[2016-04-20] ‘Bitcoin is dead,’ says prominent fintech exec

[uncaer9]

Exactly three months ago, a well-known bitcoin developer, Mike Hearn, wrote a post on Medium that rocked the community of people who believe in the future of the digital currency and its technology. Bitcoin, he wrote, has failed. “It has failed because the community has failed… Worse still, the network is on the brink of technical collapse.” The post led to screaming headlines about the end of bitcoin.

And yet, the industry plugs along. The currency is trading at $430 USD. Transaction volume (the number of bitcoin transactions per day) is higher now than it was before Hearn’s post, according to a tracker at Blockchain.info. Just this week, the Wall Street Journal profiled a top ETF (exchange-traded fund) attorney who is advocating for a bitcoin ETF, the same effort that Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are pushing.

https://beta.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-is-dead-says-prominent-fintech-executive-taavet-hinrikus-transferwise-bitcoin-experiment-failed-191800988.html

is this guy normal people 

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[BruceSwanson]

What Taavet Hinrikus said:

But we’re not seeing real people use bitcoin. And we don’t know what problem it solves.

What I think he meant:

But we're not seeing many affluent bank-customers use bitcoins yet. And that's an opportunity for us.

What Taavet Hinrikus said:

Now, blockchain, I think, is a genius advancement in technology. But I’m not sure we’re seeing yet where to apply it. I’m pretty excited about R3 and Digital Asset Holdings. I think there are many areas where using blockchain is great, but it’s still early days.”

What I think he meant:

Now, blockchain, I think, is a genius advancement in technology. But I’m not sure we’re seeing yet where we can make money from it. I’m pretty excited about R3 and Digital Asset Holdings. I think there are many areas where using blockchain could be profitable, but it’s still early days.”

What the article's author Daniel Roberts wrote:

If tech entrepreneurs like Hinrikus feel they no longer need to keep paying attention, that could be a problem for the coin and its future viability.

What I think Roberts will wish he had written:

If tech entrepreneurs like Hinrikus feel they no longer need to keep paying attention, that could be a problem for tech entrepreneurs like Hinrikus.

[cmbartley]

What Taavet Hinrikus said:

But we’re not seeing real people use bitcoin. And we don’t know what problem it solves.

What I think he meant:

But we're not seeing many affluent bank-customers use bitcoins yet. And that's an opportunity for us.

There's a whole thread on bitcointalk about how people spend their bitcoin and the near unanimous answer was, they don't. Most bitcoin is being held or speculatively traded. It doesn't interface much with traditional marketplaces and very few commercial entities accept bitcoin directly (without going through bitpay or some other provider that converts it to fiat). This doesn't mean it's dead, but it seems quite unlikely that bitcoin (in its current, anonymous incarnation) will be adopted into the financial industry. Many bitcoin supporters don't want that to happen anyway, they'd prefer for bitcoin to subsume traditional fiat. Not gonna happen. But it could continue to exist as a parallel currency used by a minority of individuals with other digital assets taking the place of the lapdog of banks and FIs.

[Denker]

Bitcoin obituaries --> 101?
Funny that someone of a dying company is calling the death of a growing technology.

[eyeknock]

Bitcoin obituaries --> 101?

only 101? are more, believe me and will be more with time... curious about that "now" he is saying it, maybe is time to say it and take some advantage?... let them say whatever they want, no one listen them...

[BruceSwanson]

There's a whole thread on bitcointalk about how people spend their bitcoin and the near unanimous answer was, they don't. Most bitcoin is being held or speculatively traded. It doesn't interface much with traditional marketplaces and very few commercial entities accept bitcoin directly (without going through bitpay or some other provider that converts it to fiat). This doesn't mean it's dead, but it seems quite unlikely that bitcoin (in its current, anonymous incarnation) will be adopted into the financial industry. Many bitcoin supporters don't want that to happen anyway, they'd prefer for bitcoin to subsume traditional fiat. Not gonna happen. But it could continue to exist as a parallel currency used by a minority of individuals with other digital assets taking the place of the lapdog of banks and FIs.

Taavet Hinrikus did say it is early days. It is indeed. Bitcoins will not soon compete (never mind replace) fiat at the point-of-sale except on the Dark Web. My own view is that the BTClockchain will end up being used massively for data registration by FIs and banks using it to back up their permissioned-blockchain hashes as a form of public accountability, like legal notices published in newspapers; and by the public for routine notary purposes. Ethereum will play a role in this and also expand bitcoins' use as a contractual currency. And apps will allow writers and photographers to quickly and cheaply register their keystrokes and pixels on the BTClockchain. As of now (this instant anyway) the bitcoin price is rising and Blockchain.info shows a steady stream of transactions as it always has. Their precise amounts ($.09, $30.73, $3945.76, etc.) indicate more than speculative trading. They indicate use in commercial transactions. There is every reason to believe that those kinds of transactions are here to stay and will grow over time -- and that Hinrikus, Hearn, and Dimon will come to regret their remarks.

[Carlton Banks]

And apps will allow writers and photographers to quickly and cheaply register their keystrokes and pixels on the BTClockchain.

I liked everything you said, but this point I think is going to prove problematic for artists and creative types. It just sounds like a really expensive (and unprofitable) way to prop up an untenable concept: intellectual property. I can say "time machine" or "unicorn", but they don't exist, and neither does intellectual property (since about 1993, anyway). These people will quickly realise that coming up with a workable model for selling their skills is what's needed, not clinging onto a paradigm that was only possible for a short ~75 year period. Some already are, crowdfunding, giveaways at live performances etc.

[BruceSwanson]

And apps will allow writers and photographers to quickly and cheaply register their keystrokes and pixels on the BTClockchain.

[T]his point I think is going to prove problematic for artists and creative types. It just sounds like a really expensive (and unprofitable) way to prop up an untenable concept: intellectual property. I can say "time machine" or "unicorn", but they don't exist, and neither does intellectual property (since about 1993, anyway). These people will quickly realise that coming up with a workable model for selling their skills is what's needed, not clinging onto a paradigm that was only possible for a short ~75 year period. Some already are, crowdfunding, giveaways at live performances etc.

A fast 'n easy BTClockchain data-registration app would not substitute for formal copyright protection. But it would or could be the basis for applying for such protection. From my perspective, your comment about such a process being expensive and unprofitable applies to some aspects of our economy, not expensive and unprofitable for users. For example, if a researcher could in real time hash and copy/paste to the BTClockchain some critical data from an experiment, that means less chances for profitable theft from a co-researcher or competing company. It could be expensive for competitors to make use of that data for their own ends because now they could be obligated to pay for it. Even if the originator did not sue, public knowledge alone of the would-be theft would be harmful for the would-be thieves.

In modern societies there is a lot of such theft which can save thieves a lot of money and time. The old 1964 Air France advertising slogan Come home to [Paris, Nice, Europe, etc.] was stolen from the writer who thought of it -- and right during a meeting in front of numerous disinterested observers. When the writer first suggested it, his boss instantly took the ball and ran with it. The writer got no credit because there was no way to prove ownership or act of creativity. (A version of this incident was incorporated into an episode of Mad About You). But today, suppose a writer incorporated a possible slogan onto the blockchain before the next meeting, and made that fact known. If the idea turned out to be a good one, well, that's protection of intellectual property, and we can see from that example that intellectual property has its good uses. What's needed is not less intellectual property. What's needed is more. It would be expensive for some individuals and enterprises, but profitable for others. Society would benefit.

What BTClockchain data-registration promises to do is democratize intellectual property. Giveaways and live performances are one thing -- The Grateful Dead allowed audience members to openly and professionally record performances. But the band's lawyers would have sued anyone who tried to sell those recordings as official offerings. Allowing the recordings was probably just good PR.

As for Hinrikus, Hearn, and Dimon, my guess is that none of them were thinking of data registration when they announced Bitcoin was either over or doomed to be. Which will be very bad PR for them.

[Carlton Banks]

aha, you appear to be talking my language to a certain extent, Bruce!

I totally agree, proper attribution of creative output should be a desirable application for blockchains, it's entirely workable and would indeed provide societal benefits.


However, the concept needs correct labelling, so that artists don't get the wrong idea. "Intellectual Attribute" would be apt, as it describes the function and capabilities of such a system. "Property" implies something that can successfully be possessed, and abstract concepts or information cannot be possessed in the 21st century.

I'm going to suggest something radical to you: all concepts are stolen from nature. There is nothing new under the sun, as they say; every notion conceived by every conscious entity was simply a re-interpretation of an experience that entity had in life. Everything is inspired by something, absolute novelty is impossible. Physics and logic permit a range of possibilities in this universe, and all conscious minds do when supposedly "creating" is taking something that was already possible from off that metaphorical cosmic shelf.

So, forget this "stealing" ideas thing. It's non-sensical; either we're all stealing, or no-one is, and so "idea theft" differentiates nothing, an empty concept. The Grateful Dead concert recordings were the beginnings of humans starting to realise that.

[marcus_of_augustus]

What Taavet Hinrikus said:

But we’re not seeing real people use bitcoin. And we don’t know what problem it solves.

What I think he meant:

But we're not seeing many affluent bank-customers use bitcoins yet. And that's an opportunity for us.

There's a whole thread on bitcointalk about how people spend their bitcoin and the near unanimous answer was, they don't. Most bitcoin is being held or speculatively traded. It doesn't interface much with traditional marketplaces and very few commercial entities accept bitcoin directly (without going through bitpay or some other provider that converts it to fiat). This doesn't mean it's dead, but it seems quite unlikely that bitcoin (in its current, anonymous incarnation) will be adopted into the financial industry. Many bitcoin supporters don't want that to happen anyway, they'd prefer for bitcoin to subsume traditional fiat. Not gonna happen. But it could continue to exist as a parallel currency used by a minority of individuals with other digital assets taking the place of the lapdog of banks and FIs.

you and many others who think like you do not understand ... bitcoin is not a competitor to the existing financial industry, it totally subsumes it.

Bitcoin users are doing things that traditional finance is not even dreaming of yet. Bitcoiners are getting ahead and making a quantum leap in efficiency versus economic actors bogged down in the legacy system. Bitcoin will be adopted because of competitive pressures, those pressures will not be felt by the mainstream for a long time because their competitors are not even on the same platform. Bitcoin is filling in the niches and edge cases that existing systems don't even recognise or provide services for. By the time mainstream legacy currency users start feeling competitive economic pressures from bitcoin users it will be too late, their business models will be so outdated they will have zero time to catch-up because if their competitors are using bitcoin effectively in such a way as to out-compete them, and they are not, they are already toast.

Think about the Internet users, the early ones, they were getting ahead doing things in ways that no-one dreamed of but made them orders of magnitude more efficient (after they invested in a learning curve, modems, installing browsers, etc) ... many businesses only went online because they had to (it was adopt or perish). Right now it is tech savvy bitcoiners who are making the early knowledge investments to use an admittedly clunky system but by doing so they can avail themselves of bitcoins myriad of efficiencies, particularly with cross-border and private commerce.

Just can't believe how guys like this Transferwise CEO can be so blind to the competitive threat he is facing, knowing everything we know now about technology adoption characteristics and curves. He's toast. Send me his lunch over now and I'll get it over with.

[cmbartley]

What Taavet Hinrikus said:

you and many others who think like you do not understand ... bitcoin is not a competitor to the existing financial industry, it totally subsumes it.

Bitcoin users are doing things that traditional finance is not even dreaming of yet. Bitcoiners are getting ahead and making a quantum leap in efficiency versus economic actors bogged down in the legacy system. Bitcoin will be adopted because of competitive pressures, those pressures will not be felt by the mainstream for a long time because their competitors are not even on the same platform. Bitcoin is filling in the niches and edge cases that existing systems don't even recognise or provide services for. By the time mainstream legacy currency users start feeling competitive economic pressures from bitcoin users it will be too late, their business models will be so outdated they will have zero time to catch-up because if their competitors are using bitcoin effectively in such a way as to out-compete them, and they are not, they are already toast.

Think about the Internet users, the early ones, they were getting ahead doing things in ways that no-one dreamed of but made them orders of magnitude more efficient (after they invested in a learning curve, modems, installing browsers, etc) ... many businesses only went online because they had to (it was adopt or perish). Right now it is tech savvy bitcoiners who are making the early knowledge investments to use an admittedly clunky system but by doing so they can avail themselves of bitcoins myriad of efficiencies, particularly with cross-border and private commerce.

Just can't believe how guys like this Transferwise CEO can be so blind to the competitive threat he is facing, knowing everything we know now about technology adoption characteristics and curves. He's toast. Send me his lunch over now and I'll get it over with.

Replace "bitcoin" with "distributed ledger" and I mostly agree. Distributed ledger technology is like the invention of search engines. Bitcoin is Alta Vista, first of a kind but unlikely to the be the winner in this space.

[marcus_of_augustus]

you and many others who think like you do not understand ... bitcoin is not a competitor to the existing financial industry, it totally subsumes it.

Bitcoin users are doing things that traditional finance is not even dreaming of yet. Bitcoiners are getting ahead and making a quantum leap in efficiency versus economic actors bogged down in the legacy system. Bitcoin will be adopted because of competitive pressures, those pressures will not be felt by the mainstream for a long time because their competitors are not even on the same platform. Bitcoin is filling in the niches and edge cases that existing systems don't even recognise or provide services for. By the time mainstream legacy currency users start feeling competitive economic pressures from bitcoin users it will be too late, their business models will be so outdated they will have zero time to catch-up because if their competitors are using bitcoin effectively in such a way as to out-compete them, and they are not, they are already toast.

Think about the Internet users, the early ones, they were getting ahead doing things in ways that no-one dreamed of but made them orders of magnitude more efficient (after they invested in a learning curve, modems, installing browsers, etc) ... many businesses only went online because they had to (it was adopt or perish). Right now it is tech savvy bitcoiners who are making the early knowledge investments to use an admittedly clunky system but by doing so they can avail themselves of bitcoins myriad of efficiencies, particularly with cross-border and private commerce.

Just can't believe how guys like this Transferwise CEO can be so blind to the competitive threat he is facing, knowing everything we know now about technology adoption characteristics and curves. He's toast. Send me his lunch over now and I'll get it over with.

Replace "bitcoin" with "distributed ledger" and I mostly agree. Distributed ledger technology is like the invention of search engines. Bitcoin is Alta Vista, first of a kind but unlikely to the be the winner in this space.

Ok, you're really misinformed ... what you just said is bordering on not-worth-replying-to-ridiculous but I'll give it a go because you seem earnest.

Distributed ledger technology is a necessary component of bitcoin but not the main invention, which is a trust-no-one global currency with embedded automated programmable contract adjudication settlement system. The protocol that achieves this magic is much more akin to TCP/IP, not a layer 3 search engine app (how did you get so mixed up??), the protocol has the tradeable cryptographic asset hard-wired into the protocol to achieve all this wonderful trustlessness, dismissing the tradeable asset (or the global p2p network) as analogous to a layer 3 search engine app is just silliness, marketing-wonk speak gone haywire.

tl;dr You just compared TCP/IP to Alta Vista, sigh.

[Carlton Banks]

Think about the Internet users, the early ones, they were getting ahead doing things in ways that no-one dreamed of but made them orders of magnitude more efficient (after they invested in a learning curve, modems, installing browsers, etc) ... many businesses only went online because they had to (it was adopt or perish). Right now it is tech savvy bitcoiners who are making the early knowledge investments to use an admittedly clunky system but by doing so they can avail themselves of bitcoins myriad of efficiencies, particularly with cross-border and private commerce.

Just can't believe how guys like this Transferwise CEO can be so blind to the competitive threat he is facing, knowing everything we know now about technology adoption characteristics and curves. He's toast. Send me his lunch over now and I'll get it over with.

thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis. All of it. "Hey bankster, where's that lunch money at?"

[keystroke]

Distributed ledger technology is a necessary component of bitcoin but not the main invention, which is a trust-no-one global currency...

Yup, haters trying to flip the narrative and fools following as usual. Look back on cypherpunk writings from the 90s. The goal was a trust-no-one private global currency. The blockchain is the technology which enables that, and a brilliant invention, but the blockchain itself wasn't the goal. The haters aren't sure what to do so they painted this blockchain picture which is intellectually pretty bankrupt and doomed to failure but experiencing some rather pathetic malinvestment at the moment. I guess it might be buying them time to a certain extent and acting as one more transfer of wealth from the hands of the uninformed. Such is the way of the world.

[cmbartley]

Distributed ledger technology is a necessary component of bitcoin but not the main invention, which is a trust-no-one global currency...

Yup, haters trying to flip the narrative and fools following as usual. Look back on cypherpunk writings from the 90s. The goal was a trust-no-one private global currency. The blockchain is the technology which enables that, and a brilliant invention, but the blockchain itself wasn't the goal. The haters aren't sure what to do so they painted this blockchain picture which is intellectually pretty bankrupt and doomed to failure but experiencing some rather pathetic malinvestment at the moment. I guess it might be buying them time to a certain extent and acting as one more transfer of wealth from the hands of the uninformed. Such is the way of the world.

An important question to ask is whether or not the world really wants a trustless digital currency or whether it's just a few technophiles. Cash is trustless as well but there's a reason people don't store their cash under their mattress. If your house catches on fire you can go broke. If you get Goxxed or Cryptcyed you can just as easily go broke as well. That's a HUGE problem.

I think the problem that many bitcoin maximalists make is they're really making a philosophical argument rather than a technological one. Our financial systems and the legal protections that enshroud them have evolved over millennia. Yes bitcoin is trustless (mostly), yes it's peer to peer, yes it solves double-spending, and it goes on. But at the end of the day, if there's no recourse if your private key gets stolen or your exchange gets hacked/steals your bitcoin then it's not a SAFE store of value. That doesn't mean that bitcoin doesn't have it's place, but it does mean that it doesn't have a place within the mainstream economy. Any safeguards that would be put in place within the bitcoin universe would require some degree of identity sharing/unmasking which sort of defeats the whole purpose.

Bitcoin is the first successful iteration of a technology that eventually will remake the world, it just doesn't solve a problem that MOST people have. It solves a problem that bitcoin maximalists have.

[marcus_of_augustus]

^^$6.9 billion and $575 million per annum growth is just "bitcoin maximalist technophiles" ?? ... wake up this is not 2011. Your pathetic attempts at sidelining by labelling and denigration don't wash any more.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-420000-might-bitcoins-magic-number-daniel-masters

[cmbartley]

^^$6.9 billion and $575 million per annum growth is just "bitcoin maximalist technophiles" ?? ... wake up this is not 2011. Your pathetic attempts at sidelining by labelling and denigration don't wash any more.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-420000-might-bitcoins-magic-number-daniel-masters

That's $6.9 billion market cap which says nothing about growth or adoption. Market capitalization is a product of how much bitcoin has been distributed and how much people are willing to pay for it. Remember when the market cap was 25 billion (https://faisalkhan.com/2014/01/26/20140126the-case-for-bitcoins-in-pakistan/)? Is bitcoin 4 times less popular now than it was then? Of course not, it's more popular and more widely used even though the market capitalization is much lower than the all time high. If only 1 bitcoin had been allocated and Bill Gates bought it for 7 billion dollars the market cap would be $7 billion but the % adoption would be = [(1 person/7 billion people) x 100%] or effectively zero.

I'm not on bitcointalk to malign bitcoin. I support bitcoin. But let's be real, bitcoin isn't going to replace fiat. Maybe, just maybe, some digital token will some day but it won't be bitcoin. Especially when Satoshi's damn near 8% of bitcoin can hit the market at any time.

[Carlton Banks]

Bitcoin is the first successful iteration of a technology that eventually will remake the world, it just doesn't solve a problem that MOST people have. It solves a problem that bitcoin maximalists have.

Well, I'd quite like to be a capitalist, but that's been made impossible with fiat currency. Doesn't sound like a "bitcoin maximalist" problem to me, but perhaps you're right that the perception of this being a problem isn't widespread.


"You know that there is something wrong with the world, but was is it?"

Just because someone isn't a self-described "bitcoin-maximalist", doesn't mean they can't recognise that this way of life is bullshit.

[cmbartley]

Bitcoin is the first successful iteration of a technology that eventually will remake the world, it just doesn't solve a problem that MOST people have. It solves a problem that bitcoin maximalists have.

Well, I'd quite like to be a capitalist, but that's been made impossible with fiat currency. Doesn't sound like a "bitcoin maximalist" problem to me, but perhaps you're right that the perception of this being a problem isn't widespread.


"You know that there is something wrong with the world, but was is it?"

Just because someone isn't a self-described "bitcoin-maximalist", doesn't mean they can't recognise that this way of life is bullshit.

No arguments from me.