[2019-03-26] Bitcoin is Nothing More Than ‘Bovine Excrement’

[LeGaulois]

"...Move over, Jamie Dimon, because there’s a new contender for the coveted title of “king bear of the bitcoin-bashing brigade”: technologist Nicholas Weaver..."

"...So what happened when the cryptocurrencies first came out in 2010 and 2011 is most people who looked at it with technical understanding went, “Oh, this is bovine excrement, and walked away.”...

"...Why is bitcoin just bovine excrement? Because while it might use cryptography, it utterly fails as a currency, leaving proponents with “very few non-criminal uses...”
Source: https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-is-nothing-more-than-bovine-excrement-berkeley-researcher

I had a good laugh reading the title of the article.
His main arguments are about bitcoin’s immutability, the difficulty for the average Joe to securely hold your coins, difficulty to spend. I wonder if he really looked at it, isn't BTC enough user-friendly. However there is a point I agree with.

“The dirty little secret is the merchants who say they accept cryptocurrency…aren’t actually accepting cryptocurrency,” he said, noting that they instead use third-party conversion services such as BitPay or Coinbase Commerce

That's true for a lot of merchants, especially the medium and big ones.

[Theb]

It is the first time I ever read an article about Bitcoin replacing the word “bullshit” as bovine excrement I thought they have censored the word to punch us with some cold hard truths but at the end it is one of those articles that doesn't really add something new because it just gives back an old opinion being recycled again and again. It is 2019 and they are still using arguments that “BTC does not act as a currency” or “its only useful for criminal purposes" both of which has been disproven before yet they still say it as if people hadn't heard it before.

[BitHodler]

From harvested baby brains to bovine excrement, they are definitely trying to spice things up after having exhausted their fraud and criminal money dictionary. I don't know what to think about this because it's too pathetic.

Instead of bringing up solid arguments why Bitcoin according to them doesn't work, or why they don't like it, they degrade themselves to such low levels to make an invalid point.

Calling names is a sign of weakness and fear. Most people here disliking banks and governments have solid arguments to back it up, and that without calling names or using bad words. I wonder what's next.

[gentlemand]

People like this are often silly, but in the context of your regular person plenty of their points are perfectly valid. As it stands BTC is ludicrously volatile, most of the services are shit and security is a challenge most people aren't up to.

What I don't get is why they never acknowledge a future where these growing pains are dealt with.

[NeuroticFish]

What I don't like is that CCN, instead of ignoring these trolls, they cite them, leaving the door open for even more trolls.
CCN started to make every "nobody" famous just because they seem to have a contest on who can troll better against Bitcoin?

[Betwrong]

Fortunately, no one is going to give a flying fork about this guy's opinion. He's no Jamie Dimon about whom there are articles in 11 languages in Wikipedia compared to this guy's zero. It's him who is becoming known due to Bitcoin and not the vice versa. As NeuroticFish rightly said, such trolls should be rather ignored than cited.

[btyco]

Bovine excrement produces a lot of methane gas which contributes to global warming. Bitcoin mining generates a lot of heat so in that sense they are similar, but that's where the similarities end

[poptok1]

Bovine excrement produces a lot of methane gas which contributes to global warming. Bitcoin mining generates a lot of heat so in that sense they are similar, but that's where the similarities end

But that's only true if assuming that the global warming is a fact though. Notice on how the narration changed recently, it not global warming any more, it's the climate change...yeeeah mhm
Let them attention seekers speak whatever they want, just don't give them what they seek for. Even when among their words lies some truth, despite them having valid points, all they want is money and power. Nobody that cares for something more, would be able to come up with slander and fancy names as his points destined to be a constructive critique.

“The dirty little secret is the merchants who say they accept cryptocurrency…aren’t actually accepting cryptocurrency,” he said, noting that they instead use third-party conversion services such as BitPay or Coinbase Commerce

Why bother with actual issues? Let's throw some stones. Useful idiot, nothing more or a clickbait.

[dunfida]

Actually he do have some points out there but this man do only just add up on the pile of trolls who do tries to say something about Bitcoin without even realizing on what do they actually talk about.
This is just a like a normal day and having some normal dudes do make some critique once again.

[1Referee]

Sweet. The longer these hillbillies keep trashing Bitcoin, the longer we can get more Bitcoin for our fiat currencies, before they lose even more value.

I don't see any problems in merchants using third party payment gateways to allow people to spend their coins. It's of course better to have them hold their coins themselves, but we're not at that stage yet so it's super convenient for me to actually spend my coins through whatever payment gateway.

Another thing that people seem to overlook is the fact that in some countries (the US is the largest one), there are disadvantages to directly accept Bitcoin payments due to how taxation works there. Having a payment gateway do it for you is much cheaper and much more hassle free.

Without payment gateways the utility for Bitcoin as currency will be drastically reduced.

[squatter]

However there is a point I agree with.

“The dirty little secret is the merchants who say they accept cryptocurrency…aren’t actually accepting cryptocurrency,” he said, noting that they instead use third-party conversion services such as BitPay or Coinbase Commerce

That's true for a lot of merchants, especially the medium and big ones.

What would you expect them to do, though? Their supply chain requires fiat money, not bitcoins. Accepting bitcoins directly (and holding them) enters them into the business of currency speculation and I think most merchants -- especially ones operating on low margins -- want no part of that.

These arguments always boil down to the same thing -- the Bitcoin economy isn't self-sufficient... yet. If adoption continues growing like other major technologies, I think we'll see a major shift towards bitcoin-based supply chains and bitcoin payroll. That will eventually spill over into both consumers and merchants demanding bitcoin acceptance at the retail level.

But we can't put the cart before the horse. The demand just doesn't exist yet.

[hatshepsut93]

People like this are often silly, but in the context of your regular person plenty of their points are perfectly valid. As it stands BTC is ludicrously volatile, most of the services are shit and security is a challenge most people aren't up to.

What I don't get is why they never acknowledge a future where these growing pains are dealt with.

Yeah, I have a lot of similar views as I too believe that Bitcoin is far from perfect, the ecosystem needs to solve a lot of challanges, and in the end there's not much benefits in it for an average joe. But this doesn't mean that Bitcoin is "bovine excrement", it just means that it's a niche product, and history knows a lot of niche products that have only a few percent of the market, but still exist and evolve through the years.

[buwaytress]

People like this are often silly, but in the context of your regular person plenty of their points are perfectly valid. As it stands BTC is ludicrously volatile, most of the services are shit and security is a challenge most people aren't up to.

What I don't get is why they never acknowledge a future where these growing pains are dealt with.

That's the thing! I think all these issues are acknowledged by Bitcoiners - the very earliest books I read, obviously pro-Bitcoin, pointed these things out long before these experts "spilled the beans".

It's a new technology, in the throes of early adoption and therefore quite vulnerable to speculator activity, what else were we expecting?

Teething problems. Everyone's got to deal with it.

P.S. Glad someone else understands that "Bitcoin accepted" doesn't actually mean the merchants have Bitcoin wallets. Not sure it's a dirty little secret though. USD payments accepted also don't necessarily merchants have USD accounts...

[magneto]

"...Move over, Jamie Dimon, because there’s a new contender for the coveted title of “king bear of the bitcoin-bashing brigade”: technologist Nicholas Weaver..."

"...So what happened when the cryptocurrencies first came out in 2010 and 2011 is most people who looked at it with technical understanding went, “Oh, this is bovine excrement, and walked away.”...

"...Why is bitcoin just bovine excrement? Because while it might use cryptography, it utterly fails as a currency, leaving proponents with “very few non-criminal uses...”
Source: https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-is-nothing-more-than-bovine-excrement-berkeley-researcher

I had a good laugh reading the title of the article.
His main arguments are about bitcoin’s immutability, the difficulty for the average Joe to securely hold your coins, difficulty to spend. I wonder if he really looked at it, isn't BTC enough user-friendly. However there is a point I agree with.

“The dirty little secret is the merchants who say they accept cryptocurrency…aren’t actually accepting cryptocurrency,” he said, noting that they instead use third-party conversion services such as BitPay or Coinbase Commerce

That's true for a lot of merchants, especially the medium and big ones.

The truth is somewhere in between the permabears and permabulls of bitcoin.

Don't believe the people that are calling bitcoin a scam, or a fraud with absolutely no function to serve in society, because that is simply untrue. And don't sit there and blindly listen to every word that a so called "analyst" tells you about how great an investment bitcoin is, and how flawless it is. Because it is not.

The points brought up in this article isn't particularly new, either. It's classic fear mongering by someone that appears to be knowledgeable.

Your point about bitcoin having to be accepted through third party payment processors is a valid one. Obviously, that originates from the fact that BTC is volatile, but the fact that merchants are doing this means that goods aren't actually priced in BTC, which if they were, may actually contribute to lessening volatility.