What are the most convincing arguments against Bitcoin?

[axus]

The cost of the electricity requirements to secure the transactions will eventually outweigh the benefit of the transactions.

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[taltamir]

What I'm trying to say is that while I don't approve of the use of force, one should not brush of the inequality as a non issue. Imagine immense ghettoization with just a few extremely wealthy and almost no middle class, yes one could argue that it is better than communism, but what we are talking about is whether it is a fortunate situation or not. In fact wealth disparities that big, make it hard for anyone to change their wealth position and these conditions are ripe breeding grounds for revolution.

Too much imagining too little reality.

immense ghettoization with just a few extremely wealthy and almost no middle class

I don't need to imagine, I can see it in every communist country in history, ever.

And the fact that people use this as an argument for pushing communist agenda is absurd. You are stoking fear to attack the only thing that prevents what you claim to fear.

yes one could argue that it is better than communism

IT IS COMMUNISM. You are insisting that capitalism IS communism.

In fact wealth disparities that big, make it hard for anyone to change their wealth position and these conditions are ripe breeding grounds for revolution.

This isn't wealth disparity, its freedom disparity.

[jinni]

You are insisting that capitalism IS communism.

Precisely. I'm saying that todays so called capitalist societies are not really capitalist. I'm saying that we don't really have any good examples of free markets anywhere.

I don't believe in taxes as I think it is forcing people to do something. But that doesn't mean I don't believe that truly free market capitalism might be prone to big wealth disparity with all the problems that lead to. I'm arguing that those wealth disparities are a problem in themselves.

Therefore it is important to think about what one can do to make sure that the wealth disparity does not become big enough to be a problem. What I'm talking about is that in a truly anarcho-capitalist society, culture is really important. A culture that embraces the fact that we live in a community and shouldn't stranger to one another, that one should try to help other people intelligently (by teaching them the skills they need to help themselves).

Wealth is important for your opportunities and if your culture is so confoundedly stupid that you can't understand that nor think that it has negative consequences, then I suggest you think again!

[taltamir]

Precisely. I'm saying that todays so called capitalist societies are not really capitalist. I'm saying that we don't really have any good examples of free markets anywhere.

Well, yes. The biggest problem is all this communism that is being introduced into falsely labeled capitalistic societies.

But that doesn't mean I don't believe that truly free market capitalism might be prone to big wealth disparity with all the problems that lead to. I'm arguing that those wealth disparities are a problem in themselves.

You are using the terms of the enemy. Wealth disparity is the rallying cry of communists as they dismantle capitalism. A society with no middle class and masses with nothing has a disparity of freedom and of qaulity of life.

Wealth disparity is when people say "the top 1% has 70% of all money/property in terms of dollars". But in a communist society with no middle class there is no 1%, the people at the top are so very few, and relatively if you compare the ratio of wealth its not that big because society is so backwards that the only way for the wealthy not to live like animals themselves is to import it from non communist nations

[jinni]

Well, yes. The biggest problem is all this communism that is being introduced into falsely labeled capitalistic societies.

The labels are not the biggest problem.

But that doesn't mean I don't believe that truly free market capitalism might be prone to big wealth disparity with all the problems that lead to. I'm arguing that those wealth disparities are a problem in themselves.

You are using the terms of the enemy. Wealth disparity is the rallying cry of communists as they dismantle capitalism. A society with no middle class and masses with nothing has a disparity of freedom and of qaulity of life.

Wealth disparity is when people say "the top 1% has 70% of all money/property in terms of dollars". But in a communist society with no middle class there is no 1%, the people at the top are so very few, and relatively if you compare the ratio of wealth its not that big because society is so backwards that the only way for the wealthy not to live like animals themselves is to import it from non communist nations

"The terms of the enemy"? Come on, this is typical 1950s McCarthyist rhetoric. There are examples of so-called democracies with a high living standard on average and high median living standard as well as low poverty, and there are examples of the same with big income disparities, high average living standards, lower median living standards and high poverty. Both type of societies have high taxes and lots of bureaucratic rules, but the ones with lower income disparities are less stressful to live in because one doesn't have to face poverty, there is less crime and in general less tension.

There are examples of so-called social democracies where there is a lot bureaucracy like everywhere, but where the common man is well off middle class (as in absolute middle class on a western scale) and where markets do have a say and it is still possible to make one's own life according to pretty free rules in comparison to other countries that call themselves "capitalistic". I don't champion this kind of society at all, but pretending like all state intervention makes only complete ugliness for everyone at all times ever simply isn't true. Some of the best countries to live in for average Joe at the moment are rich social democracies in Europe - and that is a fact (these countries are also safe, have low prison populations and low recidivisy rates). Another fact is that we haven't really had any pure capitalist society in modern post-ww2 times.

I think your logic is completely binary, where everything is either communism or capitalism. If you want to use terms in this black-and-white manner you have to define what you mean by them. Both of these terms are loaded and need to be handled with care.

Just because the state uses force to accomplish it's goals doesn't mean it is always only evil and never has accomplished anything worthwhile. I think that mostly it is inefficient and often evil, but not completely anything. Apple Inc., on the other hand, is pure evil - a malignant cancer on mankind.

[taltamir]

"The terms of the enemy"? Come on, this is typical 1950s McCarthyist rhetoric.

1. He has since been proven right.
2. why shouldn't I call those who seek to make me into a slave an enemy?

I think your logic is completely binary, where everything is either communism or capitalism

You couldn't be further from the truth.
It is a continuum, but one where there is a direct connection between the variables. More communism = lower quality of life. More capitalism = more wealth "disparity" yet higher quality of life for even the poorest.

the main disagreement we have is on what the term "wealth disparity" means. You think it means "shrinking middle class, lots of extremely poor people"

Everyone else in the world thinks it means "if you take the X% top richest people, add up their property, you get a value which comprises a % of the total property in existence. The higher this value, the more wealth inequality"
This is a term that was invented by the communists and I am refusing to use it, but I don't pretend to seek to redefine it. There is no point in redefining it because it's definition is actually fairly accurate. The problem is that it looks at percentages instead of actual values.

I don't care if bill gates lives in a palace so long as I have a decent standard of living. I do care if stalin/mao/etc live in a palace if I have a horrific quality of living.

This is mostly because so few individuals had any wealth under such regimes.

The united states is also marching towards wealth equality. in 2012 we had 40% fewer millioneres than we had in 2008. It isn't JUST the poor that are getting poorer, the middle class are getting poorer, the rich are getting poorer. Everyone is getting poorer. Except for a few corrupt individuals who are getting richer, for now.

[Anon136]

Investment in mining hardware leads to logarithmic improvements in hashing efficiency rather than more desirable linear improvements. So for example 10 billion dollars invested in infrastructure to produce asics will lead to way more than 10 times as much hashing power as 1 billion dollars invested in infrastructure. This coupled with that fact that IC fabrication is potentially the best example of natural monopoly to ever exist, means that no one will ever be able to produce chips even 1/10th as efficient as intel or amd and there is simply no room in the market to create a robust array of companies that operate on the economies of scale of intel or amd. This means that the government could, in theory, twist the arms of all of the COMPETITIVE asics manufacturers into installing back doors in all of the top of the line asics in the future. Or they could even contract with intel to produce asics for them and then murder the rest of the network with even a hand full of asics produced with that sort of economy of scale.

there you go thats my best effort devils advocate argument against bitcoin.

[taltamir]

Investment in mining hardware leads to logarithmic improvements in hashing efficiency rather than more desirable linear improvements. So for example 10 billion dollars invested in infrastructure to produce asics will lead to way more than 10 times as much hashing power as 1 billion dollars invested in infrastructure. This coupled with that fact that IC fabrication is potentially the best example of natural monopoly to ever exist, means that no one will ever be able to produce chips even 1/10th as efficient as intel or amd and there is simply no room in the market to create a robust array of companies that operate on the economies of scale of intel or amd. This means that the government could, in theory, twist the arms of all of the COMPETITIVE asics manufacturers into installing back doors in all of the top of the line asics in the future.

there you go thats my best effort devils advocate argument against bitcoin.

This is very well put. This is what I was talking about earlier about ASICs causing centralization of the bitcoin.
And the fact of the matter is, all the major governments have a history of twisting the arms of companies for backdoors. See the snowden leak for the USA, while the rest openly admit it and say its for the greater good

[jinni]

Investment in mining hardware leads to logarithmic improvements in hashing efficiency rather than more desirable linear improvements. So for example 10 billion dollars invested in infrastructure to produce asics will lead to way more than 10 times as much hashing power as 1 billion dollars invested in infrastructure. This coupled with that fact that IC fabrication is potentially the best example of natural monopoly to ever exist, means that no one will ever be able to produce chips even 1/10th as efficient as intel or amd and there is simply no room in the market to create a robust array of companies that operate on the economies of scale of intel or amd. This means that the government could, in theory, twist the arms of all of the COMPETITIVE asics manufacturers into installing back doors in all of the top of the line asics in the future.

there you go thats my best effort devils advocate argument against bitcoin.

This is very well put. This is what I was talking about earlier about ASICs causing centralization of the bitcoin.
And the fact of the matter is, all the major governments have a history of twisting the arms of companies for backdoors. See the snowden leak for the USA, while the rest openly admit it and say its for the greater good

+1 for good argument against Bitcoin. Is there anything we can do about it? As far as I understand distributed manufacturing of high quality chips is far behind the most advanced chipfabs.

[jinni]

"The terms of the enemy"? Come on, this is typical 1950s McCarthyist rhetoric.

1. He has since been proven right.
2. why shouldn't I call those who seek to make me into a slave an enemy?

McCarthy was never proven right, the fascist post-war US was no heaven for ordinary people if not for their domination of other peoples making the ordinary American rich.

I think your logic is completely binary, where everything is either communism or capitalism

You couldn't be further from the truth.
It is a continuum, but one where there is a direct connection between the variables. More communism = lower quality of life. More capitalism = more wealth "disparity" yet higher quality of life for even the poorest.

the main disagreement we have is on what the term "wealth disparity" means. You think it means "shrinking middle class, lots of extremely poor people"

Everyone else in the world thinks it means "if you take the X% top richest people, add up their property, you get a value which comprises a % of the total property in existence. The higher this value, the more wealth inequality"
This is a term that was invented by the communists and I am refusing to use it, but I don't pretend to seek to redefine it. There is no point in redefining it because it's definition is actually fairly accurate. The problem is that it looks at percentages instead of actual values.

I don't care if bill gates lives in a palace so long as I have a decent standard of living. I do care if stalin/mao/etc live in a palace if I have a horrific quality of living.

This is mostly because so few individuals had any wealth under such regimes.

The united states is also marching towards wealth equality. in 2012 we had 40% fewer millioneres than we had in 2008. It isn't JUST the poor that are getting poorer, the middle class are getting poorer, the rich are getting poorer. Everyone is getting poorer. Except for a few corrupt individuals who are getting richer, for now.

Too much wealth disparity is a problem. Firstly, it means protecting the wealthy will rely on using force against the poor to fend them off; secondly, it means people who are less well off don't have the same opportunities as the more well off and hence society is less meritocratic; thirdly, crime will increase.

I don't subscribe to the fallacy of "if the rich get richer in the relation to the poor, then the poor get richer in absolute terms". It is not an absolute truth, but merely something that happens sometimes.

To me, a true capitalist or anarchist society is one where no matter what amount of wealth you have, you have good (if not equal) opportunities to make your skills valuable and useful to their full and real extent. If inequality is too great this will not be possible.

I agree that if you separate wealth and political power by getting rid of the state, one could make room for larger "wealth disparities" than otherwise without sacrificing too much lost opportunity. But we have many problems, ie proto-governmental multinational companies, so jut getting rid of the state is not enough. As we see with Bitcoin, most things work better decentralized. And one of the biggest threats to Bitcoin is the centralization of mining. I think that a decentralized state of affairs would be in the long-term make less problems, better culture and as a result of that less wealth disparity.

In essence, gross wealth disparity is a hindrance to free competition, makes people estranged towards each other and encourages nepotism. I don't want to use force (taxes) to prevent this (as I think that will just make things worse), but I do think that it is important to assume the role of leadership when one is put in that position and hence one has responsibility for a lot of people. This is what I mean by wealth disparity. One cannot ignore it because if you have the faculty to help people out of a bad situation by teaching them how, you are morally obliged as a fellow human, that quite possibly have happened to end up in your comfortable position more by happenstance than by merit, to help out.

This is merely how I think it is necessary for a culture to be in order to avoid revolution (and in the end possibly shootings of early adopters of Bitcoin, just like the Russian imperial family where executed).

[Damnsammit]

Too complex to use for people as dumb as me.

This.

And that it is not safe, or rather that it is too complicated a task to safeguard your Bitcoins.

I just got my first offline wallet after getting 10 LTC stolen from me. 

[MoonShadow]

"The terms of the enemy"? Come on, this is typical 1950s McCarthyist rhetoric.

1. He has since been proven right.
2. why shouldn't I call those who seek to make me into a slave an enemy?

McCarthy was never proven right,

Actually, he was eventually.  McCarthy's core premise was that the Soviet Union had sleeper cells inside the United States, and he believed that spies held very high profile lifestyles, most likely in media.  It took until after the fall of the Soviet Union to prove it, but McCarthy's paranoid premise was correct even though a great number of innocent people were included into the project as well.

[Zarathustra]

You are insisting that capitalism IS communism.

Precisely. I'm saying that todays so called capitalist societies are not really capitalist. I'm saying that we don't really have any good examples of free markets anywhere.

Yes, because the 'free market' is an oxymoron. Free humans are self-sufficient. They live (lived) in self-sufficient communities beyond the state, beyond the market, beyond labor division, beyond collectivistic communism/capitalism, which essentially is the same: working with and against everybody, against human nature and against the nature in general. They are growing rampant until they collapse. For the first time in the history of the citizen (a cartoon of the former human) the collapse will be global.

[SprichtZarathustra]

For the first time in the history of the citizen (a cartoon of the former human) the collapse will be global.

+1

Also Spricht Zarathustra!

Onwards to the grandiose being that stands above all irrationality.

[pizzabit]

it can only handle 7 transactions a second :/ 

[mprep]

it can only handle 7 transactions a second :/ 

Where did you get that one? I never heard of such limitation.

[Nancarrow]

It's to do with the blocksize limit - currently all blocks can only hold a maximum of 1MB of data. I'm told by smarter people that it would require a hard fork to remove or otherwise change this limit. Given average time to generate a block as 10 min, and a minimum transaction size of ... whatever-it-is bytes, that works out to 7 transactions per second.

If the blocksize limit were increased, or removed altogether, we'd get the blockchain increasing at an even faster rate than it already is, but that may or may not be a problem depending on how storage hardware develops, and how drastically we implement 'pruning' solutions or lightweight clients. I'm told there are also economic reasons why a limited block size might be a good idea but I don't know what those are.

[Ailure]

Well said economic reason are with fees I guess. When the size limit is reached on a block, transactions with higher fees are prioritized over those with lower or no fee. Or so, at least that is from what I understand with how bitcoin works.

I don't think it's a problem that some blocks might reach the limit during peak usage times. I would think it's a problem if a transaction could be delayed for more than a hour due to this though. Currently though, a lot of BTC... especially those traded for speculation on exchanges are all traded offchain and does not affect the blockchain at all. So this might be more of a problem the more people actually use BTC as a currency. Then again payment processors might cover this as well, but... inputs.io is probably still in recent memory amongst many of us.

But the bitcoin whitepaper does cover how to trim the blockchain down to a more manageable level (tl;dr, involves pruning old data after verification), and personally for everyday usage I tend to use a client like multibit to go around the space problem in general (though as a enthusiast I have bitcoin-qt installed as well).

[olinnebit]

ASIC mining farms. I believe Satoshi intended for BTC to be cpu only

Your belief is in error.  Sataoshi expressed a desire that Bitcoin remain cpu only till the "kinks" were worked out, but he didn't get to decide that issue alone either.

I don't understand you completely; by issue, do you mean the kinks or CPU? And what did Satoshi try to decide?

[MoonShadow]

ASIC mining farms. I believe Satoshi intended for BTC to be cpu only

Your belief is in error.  Sataoshi expressed a desire that Bitcoin remain cpu only till the "kinks" were worked out, but he didn't get to decide that issue alone either.

I don't understand you completely; by issue, do you mean the kinks or CPU? And what did Satoshi try to decide?

He attempted to convince the users to hold off on GPU mining.  He didn't get his way.