Bitcoin Forum

There is this misconception that has been created about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general which needs to be cleared once and for all. I quote Satoshi's words from his whitepaper "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
Maybe i misinterpreted this but where in this statement is it written/implies that bitcoin is going to get rid of poverty. Let's not get things twisted and funny enough when their false assumptions don't come to pass they tend to consider that the technology failed. Well i guess they failed in interpreting this simple message above.  ;D

I think you are the one that misinterprets the true meaning of it, And if you would look at Financial Institution is a company engaged in the business of dealing with financial and monetary transactions such as deposits, loans, and investments and include a huge range of business encompass financial services that include insurance companies, brokerage firms, investment dealers, banks and other companies that need Financial Institution, It is not really getting rid of poverty but the use of certain third-party organization that is why Bitcoin transaction is used with trust that is why we are free of ta in every transaction you made.

First of all, Bitcoin was not invented to alleviate poverty and its a wrong notion even just to assume it! @ OP, would you be kind enough to further clarify your point? I mean maybe you could provide us relevant  links with regards to your topic especially when you mentioned "Manna" which I believe is a Biblical term. I hope you could expound more on this topic at hand. :)

that is only misconception when you say it about bitcoin. but it is completely true when you say it about 99% of the altcoins. you can not possibly find at least 10 coins that are satisfying this definition of being a "currency". nearly all of them are created for pump and dumps.

Everyone is free to view btc the way they want to view it, if for any reason someone sees btc as a means of alleviating their financial needs then I don't see why not after all if btc didn't serve that purpose they won't see it as that, same thing with the person who use btc for it's tech can see it that way because the tech part serve him, btc is multipurpose.

I think what OP's trying to convey is that Bitcoin's white paper does not tell anything about solving poverty. And these other people claiming that the technology (Bitcoin) have failed, when in fact, it really is a success since the main purpose, having P2P payment solution without intermediary, has been achieved by Satoshi.

People replying to this post should read twice, OP should reconstruct his sentence for clearer expression of ideas.

Poverty is about how to manage money, not money itself, so the comparison seems illogical. "It's like the relationship between the length of the road and the depth of the sea."
Correcting that phrase would be: if Bitcoin is used properly, we will get rid of poverty.
General headlines are often used for propaganda and media amplification, linking BTC to poverty, hunger, drugs, etc. are propaganda, not real debates.

As it used in many application, by different people, it shows ways that are helpful depending on where we wanted it to be use. As it is primarily for fast transactions that is wide tool too as it connects money and many different sources like the benefiary and sender of that money. As time passed by and it's demand increases the value increases too that shows how good it is as investment too and becoming a early adopter to help us away to poverty.

If he meant that, with its current design, Bitcoin can handle only 5 transactions per second. that might be enough at the inter-bank level, but is certainly not enough for everyone to transact directly in bitcoin. secondly, there are the huge fees. Bitcoin is a really expensive way to pay for things, especially low value items.  

Thirdly, Bitcoin isn't remotely functional as a currency and P2P payment method; primarily because of the volatility in its value. This volatility means that if bitcoin is rising, no one in their right mind would pay for things using bitcoin, because if they wait their bitcoin will be worth more. Meanwhile when bitcoin is falling no one in their right mind would accept bitcoin as payment. hence bitcoin is not being marketed as a form of payment. it is marketed as an asset whereas a portion of that asset can be sent anywhere fast and at a low cost.

First off, who claims that bitcoin is the solution to poverty? I mean it can alleviate the standard of living of some people because because it gives them more purchasing power, however, to claim that it's like a magic bean and a solution to every human problem is wrong.

Bitcoin was designed to be a P2P as you have said, meaning without any party in the middle. However, let me remind you that it also involved in the past ten years that it is being consider today as an asset or store of value (SoV).

While satoshi designed bitcoin to be a peer to peer transfer of cash (payments), now it comes to a point that it became a store of value. Even it became like that, there's no way bitcoin going to get rid of poverty. Poverty is a choice and bitcoin can't be used to end it, you will end of in a very huge debt if you choose to have bitcoin while you don't understand what its purpose, how to use it, etc.

FIrst where did you get that idea of Misinterpretation?yeah people are looking to gain profit in bitcoin but none of them says that it will carry them from the bed of poverty,or maybe this is just your experience and not others?

This is the future currency but to have this you must purchase of work for it so there is no misinterpretation there,you should clarify what you mean here

It was really never intended to solve poverty. Satoshi isn't a government to worry solve that problem.
Actually Satoshi achieved his goal in making it a peer-to-peer transaction. And I don't know who claimed it to be a solution for poverty? But let's not close the fact that bitcoin also helped us financially, but not to the point that its main function is to solve poverty.

Exactly! People need to understand that Bitcoin and cryptoucrrencies & blockchain are a revolution that could or could not evolve in something of very high impact on our world. Similar to the internet, Bitcoin is an opportunity that people can choose to take advantage of. That's the only way in which people will get rid of poverty through Bitcoin in my view. Always remember that nothing is guaranteed on Earth.

LOL, who said that Bitcoin is the answer for poverty. And for those people who are "dreaming" that it's the solution, then they are in the wrong market. I can't believed people around claiming that bitcoin or crypto for that matter is the solution? Maybe they are blinded because they think it's a get rich scheme, but it's not. Earning Bitcoin needs hard work as well and you really need to be smart in order for you to make a lot of money.

People got the message but there is more to it for BTC rather than just a Peer-to-peer payment system. It may not be in stated in the whitepaper but as an investor's/trader's perspective BTC is something that can actually make your rich or at least earn from it. Satoshi didn't mention anything about it's price or how volatile it will be in the market but with the results we have on how it fluctuates and how it has risen through the years you will get the point on why people are saying this and how the news media is saying BTC can act as a "safe haven" when a financial crisis comes.

I think bitcoin is only a way for people who want to make money from a new source. Bitcoin is like a knife, how we will use bitcoin for our life. If we know what we can do with bitcoin, bitcoin will help us to make money in the short term and long term.

Bitcoin cannot get rid of poverty if people don't want to try to change their life and only to expect to make money from bitcoin without doing anything. That will be only a dream for people who think like that because they will not earn anything from other people. So if you want to change your life with bitcoin, you need to be ready for the consequences and the risk inside bitcoin itself.

Well i don't have much links to buttress this point but if you have been here long enough this view has been shared by some young folks after the bull run of bitcoin in 2017. Luckily enough i just found an old post which also makes such claims. Just check it out https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5046710.msg46679092#msg46679092 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5046710.msg46679092#msg46679092)

What i simply meant by "Manna" is food as some folks think bitcoin is going to provide food unto their table.

Just to add to your post, there are many people who are not smart and still they make a lot of money from inheritance or lottery, etc. However most of them go bankrupt just because they are not smart with their finances and don't have financial education.

I don't think many people believe that Bitcoin will solve poverty, but some people believe that Bitcoin will replace banks, which is almost just as unlikely - adoption is going painfully slow, the tech is not scalable for that yet, the price is too unstable and so on. Bitcoin's future is still quite unclear - we know that it is here to stay, but we don't know just how successful it will be in the long run.

Whether what is written on the white paper become fulfilled or not, we can also contribute to the development of bitcoin other than it just being treated as a tool for transaction in peer to peer without any third party involved. An believe it or not, bitcoin adoption is now widely spread that many individuals find their way of life easier in terms of transactions using bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. It may not get rid of the poverty yet, but sooner or later, we, as contributors to bitcoins will be a tool to help those that in need through the help of bitcoin.

peer-to-peer just want to make transactions being just the two parties involve without central authority. surely there is a tech when nakamoto said this. i don't remember anyone saying btc can help the less fortunate to become rich but it certainly help people from getting rekt by banks and central authorities. no matter how much effort you will spread the word that BTC isn't for get rich quick scheme, they already have seen it happened over and over. this is why its going to go up and down every time being a MANNA to them.

Bitcoin was never meant to save anyone from poverty, but just provide an avenue for the un-banked portion of the society to still be a part of the growing e-commerce ecosystem and have a say on the global economic scene. True that bitcoin somewhat helped the redistribution of wealth in the world but the majority of its purpose was to be a global currency that knows no authority, limits and restrictions. It just so happened that people speculated the hell out of it having the value of what it has today.

Bitcoin gives more opportunity to elevate one's status.  If that is not the same as getting rid of one's poverty, I do not know what it is to you.  I know people need to work to earn a living but if there is no opportunity for them, would they earn any amount to sustain their daily needs?


Indeed but when Bitcoin was created, it was packaged with lots of opportunity for people.  Start-ups offer more job, wise investments gives a huge return and there is less hassle on sending remittances all over the world.

Though Bitcoin wasn't necessarily invented to alleviate poverty, we can all agree that it has made some people very wealthy especially those who were able to start investing into bitcoins in its infancy stages. Am sure they didn't believe that it was going to rise in value as time goes on and now they are enjoying the profits and even those who started late have also been able to make some profits from it though it was made specifically for payments.

Well, to be fair, more than interpretation failed if we talk about Bitcoin as money being sent directly from one person to another. We have exchanges where we trade, we have some wallets that can also be considered intermediaries (all of them, maybe...). And if Bitcoin was not meant to solve the problem of poverty but can help to solve it, there's nothing wrong with that. But you're right that blaming Bitcoin for not doing that is wrong (who is blaming it for that, though?). Saying that people who blame Bitcoin wrongly for volatility would be a more difficult case, though, because one might argue that for something to function as money is should have relative stability.

At least some folks really get my message in here. there is this tendency of we dumping or accepting cryptocurrencies in the near future and even if it's the latter it's still going to be way expensive for people to buy. In case any poor person decide to invest into bitcoin do you think he/she would have enough resources to hodl for even more than 6 months? That's why investment strategies are always a game of the well-to-do because they have several streams of income in their life.

Does it mean we have to follow Satoshi's ideas to the word?
Some of us see Bitcoin as tradable asset, some as safe haven for illegal money, some as retirement money, others for a way to pay for child porn online or extort people. I don't see anything bad in trying to become rich with Bitcoin. There are people who say they follow Satoshi's vision but really misinterpret it and damage his name like CSW.

  I agree, people act as if Bitcoin was a magical beanstalk that would grow by throwing your money at it. Durring the big pump a while ago when the market price reached the all time high, people where taking out money against their homes and emptying their savings accounts, then it crashed.
   It's just gonna take time for the sector to evolve a little more, I don't think crypto would do well mainstream to ordinary people, But one day perhaps.

Bitcoin is both a tech and a Manna! God created man and man created the manner, whichever way you look at it, without a single fight or working from 9 to 5, with bitcoin one can attain financial freedom from the comfort of their living room, this is a "miracle".

I understand the OP in that link you've supplied did contend that Bitcoin could supposedly "alleviate" poverty but outlined only just three phenomenons that causes poverty and cites Bitcoin as a solution where in fact, there are different factors that can cause poverty which cannot be resolved by Bitcoin alone!

I do not think Bitcoin can solve unemployment,  overpopulation, conflict or war, disasters, etc., all of which are also causes of poverty. Imho.


Yes. I also meant "Manna" is food which is referred in the Bible.  :)

actually there's a coin called manna, it's around since 2015 :D

it's an UBI (universal basic income) project, registered users receive free coins every week.

https://mannabase.com/
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/manna/

Certainly, Bitcoin had not been invented and adopted for the sake of eradicating poverty. In the first place, nothing can really erase poverty from the face of the planet but we can just minimize its impact on people. There are many tools and programs that anti-poverty groups/agencies are using to address this problem and some are effective and some are not. However, if you happen to be one of the many who acquired your Bitcoin during the faucet days and you hold on to them, then I am sure if you were a poor guy before you can now enjoy the riches you might be dreaming of. And that brings us to another misconception that Bitcoin is a get-rich-quick scheme and so when it failed to bring the money to people (or some speculators) the conclusion is that Bitcoin is just another scam. Personally, I don't see any wrong with us desiring for money because that is given, considering that we are living in a costly world where inflation is eating up our income, but looking at Bitcoin this way is just like looking at a coin in one angle. Maybe it is not Bitcoin's job to fight poverty but the blockchain technology may offer some help directly or indirectly.

I don't see understanding eliminating poverty. Besides the concept of peer-to-peer that is eliminating additional costs, which are usually used by third parties as their services. You are not given money for free with this technology, you still have to work to get money.

Can we blame them? A lot of people have never been exposed to a "currency" that increase in value of time, so when they see this for the first time and they compare it to their local currency, then they think it is "Manna" from the sky. A lot of people in third world countries are experiencing hyperinflation, where the local fiat currency are losing value every day and this is a God send for them to find a currency that holds it's value and even increase in value over time.  8)

So, let's ignore all the negative criticism and appreciate what Bitcoin has to offer the people who are suffering with hyperinflation.  ;)

Bitcoin is first and foremost an opportunity

You have a point but let us not forget that bitcoin nowadays is much more considered to be a store of value rather than as a for of payment. It means that people are into bitcoin because of the potential profit through trading.  Also let us also look at monetary inflation and economic collapse and that bitcoin can be a tool for them to escape poverty. I dont say that universally bitcoin could get rid of poverty but I am also not saying that it does not have the potential to help people alleviate poverty.

Most people don't read much.
They've heard that some early Bitcoiners are rich now. Just look at Ver, or the twins, isn't it?
They may also hear about faucets: money for free. (It doesn't matter that's probably only a tenth of a cent, that part they'll understand much later.)
They may also hear about mining: some magic and poof, money for free.

And here's how the false assumptions are born.
Some will read and see what's the reality. Some others will get disappointed and may even become opponents of this technology.

I have this feeling that he knew that it will become valuable because why would he create a very limited supply and cannot be modified and altered, there is none of his writing that tells us that it will get rid of poverty, and yet it was created to be that way, once it become valuable people are more than willing to engage in buying and selling and storing it and create demand.
That is why it become a tool to make money and get rid of poverty.

I wonder why I read from a mate's post recently that bitcoin was created for asset purpose and for people to make money and I wonder if this user really even read anything that has to do with satoshi’s paper before saying this and the thing that I have found out is that many people joining cryptocurrency without even understanding one thing about it, and they just feel it is a Ponzi scheme where they put money to double it, so everything they look for on the internet is how much they can out in and how much they can get in return from the money which I would blame this misconception on people that introduced them first to the cryptocurrency market.

This is the main focus of bitcoin that you have here and this is what should make us happy the, most because we now have the freedom to have a transaction that will be free of all these thirds party government agencies that usually do frustrate ones transaction.