My criticism of BitCoin

[Integic]

I dont like BitCoin for these reasons:

1. The whole idea that someone can turn on his computer/GPU and "bit mine" and earn money is ridiculous.
People should earn money when they work hard for it. Turning on a computer and leaving it to run does not and should not count.
This is a waste of electricity as well and therefore it causes greenhouse gases and has a carbon footprint.

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

3. BC is unstable. People lost a lot of money (one tiny example; there are probably hundreds and thousands) and they did nothing wrong. A good modern currency should not have this defect.

It does have positive points which is why many people are using it but it would have been nice if it didnt have the above problems.

One would think if a new digital currency was created it wouldnt have issues like this. Computers and software are so powerful now. It should have been possible to design a currency with none of the issues above.

"Then dont use it" Or "Why dont you make your own currency system?"
These are not valid responses so they shouldnt be said here.

[AgentofCoin]

I dont like BitCoin for these reasons:

1. The whole idea that someone can turn on his computer/GPU and "bit mine" and earn money is ridiculous.
People should earn money when they work hard for it. Turning on a computer and leaving it to run does not and should not count.
This is a waste of electricity as well and therefore it causes greenhouse gases and has a carbon footprint.

1a. Then I guess when farmers use automated network controlled tractors and etc to harvest their crops, that isn't work either and isn't really "proper crop".

1b. When a single volcano erupts on earth, it throws off more green house gases into the atmosphere then a few decades of human civilization.
      A Volcano is a larger threat to the ozone layer then Bitcoin is and there is one going off every few minutes.

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

2. Disabling "stolen" bitcoins makes no sense. Who is to say what is stolen or not? Who is the decider in a decentralized system?

3. BC is unstable. People lost a lot of money (one tiny example; there are probably hundreds and thousands) and they did nothing wrong. A good modern currency should not have this defect.
....

3. Bitcoin currently is not a currency, it is an asset, and currently acts as an asset. As time goes on, and with stabilization, it will be a proper currency.


Edit: corrected grammar errors

[edric]

1. The whole idea that someone can turn on his computer/GPU and "bit mine" and earn money is ridiculous.
People should earn money when they work hard for it. Turning on a computer and leaving it to run does not and should not count.
This is a waste of electricity as well and therefore it causes greenhouse gases and has a carbon footprint.

How is a computer producing currency much different than a central bank using a fractional reserve credit brokering system?  The only difference is that bitcoin has a finite limit of supply.  A central bank currency will inflate infinitely.

[pooya87]

I dont like BitCoin for these reasons:

1. The whole idea that someone can turn on his computer/GPU and "[ur l=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_network#Bitcoin_mining]bit mine[/url]" and earn money is ridiculous.
People should earn money when they work hard for it. Turning on a computer and leaving it to run does not and should not count.

bit mine as you put it , is a work too. the people who are leaving their computer on to mine bitcoin are confirming other people's transactions and helping the bitcoin network

This is a waste of electricity as well and therefore it causes greenhouse gases and has a [ur l=https://pando.com/2013/12/16/bitcoin-has-a-dark-side-its-carbon-footprint/]carbon footprint.[/url]

and cutting down trees and printing out paper money (cash) is eco-friendly?

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, [ur l=https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&q=stolen+bitcoin]BC gets stolen all the time[/url].
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

people get mugged, cars get hijacked, supermarkets get robbed, so i guess we should stop going out of our home and stop using cars, etc
why don't you google stolen vehicle, or people getting mugged in the street?

3. BC is unstable. People lost a lot of money ([ur l=http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-i-lost-half-of-my-retirement-investment-in-bitcoins-2014-10-07]one tiny example[/url]; there are probably hundreds and thousands) and they did nothing wrong. A good modern currency should not have this defect.

all those people lost their money because they have blindly put a lot of money in something they didn't understand how it works. then bought it at the highers peek of price with the hope "to get rich quickly over night" but their dream didn't come true. also they didn't want to accept that price is going up and sell, they held on to their bitcoin until it was late.

It does have positive points which is why many people are using it but it would have been nice if it didnt have the above problems.

One would think if a new digital currency was created it wouldnt have issues like this. Computers and software are so powerful now. It should have been possible to design a currency with none of the issues above.

"Then dont use it" Or "Why dont you make your own currency system?"
These are not valid responses so they shouldnt be said here.

it has problems, and nobody can deny them (not what you mentioned here) but it is a new technology and it should have these problems and they are getting fixed over time as it grows.

[money.investment]

1. The whole idea that someone can turn on his computer/GPU and "bit mine" and earn money is ridiculous.
People should earn money when they work hard for it.

Their computer is working hard, for them

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen?

The so called "serial number" is the strength of bitcoin, giving you full control of your money, its your responsibility to keep it safe.

3. BC is unstable. People lost a lot of money (one tiny example; there are probably hundreds and thousands) and they did nothing wrong.

"BC" is not unstable, its market value is unstable. Bitcoin has work flawless since Jan 2009, never breached its protocol. Hundreds and thousands of people, who lost money in trading, because of their greed (as in the case of any speculative market), they thought bitcoin as instant get rich scheme. People who had blindly entrusted their bitcoin to centralized exchanges, have also lost big money, due to failure of the exchanges not bitcoin.

[Mickeyb]

The op has no rebuttals obviously because he was purely wrong, at this time I would just consider this a win for the forum and just let the thread die. We will still see many like this in the future though   

It's funny to me how people are coming back with the same old arguments over and over again and they make as much sense as they did at the beginning, no sense at all. 

Like you can buy drugs and guns for Bitcoin, well people are buying it all time for $. Or Bitcoin is harming our environment. Well how many trees are cut to make all overly printed dollars and other currencies around the world.

My absolute favorite one is securing Bitcoin's through hashing power costs to much money and we would be better off using that hashing power for medical research lets say, when nobody actually even tries to think how much costs daily to secure any countries FIAT system? Imagine how much cost US Fed to print and replace all the dollars daily?

I guess we will never stop hearing arguments like that!

[monsanto]

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

Ultimately I think this may prevent Bitcoin from being widely adopted. That doesn't mean it can't continue to exist as a niche system. But, the average person is willing to pay a certain amount, to a credit card for example, in order to be able to have customer support (i.e., insurance) in the event of theft.

[shorena]

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

Ultimately I think this may prevent Bitcoin from being widely adopted. That doesn't mean it can't continue to exist as a niche system. But, the average person is willing to pay a certain amount, to a credit card for example, in order to be able to have customer support (i.e., insurance) in the event of theft.

What makes you think that "the average person" (whoever that is) is willing to pay extra? I see constant examples (even here) where people have no idea how expensive credit cards are and how every customers pays more for every item in a store that is accepting credit card payments. On top of that people are constantly in pursuit of "free" services where the only price you pay is that the provider spies on you can sells the information to advertising companies. While its a perfectly fine way to finance something, I dont think most people using a service like google are aware of the price they pay.

With all that being said I think bitcoin is actually capable of enabling a service to provide transparent insurance of your coins (for an extra ofc). E.g. some of the treasurers for the board secure a part of its funds for a fee.

[jeffthebaker]

Real talk, it's obvious OP is horribly misinformed about what exactly is Bitcoin, but this should be alarming. These views very well may reflect that of the general public in regards to Bitcoin, which is a huge problem.

[Amph]

first point don't work anymore, it's like you say, it is not easy anymore, you need big farm super cheap electricity and a big space, not everyone can do that and there is no wasting resource if you can produce something that has a great value, like bitcoin

they are stolen all the time not becaue bitcoin is insecure, but because average people are incompetente they want everything done in automatic...ridiculous, and "they" can't disable shit, bitcoin is not centralized, fortunately...

unstability it's only related to its adoption, something that will fix itself with time, no need to worry about it

[n2004al]

I dont like BitCoin for these reasons:

1. The whole idea that someone can turn on his computer/GPU and "bit mine" and earn money is ridiculous.
People should earn money when they work hard for it. Turning on a computer and leaving it to run does not and should not count.
This is a waste of electricity as well and therefore it causes greenhouse gases and has a carbon footprint.

There is nothing bad that money can be earned in this way. No one are stealing nothing and stealing it is the only way of earnings that can be punished.

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

No one has told that with bitcoins will not be stealing of bitcoins. Stealing has nothing to do with the money but with the evildoers. There are and there will be always such kind of people and they will steal not only bitcoin but everything. Even the fiat money you like.

3. BC is unstable. People lost a lot of money (one tiny example; there are probably hundreds and thousands) and they did nothing wrong. A good modern currency should not have this defect.

Every fiat money is unstable. Let's remember here the us dollar. There are to many periods where us dollar was devaluated and evaluated again. We can rememebr that this has happen even the last 7-8 years. Only the last year (two years) us dollar has gained about 20% of his value.

[Mickeyb]

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

Ultimately I think this may prevent Bitcoin from being widely adopted. That doesn't mean it can't continue to exist as a niche system. But, the average person is willing to pay a certain amount, to a credit card for example, in order to be able to have customer support (i.e., insurance) in the event of theft.

Yes, but for this customer service, you are paying crazy fees and don't have a control over your money, look at Greece and capital controls. Ultimately, people will and should have options. Some will trust banks and Visa and pay fees and be insured. Others will choose Bitcoin and decide to be their own bank. That's one of the problems of today's system, people don't have options and people should always have options!

[prodigy8]

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

Ultimately I think this may prevent Bitcoin from being widely adopted. That doesn't mean it can't continue to exist as a niche system. But, the average person is willing to pay a certain amount, to a credit card for example, in order to be able to have customer support (i.e., insurance) in the event of theft.

Yes, but for this customer service, you are paying crazy fees and don't have a control over your money, look at Greece and capital controls. Ultimately, people will and should have options. Some will trust banks and Visa and pay fees and be insured. Others will choose Bitcoin and decide to be their own bank. That's one of the problems of today's system, people don't have options and people should always have options!

If you dont have control of your money it means that they are not yours anymore, it can happen that like the bank bankrupt and your money are lost or limited like the Greece you are right.

[achow101]

I dont like BitCoin for these reasons:

1. The whole idea that someone can turn on his computer/GPU and "bit mine" and earn money is ridiculous.
People should earn money when they work hard for it. Turning on a computer and leaving it to run does not and should not count.
This is a waste of electricity as well and therefore it causes greenhouse gases and has a carbon footprint.

It is a smaller carbon footprint than you really think it is. Besides, you can't CPU or GPU mine anymore. It isn't profitable and just wastes money and electricity. The big mining farms that mine are usually near big cheap sources of electricity. Those happen to tend to be renewable sources like hydroelectric plants. HaoBTC's mine is near a hydroelectric which provides them cheap electricity and doesn't have a carbon footprint.

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

It is just like cash. Cash can be stolen, and the serial numbers can't be disabled. There aren't serial numbers with Bitcoin, and disabling the spending of certain transactions requires hard forks and implies that there is centralization to decide what transactions are not stolen Bitcoin. Whose job would it be to decide that someone's transactions was Bitcoin being stolen?

3. BC is unstable. People lost a lot of money (one tiny example; there are probably hundreds and thousands) and they did nothing wrong. A good modern currency should not have this defect.

It is just like stocks, the price goes up and down. Other foreign currencies fluctuate too. People shouldn't look at Bitcoin as a speculative investment where they can profit from it. Also, instead of looking at Bitcoin and comparing it to other currencies, it should be independent from them. Instead of 1 BTC = 300 USD, it should be 1 BTC = 1 BTC. This is what I hope happens in the future.

[Bitware]

I dont like BitCoin for these reasons:

1. The whole idea that someone can turn on his computer/GPU and "bit mine" and earn money is ridiculous.
People should earn money when they work hard for it. Turning on a computer and leaving it to run does not and should not count.
This is a waste of electricity as well and therefore it causes greenhouse gases and has a carbon footprint.

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

3. BC is unstable. People lost a lot of money (one tiny example; there are probably hundreds and thousands) and they did nothing wrong. A good modern currency should not have this defect.

It does have positive points which is why many people are using it but it would have been nice if it didnt have the above problems.

One would think if a new digital currency was created it wouldnt have issues like this. Computers and software are so powerful now. It should have been possible to design a currency with none of the issues above.

"Then dont use it" Or "Why dont you make your own currency system?"
These are not valid responses so they shouldnt be said here.

If I don't like a resturants food, I dont go there.

If I dont like a person, I dont hang around them.

If I dont like a product, I dont buy it.

If I dont like Bitcoin, I wont use it, or I will help to change it, in which case I would post my suggestions in the dev section.

"Don't use it" is a completely valid statement

"Go make your own currency system" is a completely valid statement.

If you don't like Bitcoin and wish to change it, head on over to the dev section and submit changes.

No,no... you can't be bothered to do that. What you do is post your negative nancy crap in this high volume sub-section for added visibility.

Wonder why... maybe you've got something to lose by Bitcoins' success...

[shawshankinmate37927]

I could also list a lot of reasons why I don't like USD, but what choice did I have before Bitcoin came along?  I was stuck having to use fiat due to a lack of alternatives.

Perhaps the best thing about Bitcoin is that you're free not to use it if you don't want to. 

[monsanto]

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

Ultimately I think this may prevent Bitcoin from being widely adopted. That doesn't mean it can't continue to exist as a niche system. But, the average person is willing to pay a certain amount, to a credit card for example, in order to be able to have customer support (i.e., insurance) in the event of theft.

What makes you think that "the average person" (whoever that is) is willing to pay extra? I see constant examples (even here) where people have no idea how expensive credit cards are and how every customers pays more for every item in a store that is accepting credit card payments. On top of that people are constantly in pursuit of "free" services where the only price you pay is that the provider spies on you can sells the information to advertising companies. While its a perfectly fine way to finance something, I dont think most people using a service like google are aware of the price they pay.

With all that being said I think bitcoin is actually capable of enabling a service to provide transparent insurance of your coins (for an extra ofc). E.g. some of the treasurers for the board secure a part of its funds for a fee.

What makes me think that is that they do pay extra. In addition they can purchase on credit. Bitcoin USD volume hasn't increased. Have you ever seen someone notice incorrect charges on a credit card, panic, call up the CC and then get the charges reversed? Now imagine some "average person" getting hacked, and then realizing there's nobody to call, that's it, bye bye money. And, considering even fairly advanced users get hacked, good luck protecting everyone. And, no, I don't think most people will value "free" if they have to stick everything in a paper wallet they generate offline on a dedicated computer etc etc, in order to be 100% sure it's safe. As for extra insurance on bitcoin, that's possible, but once instituted on a large scale you probably wouldn't save much over what you get now.

Having said all that, I'm not saying bitcoin isn't useful, or even that a lot of people won't keep a small amount in a cryptocurrency. I just don't think your average person in an industrialized country will trust putting the same amount in bitcoin that they do in credit cards. I could be wrong but it hasn't happened yet so I don't see why the onus would be on my argument.

[Karartma1]

There was Economical Crysis in 2001 in Turkey (of course it was somehow worldwide) But We were affected a lot.
My parents lost their shops, we have paid a lot of debt, etc. We lost tons of money.

It's happening in Greece now, People lost lots of money. It's not only bitcoin's problem but also general financial ecosystem's problem.

[Za1n]

I dont like BitCoin for these reasons:

1. The whole idea that someone can turn on his computer/GPU and "bit mine" and earn money is ridiculous.
People should earn money when they work hard for it. Turning on a computer and leaving it to run does not and should not count.
This is a waste of electricity as well and therefore it causes greenhouse gases and has a carbon footprint.

Obvious troll is obvious, but here goes...

Agreed, computers should never be used for making money for no reason whatsoever. In fact, computers as a whole are just a waste of electricity. Things were was better back before we used computers for everything. I mean no electronic banking, it was nice when we had to wait in line to cash our paychecks on Friday. Then sit down and mail out checks for all our bills. Oh, if I wanted to take a trip during the weekend and forgot to get enough cash out on the weekend, I better hope the bank was open, cause of course no ATM's without computers wasting all that electricity. I mean those ATMs churning away all day for the handful of people that use them, what a waste.

Don't forget about Wall Street or any financial services for that matter wasting all that electricity on their computers making money.

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

I know right. Why don't they disable those pesky serial numbers on my FRNs if I get mugged, or a bank gets robbed, or any money used for illicit activities. Why does my bank account get drained because Target or Home Depot had a breach. I mean these superior systems designed by the elite bankers should be fool proof, right?

3. BC is unstable. People lost a lot of money (one tiny example; there are probably hundreds and thousands) and they did nothing wrong. A good modern currency should not have this defect.

OMG, right I mean bitcoins is the only way people can lose money. Well there was the Madoff thing, oh and Enron, something about Charles Ponzi a long time ago, I am sure there were millions who lost and they did nothing wrong.

It does have positive points which is why many people are using it but it would have been nice if it didnt have the above problems.

One would think if a new digital currency was created it wouldnt have issues like this. Computers and software are so powerful now. It should have been possible to design a currency with none of the issues above.

"Then dont use it" Or "Why dont you make your own currency system?"
These are not valid responses so they shouldnt be said here.

Yes, computers and software are indeed powerful, but the people who use them are still very much fallible and most, if not all, of the problems you indicated are due to that weakness more so than the technology.

[Hopalong]

2. One would think they came up with a new currency system so theft could be prevented. No, BC gets stolen all the time.
Why couldn't they "disable" the serial numbers of the currency that was stolen? Thats the kind of system that should have been designed.

Ultimately I think this may prevent Bitcoin from being widely adopted. That doesn't mean it can't continue to exist as a niche system. But, the average person is willing to pay a certain amount, to a credit card for example, in order to be able to have customer support (i.e., insurance) in the event of theft.

What makes you think that "the average person" (whoever that is) is willing to pay extra? I see constant examples (even here) where people have no idea how expensive credit cards are and how every customers pays more for every item in a store that is accepting credit card payments. On top of that people are constantly in pursuit of "free" services where the only price you pay is that the provider spies on you can sells the information to advertising companies. While its a perfectly fine way to finance something, I dont think most people using a service like google are aware of the price they pay.

With all that being said I think bitcoin is actually capable of enabling a service to provide transparent insurance of your coins (for an extra ofc). E.g. some of the treasurers for the board secure a part of its funds for a fee.

My credit card cost less then $10 a year. No fee when i use it. That $10 include an incurance from theft. Reduced prices in a lot of stores and chargeback in case of a seller not delivering. The bitcoin is the currency with extra payment.