Why Are You Sold On Bitcoins?

[kiba]

Why are you sold on bitcoins?


Here's my story. An open source gaming of mine link to bitcoin to a thread. I checked it out, then I immediately realize its potential for agorism. I was sold right there.

I never heard of the idea called cryptocurrency though I was vaguely aware of crypto-anarchism. I thought about digital money but concluded that they will never work in practice because there's no way to render them truly scarce.

[theymos]

I've had a long-term interest in distributed systems such as Gnutella and Tor. I also support Austrian economics and anarcho-capitalism. Bitcoin is basically an exact match for my interests.

I know that Bitcoin will work because I understand both its technology and its economics.

[FreeMoney]

I had thought about it a little and decided it wasn't possible also. Followed here from slashdot. Read and was amazed that it had been accomplished.

I know for sure a limited number of transferable tokens makes a good money. And although I can't verify the implementation myself it does look good.

[jgarzik]

I'm not "sold" on bitcoins, in that, I have no clue if they will succeed or fail.  I think failure potential is >50%, and that it's a high risk endeavor.

It's also an intriguing concept, fun to play with, and a potential "disruptive change", a genuinely new idea in the area of currencies, which hasn't seen many truly unique ideas in the past 100 years.

[slush]

As theimos, I'm also amazed with decentralized systems and libertarian economics. I come to bitcoins from tahoe-lafs.org and the first was 'wtf'. Currently I believe in original idea a lot. It still needs much work to be usable by my mom, but I see the way.

At this time I'm affraid of two things:
* reaction of government when bitcoin become more popular. But it is just 'we will see'. Keeping infrastructure decentralized can help a lot in future.
* missing services for which we can pay in btc. It is egg-chicken problem. We can only try to talk with service providers and again 'we will see'.

[Timo Y]

I have been a p2p enthusiast for about 10 years. I have been a strong supporter of pseudonymous p2p projects  such as Freenet, i2p, and Tor since I think their existence is essential to guarantee free communication in society.  But I always thought that most p2p networks don't have a satisfactory mechanism for allocating bandwidth among their users. I already came up with the idea of a p2p cryptocurrency myself to solve this problem about 5 years ago (my version was not nearly as ingenious as Satoshi's).

Also, I have always been angered and frustrated with the crappiness, inconvenience, and lack of security of popular online payment methods such as credit cards and paypal.  

My credit card has been scammed twice. I felt that the ensuing grief was completely unnecessary. There is simply no good reason to give everyone on the internet (and on the street) you pay a few dollars a blank cheque (essentially that's what CC details are) and then to trust them not to abuse it. The stupidity of this system has always amazed me.  

When I first stumbled accross Bitcoin (thanks to the now deleted Wikipedia article), there wasn't much selling to do, I simply thought, YES this is what I have been waiting for all these years.  

[RHorning]

I came to this project from the original Slashdot announcement and was incredibly skeptical that this idea really would work as suggested.  

The idea for electronic money first grabbed my interest back in an issue of Byte magazine almost 30 years ago, where the article went into details and even had some software published with the article about how to implement the currency and how to even send that money by e-mail (the suggested method at the time and WAAAAAY before the web happened).  The one fatal flaw that I saw of this particular money system was the need for a central authority to perform the record keeping, but the basic concept was pretty sound and I kept an ear to the ground in terms of future developments of the idea.

When the slashdot article suggested that somebody figured out how to decentralize the record keeping aspect and maintain the integrity of the currency, my first impression was "bullshit" and to think it was some major scam.  It was something I studied and even implemented in terms of a test currency.

Satoshi certainly deserves some kudos with putting together some ideas from different places and shoving them together to make something new and different.  None of this is really all that new by itself, and I was aware of nearly all of the pieces even before Satoshi created Bitcoins, but never thought of putting them all together in this fashion.  I even vaguely remember HashCash, but didn't think of using it for real money.

This is also an enabler concept, as it opens up a whole bunch of other possibilities, some of which I've described in other posts, some of which I still have yet to act upon.  We've really just started to come up with the power of this idea, and I don't think it will be restricted to just this current implementation of Bitcoins either.

As theimos, I'm also amazed with decentralized systems and libertarian economics. I come to bitcoins from tahoe-lafs.org and the first was 'wtf'. Currently I believe in original idea a lot. It still needs much work to be usable by my mom, but I see the way.

At this time I'm affraid of two things:
* reaction of government when bitcoin become more popular. But it is just 'we will see'. Keeping infrastructure decentralized can help a lot in future.
* missing services for which we can pay in btc. It is egg-chicken problem. We can only try to talk with service providers and again 'we will see'.

The government issue is perhaps the worst part of it.  My hope is that it becomes popular enough fast enough that it will be like e-commerce:  It hit the government so hard and so fast that regulatory agencies weren't able to cope with it, but it was adopted slow enough that the grandchildren of senators and congressmen were involved enough that those regulation would have to put the relatives of members of congress in jail if it was made illegal.  Even now the concept of sale taxes for internet purchases is still a huge issue, yet most state legislatures have broadband internet access in the legislative chambers now.  If Bitcoins becomes popular enough that members of congress are using it before it is regulated, we might have a chance to avoid this bombshell.  Had congressmen thought that the internet was for distribution of pornographic GIF images and playing NETTREK, I doubt they would have funded DARPANET or even permitted it to remain in operation.

In terms of services, I think it is trying to find the "killer app" which in and of itself justifies the use of Bitcoins.  I'm talking something which can't be done unless you are using Bitcoins.   Other things will be nice in terms of helping expand the overall market and other applications will show up, but that is to me what will make or break Bitcoins.  I have no idea what that might be either, and I don't think anybody has come across it yet.  There could be a gradual discovery of Bitcoins and several small things that together will eventually add up to be something big, but I don't think you can use existing e-commerce sites as a template for this "killer app".

My fear is that perhaps hyperinflation and/or civil unrest is going to show up and become the "killer app" that will make Bitcoins necessary.  If people stop trusting the fiat currencies, Bitcoins might be a salvation together with other alternative currencies, but then again that might give a reason to do regulations on those alternate currencies to try and prop up the fiat currencies too.  It will make a whole bunch of people who are currently on this forum quite wealthy, but that is a world I'm not sure I'd like to live in either.  Perhaps wiser heads would prevail and be grateful that trade is happening at all and turn a blind eye to something like Bitcoins in that situation too.

[BioMike]

I also came here via the Slashdot post. Living in Europe, options for safe online payment are very limited, even more if you are, just like me, very sceptical about paypal and similar services (they are not banks and don't have to comply with regulations that governments put upon them). Although I have a credit card (they are not so easy to get here in Europe as compared to the usa), I'd rather not use it, because it puts me in debt of someone.

Bitcoin doesn't have these side effects and I understand how they work, this generates some trust for me and I hope bitcoin will be accepted by many people in the future.

[The Madhatter]

Why am I sold? Well, I've been waiting for a system like this for a long time. I've been through every 'slash and burn' Visa merchant regulation change since 1998. I've witnessed the rise and fall of many centralized payment systems. I've seen bank/court/government corruption with my own eyes, and on and on.. A lot of people on this forum can probably relate to this.

My biggest fear is that government will stifle the adoption of Bitcoin by making it illegal. This, in turn, would compel any corporation in their jurisdiction to refuse to use it.

We will end up with people who use Bitcoin illegally or from jurisdictions where it is still legal. The "wild west cowboys"; if you will.

The mainstream media would likely smear Bitcoin and tell the general public that it only has one use - to further the black market. You'll get the typical vox populi reaction in the name of protecting children/animals/environment/"insert some cause here"; individuals will stop using it out of fear and it will snowball from there. They know how to play the hegelian dialectic game quite well.

That said; I think we still have to try.

I, for one, am not giving up.

Cheers!
The Madhatter

[asdf]

Lack of centralized (government) control and fixed supply.
I think that if bitcoin becomes widely adopted, it will severely mitigate the ability of government to raise revenue by force (tax and inflation). This will shrink the size of government and make it more accountable.

No dependance on 3rd party for transactions.
Bitcoin gives us a way out of the parasitic banking system and limits the ability of the government to monitor/audit our economic activity. This means it will be very difficult to regulate much of the economy leading to freer markets and therefore, greater economic growth. Taking away the power of the government to manipulate markets kills the incentive for corporate-government partnerships.

Bitcoin is nothing short of revolutionary.

[MoonShadow]

Why are you sold on bitcoins?

I'm an agorist/libertarian.  I've been waiting for this for thirty years.

[mikegogulski]

Lack of centralized (government) control and fixed supply.
I think that if bitcoin becomes widely adopted, it will severely mitigate the ability of government to raise revenue by force (tax and inflation). This will shrink the size of government and make it more accountable.

No dependance on 3rd party for transactions.
Bitcoin gives us a way out of the parasitic banking system and limits the ability of the government to monitor/audit our economic activity. This means it will be very difficult to regulate much of the economy leading to freer markets and therefore, greater economic growth. Taking away the power of the government to manipulate markets kills the incentive for corporate-government partnerships.

Bitcoin is nothing short of revolutionary.

+1.5 (minus half a point for missing that it will make government impossible if it out-competes the central-banking/fiat-currency monster)

[MoonShadow]

+1.5 (minus half a point for missing that it will make government impossible if it out-competes the central-banking/fiat-currency monster)

I don't think that he missed that, I think that it was implied.  The central bank is the beating heart of the beast.

[Bimmerhead]

I read the article by Elliott Prechter in the September Elliott Wave Theorist.  I think the biggest attraction was it's non-inflationary nature, followed by the potential for micro-payments.

I'm also concerned about government banning it.  Possibly one way to fly under the radar of government long enough to get established in the mainstream and thus make it politically expensive for government to intervene is to blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah.

[slush]

become the currency of online social gaming, blog-tipping and other micro transactions.  Hopefully it would just be seen as a play-currency like Facebook credits

<offtopic>Bitcoins became popular in online gaming world once it will be easy to securely and quickly buy bitcoins; it will stay as currency for geeks and hackers until we have to go to IRC and find somebody to buy btc from them.</offtopic>

[MoonShadow]

become the currency of online social gaming, blog-tipping and other micro transactions.  Hopefully it would just be seen as a play-currency like Facebook credits

<offtopic>Bitcoins became popular in online gaming world once it will be easy to securely and quickly buy bitcoins; it will stay as currency for geeks and hackers until we have to go to IRC and find somebody to buy btc from them.</offtopic>

Your use of the English language makes my eyes bleed.  Are you using a translation program to post?

[slush]

Your use of the English language makes my eyes bleed.  Are you using a translation program to post?

Oh, sorry. My English is poor, I know. And when I think faster than write, it leads to crazy sentences like this ;-).

[wumpus]

I think bitcoin is the first virtual commodity independent of any central control that has made it to a stage where it's being adapted. Combined with the fact that it is easy to send over the internet, this makes it very promising as an international unit of exchange.
(this could never happen with a real commodity such as gold, as it is way too expensive to store and transport)

Even though I'm not exactly sure that bitcoin in its current form will make it, it shows great promise.

[S3052]

 bla

[wumpus]

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