The 'all or nothing' fallacy

[FreeMoney]

Bitcoin is like an open source remittance network. Set up a BTC<-->Peso kiosk in Mexico City and now anyone with BTC can remit to Mexico, you are automatically in the network. When it gets bigger it will get bigger which will make it get bigger, limiter is... I don't know.

Most of remittance flow between the US and Mexico is in the direction of Mexico. Your kiosk in Mexico City would run out of Pesos fast. The local market price of btc would decline. Now they need to sell their btc elsewhere (in the US, for example). They need to either buy Pesos in the US and move them across the border, or move USD across the border and exchange them to Pesos.
We are back to old-fashioned fiat remittance business. Bitcoin only made it more complicated and more expensive: you need to have means of moving fiat internationally anyway, so why bother with bitcoins?
The only way btc remittance would ever work is if btc already is reasonably adopted in both countries (exchanges or ideally goods/services). The market can then absorb btc remittance without being moved significantly, and when it does you'll rely on arbitrage players to take care of things. Remittance can therefore never be a killer app for Bitcoin - it can only thrive where a diverse btc economy is already established. I can vouch it works between the US and Canada right now. I use it by simply exchanging between virtex and gox. No need for "remittance businesses".

Sure, so that guy makes a few transfers a week the old way and gets a much better conversion rate.

Once bitcoin is widely adopted you don't even need the kiosk. Earn coins, send coins, they spend coins.

[JMAHH]

[EDIT]: The only "nothing" scenario I see is if the Net is locked down to unprecedented levels. Like every computer comes shipped with spyware, every payment must be processed through the government and violations of law carry really harsh punishments - in short, a HiTech North Korea.

I just wanted to quote this so people can re-read it. It's incredibly important to be aware of the tendency of governments around the world (including America and nations in Europe) towards regulation - and ultimately censorship and tyranny. Be on your guard, everyone in this forum and Bitcoin. Regulation looms.

[The-Real-Link]

  I was thinking the remittance idea was pretty good and just latched onto the thought myself recently.  Why spend $50 on an international wire when you could just send coins over the network?  Have someone you're sending money to overseas have a Bitinstant card and they could withdraw their funds locally. 

  Even if that ate ~6% total (3 or so each way), it'd seem to only make you lose out if sending in amounts greater than $1,000.  It'd still be faster than a wire though.

[evoorhees]

A number of times I have seen people say: with Bitcoin it is going to be 'all or nothing'. In other words, Bitcoin is either going to displace and put out of business all fiat currencies or it is going to 0. However, when people say this they don't really give any support for the statement. I think this is wrong right off the bat. Bitcoin could easily have a market cap of billions of USD on 3 use cases alone: black market/grey market products (e.g. Silk Road), gaming tokens (e.g online Bitcoin casinos), and international transfers (e.g. all the Bitcoin exchanges across the world). Another use case would emerge after Bitcoin had a large market cap and stable price from those 3 markets: long term wealth storage. Wealthy individuals who want to stash away a significant amount of wealth that can't be confiscated by governments or otherwise stolen could put BTC into cold storage for as long as they wanted. They could travel the world and sell their coins to local Bitcoin dealers for the local fiat currency.

In any event, I would like to hear some arguments from people who believe Bitcoin is going to either be 'all or nothing'. Perhaps there is a good argument that I have not heard yet.

I wouldn't say Bitcoin is "all or nothing"... but I would say it's really worth either thousands of dollars per coin or it's worth zero. 

[Vladimir]

Consider it as a call option without expiration date (or one at some point in very far feature) on something like BRK/A or MSFT or INTC or well... LEH, decades ago.

[kjj]

I think that in one of his speeches, Gavin put it something like this:  Years from now, 1 bitcoin will be worth either a lot, or nothing at all.  It is very unlikely to be around the same price it is now.

I fully support that view.  It doesn't mean that bitcoin must be "all".  It doesn't mean that it has to be everywhere and do everything.  But it'll either take off and be pretty big, or it'll vanish into the mists of history.

[dissipate]

I think that in one of his speeches, Gavin put it something like this:  Years from now, 1 bitcoin will be worth either a lot, or nothing at all.  It is very unlikely to be around the same price it is now.

I fully support that view.  It doesn't mean that bitcoin must be "all".  It doesn't mean that it has to be everywhere and do everything.  But it'll either take off and be pretty big, or it'll vanish into the mists of history.

Care to explain how it will vanish into the mists of history when there are clearly niche markets that can never be served by regulated fiat currencies or payment systems?

[evoorhees]

Sadly, the killer app for Bitcoin seems to be none other than regional-level mail order illegal drug trade.

Central to the notion of a "killer app" is something which may be as-yet unseen and unknown, but which will revolutionize usage when it comes about. Thus, to say Bitcoin's "killer app" is drug trade, merely because that's a common usage now, is to misunderstand the concept of killer apps.

In all likelihood, none of us know what the killer app will be, and indeed there may be many since Bitcoin is such a versatile and enabling technology.

[dissipate]

Sadly, the killer app for Bitcoin seems to be none other than regional-level mail order illegal drug trade.

Central to the notion of a "killer app" is something which may be as-yet unseen and unknown, but which will revolutionize usage when it comes about. Thus, to say Bitcoin's "killer app" is drug trade, merely because that's a common usage now, is to misunderstand the concept of killer apps.

In all likelihood, none of us know what the killer app will be, and indeed there may be many since Bitcoin is such a versatile and enabling technology.

I agree 100% with this. Nobody could possibly have predicted what the 'killer apps' of the Internet would be back in the '70s. What Bitcoin is being used for now and who is using Bitcoin now could be radically different from how it is used and who is using it in the future. Bitcoin is a protocol that can have all kinds of layers built on top of it, many of which could completely hide Bitcoin entirely. In that case, Bitcoin would just be a back end system of wealth transfer.

[N12]

Well, Bitcoin has been around for a fairly long time now considering how revolutionary it is, but as far as I know, Silk Road is still the biggest purely non-financial Bitcoin business. I expected things like coinworker or ogrr to sprout, but it seems they went under.

I'm more skeptical now on "killer apps" enabled by Bitcoin than I used to be, as I've beeen watching out for them ever since the Silk Road was created in Feb 2011 and not much has really happened since then.

[kjj]

I think that in one of his speeches, Gavin put it something like this:  Years from now, 1 bitcoin will be worth either a lot, or nothing at all.  It is very unlikely to be around the same price it is now.

I fully support that view.  It doesn't mean that bitcoin must be "all".  It doesn't mean that it has to be everywhere and do everything.  But it'll either take off and be pretty big, or it'll vanish into the mists of history.

Care to explain how it will vanish into the mists of history when there are clearly niche markets that can never be served by regulated fiat currencies or payment systems?

Probably by something more suitable to those niches coming around and displacing bitcoin.  But other ways are possible too.

[dissipate]

Probably by something more suitable to those niches coming around and displacing bitcoin.  But other ways are possible too.

The only thing that could replace Bitcoin for those niches is another cryptocurrency. I think it is unlikely for another cryptocurrency to displace Bitcoin anytime soon because it would have to be far superior, and have a greater amount of developers and talent behind it. It would have to be so superior that Bitcoin couldn't have something else built on top of it to catch up, or simply have features added to the protocol or clients. That's quite a tall order. In any event, it could happen with a well funded corporate backed cryptocurrency where the corporation was willing to spend more money right now on a developer team. They open source the cryptocurrency itself (just like Bitcoin), but they use their expertise of the currency to bundle it into other 'killer apps' that they monetize. Even in this scenario though, it is not clear what advantage the corporation would have in developing the new cryptocurrency over just using Bitcoin.The lack of developer resources for Bitcoin itself is probably the biggest weakness it has right now. But who with deep pockets would be willing to pump a lot of cash into such a venture described above? None that I can see right now.

[kjj]

Probably by something more suitable to those niches coming around and displacing bitcoin.  But other ways are possible too.

The only thing that could replace Bitcoin for those niches is another cryptocurrency. I think it is unlikely for another cryptocurrency to displace Bitcoin anytime soon because it would have to be far superior, and have a greater amount of developers and talent behind it. It would have to be so superior that Bitcoin couldn't have something else built on top of it to catch up, or simply have features added to the protocol or clients. That's quite a tall order. In any event, it could happen with a well funded corporate backed cryptocurrency where the corporation was willing to spend more money right now on a developer team. They open source the cryptocurrency itself (just like Bitcoin), but they use their expertise of the currency to bundle it into other 'killer apps' that they monetize. Even in this scenario though, it is not clear what advantage the corporation would have in developing the new cryptocurrency over just using Bitcoin.The lack of developer resources for Bitcoin itself is probably the biggest weakness it has right now. But who with deep pockets would be willing to pump a lot of cash into such a venture described above? None that I can see right now.

Hey, I never said it was likely.

But some parts of bitcoin's design were made with the assumption that it would not be small for long.  If bitcoin ends up in a couple of niches, the mining reward won't be enough to pay for security and/or the fees will be too high to be useful.  In the long run, of course.

[dissipate]

Hey, I never said it was likely.

But some parts of bitcoin's design were made with the assumption that it would not be small for long.  If bitcoin ends up in a couple of niches, the mining reward won't be enough to pay for security and/or the fees will be too high to be useful.  In the long run, of course.

Yes, that is a potential problem. A weakness of Bitcoin is that there is no direct demand for security of the blockchain. In other words, those using Bitcoin don't really care if the next block is generated at a difficulty of 1 or a difficulty of 1 quadrillion. They just want their transactions to go through. If the price of Bitcoin stays too low, this could be a problem. The miners would continue to mine at a rate that is profitable, but that could mean a lot less security, and diminishing security for the blockchain. If Bitcoin simply had a fixed reward for miners forever this wouldn't be as much of a problem. I believe there were other spinoff cryptocurrencies that went this route. I don't think this would fly with the current group of Bitcoin enthusiasts though, because they love the fact that there will only ever be 21 million BTC in existence. We will see how this plays out...

[Killerpotleaf]

Hey, I never said it was likely.

But some parts of bitcoin's design were made with the assumption that it would not be small for long.  If bitcoin ends up in a couple of niches, the mining reward won't be enough to pay for security and/or the fees will be too high to be useful.  In the long run, of course.

Yes, that is a potential problem. A weakness of Bitcoin is that there is no direct demand for security of the blockchain. In other words, those using Bitcoin don't really care if the next block is generated at a difficulty of 1 or a difficulty of 1 quadrillion. They just want their transactions to go through. If the price of Bitcoin stays too low, this could be a problem. The miners would continue to mine at a rate that is profitable, but that could mean a lot less security, and diminishing security for the blockchain. If Bitcoin simply had a fixed reward for miners forever this wouldn't be as much of a problem. I believe there were other spinoff cryptocurrencies that went this route. I don't think this would fly with the current group of Bitcoin enthusiasts though, because they love the fact that there will only ever be 21 million BTC in existence. We will see how this plays out...

truth is you dont need THAT much power for reasonable security.

the fact is that a double spending is possible and might even become "easy" to pull off if the hash rate drops dramatically.

but who the hell cares?

as long as you wait for enough confirmation you can rest assured you now own the bitcoins,

the only time double spending would become an issues is if you pay from something like a big screen TV, and run out the door of the store b4 they realized it was double spent coins you paid with. ( good luck orchestrating such an attack, even with a very low hash rate....)
and if you can buy stuff at your local store with bitcoin, bitcoins value will surely be enoght to support a very high hashrate.

am i making any sense?

[Realpra]

Not false; if the BTC crypto algorithms fail then the value of BTC is zero.

If they do not BTC is perfect money and could go very high.

So okay 50/50 I guess: "High or nothing".

[ElectricMucus]

Unforgeability is not perfection.

Bitcoin is not perfect, only mathematical entities are 'perfect' and depending how you think about them not even that.
One of the major flaws of bitcoin is it's power consumption for example.

[tvbcof]

I estimate that if Bitcoin continues to work, and work well, it could be a 'fringe' 'guerrilla' currency which solve some corner case problems and act almost exclusively as an exchange currency and still commands very high valuations (if that is what is important to a given person.)  For this reason and others, I'm perfectly content to have it not strive to take over the world.  I fear that attempts to have Bitcoin do so, or having it falling into that role by accidents of fate would likely lead to a plethora of problems which are better avoided.

[Domrada]

Not false; if the BTC crypto algorithms fail then the value of BTC is zero.

If they do not BTC is perfect money and could go very high.

So okay 50/50 I guess: "High or nothing".

My view is similar to this one. 

The future of bitcoin is not necessarily all or nothing, but it is certainly either something much greater than it is now, or nothing.  It hasn't reached full penetration yet.

[tvbcof]

Sadly, the killer app for Bitcoin seems to be none other than regional-level mail order illegal drug trade.

Central to the notion of a "killer app" is something which may be as-yet unseen and unknown, but which will revolutionize usage when it comes about. Thus, to say Bitcoin's "killer app" is drug trade, merely because that's a common usage now, is to misunderstand the concept of killer apps.

In all likelihood, none of us know what the killer app will be, and indeed there may be many since Bitcoin is such a versatile and enabling technology.

Good points (not atypically.)

To me Bitcoin either has achieved or is well on it's way to achieving a goal which would be 'killer app' in my book.  That is, it is demonstrating the potential functionality and robustness of peer-to-peer crypto-currencies.  The reason I think that is important is because if some authoritative organization attempts to present a bio-metrics based centrally managed accounting system as the only way forward, it will be extremely valuable for John Q. Public to be able to say: "hey, wait a minute here..."  That could make Satoshi one of the central figures in world history.