself is overhyped. The benefit of decentralization is not nearly large enough to outweigh the massive costs. Furthermore, blockchain technology necessarily requires cryptocurrency, which is something people seem to overlook or not understand. Without some kind of digital token, there is no way to incentivize miners. Betting on blockchain is the same as betting on crypto, and crypto is even more overhyped than blockchain technology itself.

Ah yes an article in .... The Guardian.

A "news organisation" that actively attacks those who go against the establishment in any form once again speaks negatively of cryptocurrency.

Shocker.

The fact that you "just stumbled" upon article from that "news organisation" means you cannot distinguish between fact and propaganda and are too easily swayed. But please give any crypto you have to me. I'll put it to better use I promise.

OP,if you want to post news article links,this thread should be moved to the "Press" forum shild board.
I don`t even want to read this article.I hate leftist liberal newspapers like The Guardian.Anyway,the people should understand the difference between "worthless" and "not very usefull".
Is bitcoin worthelss?Off course not,if there are people ,who want to buy btc,then bitcoin has value.
Is bitcoin usefull enough?I would say no.Not anymore.

Agree.


What does this even mean? How do you determine the value of decentralisation and what's its fair cost? Why do people (miners?) bear those costs then?


Wrong. You only need tokens for decentralised, trustless, anyone-can-participate blockchains. You can have 'private', tokenless blockchains run by authorised nodes.


Blockchain-based cryptos are more overhyped than entire blockchain tech? Isn't it like saying "my legs weight more than my entire body"?

I really think the article is praising Blockchain more over the one that is running through it, He is talking about the failing Cryptocurrencies and the hype of so many people over initial coin offerings will all fail and blockchain will be the one that will be revolutionize over it, I really think that blockchain started with bitcoin and if there are so much hype for bitcoin blockchain also is taking credit with it as well, I don't think it is a helpful article for bitcoin and wants to take of bitcoin from blockchain.

All journalists write their articles for the money of bankers. I don't believe them. They don't understand what bitcoin is. For them, it is only a virtual currency. For users, this is much more. This is the ideology of a free economy. People may not have a significant impact on the actions of governments. But they do not want to quietly observe the irrational spending of their taxes. Therefore, bitcoin will never die.

I don't know if you can really differentiate out blockchain and bitcoin itself. I don't know if you do really know on what you are trying to say here. Blockchain technology we do all know is just like a backbone on where all transactions being made of and can publicly be seen with those transactions do happen.We do know bitcoin is the first crypto did able to make use of this technology.Criticism cant really be avoided and its not really a surprising thing for me to be read of.

I am profoundly uninterested in anything the Guardian has to say on this subject. They're such whiny molly coddling nanny state fucksticks that anything that offers people some actual freedom or fosters some rational thinking would cause them to toss their lentils.

These days I loathe the Guardian even more than the Daily Mail which is a genuinely epic achievement.

Well unfortunately bitcoin is here to stay and is not worthless for sure, Blockchain technology is great and can be use as a ledgers for all transactions that has made with bitcoin and other Cryptocurrency, I really think there are other use for Blockchain and I have read an article that Blockchain can be use for automotive mobility services, This is truly a remarkable technology if that's gonna apply for the future.

"Blockchain technology" is indeed overhyped bullshit, but Bitcoin is not overhyped and certainly not overpriced, it is in fact insanely cheap, but of course, most people in bloomberg and mainstream media are drones incapable to see how something that can't be sent all over the planet across any borders, without permission of anyone and without the possibility of being counterfeited is worth even more than gold.

History will put all these articles in their right place, just give it a decade or so, these morons are the same that wanted to see the internet be a federated clusterfuck of intranets with no freedom.

It seems that the editor knew that people would not be interested in his knowledge, or better - lack of knowledge, so to have any views he wrote something controversial ... I will just say "Stop making stupid people famous!"

It is indeed overhyped, but calling it bullshit is completely wrong. The amount of hype it is receiving is probably a lot more than its potential, but blockchain is still a very useful technology with many real world applications.

Same opinion here. Many people compare blockchain to internet. People know that it is better to not underestimate this great potential of blockchain and want to be at the beginning of the next technological revolution. In my opinion hype here is natural.

It's always good to be reminded that indeed all investment in crpyto could one day go to zero, without any warning!

It looks like you already warn us :D I don't understand why you are such a pessimist. Blockchain certainly will not be forgotten, certainly not for the next hundred years, so I do not think that something bad will happen to cryptocurrencies. Only those whose projects will be abandoned by the developers will disappear.

The price tag disagrees. Bitcoin is worth as much as the next buyer is willing to pay, specifically $10945 right now, or in any other equivalent, but we use USD because it's the most widespread currency.

These people are so full themselves. They could say "in my opinion, bitcoin is worthless" but they speak as if they have universal truth. Just ignore these scammers, they can't even form a valid argument for their claims.

For me bitcoin is very great investment, is not worthless at all. When bitcoin came to my live, it help me to paid some bills, help my family etc.
Bitcoin is profit is good every years is increase. I hope bitcoin in the future is good assets for everyone, especially investors.

I'd say if you think Bitcoin is worthless then it is to you.  If you don't think it's worthless then it obviously isn't to you.  But if fiat is rubbish why is Bitcoin always valued in Fiat. 

Bitcoin is worth a lot of money and it's easy to check. If it was possible to offer the journalist who wrote this article to buy 100 btc for 1000 dollars. You think he'd refuse? Lol. He'd love to do it and ask me to sell him more coins. This means that even he doesn't believe in what he writes.

I wouldn't agree with anything written in that article besides the explanation of the ICO. Bitcoin is definitely not a safe investment and is of high risk but personally I think that its not that risky and its a good long term investment. Crypto is not going to fall off, in fact crypto is the next big thing because its mainstream, its the future.

I don't agree bitcoin is worthless even I'm agree there is have a risk if you invest in bitcoin but for me that the way for earn profit.

It means that the only "pro" of crypto over, for example, Visa or Mastercard or Venmo or any other means of transferring money/value is the fact that it is decentralized. You don't have to trust anyone, whereas with Venmo, you're giving a company control of your funds. The cost of crypto vs these systems is that it is WAYYYY slower, not scalable, more expensive in many cases, and requires the use of a massive network that consumes stupid amounts of energy even when it is less than 1% of the size it would need to achieve the dream of replacing fiat currency. It's just not worth it.


Actually it is right and you pretty much just admitted it. A centralized and non-trustless blockchain like the one you are describing is completely pointless. You are better off using a database, which would be WAY faster and WAY fewer computational resources.


Cryptocurrencies are more overhyped than blockchain technology itself. The two ideas are commonly viewed as if they aren't coupled together even though they are. I'm not saying it makes sense.

Yes blockchain and Bitcoin maybe a little being overhyped, but it's the one that make people interested, at least something new was introduced and people was excited to see new things and as far as I know blockchain and Bitcoin is very useful and can help a lot of people, the technology maybe not yet perfect and consume a lot of energy, but it's a promising technology that can change the world

Well as the author says, it not only consumes tons of energy, it's just not usable as payment system because of the extreme slow processing speed. I think a lot of people have some dream about how bitcoin is going to change the world. But it's also important to look at the technology and what it can and can NOT do. That's why I think it's such a good article, it lays out why blockchain can not be used as an international payment system.

your wrong,ofcourse they understand bitcoin,but they deny it becaue THEY ARE A WRITER WITH COST(not Cause)cant you even see that if Bitcoin funded hes write ups then maybe t articles will be in reverse,lets not spend our time with thisk kind of issue.coz it comes out that were only advertising that articles to favor the dev

I am not really talking about the difference between blockchain and bitcoin because I am talking about the article itself, If you would read the article it is trying to take out blockchain technology from the one that is running from it and trying to innovate it without bitcoin, And they are trying to explain the usefulness of blockchain technology if its not being use as a ledger of transaction because it can really be use in different things other that bitcoin.

I agree that blockchain is not that great of a technology and I hated the moment bitcoin news started being filled with headlines of "blockchain" instead of "bitcoin". The entire purpose of the blockchain was only to be used with bitcoin where it was absolutely needed because there is no centralized entity to trust and robust security against hackers in this wild wild west is needed. As soon as you move away from the use case of bitcoin, blockchain is no longer neccessary or efficient. I also have hoped that bitcoin will upgrade its use of blockchain to a more distributed model as well as get rid of POW.

How can people say bitcoin is worthless where a lot of people changed their life because of this. Bitcoin is everything, its technology that drives the price to pump higher is the prove for itself. Believe on bitcoin, its value will make you more rich in the future.

That is the case for now. What if a revolutionary technology is introduced to help the problem at hand? What if the slow transaction speed has been solved through a fork? IMO anything is possible to happen in the future as people's mind are creative and always craves new things, thus people might build mining devices that are far more efficient and cheaper to use than the current ones. This might solve the issue at hand about it consuming a lot of energy.

You haven't answered the question. How do you determine the value of benefit of decentralisation? If the high costs are not justified, what's the fair cost?
Average Joe may not be valuing decentralisation too high, but it's a different story for WikiLeaks (and alike), who had all their bank accounts frozen, or for individuals/businesses from Cyprus (EU member state, not some Banana Republic), who had seen their money just taken away from them, or for citizens of shithole countries with high risk of hyperinflation - you get the gist.
Other than exchanging physical goods (incl. cash), cryptocurrencies are the only way to transfer value in trustless, censorship-free, borderless manner. How do you put a value on that to say whether costs are justified or too high?

As for speed/costs - cryptos are performing pretty good. Bitcoin seems slow compared to other cryptos, but txs are irreversible and settled in average of 10 mins - this is huge advantage over the traditional means. Credit card purchases are rather expensive (especially for small merchants), buyers' could think they're free, but they're not - merchants pay the fees (and pass the costs to the buyers via increased product price, which also reflect costs of fraudulent chargebacks).

I just made a purchase on Aliexpress, my first payment attempt failed for an unknown reason, tried different card - it went through. Now I only have to wait 1 day for them to verify my payment. Wow, how fast and convenient. I'd be happy to pay even $15 fee just to use BTC if they had such option.


Private blockchains don't require high computational power (mining hashpower) at all. If it's pointless then why the hell is Swift (and others) spending presumably a fortune to explore/implement blockchain tech? They don't know any better? You want to email them and educate them on the issue?

LN removes obstacles such as transaction precessing speed, confirmation times, costly fees, etc. You however fail to see the value in it, because for some reason you keep hammering on that second layer like it's something that can't and won't work, while it does already deliver an outstanding job. I am sure that at a given point if Bitcoin provides on-chain scaling offering all the aforementioned features, you'll still find something to complain about. Let me ask you a question, from all the current altcoins, what is according to you a 'perfect' example of an adoption/usage stimulating altcoin? And explain why you think it is. Just saying this or that coin because it's faster and cheaper isn't enough.

Blockchain is a very expensive technology. It requires a lot of energy. But this technology is supported by many like-minded people. They allocate costs to each participant so they are minimal. Who will provide banks with their capacities? People unite in order not to use the services of banks. In fact, the cost of a Bank transaction is very low. Banks charge very high prices for transfers only because of their monopoly. They don't need the blockchain.

What are you talking about? That concept doesn't make any sense. Decentralization is a concept, not an asset. It doesn't have a quantitative value. If that is really what you are asking then your question has no answer.

I had never even heard of Aliexpress but the problem you are describing is most likely not an issue with the credit card. Either way, your evidence is completely anecdotal. The last bitcoin transaction I made took 8 days and cost $40.

Speed/cost may be performing better for crypto recently, but 10 minutes is still WAY too slow. If I go into a store to buy something, I'm not going to wait 10 minutes for the payment to process. Furthermore, the costs for bitcoin transactions are higher than credit card costs to vendors for reasonably small transactions. This problem will only become larger as mining becomes more difficult and fees rise. For bitcoin to be worth anything, it needs to be able to scale to thousands of times its current size, and it is running into major hurdles way before even coming remotely close to that point.


Your argument is that private blockchains must be valuable otherwise people wouldn't be spending money and looking into it. That argument is horribly flawed. Go read the last few Snapchat earnings reports and tell me that Snapchat Spectacles are valuable. They spent a ton of money on it and then gave up when it fell flat on its face.

One reason I can give you for many companies to be looking into blockchain is that simply saying the word "blockchain" in public will cause a company's stock price to go flying to stupidly high levels. Look at Long Island Blockchain, formerly Long Island Iced Tea. They are an iced tea distributer based on long island and their business has NOTHING to do with blockchain. They announced that they would look into blockchain technology and changed their name, and all of a sudden their stock price surges to wildly irrational levels.

And just to add, the bottom line really is that more and more crypto can be created infinitely, and none of them ever have any intrinsic value (yes, the USD DOES have intrinsic value). The crypto space is infinitely inflationary for this reason, and IMO will eventually fail. It is only getting so much attention because it is new and people made a lot of money. This is not anything remotely like the internet.

Your last statement actually sums it up. If anyone thinks blockchain technology and bitcoin is worthless, it does not take them anything to opt out. This is a community and opinions can be shared, but some are better off not being shared as they do not serve a purpose other than spreading bias or misleading information.

I can agree that the blockchain technology is over hyped and we all saw that with what happened with bitcoin late last year as people are tending towards being greedy but how does that make bitcoin worthless. If the author is even informed about swift, then he would not even write that bullshit.

I agree (with the bold part). But yet you gave decentralisation some value by saying: "The benefit of decentralization is not nearly large enough to outweigh the massive costs". Costs are measurable and you valued decentralisation below that. What if costs were 50% lower, or 75%, would decentralisation outweigh the costs then? Is there any deeper logic behind your statement, or is it just "I don't like it - not worth it"?


Aliexpress is a sub-brand of Alibaba, only the biggest e-commerce platform in the world. Not quite an anecdotal evidence if there are plenty of others with similar problems and when they have dedicated FAQ section for that. What's anecdotal (purposely?) is your BTC transaction, if really happened at all (care to share tx id?).


Are you of impression that fiat transaction are settled instantly?
You can build any 3rd party payment services on top on Bitcoin, with instant transactions (ie transfers between Coinbase accounts, pre-RBF BitPay purchases), you could accept BTC zero-conf for smaller purchases before RBF was implemented (you can still do it with BCH), you have BTC powered debit cards, you have Lightning Network, you have coins that scales on-chain, you have non-blockchain coins that claim to have unlimited capacity (IOTA) etc.

Bitcoin was created primarily as a response to the flawed global financial system, not as competition to payment processors. Even if it can compete with the latter - comparing them is bit missed.

Saying BTC is only worth something if it has capacity to replace fiat entirely is simply retarded and no different than saying McDonalds is worthless until they have capacity to feed entire world.
There's nothing stopping BTC from existing forever as a niche-alternative to fiat. What gives it value is the free market - not the way how you feel about it.


No. My argument was that: "Furthermore, blockchain technology necessarily requires cryptocurrency" and "A centralized and non-trustless blockchain ... is completely pointless" are false, as evidenced by Swift (among others). Private blockchains are just a form of distributed database and some find this tech very useful.

I have impression that you got stuck in some weird "something-is-overhyped-therefore-completely-useless" kind of logic.



Agree. What are you arguing here? Yes, 'blockchain' is overhyped and mis-used to screw investors. How does this affect cryptocurrencies?


No, USD DOESN'T have intrinsic value.
Cryptos are infinitely inflationary only if you assume that every newly created crypto is somehow automatically valuable and gets its share of crypto market cap (at expense of other coins). If that's what you believe, then put all your money in, go margin-short on BTC and create new coins at rate of thousands per day. Instant billionaire. What's stopping you?

how can bitcoin not worth it? I think bitcoin is a very useful and very successful digital currency because if you know it with bitcoin you can trade in different countries easily and you can use it for other highly secure payments.

The value of the coin is in our minds. More recently, the leader of preferences was the us dollar. Now the situation has changed. Every day there are new supporters of cryptocurrency. We see the struggle of the two worlds. It seems to me that the virtual world will win this fight. The growing popularity will increase the value of bitcoin.

This digital currency has no intrinsic use such as gold in electronics or jewelry. However, investors seem to assume some value for such things.

Yes you can trade but you can not pay anything. I don't know any shop at all in my country that accepts bitcoin. That's the whole key here, the author in the article explains why blockchain is not suitable at all for a payment system. It's way too slow.

No LN will never work because it's a really stupid system. If you were to build a payment system from the ground up you'd NEVER EVER design a system like LN. The whole reason LN exists is that people saw that blockchain is not suitable for payments, it's too slow, so they figured we need to find a way to allow for payments outside the blockchain but something that we can integrate within the blockchain system. That's when somebody thought "hey wait a minute, let's use multisig wallets where we can just change how much each party owns in that multisig wallet, that way we don't need the blockchain to perform a payment". And while it's actually a very smart idea, *given those constraints*, it's a stupid idea outside those constraints and people would NEVER even think of it when building a system from the ground up. It's some hippy idea that people will be part of payment routes and use their accounts for that but that will never work of course for reasons I've outlined in my topic.

Bitcoin as this days is not worthless because right now its value will continues to be very existing and fluctuating in the market. Yes the more supports from the users the more it become growing its value. It is still been going strong so I can say bitcoin is really worth.

You don't need to have a numeric way to measure two things against each other to say one is greater than the other. You don't need quantitative data to back every statement you make in your life. I can say that Mozart was more talented at writing and performing music than Kirk Cousins is at playing quarterback in the NFL and there is no way to measure this, but everyone would agree that it is true. It's not an unreasonable statement to make at all.


You really don't believe me? Transactions were costing insane amounts of money in November/December last year and taking weeks to process. They were stuck sitting in mem pools forever. Here is the ID, although I don't think there is any way you can see when I submitted it: 7345a9bc63c1532082414d1849ff908a18f4dbdc0859959197fa022c66a2dd3e


I never claimed they were settled, that is irrelevant. It just has to be confirmed for a credit card transaction... you can't just accept that a bitcoin transaction will be all set when it enters the mem pool... in the case of bitcoin, you NEED to wait for it to settle.

If you build a payment system on top of bitcoin then you are taking something decentralized and improving it by centralizing it. Coinbase can do instant transfers because they control all of the bitcoin and know all of their private keys are valid. You can't transfer into or out of Coinbase instantly. If you want all bitcoin payments to be controlled by a sytem like Coinbase then why even use bitcoin at all? What is the benefit of that over credit cards?

There is always a tradeoff between decentralization/trustlessness and speed/scalability. Nobody is SOLVING the pitfalls of crypto without sacrificing decentralization and trustlessness.


Your understanding of the purpose of bitcoin's creation is vague so allow me to clarify for you - it was created to replace fiat. I would make an argument here in support of this but honestly it doesn't really matter at this point.

The difference between bitcoin and mcdonalds is that mcdonalds has a book value. They have stores, inventory, etc. They also have sales, and earnings... income... bitcoin has none of that. It has no intrinsic value, which is why it cannot exist in this limbo state you described forever.


No, you are saying that Swift and others investing in private non-trustless blockchains means they have value. What about the dozens of important figures who have claimed that bitcoin is worthless? Just because somebody or some organization invests in something or says something doesn't mean they are right. That was the point of my SNAP example. Look at all the smart people who invested in Bear Stearns in 2007.

Your argument relies on others' opinions and is therefore weak. If you want to argue about the merits of blockchain as a distributed database versus, say, an actual distributed database, then I'm happy to have that conversation. I work with software and databases so I would be happy to help you understand why it is so much less efficient than something like Cassandra or even regular SQL databases.


This was a response to your argument that companies would not be looking into blockchain tech if it didn't have some large value it could bring.


Creating a new crypto and automatically assigning it value is exactly what is happening every day! Look at all the IPOs everywhere. This is literally what bitcoin is... creating value out of nothing. If it worked for bitcoin, eth, bch, ltc, iota, xrp, doge, etc... why would we think this will stop?

USD has intrinsic value because every person and organization in the US is required by law to accept it as payment for debt. It is legally guaranteed value by the US government. I would argue that this is intrinsic value. This differs from bitcoin, which nobody is required to accept anywhere.

BTW I don't believe in bitcoin but I would NEVER short it. It is too volatile. I'm not arguing that it will fall in the short term, I'm arguing that it will fall in the long term. I'm not going to pay margin interest until bitcoin dies, which could be several years or more. However, if it were available I would happily buy PUT options expiring in like, 5 years or so... that way risk is limited, as opposed to short selling where risk is unlimited.

I always find it very interesting how the technically skilled are very wary of crypto's, while the noobs, who really don't understand it, are bullish.

Obviously, they are always busy looking for traffic to help get the bills paid. Over hyping may have occurred at some point but regarding it as worthless is what I disagree with. If it is worthless, at least in the literal sense, it should even be zero by now. If anyone feels bitcoin is in the verge of dying, then there is no point spreading it, they can just easily sell all they have, close their bitcointalk account and leave the rest to us to tell them the outcome in the future because we are just getting started.

OP's must be another dumb article from a dumb author. If OP can see this as the best written article ever, I wonder how the level of his intelligent quotient is, including the person that merited his post, if it is probably not a his alt. The mistake he even made was comparing with SWIFT. The same swift that sees greatness in blockchain and trying to explore it or another one? Well, good for him since the article was at least able to help someone like him.

What part particularly struck you as dumb?

Last time I tested it was 140. Is that enough for you?


LOL. Did you even read what SWIFT said? Yesterday they said: "Blockchain technology needs to make more progress before it can handle the billions of dollars of daily cross-border payments between the world’s banks" https://www.ft.com/content/966f5694-22c6-11e8-ae48-60d3531b7d11 which is EXACTLY the author's point too. Blockchain tech as it is is NOT suitable for payment systems. Maybe some day in a future it will be. But who knows when that day will arrive and IF that day will arrive. Right now it's worthless as a payment system.

They may say what they want to say; at least it is serving its purpose for the people in OP's shoes. It is his opinion but he really messed it up by saying that was the best article he ever read on bitcoin.

If anyone have seen what you have stated with their own eyes and still call bitcoin worthless, then I am so sorry for them. Bitcoin will keep growing anyway, irrespective of what anyone says, and I really would not be surprised, because even at $1million, people like the OP and his mentor who wrote the article will still consider bitcoin worthless.

It is possible to increase the block size. This will increase the network performance. But it will only be a temporary solution. It seems to me that in the future blockchain will be used only for external transactions. The main exchange will take place within a closed network such as bitcoin Bank. But this position will have a lot of discussions.

But what you said is more in line with:
You- Kirk Cousins is not worth $20m/year contract!
Me- How much do you think he's worth then?
You- Hurr durr what kind of question is that? You can't put a figure on skills!
Me- wtf??


Yes you can. Your tx took less than 5 days, not 8. You paid $20.43 worth of fees (at that time) not $40. You exaggerated by a factor of x3.2. With $40 fee, standard sized tx would likely get included in the next block (even during peak congestion time), that's why I called you out on that.

You could before RBF was implemented and blocks weren't full. The risk was there but it was far lower than the risk of fraudulent credit card chargeback (btw, merchant can consider cc payment fully settled when chargeback time limit expires), so perfectly fine for small/mid transactions. You can still do that with BCH, you have other coins with near-instant confirmations (or instant non-blockchain coins) and you have other solutions like LN in a making. Wait, why am I feeling like I'm repeating myself...


Relying on 3rd parties on top of blockchain is hypothetical dark scenario when everything else fails. Even then you have benefit of having control over majority of your funds and only depositing smaller amounts to the 3rd parties. Having to trust someone with your $200 is not the same as having to trust someone with all your money, all the time, isn't it?

I'm sure even you put at least a tiny value in having an option in life (to use crypto if you ever feel like it), it's better than not having such option.

Bitcoins also have book value. You didn't address the point. Can you explain, precisely at what tx/sec capacity rate BTC moves from being completely worthless to being worth something. What's the magic number?


It's a strong indicator that they find the technology useful. I don't expect Swift is spending shitloads on blockchain solutions just to bump their stock price, because they are a Society and don't even have a listed stock + probably they would be the first to debunk the blockchain tech if it was indeed useless (as it's a direct competition to their service). Just as I find it hard to believe that Blockstream would manage to sell their private blockchain solutions to any business if it was indeed inferior to the existing tech etc.

Yes, I find it more credible than word of an anonymous forum "expert", with no history, saying "they're all wrong/they're a fraud".

Second of all, I don't see any real connection between BTC's worth and usefulness of private chains, so couldn't care less.


So if I create my own premined shitcoin and assign its value at $1m/coin, I'd be instantly the richest man in the world? Or, could it be, I actually need someone to buy from me at that price?



What's guaranteed is USD acceptance, not its value. Zimbabwean Dollars were also a legal tender and how did that work in terms of retaining the value?  There's no intrinsic value in USD. What's funny, it can get worse than that, in some cases being legal tender can prevent you from extracting intrinsic value from physical notes/coins, i.e. scrap metal value of 1 cent coin exceeds 1 cent, but scrapping/destroying official money is a criminal offence.

You did read my previous post? SWIFT actually agrees with the author that blockchain in its current state is NOT suitable for payment systems (which is no surprise given the current 14 tx/sec limit for bitcoin for example). Maybe some day someone will invent a new algo and it will work. But who knows if that's even possible. Until that day bitcoins is worthless as a payment system.

It came from worthless but now it is now worth it because of the demand that it has right now, and bitcoin has been widely used in different aspects so it is not worthless it is so worthy to invest at although we cannot see it physically but we can see the big opportunity enclosed in it.

Author of the original article was almost certainly clueless about Swift's project and probably moreso about the hacks they suffered.

As for FT piece - There's a difference between 'not ready yet' and 'inherently useless or inferior to current systems'. There's a difference between 'not suitable for payment systems' and 'not yet ready to support all 11,000 banks'.

According to Swift, test went 'extremely well' and are 'convinced that these obstacles will be overcome'. Change the title and you have pretty bullish piece.

yes you are right I agree with you, right now it is very much startup that use or support payment using bitcoin, but I hope bitcoin can be used for all countries as a valid payment instrument.

Ok wake me up when bitcoin can do more than 14 transactions per second. Something like the 65.000 per second that VISA currently processes. And don't start about LN, because that's just the dumbest system ever that won't work, like I explaind before: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2792933.0

WTF Bitcoin has to do with Swift's private blockchain again?

See topic title. You started about SWIFT. Regardless of that, it's at the core of blockchain technology that it can't do many transactions per second. It's not only bitcoin, it's blockchain in general that's unsuitable for payment systems. Exactly like the author describes in his article.

The fact is that bitcoin can not be a means of payment at all, especially if you look at price fluctuations in the market, it just outraged. In addition, many members of society will not be able to use bitcoin in real life and not only because of their limited knowledge, but also because of technical capabilities.

Well that's another thing indeed. Even if some genius would invent (much) faster blockchain technology some day in the future, then most shops still wouldn't want to use it due to the volatility. If you're on online shop and your margin is 3%, are you going to accept payments that can easily be worth 10-20% less at the end of the day? That would just be insane.

If those merchants started to accept it the volatility would disappear because they would be able to pay their suppliers in BTC to get stuff that they've just sold for BTC, so the coins would never end up on an exchange and would not affect the value of BTC vs fiat in the merchant's country. The exchanges are causing the volatility because the supply of coins on each of these platforms is extremely limited wen compared to the supply in circulation. This means that a small amount, like 5% of the total supply can easily crash the price or take it to the moon and we are seeing things like that happening every year.
IMO BTC can be a means of payment it only requires an economy built around it and people trading it directly, without having to use fiat.

That's pretty flawed statement. Cryptos are alredy proven to work as a payment system, because you can pay with them. What you're saying is one blockchain/crypto is unsuitable to become a one, global currency. But, even assuming it's true, I seriously fail to see how does that makes cryptos worthless. Where did you get the idea "it's all or nothing"? Explain why Bitcoin, or any other crypto, is only worth something when it has the capacity to service every person in the world? Why would it have no value if stays forever in a niche?

Oh really ? I don't even know of a single shop in my country that accepts them. Only a hand few of online retailers accept them and the list is shrinking quickly. Big parties like Steam have stopped accepting them because of all the problems mentioned.

Do you really believe that some shops will continue to accept them, if pretty much none of their clients is using it? Why go through all that trouble?

This is completely wrong. You didn't understand the analogy. You omitted Mozart entirely.


If what you are saying is true then it doesn't even matter anyway. You're really grasping at straws here. $20.43 and 5 days is still insanely far beyond anything reasonable. Cue you asking for a specific number for time and fee that is reasonable... I'll answer you now - faster than the time I have to wait for a credit card to process at a store, and a lower fee than the net profit the CC companies make per transaction.


Wrong, risk of fraudulent bitcoin transactions is higher. Both credit cards and bitcoin come with the risk of someone stealing your credentials and pretending to be you u- the difference being that you will most likely be reimbursed by the credit card company in their case. Plus, they are getting better and better at automatically detecting fraud. PLUS, people can submit fraudulent bitcoin transactions without your info... it will just get rejected. It will take longer for it to be rejected than for a credit card transaction to be successfully submitted.

Also in regards to your RBF point... none of the major bitcoin wallets implement RBF and the majority of people don't know what it is.


The point is that a "third party" blockchain or centralized, non-trustless blockchain is pointless because it doesn't bring the benefit of decentralization and it far underperforms its direct competitor - a traditional database.


Bitcoin does not have a book value. To answer your question, see my response to your other quote. It has to be better than credit cards and banks to be worth anything.


They could be pushing up the value of their shares in the private market. Investors exchange shares of private companies all the time. Either way, regardless of whether or not that is the reason, this is not an indicator that private blockchains are useful any more than Jamie Dimon's comments on bitcoin are an indicator that it is a fraud.


What you are saying here is that the work in creating a crypto is convincing other people to give it value. The only reason they would give it value is if they think that other people will give it a higher value. I don't consider crypto to be a Ponzi Scheme but I can see why a lot of people do.

I'm not saying it's easy to go out and create a coin and get value for it, but it is being done consistently.


The fact that people NEED USD to pay their taxes and make every day purchases gives it value. If I have a dollar, I know with certainty that it won't be worthless tomorrow because the government requires citizens to use it to pay their taxes and debts... not Zimbabwean dollars, US Dollars. Yes, the value will fluctuate, but it will still have some value. I'm not saying USD is a good investment - it's definitely not.

Bitcoin worthless because it has the potential as a investment highly favorable, because the value of the bitcoin that is good then when we bought with cheap prices then some time to the front of us will get huge profits because of the value bitcoin who kept up every time

Yes, actually it can be said worthless for some reasons others not believing about bitcoin that can be valuable in the future. The current value of bitcoin is worth buying now though it drops but it will usually recover. Whatever the article says, I believe on bitcoin be able to exists long.

Are you using an online translator? You're not making any sense

If you are a bitcoin enthusiast, on the internet you will find multiple studies and analyzes that will convince you of the convenience of investing in bitcoin. If you are a bitcoin hater, you will also find thousands of articles that will support your position. It is a reality that the widest range of positions on any subject circulates freely on the Internet, that it will always be possible to find an argument or analysis that can support virtually any position, for which we must be very cautious before letting ourselves be convinced by the first positive or negative argument that we find on the internet.

Lol nice catch dude. I bet he is , anyways bitcoin is not worthless but instead it is verry important due to the fact that bitcoin is useful and has a lot of features not just a stand alone currency but also it can be an asset at the same time which means we can use it for buying and investing or trading.

That is the reason why bitcoin is not a worthless piece of coin. the author of this thread maybe an anti bitcoin or want bitcoin to go down so that he can take an advantage with it.  You know speculations can also make an effect to the price of bitcoin .

If I'm not making any sense so what's your point on this topic? Let me heard your voice and very worth opinion to read here in the forum. As far from what I know we have different point of view here.

its funny that they are referring to the blockchain technology to be an over-hyped technology :'(

if they think some cryptocurrencies are overpriced, why not choose to use or invest in some coins their budgets will allow them because as far as I know projects do not set the price, its the market (us)!

This article would have been very good had it resurfaced a few years ago but unfortunately, today companies with real use of the blockchain for long-term use are developing their own blockchains as opposed to copy and paste of algorithms.

Bitcoin is worth it not worthless. Because many people who are bought bitcoin last few years ago are earning a lot of money.
Many peolle change life because of the bitcoin from people who don't have to have a lot. People who say bitcoin is worthless because they don't have bitcoin and did not invest when the price is very low.

I beg to disagree,bitcoin is not worthless because if so.. no one will invest,no one will take a risk in investing their money to a worthless coins.In fact me and my family invested some.

Of the many people, it certainly could have different reasons related to many things associated with bitcoin, one of them is investing or trading in it, and it because how widely they knew bitcoin or lack to deepened of all the things related to bitcoin.
Bitcoin is certainly is worthy, because from its very natural development., it can be got a very high popularity until getting a lot of welcomed from many people and certain countries because of the technology in it, also many benefits.