Why all the bitcoin haters?

[bitcola]

It's pretty simple: the unfairness of early adopters and the fact that it resembles ponzi in that respect.

Clearly, mainstream support is not what is going to ensure the success of this currency.


The real acid test for this currency is whether it succeeds despite the hate. If it continues to go from strength to strength regardless, mainstream will notice and pile in and the rest will be history. If it stutters and fails to take hold, that will be the end of bitcoin.

[joepie91]

When just signing up for the service itself quadruples the number of possible points of intrusion into my financial ecosystem, why?

Sign up for what service exactly?

The user friendliness example doesn't seem to be that big of a deal to me.

You are a geek. You simply cannot understand. I know, I'm fighting this every single day since the last 10 years.

Do you know the difference between the Ipod and all the other MP3 players that were on the market 2 years before the Ipod? The Ipod is more expansive. And is user friendly.

Same goes for the Iphone and everything else.

1% of the geek population care about effectiveness, security and stuffs like that. (they are using Linux for example). 99% want something easy. Or very cool. Paying will never be cool. As long as bitcoin is not usable by brain dead morons, no chance to seeing taking of.

(And as I said somewhere else, I have the complete plan written to make Bitcoin user friendly. But I believe that developing everything I describe in that document will cost something like 20 or 30 man/months. I cannot afford that, unfortunately)

Why not share said plan with the community?

[ploum]

Why not share said plan with the community?

I'm willing to do it but:

1) I need to polish everything to make it publishable. Currently, those are only note, most of them hand written. This is a somewhat important work.

2) The plan itself has no real value. Only an implementation would. (I'm anti patent and I'm not seeking to protect ideas). What is the point of discussing that kind of plan? All we need is someone willing to invest (money or time) to make such plan happen. And I don't think I could do that alone.


But, to be honnest, the main reason is 1) and my lazyness ;-)

[joepie91]

Why not share said plan with the community?

I'm willing to do it but:

1) I need to polish everything to make it publishable. Currently, those are only note, most of them hand written. This is a somewhat important work.

2) The plan itself has no real value. Only an implementation would. (I'm anti patent and I'm not seeking to protect ideas). What is the point of discussing that kind of plan? All we need is someone willing to invest (money or time) to make such plan happen. And I don't think I could do that alone.


But, to be honnest, the main reason is 1) and my lazyness ;-)

That sounds a lot like the "my code is messy so I won't publish the source" argument... you can either make your notes publishable yourself, or just drop them somewhere, and wait for someone to come along who is interested enough in it to have a go at it. Something doesn't have to be - and will never be - 100% perfect in order for it to be published.

[minor_miner]

I'm willing to do it but:

1) I need to polish everything to make it publishable. Currently, those are only note, most of them hand written. This is a somewhat important work.

Scan the notes, upload them and publish them in the forum, in an own thread.

I would definitely skim through them and get typing (if they're not utterly nonsense ).

[swop]

Bitcoin is a great concept. But in reality today it seems quite chaotic with all the scamming, hacking etc..

[pengram]

i'd say they are idiots, they don't get it, they can't do it, and they hate you for being paid more than their hard earned money 

[joepie91]

Bitcoin is a great concept. But in reality today it seems quite chaotic with all the scamming, hacking etc..

That is not something exclusive to Bitcoin. Ever counted the amount of Nigerian prince emails and phishing mails in your spam box?

[bitcoinfancy]

The whole "the early adopters have a huge advantage thats not 'fair' " people make me sick.

Every early adopter has an advantage, going all the way back in every currency. Its the foundations on which every economic development if created.

Early adopters take bigger risks than later ones do, hence the greater reward

Thats why stocks have low ipo's or "initial public offerings" (usually)

The bitcoin could have gone no where. All the work coding and everything else put towards nothing.

The early adpoters worked it up, they deserve all they got.

All this "waa waa its not FAIR!" stomping the ground like a child crap does you no good in life, or in bitcoins.

[ploum]

The whole "the early adopters have a huge advantage thats not 'fair' " people make me sick.

Every early adopter has an advantage, going all the way back in every currency. Its the foundations on which every economic development if created.

It is even useful to have unfairness, IMHO:
http://thebitcoinsun.com/post/2011/06/06/Unfairness-And-A-Pizza-The-Key-Of-Bitcoin-s-Success

[memvola]

Bitcoin is a great concept. But in reality today it seems quite chaotic with all the scamming, hacking etc..

Reality of today is not the reality of a couple of months ago, and won't be the reality of a few months later. You can't base anything on "reality" in the sense you use. Life is normative. We are here to make things happen.

[bitcoinfancy]

The whole "the early adopters have a huge advantage thats not 'fair' " people make me sick.

Every early adopter has an advantage, going all the way back in every currency. Its the foundations on which every economic development if created.

It is even useful to have unfairness, IMHO:
http://thebitcoinsun.com/post/2011/06/06/Unfairness-And-A-Pizza-The-Key-Of-Bitcoin-s-Success

Its not unfair though. Thats what I'm trying to say, and the reality of it.

In fact, you could say its unfair to them to NOT have an advantage, since people jumping in right now are jumping on on the backs of all the hard work they put in to support and prop up something from literally nothing

Its an entitlement mentality, and its destroying the world with its demanding for equality and "fairness" in all things, when equality isn't about bringing the lowest parties up, but more about bringing the best and brightest down. Then everyone can be "equal" right? *gag*

Dont lie, you wish the early adopters would "share some of the wealth". Am i right "comrade"?

[SteveM]

  I mostly agree, its a great thing, but currently unpolished. It is complicated, and it's new.
  The vast majority of people feel comfortable with the way things are, even though most don't understand economics. Hopefully when bitcoin has been around a while, that'll be the case here too. I think its safe to say that a lot of people here actually thirst for the knowledge of how the system is working, both technically and economically, its fun/interesting - but this isn't the view of everyone in the world - or even the majority.
  The "you're an idiot" responses to skepticism benefit nobody. There are problems, we all know. I'm sure more will come to light, but the beauty of open source is together we can work on and solve at least most of them.
  The anonymity of the network is fantastic, and as a buyer, and user of the currency, I love the feature. I dont feel like being tracked. But it requires a lot more trust in sellers who wish to maintain their own anonymity - it can be ideal for scammers. My current hesitation is giving bank details to the exchanges - hard to build trust while it is unregulated.
  Anyway, been reading for a few months, just started mining, and put a little of my earnings into the GLBSE. I want this to work out as a currency whether it makes me money or not. When I set up a new bank account, I can monitor more closely and will probably put some money into the exchanges.
  And yes it pisses me off that others have made so much more money, but they took so much more risk. I was hesitant to buy the mining gear 6 or so months ago, I'm kicking myself, and blaming them for my not being braver. Human nature! (now i have, and its barely profitable - hopefully can make it back soon).
  Hope to be more involved in this community. Looking forward to the inevitable flames.

[ploum]

I'm willing to do it but:

1) I need to polish everything to make it publishable. Currently, those are only note, most of them hand written. This is a somewhat important work.

Scan the notes, upload them and publish them in the forum, in an own thread.

I would definitely skim through them and get typing (if they're not utterly nonsense ).

I took the time to do it: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=24256

[blablahblah]

Hi, I had a discussion about this a few days ago with a work colleague. I was quite positive, whereas he was quite sceptical, so here is the gist of his argument:

1) Because of deflation, the value of bitcoins will keep going up, which will compel people to hoard them and thus get richer and richer instead of trading them as a currency.

2) The early adopters will become a powerful elite who live off the "interest" (equivalent).

3) Meanwhile, everyone else will be poor and the economy will be slow due to low liquidity or some kind of deflationary spiral in the market. In other words, people would rather store the few bitcoins (or bitcents) they have due to their ever-increasing value, instead of propping up a vibrant capitalist economy.

It was a lunch break so there wasn't enough time to fully respond to his arguments, but I think maybe these things could be communicated better:

1) Future deflation is not a certainty, it's just a guesstimate of people's future behaviour. Deflationary expectations could be an issue because there's a fairly obvious positive feedback loop (hoarding reduces the number of coins in circulation, which drives up their perceived value... etc.). Nevertheless, gold is a good counter-example suggesting that there are negative feedback mechanisms also in play. For instance, fear of a bubble collapse will limit trust in a commodity-currency like Bitcoin, thus stabilizing its value.

2) How can it be worse than the developed world's present situation, where it is basically held to ransom by patronage networks of bankers, Wall St, bureaucrats, etc! They practice usury on a grand scale by manipulating fiat currencies, promoting cycles of inflation and indebtedness, followed by asset collection. The criminals probably couldn't believe their luck when the mortgage-backed securities scam was so successful, but that is a discussion for another day. Actually... reducing the elites to a group of miserly Scrooges doesn't sound so bad! Even then, the "elite" part of prediction #2 relies on the unproven assumption of sustained strong deflation.

3) It implies that people would rather starve because of the promise of future "earnings" from a gold-like currency, instead of being sensible. Hunger will make even the most foolish person realise that real earnings require work in order to live well and sustainably. I also suspect that so-called deflationary spirals have never been properly tested in the real world without meddling.

[Gabi]

Deflation is a certainty if MORE people start using bitcoin and thus convert $ in bitcoins

[BkkCoins]

Deflation is a reduction in the money supply. That can only happen through coin loss, or people hiding them away. What you are talking about is supply+demand forcing the price up, as in the case of any commodity being traded. There is a built in controlled inflation with Bitcoins since they are being constantly created. If that isn't enough to offset new demand for coins then the price will go up.

[blablahblah]

Deflation is a reduction in the money supply. That can only happen through coin loss, or people hiding them away. What you are talking about is supply+demand forcing the price up, as in the case of any commodity being traded. There is a built in controlled inflation with Bitcoins since they are being constantly created. If that isn't enough to offset new demand for coins then the price will go up.

Depends on what definition you use. As there are multiple mechanisms in play simultaneously, I just used the definition that deflation occurs when: there's an increase in "real" purchasing power per bitcoin spent. There's probably a more accurate description/word for it, but it's beyond me right now.

[molecular]

The key issue is that the early adopters have nearly all of the cards.

They have (had?) 1/3 of the money. 2/3 are still up for grab by anyone. (counting anyone who joined before now to be an early adopter)

Probably 1/3 of the 6 million that belonged to miners initially were sold to speculators and "normal" people wanting some bitcoins.

[skillerd]

People in general spend to much of their time responding at haters and trollers..
Just ignore it.