State of Bitcoin

[nebulus]

Hello all, I am a new member of Bitcoin community. I have been involved in BTC for some time now.
As most of you, I have a pretty decent mining rig thats doing what its supposed to.
I am posting here in order to earn my right at the table of "BTC grown-ups" and to have a "grown-up" voice. This is probably enough of information to get me started.

To make this post less boring, I want to know if people have ever minded the following...

What is the future of BTC?

I have been pondering on this question for sometime.
On thing for certain, it is difficult to speculate what the future of BTC exactly looks like.
In trying to answer the above question, I have arrived at three solid facts.

1) There are many individuals who are vested in BTC.
2) These are developers, economists, entreprenuers, thinkers.
3) Most of these people believe there is something about BTC that makes it worth their time.

I am interested in personal feedback from the community in regard to number 3.
As for me I feel that BTC offers a technical challenge. Since I started I've learned a lot about GPUs, FPGAs, computing and programing.

What are your reasons why you invest your time into bitcoin?

Thanks!

[trutharama]

As a complexity theorist, I recognised the significance of bitcoin almost immediately. Bitcoin is a superior medium of exchange to what we have been using.

1: Enforcement of anti-counterfeit rules is built in.
2: No central control means that the intelligence of the market rules, and it is a difficult medium to be abused by elites.
3: Freedom and inexpensive exchange
4: Math says that currency monopoly is unhealthy, so there needs to be competition in currency.
5: Designed to reward the early adopter.
6: Bitcoin mining with opencl is cool.
7: Bitcoin mathematics is at its foundation beautifully conceived. Rather than using policemens guns to enforce the nature of the currency, mathematical and computational law do that naturally.
8: There are complaints that bitcoin has no inherent value... Believe it or not, this actually is an advantage because it bypasses one of the money-mongers primary strategies... They find ways to take the currency in use out of circulation (such as government decrees that no one is allowed to have gold) so that they can force people to use their junk shit vomit currencies.  For currencies with inherent value, it is difficult to impossible to replace them, so the public  winds up falling into their trap. Bitcoin is not that way.  It can not reasonably be stolen out of existence. In the worst case, they can just start a new bitcoin. 
9: The current system is shit, designed to make slaves of people, and its the responsibility of smart people everywhere to assert an evolution.

Ofcourse, BC has weaknesses as well. Everything does,  but that was not the question.

[nebulus]

Cool, thanks for your thoughts!

One comment... You are saying that starting a new bitcoin is an alternative for those who distrust the first one.
I think you are implying there exists a possibility for creation of a competing currency.
I do not think there is such possibility, the only competing alternative are the currently existing currencies.

Here is why...

Do you realize that the amount of resources that goes into making the bitcoin is pretty significant? (Like I said my interest is a technical one)

For an alternative that can size up to bitcon to exist an effort has to be made that greatly outpaces the development of bitcoin itself. I think this leaves adopters with only two options: on board or against.
I hesitate to speculate that there might be a clash between the two. I just want to stress that in the foreseeable future the currency camps that are going to exist will be bitcoin and old world currencies, not bitcoin and some other crypto-currency.

You probably can agree. Not sure if point 8 was written in a sarcastic tone hence my explanation.

[Glasswalker]

I believe bitcoin (or the concept of bitcoin at least) has the potential to make huge impact on our global culture in the long run. I am excited to see where it goes, and I want to do everything I can to foster it's growth, so I invest time, money, and energy into things involving, and supporting bitcoin, so that I know that I am helping to bring about that impact.

It may not be bitcoin itself that ends up being the bringer of change at a global scale, but I think the concept is sound, and bitcoin or something like it will make a major positive shift in the way we think about things.

[Alex Coventry]

What are your reasons why you invest your time into bitcoin?

  I'm fascinated by it.  It's definitely a new thing under the sun.  There are some libertarian ideas which appeal to me, and bitcoin aligns with them nicely.

[Wordlet]

I like it because it gives me a chance to do cool things like mod my computer and think of new and different ways to use bitcoins (or namecoins) and hear other people's thoughts on those ideas.

It also gives me the opportunity to learn more about economics and security all in one neat package. I read a post on here the other day that had a debate about deterministic wallets that got REALLY detailed in the security of passwords. Something I would've had no interest in otherwise. But I learned a lot and have since changed my passwords to be much more secure lol.

[nebulus]

Thanks! Keep them coming, always nice to see what other people think...

[deroyale]

I'm fascinated by it.  It's definitely a new thing under the sun. [emphasis added]  

+1   

[deroyale]

Bitcoin is a superior medium of exchange [...] The current system is shit, designed to make slaves of people, and its [sic] the responsibility of smart people everywhere to assert an evolution.

I'd say that's sig worthy...

in fact...  

 

Thanks!

[RandyFolds]

I am posting here in order to earn my right at the table of "BTC grown-ups" and to have a "grown-up" voice.

Well, there was your first mistake. There are about a dozen people on this forum who aren't at least 50% troll...

[nebulus]

Not sure, what you are trying to say...
If it is a mistake to play by the rules here, why put them up in the first place?

[RandyFolds]

Not sure, what you are trying to say...
If it is a mistake to play by the rules here, why put them up in the first place?

I was just cracking a joke seeming as there are very few people acting like grown ups outside of the development forums. It's kind of a free-for-all, and descends into chaos from there.

There don't seem to be any rules here, other than arbitrary bans for off-topic or ultra-offensive posts.

[nebulus]

Oh, okay... I thought you were calling me a troll in a typical "haze that newb" manner.

[Vernon715]

It seemed interesting

[naomioleary]

There is a paradox that strikes me strongly here. On the one hand, a tonne of people seem to be interested in developing Bitcoins for ideological reasons, to develop a currency independent of corporations or central banks. On the other hand, one of the biggest groups I see on here are ex-forex traders hoping to make a quick profit! Intuitively, those seem like clashing beliefs to me: speculative-capitalist and anti-capitalist.

Or am I totally wrong.

[Wordlet]

I don't think the people who ideologically like bitcoins are against corporations, they're more against central banks and money being in the hands of others and capable of being locked and taken away by government intrusion. These are more libertarian ideals (re: Ron Paul). I think the fact that the more hash's and btc you have the more power you have is kind of super capitalist in a way.

Having traders get involved is a good thing imo, people familiar with the industry are adopting it more and more.

[Timo Y]

There is a paradox that strikes me strongly here. On the one hand, a tonne of people seem to be interested in developing Bitcoins for ideological reasons, to develop a currency independent of corporations or central banks. On the other hand, one of the biggest groups I see on here are ex-forex traders hoping to make a quick profit! Intuitively, those seem like clashing beliefs to me: speculative-capitalist and anti-capitalist.

Or am I totally wrong.

The Bitcoin community is diverse. Bitcoin is just a tool and different people have different uses for it.

I see no paradox in that.  Just like it isn't a paradox that nuclear technology can be used both for weapons and for powering zero-carbon TGV trains.  It would only be a paradox if one use precluded the other, but that's not the case with Bitcoin.

Most people who are interested in Bitcoin for ideological reasons, are some flavor of libertarian and don't really fit into the traditional right/left or capitalist/socialist spectrum.

Libertarians are pro free market.  Central banks are seen as a coercive distortion of the free market and that's why most libertarians oppose them.  Some, but not all libertarians also oppose big corporations because they are seen to hurt the free market through practices like regulatory capture.

There are also a lot of moderates and pragmatists in the bitcoin community, but they don't tend to be as vocal as the ideologists.

[ineededausername]

On the one hand, a tonne of people seem to be interested in developing Bitcoins for ideological reasons, to develop a currency independent of corporations or central banks.

Wanting freedom from the central banks is not anti-capitalist. 

[freedomworx]

As a complexity theorist, I recognised the significance of bitcoin almost immediately. Bitcoin is a superior medium of exchange to what we have been using.

1: Enforcement of anti-counterfeit rules is built in.
2: No central control means that the intelligence of the market rules, and it is a difficult medium to be abused by elites.
3: Freedom and inexpensive exchange
4: Math says that currency monopoly is unhealthy, so there needs to be competition in currency.
5: Designed to reward the early adopter.
6: Bitcoin mining with opencl is cool.
7: Bitcoin mathematics is at its foundation beautifully conceived. Rather than using policemens guns to enforce the nature of the currency, mathematical and computational law do that naturally.
8: There are complaints that bitcoin has no inherent value... Believe it or not, this actually is an advantage because it bypasses one of the money-mongers primary strategies... They find ways to take the currency in use out of circulation (such as government decrees that no one is allowed to have gold) so that they can force people to use their junk shit vomit currencies.  For currencies with inherent value, it is difficult to impossible to replace them, so the public  winds up falling into their trap. Bitcoin is not that way.  It can not reasonably be stolen out of existence. In the worst case, they can just start a new bitcoin. 
9: The current system is shit, designed to make slaves of people, and its the responsibility of smart people everywhere to assert an evolution.

Ofcourse, BC has weaknesses as well. Everything does,  but that was not the question.

What a great post!

[freedomworx]

Wanting freedom from the central banks is not anti-capitalist. 

Exactly. There's freedom in free enterprise.