Why Bitcoin changed the world... and its price will crash

[BigJohn]

You guys are just speculating and throwing around ridiculous analogies that have ZERO applicability in this field. Please stop making yourselves look like complete idiots, as much fun as it for the rest of us.

See, I respect the shit out of the people in this community, I really do, but comments like these just simply don't help.

You're basically saying I'm wrong because I'm stupid.

And I'm a big boy, I can handle being called stupid, but you gotta tell me why. Or else it honestly just looks like you're reading the first line of my posts and commenting just on that out of context. I can't explain it any other way. You're coming up with objections to things I've never said. The only way you could believe I said those things, is if you read just one line out of the entire post and took it out of context.

[CryptoPhilanthropist]

The reactions to my opening post illustrate how easy it is for otherwise intelligent people to start sounding like an echo chamber once they have financial or ideological reasons to promote a certain worldview.

Many of the definitions that people are using are normative rather than descriptive. It is begging the question to say "cryptocurrency can't be issued by a central institution" or "cryptocurrency can't be backed by tangible assets." Obviously, most people posting here are libertarians who strongly favor decentralization. Nobody expects a centrally issued cryptocurrency to appeal to you. But it seems like some of you can't even wrap your mind around the business model.

The point is that right now: (1) all transactions performed using distributed block-chains are done in cryptocurrencies; and (2) existing cryptocurrencies are not issued like fiat currencies. But neither of those two things has to remain the same. Distributed network authentication is a new technological paradigm, just like paper money was. The fact that paper currency became the dominant means of exchange did not mean that the first form of paper money prevailed over all the later ones.

The high price of bitcoins is a giant disincentive for the network to prevail, because it raises the cost of using the network to confirm transactions. (i.e., miners are being paid huge amounts of money, because BTC are so valuable) The major financial institutions will want an opportunity to mine a large percentage of whatever cryptocurrency will take off as the dominant paradigm. Imagine how easily banks like Wells Fargo could create financial incentives for merchants to take their bank-backed crypto-currencies instead of BTC.

When people say that these currencies will be less "free" than Bitcoin, because they can be controlled and manipulated by governments, they simply make the case for why these are the currencies that will prevail in the end. Within their sovereign territory, governments can easily prevent merchants from publicly accepting certain forms of currency, like BTC. Governments use their control over the money supply as one of their primary means of retaining power, and they will not give it up without strong resistance. They will find a way to make public cryptocoin logs their newest tool of panoptic surveillance, by using the legal system to force the adoption of their favored coins. This will be easy to do under the guise of preventing money laundering, combating terrorism, etc.

Crude historical analogies are not helpful, because you can always pick an example whose facts suit your argument. I could claim that BTC is like MySpace and we haven't seen Facebook yet, but that doesn't mean that is a valid take on the facts. What matters is the technical and economic nuances.

Here, the Bitcoin protocol can and has been cloned to allow for alternative coins. It way well continue to be the dominant model for how coins should be tracked. But that doesn't mean that the original denomination will remain relevant. The barriers to entry for alternative coins are just too low. So far, those coins have mostly been weak imitations. But the launch of a GoogleCoin or BOACoin could instantly change that and create a crisis of confidence in BTC.

[BigJohn]

- The coin supply *will* be inflated beyond what was originally promised.  History has shown that *all* humans with the ability to inflate the money supply eventually take advantage of this power.  If there is a "backing," it will eventually become meaningless, as history has also shown.

This is the main point I'm in disagreement with most people over.

Because the argument isn't that a centralized coin will be awesome and amazing and will replace Bitcoin because of that. It's that a centralized coin, even though it's worse than Bitcoin in many ways, will gain widespread adoption quicker than Bitcoin, and over-take it very fast. Or at least that it has the potential to do so, depending on how its issuer plays its cards.

You're absolutely right that it will be inflated, destroyed, and taking advantage of. But that will take a very long time. The Fed was founded 100 years ago in 1913, and the Bretton Woods system has been around since 1944. Almost as soon as those systems were established, you had people opposing them on very similar grounds. That the government shouldn't have that kind of control, that it will be inflated, that it's economically irresponsible, that people will suffer in the long run, etc.

And guess what? Those people were right. And yet the USD is widely adopted. It has many "users" throughout the world. And the people who control it have great power.

So I have no doubt that if Bitcoin demonstrates demand for a crypto-currency out there, and TPTB create their own crypto-coin, that they can get widespread adoption over Bitcoin in no time.

[Cryddit]

For those who are saying "no newer and different cryptocoin could replace Bitcoin, cos Bitcoin was first!!!11"  

I'm noticing that a lot of Rock & Roll artists sold a hell of a lot more records than Chuck Berry.  

You have just argued that Chuck Berry is analogous to TCP/IP in that it was the first to market .... therefore TCP/IP should have been superseded by now by infinitely better protocols? wtf?

My point is that Chuck Berry *ISN'T* analogous to TCP/IP, and neither is Bitcoin.  You don't have to be chuck berry to play rock & roll, and you don't have to be Bitcoin to use a cryptocurrency protocol.  

Bitcoin exists at the application layer, not the network layer.  You can have a different application use the same network and even the same protocol, and you don't need to touch infrastructure to make the change.  

There is absolutely nothing that locks out new coins from competing with Bitcoin.

[dwma]

How can an algorithmic artifact be a proxy for physical gold?
Someone has to update the network manually on the amount of gold in existence, since the digital network can't figure it itself.

This means: trust.

Trust & cryptocurrencies don't mix.

Exactly.  This means there has to be a central place you trust with your gold.

Lets just assume we can trust this entity and it is a private organization for another argument of why this is bad.

The only way the e-currency/gold angle has value is if you can actually redeem your currency.  What would keep people from doing this?  Only if the exchange price was greater than the gold price.  If it isn't, then people exchange it out for their gold and what does teh entity do?  What is the business model of this "gold backed e-currency based entity" ? 

It makes little sense, except possibly to remove volatility out of the market by pegging the price to gold.  However, how does the backer of the coins make their money?  They have to keep a well guarded warehouse hosting millions of dollars in gold.  I just can't see this working out.

[Peter R]

The reactions to my opening post illustrate how easy it is for otherwise intelligent people to start sounding like an echo chamber once they have financial or ideological reasons to promote a certain worldview.

Agreed, and this is why it is important to engage thoughtful intelligent people like yourself in polite debate.  

But the launch of a GoogleCoin or BOACoin could instantly change that and create a crisis of confidence in BTC.

OK, but the devil is in the details.  Can you explain what such a coin would look like?  Does it involve mining?  Is there a block reward?  Is it centralized or decentralized?  Is it "backed" by something like dollars or gold?  Can you send it internationally?  Are transactions reversible?  Are transactions/accounts anonymous, pseudonymous, or linked to a real person?  Are balances confiscatable?  What authority decides?  Can that authority inflate the money supply?  Does it follow the same AML/KYC procedures as our current system?  Are there multiple such systems in each country/region, or is there one main system for the entire world?

My conclusion is that there are only two end-games (which end-game is chosen depends on the details above): something free and global like bitcoin, or something very similar to what we already have.  

I think we all agree that the bitcoin experiment could collapse (and that is why its value is $800 rather than $100,000+), but I see it as a better monetary system for us or for our children.  For this reason, I support it.  

[dwma]

You guys are just speculating and throwing around ridiculous analogies that have ZERO applicability in this field. Please stop making yourselves look like complete idiots, as much fun as it for the rest of us.

See, I respect the shit out of the people in this community, I really do, but comments like these just simply don't help.

You're basically saying I'm wrong because I'm stupid.

And I'm a big boy, I can handle being called stupid, but you gotta tell me why. Or else it honestly just looks like you're reading the first line of my posts and commenting just on that out of context. I can't explain it any other way. You're coming up with objections to things I've never said. The only way you could believe I said those things, is if you read just one line out of the entire post and took it out of context.

You're not stupid, you just find an analogy that sorta fits but is really nothing more than a single data point in history.  Then we had the neurobiology stuff.  It is all just a tad silly.  Analogies are good for helping people understand things.  They are not good for winning arguments.  We can come up with analogies all day for either side, but so many have zero value and end up pulling the discussion into weird tangents.

[dwma]

The only way a bank backed e-currency will work is if it is mainly in one country and it gives up the whole borderless international concept that us cryptocurrency fans embrace.

It is hard to imagine the cryptocurrency supporters ever accepting these backed currencies, or that this would take over with so much of the anti-banking sentiment in the US.  It might somehow be the solution for micropayments in the US, since it would be pegged to the dollar.  It definitely won't overtake cryptocoins.  Just too much baggage there and too many smart people pushing for cryptocoins.

[AnonyMint]

The reactions to my opening post illustrate how easy it is for otherwise intelligent people to start sounding like an echo chamber once they have financial or ideological reasons to promote a certain worldview.

yada yada yada...

You haven't address my prior post.

Within their sovereign territory, governments can easily prevent merchants from publicly accepting certain forms of currency, like BTC.

Not if anonymity is 99.9% and we are moving to an economy where we download and 3D print thus every merchant transaction can be anonymous.

No more physical stores. No more physical merchandise other than the low valued components of raw materials, which will be in abundant oversupply as the global economy implodes after 2016 from the $150 trillion debt bubble (and $1000 trillion derivatives and $1000 trillion unfunded promises from governments).

We are moving to a radically different world. The industrial age is done.

Now we enter a massive global implosion with 50% unemployment and chaos.

Anonymity will reign. Those without cunning and balls, just get out the way.

[HeliKopterBen]

For those who are saying "no newer and different cryptocoin could replace Bitcoin, cos Bitcoin was first!!!11"  

I'm noticing that a lot of Rock & Roll artists sold a hell of a lot more records than Chuck Berry.  

You have just argued that Chuck Berry is analogous to TCP/IP in that it was the first to market .... therefore TCP/IP should have been superseded by now by infinitely better protocols? wtf?

My point is that Chuck Berry *ISN'T* analogous to TCP/IP, and neither is Bitcoin.  You don't have to be chuck berry to play rock & roll, and you don't have to be Bitcoin to use a cryptocurrency protocol.  

Bitcoin exists at the application layer, not the network layer.  You can have a different application use the same network and even the same protocol, and you don't need to touch infrastructure to make the change.  

There is absolutely nothing that locks out new coins from competing with Bitcoin.

When Elvis became more popular than Chuck Berry, did the entire music industry have to change to accommodate Elvis?  The entire infrastructure of the internet would have to change for another protocol to replace TCP/IP.

In fact, IPv6 is a far superior version of IP than IPv4, but the world has yet to even modestly move to IPv6 because existing hardware and infrastructure would have to change to accomodate this, and IPv6 has been around for nearly 15 years now.  Its not just a settings change.  Newer hardware supports both IPv4 and IPv6 and are backward-compatible with legacy hardware that only supports IPv4.  The problem is, legacy hardware will only communicate with current hardware through IPv4.  Also, entire network configurations would have to be changed to move to IPv6, requiring a lot of skilled labor and working through many problems.  Eventually, IPv6 may become the dominant protocol, but it will take time.

Bitcoin is similar in the fact that the infrastructure and hardware being built around bitcoin may not be forward-compatible with a completely new protocol, not to mention the fact that the new protocol would have to be far superior to bitcoin much like IPv6 is far superior to IPv4, and I have yet to see anything of that sort. 

[aggster]

this is the greatest pyramid scheme of all time, everyone who adopts makes money, and the end game will be the end of the current monetary and banking system, perfect

[newguy05]

I stopped reading about a quarter way in, the original post is retarded.  It's like saying diamond will crash in price because you have many other quartz that look similar.

Either the entire cryptocurrency concept crash and burn or it survives and flourish - in which case bitcoin will be far and large remain as the gold in that sector.  Second most popular litecoin still has years to go before it can reach what silver is to gold.  It's not a diss on litecoin or any other, just a fact.

The real danger of bitcoin death i see is after all the coins are mined (or close to it) around 2141, the idea is the transaction fees should be significant enough to support the miners keeping their hardware running.  However if this doesnt happen (and you really need many order of magnitude transactions compare to today to keep the mining hardware running solely on transaction fees as profit alone).  If the transactions dont reach that level, then people will shutdown their miners hence weakening the network eventually to the point of no return, it's a snowball effect - as the network shrinks, transactions will become less and less as people give up on bitcoin which in turn causes more hardware getting shut etc..  That's the doomsday situation, to prevent that bitcoin needs to be as popular(similar volume) as credit card transactions by then. But i wont be around to see what happens, unfortunately.

[BigJohn]

OK, but the devil is in the details.  Can you explain what such a coin would look like?  Does it involve mining?  Is there a block reward?  Is it centralized or decentralized?  Is it "backed" by something like dollars or gold?  Can you send it internationally?  Are transactions reversible?  Are transactions/accounts anonymous, pseudonymous, or linked to a real person?  Are balances confiscatable?  What authority decides?  Can that authority inflate the money supply?  Does it follow the same AML/KYC procedures as our current system?  Are there multiple such systems in each country/region, or is there one main system for the entire world?

Well, there are significant problems with Bitcoin at the moment. Those problems could be alleviated in the future, but in the meantime it leaves the door wide open for a centralized coin.

It would solve the problem of price volatility. Say a big bank issues a cryptocurrency, they'd have a much easier time keeping its initial price stable. Keep in mind that they can toss out the 21million number, or the halving block rewards, on a whim. They could peg it to some commodity, or even a basket of currencies, and get something that's pretty stable right off the bat.

It would also solve the problem of wallets. People have to jump through all sorts of hoops to keep their Bitcoins. This is already a bank. They're already in the business of keeping people's money safe. So it would make sense to have them keep your online wallet. And with that comes things like FDIC insurance. Increased security relative to making an offline wallet.

And it would keep all the benefits of a cryptocurrency. You'd still have instant transactions. You can still send money across the glove in seconds. All that good stuff.


Now personally I think something like that would be horrible. I'd never want to use it. I'd probably stick to cash. But there's no doubt in my mind that if they pull a stunt like this off, they'd get much wider adoption, at a much higher rate, than any of the current cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin.

[justusranvier]

They could peg it to some commodity, or even a basket of currencies, and get something that's pretty stable right off the bat.

No.

[BigJohn]

Why couldn't they?

[Peter R]

OK, but the devil is in the details.  Can you explain what such a coin would look like?  Does it involve mining?  Is there a block reward?  Is it centralized or decentralized?  Is it "backed" by something like dollars or gold?  Can you send it internationally?  Are transactions reversible?  Are transactions/accounts anonymous, pseudonymous, or linked to a real person?  Are balances confiscatable?  What authority decides?  Can that authority inflate the money supply?  Does it follow the same AML/KYC procedures as our current system?  Are there multiple such systems in each country/region, or is there one main system for the entire world?

Well, there are significant problems with Bitcoin at the moment. Those problems could be alleviated in the future, but in the meantime it leaves the door wide open for a centralized coin.

It would solve the problem of price volatility. Say a big bank issues a cryptocurrency, they'd have a much easier time keeping its initial price stable. Keep in mind that they can toss out the 21million number, or the halving block rewards, on a whim. They could peg it to some commodity, or even a basket of currencies, and get something that's pretty stable right off the bat.

It would also solve the problem of wallets. People have to jump through all sorts of hoops to keep their Bitcoins. This is already a bank. They're already in the business of keeping people's money safe. So it would make sense to have them keep your online wallet. And with that comes things like FDIC insurance. Increased security relative to making an offline wallet.

And it would keep all the benefits of a cryptocurrency. You'd still have instant transactions. You can still send money across the glove in seconds. All that good stuff.


Now personally I think something like that would be horrible. I'd never want to use it. I'd probably stick to cash. But there's no doubt in my mind that if they pull a stunt like this off, they'd get much wider adoption, at a much higher rate, than any of the current cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin.

Thanks for the response BigJohn.  

I said the "devil is in the details" because I wanted someone like yourself to explain *how* such a centralized coin could be pegged to, for instance, gold.  Does your coin still involve mining that people all over the world can participate in?  If so, where do you get the gold to back the newly minted coins?  Can I walk into your bank and exchange my coins for gold at the pegged rate, or do you not allow this?  If mining is not involved, would you just have a big centralized server and process all the transactions yourself?  I guess you could acquire gold on the open market each time you sell a new coin, and then never have too much capital at risk.  But if this is your plan, it sounds a lot like eGold 2.0 and we know how the first version turned out.  In fact, I believe the original owner of eGold is trying to re-kindle his old flame, so we may get to see this experiment play out in real time....

[BigJohn]

I'd like to stress that it's not "my" coin. I'd be dead-set against such a thing, as I'm a huge fan of Bitcoin and its open nature. But I just recognize an opening for some entity to create a less than ideal coin, namely a bank, government, or a major corporation.

But what I imagine could be as simple as them buying up a certain amount of gold, and simply say that 1coin=1oz of gold. Then say they have 50,000 ounces, they'd simply set the upper limit to 50,000 (this is Bitcoin's 21million number), premine the whole thing from the get-go, and then sell it to people for fiat. In reality they could raise that 50,000 number in any way they please. They could say that 1coin is half an ounce, a quarter an ounce, or whatever. They could even run it as a fractional reserve scheme, where they only have physical gold to back-up 10% of the coins. There wouldn't be a need for decentralized mining. They could just mine it all themselves.

Suppose the Bank of China did this. And say you did some work for a company that paid you in these coins. You could walk into one of their branches and exchange it for gold. Or if it becomes widespread, as I believe it would, like how we always say Bitcoin will become one day, you could simply use your coins to buy whatever you wanted.

Yeah, this sounds real similar to eGold. But keep in mind that I'm just using gold as an example. It could literally be anything, or even nothing. In fact if Bitcoin gets much more successful, I'd bet they'd copy Bitcoin in that sense and not even bother backing it up with anything (other than their name). To the average person a cryptopcurrency backed by the "good name" of a government is superior to Bitcoin which is backed by nothing. And also about eGold, keep in mind that the project actually did quite well. It ended up dying because of legal issues. They even threw the Patriot Act on them. It had lots of problems with hacking and whatnot. But Bitcoin suffers from those just the same. Even worse with Bitcoin, because people need to keep their own wallets safe, and that's constantly proving to be a problem.


I hate the thought that this would happen. But I think we're fooling ourselves if we think it won't. To the average person the biggest advantages of Bitcoin, like instant transfers across the world, are easily replicated by such a thing. And some of Bitcoin's downsides, like transaction fees, could even be removed.

[HeliKopterBen]

Why couldn't they?

Because they have already done that and it failed.  The USD was pegged to gold up until 1971, at which time the Nixon administration arbitrarily decided to cease USD convertibility into gold.  The USD has lost 83% of its value since that time.  This is the entire problem bitcoin solves.  

[HeliKopterBen]

I'd like to stress that it's not "my" coin. I'd be dead-set against such a thing, as I'm a huge fan of Bitcoin and its open nature. But I just recognize an opening for some entity to create a less than ideal coin, namely a bank, government, or a major corporation.

But what I imagine could be as simple as them buying up a certain amount of gold, and simply say that 1coin=1oz of gold. Then say they have 50,000 ounces, they'd simply set the upper limit to 50,000 (this is Bitcoin's 21million number), premine the whole thing from the get-go, and then sell it to people for fiat. In reality they could raise that 50,000 number in any way they please. They could say that 1coin is half an ounce, a quarter an ounce, or whatever. They could even run it as a fractional reserve scheme, where they only have physical gold to back-up 10% of the coins. There wouldn't be a need for decentralized mining. They could just mine it all themselves.

Suppose the Bank of China did this. And say you did some work for a company that paid you in these coins. You could walk into one of their branches and exchange it for gold. Or if it becomes widespread, as I believe it would, like how we always say Bitcoin will become one day, you could simply use your coins to buy whatever you wanted.

Yeah, this sounds real similar to eGold. But keep in mind that I'm just using gold as an example. It could literally be anything, or even nothing. In fact if Bitcoin gets much more successful, I'd bet they'd copy Bitcoin in that sense and not even bother backing it up with anything (other than their name). To the average person a cryptopcurrency backed by the "good name" of a government is superior to Bitcoin which is backed by nothing. And also about eGold, keep in mind that the project actually did quite well. It ended up dying because of legal issues. They even threw the Patriot Act on them. It had lots of problems with hacking and whatnot. But Bitcoin suffers from those just the same. Even worse with Bitcoin, because people need to keep their own wallets safe, and that's constantly proving to be a problem.


I hate the thought that this would happen. But I think we're fooling ourselves if we think it won't. To the average person the biggest advantages of Bitcoin, like instant transfers across the world, are easily replicated by such a thing. And some of Bitcoin's downsides, like transaction fees, could even be removed.

Egold did not die because of legal issues.  It died because there was a central point of failure.  Again, Bitcoin solves this problem.

[BigJohn]

Why couldn't they?

Because they have already done that and it failed.  The USD was pegged to gold up until 1971, at which time the Nixon administration arbitrarily decided to cease USD convertibility into gold.  The USD has lost 83% of its value since that time.  This is the entire problem bitcoin solves.  

That doesn't make any sense. You're saying the USD was pegged to gold until 1971. That's true. So that means that they can in fact peg it to gold. Just that it will fail eventually. I wasn't saying it won't fail, it will, but it will take decades to fail. Maybe even 100+ years just like how the USD is still around.

So again, why can't they?