Why Bitcoin is doomed to fail, and there's nothing you can do about it.

[Interized]

How can u be a Senior Member with activity of 224 and post such bullshit?

Embarrassing.

Why is it bullshit? Because it attacks your precious feeble coin? Does the truth hurt you? Does it make you cry?

hes speaking the truth but its a foreign language to yall

"Double spends are already occurring, and have occurred since over 1.5 years ago, and it will only get worst as time goes on, and bigger merchants and higher ticket items come online the then you will really see the “bad pool operators” start to take advantage of this. "

Yeahh... no. LOL

He then assumes all the pools are united and double spending.. but this cannot even happen without someone noticing.. Like holy shit the OP is just BEYOND stupid.

It's cute how you make yourself look retarded lmao.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=130764.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=327767.0

When will you actually learn to read and properly research something?  

DISCLAIMER: The following post shows the risk with accepting bitcoin transactions with no confirmations. This could not have been done if the transaction had a confirmation.

I never mentioned about confirmations, just mentioned that they have occured, since everybody on here always says ohhhh just accept 0 confirmations for instant payments.

Don't worry though it's only a matter of time before a confirmed double spend occurs, and even then there are a dozen other issues that will cause Bitcoin to fail.

You are like Obama.

You truly believe in your own BS.

[JohnyBigs]

Those are all real problems but most are relatively easy to fix... The real reason that bitcoin is doomed to fail is that it is not currency. The fatal flaw with bitcoin is that it is not definable and has a fixed supply.

1 unit of currency = 1 joule of work!!!   

Hence why one of the biggest accounting firm properly said Bitcoin is not a currency, because it's not. I don't know how hard or easy those solutions are to implement, but the fact that Gavin has not addressed them, instead of wasting time on useless improvements.

[Harry Carson]

Okay, let's do this.

Does this even require any explaining? Do you honestly think that the current financial system that controls Trillions of dollars in the current global economy, is going to give up their power to some guy Guatemala because he ran he's 1990's computer the first year of Bitcoin.

Can you define "current financial system"?

2. CENTRALIZED MAIN DEVELOPMENT

When uTorrent started adding malware to their client, nobody was "forced" to sit there and swallow it. If something goes awry, switch clients.

I saw this the other day, looked interesting, and like it's run by competent people: https://github.com/conformal/btcd

I'm sure there are others.

However, the concerns you raise are still valid concerns, and I think people need to acknowledge that before they are prepared to jump ship and switch clients if anything does go awry.

You think average people will store a 100TB worth of data? No.

Yes.

Double Spends

Double spends are already occurring, and have occurred since over 1.5 years ago, and it will only get worst as time goes on, and bigger merchants and higher ticket items come online the then you will really see the “bad pool operators” start to take advantage of this.

Nobody is going to double spend on a cup of coffee, nobody is going to commit fraud for small amounts, well at least not in person, but they will for big ticket items.

This has been discussed many times. Vendors can choose to wait as many blocks as they want. 10 blocks is no big deal for a 1000 BTC purchase.

Slow Speed

This has been discussed to death. Search this forum.

If it's fraud, say someone uses someone else card to buy something, the money does not come out of the merchants account, the credit card company takes the hit

From Wikipedia: The liability for the fraud is determined by the details of the transaction. If the merchant retrieved all the necessary pieces of information and followed all of the rules and regulations the financial institution would bear the liability for the fraud. If the merchant did not get all of the necessary information they would be required to return the funds to the financial institution. This is all determined through the credit card processory.

Okay so if the merchant messed up somehow (e.g. didn't double check a signature) then the merchant pays for the fraud. Same deal with double spending.

Un-Scalable

Bitcoin can barley handle a few hundred thousand transactions a day, what happens if the transactions grow to 10 Million, 50 Million, 100 Million which are all still relativity small transaction numbers compared to the 6 Billion people in the world. It simply can't handle it.

6 billion people in the world wont be making online transactions all at once. This issue has also been discussed to death; search the forums.

51% Attacks

51% attacks which don't have to be 51% of the network, as they can do it with far less hashpower, such as ghash.io 29% the two biggest pools combined make up over 51% of the network and can literally destroy Bitcoin at any second. It doesn't even need to be the pool operators, it can be hackers who take over the pools.

They'll literally destroy it?

Unstable Exchange Rate

It can never be used as a sole currency to replace all other fiat currencies. Why? Because it's price is unstable. It must always rely on another fiat currency to have any sort of monetary use, no merchant is going to transact when the price of the currency fluctuates 50-200% a day. The only way to stop this is to have actual control of the currency and adjust creation.

The price will settle.

4. NO BENEFIT OVER FIAT

blah blah blah blah Want to know how right I am and how wrong you are? blah blah

Oh. Sigh. I thought this poster was making a genuine effort to have a discussion. I'll get better at this. Time to utilise that ignore list!

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Why is every popular post on this forum about Bitcoin failing? Why does anyone respond to these posters? Isn't it a better idea to just let them sink to the bottom of the cesspool and focus on more positive things?

Like more bitcoiners donning pink tutus. 

[sublime5447]

Why is every popular post on this forum about Bitcoin failing? Why does anyone respond to these posters? Isn't it a better idea to just let them sink to the bottom of the cesspool and focus on more positive things?

Like more bitcoiners donning pink tutus.  

Tutus are nice and all but my motivation is to remove the money power from government and the elite. That cant happen while we are fucking around with bullshit pseudo currencies like bitcoin.

It is a little difficult to watch there were a couple of tech problems, but check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV-32qmLG64  

[QuestionAuthority]

Why is every popular post on this forum about Bitcoin failing? Why does anyone respond to these posters? Isn't it a better idea to just let them sink to the bottom of the cesspool and focus on more positive things?

Like more bitcoiners donning pink tutus. 

Are you back home yet?

[silverfuture]

Yes i researched and Bitcoin is .0005% of the worlds population, retard much? Everything I have mentioned in the OP are well known documented issues, again retard much? Maybe you should research mental retardation hopefully a picture of you doesn't pop up and you can get the help you deserve.

While your* at it, maybe you can learn better grammar so you don't give yourself away being from a shit 3rd world country, with malnutrition, causing you to fail at grasping simple concepts and ideas.

*emphasis mine
I didn't lol, but close.

.

[henryreardon]

Do Gavin Anderson et al really have that much control over BTC and the network?

[QuestionAuthority]

Do Gavin Anderson et al really have that much control over BTC and the network?

No, it's a fake out dude. Obama's really in charge.

[NWO]

1. IT'S A DECENTRALIZED CURRENCY

Does this even require any explaining? Do you honestly think that the current financial system that controls Trillions of dollars in the current global economy, is going to give up their power to some guy Guatemala because he ran he's 1990's computer the first year of Bitcoin.

Let's all open up our history books and see when the 99% won against the 1%? Almost never, and even when they did “win” it was basically the 1% handing off power to another form, and still running it behind the scenes just to appease the people.

Even if they allowed Bitcoin to become successful, they will regulate it so heavily, that it will pretty  much lose any “benefits” that it had, (Europe is preparing to tax and regulate Bitcoin) and pretty much becomes centralized and just like anything else.

The current system will stay in power with centralized control, hence why they will create their own digital fiat currencies replacing their paper, to even gain more control.

2. CENTRALIZED MAIN DEVELOPMENT

Basically the “official” releases come from the Bitcoin Foundation. The development is pretty much centralized. Even if people fix everything wrong with Bitcoin, the foundation makes the final decision on what to include in it's next version on it's own priorities. This is basically all run by “Gavin” who caused Satoshi to disappear after he decided to meet with the CIA. The same guy who has not addressed any of the issues going to be discussed below for the whole time he has been in control. Whether by accident or on purpose is not the point. The point is the main trusted Bitcoin client is controlled by one entity, and everything they say, do, or don't do goes.

3. FLAWED ARCHITECTURE

Size

11 GB today.
100 GB 1.5 years from now
1 TB 3 years from now
10 TB 4.5 years from now
100 TB 6 years from now
1 PB 7.5 years from now
10 PB 9 years from now
100 PB 10.5 years from now

You think average people will store a 100TB worth of data? No. The solution cut the blockchain into pieces and store the whole blockchain only on specialized nodes, kind of defeats the purpose of decentralized than doesn’t it?

Double Spends

Double spends are already occurring, and have occurred since over 1.5 years ago, and it will only get worst as time goes on, and bigger merchants and higher ticket items come online the then you will really see the “bad pool operators” start to take advantage of this.

Nobody is going to double spend on a cup of coffee, nobody is going to commit fraud for small amounts, well at least not in person, but they will for big ticket items.

Slow Speed

Waiting for a transaction to fully confirm, is not feasible for day to day transactions. Yes let's hear the Credit Cards take 180 day confirms. One no they don't they confirm instantly, the money is just on hold for 90-180 days if the merchant sells a crappy product and refuses to honor warranty or remedy the issue. If it's fraud, say someone uses someone else card to buy something, the money does not come out of the merchants account, the credit card company takes the hit. Secondly, most important the buyer pays and gets his goods immediately, unlike Bitcoin where they have to wait for a few confirmations to be sure.

Un-Scalable

Bitcoin can barley handle a few hundred thousand transactions a day, what happens if the transactions grow to 10 Million, 50 Million, 100 Million which are all still relativity small transaction numbers compared to the 6 Billion people in the world. It simply can't handle it.

51% Attacks

51% attacks which don't have to be 51% of the network, as they can do it with far less hashpower, such as ghash.io 29% the two biggest pools combined make up over 51% of the network and can literally destroy Bitcoin at any second. It doesn't even need to be the pool operators, it can be hackers who take over the pools.

Unstable Exchange Rate

It can never be used as a sole currency to replace all other fiat currencies. Why? Because it's price is unstable. It must always rely on another fiat currency to have any sort of monetary use, no merchant is going to transact when the price of the currency fluctuates 50-200% a day. The only way to stop this is to have actual control of the currency and adjust creation.

4. NO BENEFIT OVER FIAT

With everything mentioned above it shows that Bitcoin has no real advantage over fiat for 99% of the people in the world. You can't pay your bills or general living expenses in it, can't buy much with it. It's slow, not consumer friendly, as once a payment is sent there is no charge back method. Guess what 90% of the world are consumers not merchants. If Bitcoin doesn't appeal to the regular consumer who buys goods from merchants it will never succeed. Even if it succeeds it's doomed by it's very architecture which can't handle the success.

The only use it has, is sending small internationally pretty quickly, which then again gets converted to fiat for people to actually use. What market is there for small international payments 5-10% of the world?

No entity would trust high sums of money to be transferred with Bitcoin with all of it's flaws. Want to know how right I am and how wrong you are? Bitcoin has about 3 million users in a 5 year period. Facebook in that same time had what? 600M-1 Billion users.

Not to mention by the time, I have opened 10 accounts just to buy and convert Bitcoin, I could have swiped my credit/debit card 1000 times.

5. CONCLUSION

Even if Bitcoin or another crypto currency fixes all of these issues, they are still doomed to fail because of reason #1.

With zero advantages and quite a few disadvantages over fiat, centralized incompetent development, and inhert flaws Bitcoin is doomed. So next time you get excited about Bitcoin growing, and can't wait for it's mass adaption, just know it's own growth is another nail in it's coffin. Bitcoin is digging it's own grave.


Before all the geniuses on this forum come and give your wonderful flawed opinions, and say how wonderful it is, and it's going places, and I am wrong, and Gavin will fix everything, and Bitcoin will take over the world as a currency and payment system. Please refer below to get a reality check:

Bitcoin users in 5 years: 3 Million

Ripple solves pretty much all of these issues. Which is why I use my Ripple wallet for BTC transactions.

[kireinaha]

It's funny how the OP posted a well thought out and articulate write up of bitcoin flaws, and most people here just tell him he's an idiot or dismiss him as a troll. That's a pretty strong indicator that there's a problem, and the reason I'm bearish long term.

I've long wondered what the incentive is going to be for consumers to start using bitcoin. And here we are 5 years later and the user base is still tiny (relatively speaking). And of those, most are using it only as a speculative instrument or for gambling online.

To all those who think consumers will be stirred with a revolutionary passion to ditch the banks and migrate to bitcoin, you're seriously delusional. You need to realize that every democratically elected president and leader in the US and Europe has won their office by promising to give the most "free stuff" to voters. The majority of people unfortunately look toward government to solve their problems. As a group of libertarians, you guys should really be the first to recognize this.

[drgyoza]

Hi,

I read the OP with interest, considering argument #1. It is also the most important threat I see concerning BTC, and those who don't see it are blind. It doesn't mean fatality, but this power really exists.

Here is an interesting point of view about the future of money.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8JhmQ73Vq8

I'm more optimistic than OP concerning the future of BTC, but it is not my purpose in this reply, I just wonder how can you compare BTC users growth to Facebooks ? Both of them take place on the grid but IMHO the comparison stops here. Facebook is free and does not require (apparently) involvement. You sign in and you let uncle Sam doing the rest, while BTC by essence is costly, you have to pay for it, then to take care of it, and take the risk on you. Big difference isn't it ? 

drgyoza

[Bismarckbkk]

It's funny how the OP posted a well thought out and articulate write up of bitcoin flaws, and most people here just tell him he's an idiot or dismiss him as a troll. That's a pretty strong indicator that there's a problem, and the reason I'm bearish long term.

Exactly the rebuttlers in this thread have just reinforced my bearish outlook on BTC.

When talking about bitcoin you hear about grandios future scenarios where 1 BTC is worth tens or hundred thousands of dollars. When it has peacefully replaced states and central banks and the world has transformed into a libertarian peacefull society.

I think I said it earlier but ill say it again. Although governments cant eradicate bitcoin and bitcoin use they can certainly push it back to the fringe where it had an actual practical use in this system that we live in.

Bitcoin does not beat guns and people will not go to extreme lengths and pay premiums out of idealism.

The fact that fiat is created out of nothing and bitcoin is finite doesnt mean anything if people with guns can force you to use one over the other.

I would love to live in a future where people are free to choose to trade in whatever they wish but thats not where we live.

[henryreardon]

No, it's a fake out dude. Obama's really in charge.

I assume that means you do not know the answer, or cannot articulate the answer, to my question?

[henryreardon]

The fact that fiat is created out of nothing and bitcoin is finite doesnt mean anything if people with guns can force you to use one over the other.

If Bitcoin makes the fiat worthless, and thus starves the government of funds, how will they pay the men with guns?  Government "power" is only possible because they steal money from the citizens though income taxes and inflation. They cannot inflate Bitcoin. And if they try to tax too high, people will refuse to pay, that would be much easier to do in a Bitcoin economy than it is now.

[QuestionAuthority]

No, it's a fake out dude. Obama's really in charge.

I assume that means you do not know the answer, or cannot articulate the answer, to my question?

No, it means that you don't really know what open source is. It means you don't know what a pull request is. It means you don't know what the fork & pull model of open source development is. It means if I told you he was completely fucking powerless to make changes that the community doesn't support you wouldn't understand why.

[JohnyBigs]

The fact that fiat is created out of nothing and bitcoin is finite doesnt mean anything if people with guns can force you to use one over the other.

If Bitcoin makes the fiat worthless, and thus starves the government of funds, how will they pay the men with guns?  Government "power" is only possible because they steal money from the citizens though income taxes and inflation. They cannot inflate Bitcoin. And if they try to tax too high, people will refuse to pay, that would be much easier to do in a Bitcoin economy than it is now.

Bitcoin is not going to starve anyone with .0005% market share. Secondly, people will love paying taxes, like they did in Cyprus, where the banks legally stole 70% of their money, and they did nothing. Same in Greece, people might protest but that's about it when the army comes with weapons, people usually run.

Hence why guns are useful, and anyone who is for gun control is dooming themselves. Why do you think only the arab nations are having revolutions because the people actually have guns to fight with. In Europe, everyone has pretty much been disarmed and is at the mercy of their government.

Same thing they are trying to do in the US, commit staged school shootings every week so they can pass gun laws to outlaw guns and control them as much as possible. This is another discussion on it's own.

It's nice in theory that people will do this and that, but when it comes time to go to jail, prison, or physical harm people will do nothing.

[JohnyBigs]

No, it's a fake out dude. Obama's really in charge.

I assume that means you do not know the answer, or cannot articulate the answer, to my question?

Henry, don't mind them this is what the Bitcoin community is Elitist's who think they are better than everybody. Kind like the Environmentalist who feel morally superior because they protect trees, and if you don't do the same you are worthless scum.

To answer your question since nobody is going to. Yes Gavin and the foundation have this much power. Basically everyone only trusts the Bitcoin foundations client, because imagine if you download a random client off the internet, you can't trust it, it can steal your wallet ect.

The problem is other community members can get together and work on solutions and fix Bitcoin, but then there will be 2 different versions and it will ruin Bitcoin even more, as some people would run a different version.

So basically people are stuck with Gavin and the Foundation, unless they decide to start their own foundation work very hard, create an awesome update, and hopefully people will adapt it, but as mentioned above it will cause problems most likely.

[Bismarckbkk]

First of all Money is a means of exchange. Bitcoin has just as much value papermoney by itself. In only can attain value if it is a means of exchange.

The only thing that has real value is human labour and tangible assets.

Money is an agreed upon method of exchange to make trade easier.

You can trade in sticks or toenails if you want to.

A government can force you by law and under threat of violence and jailtime to trade in whatever they want you to trade it.

Bitcoin cant make fiat worthless. If a state imposed laws that restrict trade to a certain currency that it controls there is nothing you can do about it.

How are you going to to use bitcoin if government has imposed laws that restrict coorporations to trade in bitcoin?

Also inflation itself is not a bad thing, its an incentive for people to spend money and create economic prosperity.

What you see now is just a wealth transfer where insane amount of money are created by an elite and distributed and kept by a small number of the population.

If that money where to be seen increased wages inflation would be great.

[JohnyBigs]

Hi,

I read the OP with interest, considering argument #1. It is also the most important threat I see concerning BTC, and those who don't see it are blind. It doesn't mean fatality, but this power really exists.

Here is an interesting point of view about the future of money.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8JhmQ73Vq8

I'm more optimistic than OP concerning the future of BTC, but it is not my purpose in this reply, I just wonder how can you compare BTC users growth to Facebooks ? Both of them take place on the grid but IMHO the comparison stops here. Facebook is free and does not require (apparently) involvement. You sign in and you let uncle Sam doing the rest, while BTC by essence is costly, you have to pay for it, then to take care of it, and take the risk on you. Big difference isn't it ? 

drgyoza

drgyoza Facebook was used as an example of growth, you can use google, paypal, Apple for example. Apple actually requires you to spend money on it. Most things that are going to "take over the world" have high user growth within the first 5 years. I was just comparing growth in general.

Also, their press is positive, Apple was like it's the best thing since the wheel. Facebook was like, it's so amazing I can talk to all my friends everybody get on facebook.

What is Bitcoins press? It went to $1000 today it's a shitty bubble, the government is against Bitcoin, all the press is negative. This influences the normal potential users, hence why that argument was made. It's about growth generally speaking, if after 5 years you only have 3M users something is seriously wrong, and most likely you won't be gaining many more even if you double those numbers. You either grow insanely or you don't.