Does Bitcoin have AIDS?

[smalltimer]

High hash needs to be paid for.
Bitcoin has good hash but keeps going down because that hash needs to be paid.
When you buy gold you do not pay a constant tax to the miners after initial purchase.
Bitcoin is different. Here you pay after purchase a tax to miners of 10% of its value this year.

Can it be cured with speeding up blocktimes or does it need to fork to faster rewarddecrease?
Obviously satoshi was afraid of attackers. He did not think of a whole army of altcoins which could jump in and back it up.
He did not think of the possibility to share hash with other coins.
What sense does a mega-high hashrate make when it is this expensive and makes the coin useless to store value?
Are the fears which would make such high and expensive hashrate necessary still justified in 2015?

Here is my question:
Does Bitcoin have aids? Can it be cured? How?

[Flashman]

When you buy gold you do not pay a constant tax to the miners after initial purchase.

Yes you do, every ounce they mine devalues your holding. ... under your apparent definition of tax.

[smalltimer]

When you buy gold you do not pay a constant tax to the miners after initial purchase.

Yes you do, every ounce they mine devalues your holding. ... under your apparent definition of tax.

could be true but that inflation of gold is way lower - low enough to not be felt. Bitcoin is a different story.

[leannemckim46]

This is a terrible analogy.

[homo homini lupus]

short answer:
yes, it has aids
no, it can't be cured

It will be extremely expensive to use it even later because what you say is exactly right: the hash needs to be paid.
Bitcoin has much too high hashrate if you look at it from this angle.

Such huge pow-miningpower is unsustainable.
I imagine if bitcoin would be world currency to be quite a grey world with a few super-rich and the rest having nothing at all, aswell as huge electricity consumption from keeping this nonsense running.

[Bitcoinpro]

its going to save humanity

[homo homini lupus]

its going to save humanity

Not with this mining.

Why should it save humanity?
If bitcoin would save humanity gold would already have done it.

What saves humanity is the right kind of education, not digital tulips.

Is crypto going to make things better? Maybe.
Is Bitcoin going to 'save humanity'? Certainly not! (lay off the drugs, dude)

[DannyHamilton]

When you buy gold you do not pay a constant tax to the miners after initial purchase.

Yes you do, every ounce they mine devalues your holding. ... under your apparent definition of tax.

could be true but that inflation of gold is way lower - low enough to not be felt. Bitcoin is a different story.

Only because gold has been mined for centuries.  When the second ounce of gold was pulled from the ground, the annualized inflation rate was astronomical!

A currency can't already exist without first coming into existence. The annualized inflation rate (what you seem to want to call a "tax) of bitcoin is quickly dropping.  By late 2016 it will be less than 4.25%  Four years after that it will be 1.79%.  Within a decade it will drop to less than 0.9%

[slaveforanunnak1]

AIDS is not real, and HIV's evidence is flimsy at best.
Hear it from the horses mouth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQFxratWh7E

so, to answer your question, no! bitcoin does not have AIDS or GRID as it was called earlier.

[smalltimer]

When you buy gold you do not pay a constant tax to the miners after initial purchase.

Yes you do, every ounce they mine devalues your holding. ... under your apparent definition of tax.

could be true but that inflation of gold is way lower - low enough to not be felt. Bitcoin is a different story.

Only because gold has been mined for centuries.  When the second ounce of gold was pulled from the ground, the annualized inflation rate was astronomical!

A currency can't already exist without first coming into existence. The annualized inflation rate (what you seem to want to call a "tax) of bitcoin is quickly dropping.  By late 2016 it will be less than 4.25%  Four years after that it will be 1.79%.  Within a decade it will drop to less than 0.9%

costs for mining still have to be paid. It can't hold the value now so it won't be worth much, much more later.
So once the inflation fades out you have the choice of either make fees higher or let hashrate drop out. But because it wasn't able to hold value for decades it will not be worth a lot after these decades of inflation so i basically expect it to fiddle out or become very expensive to use.

Bottom line:
Mining hashpower needs to be paid

Right now there's much more hash than it would need and that's paid now and will be paid later too. These effects of this current bearmarket will be felt long time.
I wouldn't be so 100% sure the next bubble will arrive soon. Why should it? Buy Litecoin for 1$ next week... and the week after that for 50 cents.


There's too much hash on it that wants to be paid. Bitcoin heavily favour miners with the excuse of the security. But that security problem arises later again - meanwhile you have a bad image and a bad reputation for being unable to maintain a value.

This problems indentified here will not just vanish into thin air with a halving.  

hashrate = expenses

what i say is: either hash comes down or expenses go up
It's very unfortunate Bitcoin can't hold its value now and is not attractive to invest into, for that reason.

[ChuckBuck]

Bitcoin does not have AIDS silly rabit!  

It has Ebola!!!



It's slowly dying a slow slow death, never to be cured ever again...

There definitely needs to be some developmental changes to help expedite all the weaknesses Bitcoin possesses at the moment.  It's not perfect, that's for sure, but we're only in year 6 of this "Beta".

[jonald_fyookball]

@smalltimer

you have points but you're not considering demand,
which is half the supply+demand  equation... which
affects price now...

...and you're not considering the increasing transaction
volume which will decrease the fee size later.

cheers. 

[smalltimer]

@smalltimer

you have points but you're not considering demand,
which is half the supply+demand  equation... which
affects price now...

...and you're not considering the increasing transaction
volume which will decrease the fee size later.

cheers.  

transaction volumes are too low - half of it is fake and me sending coins to exchanges and back or playing satoshi dice.

Demand is the problem: demand will not grow because it can't hold its value
that's the gist of my point actually


-> If it would hold value better and favour miners less the demand would be higher and the hash maybe a little lower, so the price would be rising (and ultimately with it the hash too)

Raw hash is expense and doesn't provide any value in itself. What provides value is a fine balance between investors and miners which bitcoin has been unable to strike.

Price will come down and hash too until an equilibrium between miners and investors is reached (supply/demand equilibrium). So the inflation it has now does not provide any additional security, it just makes sure the coin doesn't take off.

The theory of the inflation being necessary to secure the network is total bogus.
What secures the network is a sustainable high price and high demand whilest inflation should be minimal. After all you want to get money into the system not out of the system.

[jonald_fyookball]

Demand is the problem: demand will not grow because it can't hold its value

nonsense.

what, its gonna slide to 0?

At some point, when the market decides its cheap, there will be more demand
than supply and the price will increase.

[smalltimer]

Demand is the problem: demand will not grow because it can't hold its value

nonsense.

what, its gonna slide to 0?

At some point, when the market decides its cheap, there will be more demand
than supply and the price will increase.

no, not to zero but to a sustainable marketcap which is likely much, much lower than this.

[jonald_fyookball]

Demand is the problem: demand will not grow because it can't hold its value

nonsense.

what, its gonna slide to 0?

At some point, when the market decides its cheap, there will be more demand
than supply and the price will increase.

no, not to zero but to a sustainable marketcap which is likely much, much lower than this.

Certainly possible, of course...  And you are entitled your opinion for sure.

But, I don't think you haven't given any convincing reason that the price
will decline other than we are currently in a downtrend.

Trends do have a feedback-loop type effect and perpetuate themselves,
often times much longer than traders expect.  But, at some point the
ship runs out of steam, and the bulls take control away from the bears
(or vice versa after an uptrend).

MY opinion is that long term,  the market cap will be much larger due to the
rapidly decreasing inflation and the spread of this new technology.

[smalltimer]

But, I don't think you haven't given any convincing reason that the price
will decline other than we are currently in a downtrend.

i can give you that:
-demand slows down thanks to the inflation, that's one point
on the other hand it takes around 1 Million USD every day to pay for the hash

(3600coins multiplied by current price)

Now you have lower demand and high expenses so cap comes down. Would inflation be lower demand would be higher. It's pretty ironic actually.

More supply = less demand

It's not scarce enough to be worth something, constant emission is too high and that's what dampens demand.

'feedback-loops' you name it!
It spells: volatility


... but at least the miners earn and the hashrate is high   (until it's not)

[fat buddah]

[deine mudder]

ebola: we haz it

[wickedgoodtrader]

The difference between gold and BTC is that when gold becomes unprofitable to mine, miners stop and supply stops. When BTC becomes unprofitable to mine.. some miners stop but supply keeps on coming.

the outlook for BTC is grim over the next 6-10 years as reward is so high. Once reward is negligible is when BTC has a chance to go up again.