Bitcoin study: Period of exclusivity encourages early adopters

Re:Bitcoin study: Period of exclusivity encourages early ado... by davidgerard on Friday July 14, 2017 @05:54AM (#14768675)

> I have a hard time reconciling the social justice goals of some cryptocurrencies with this initial period where people are basically creating wealth out of thin air by doing useless computations at the cost of enormous electricity.

> How are we any better for it? A select group gets rich, there is rampant speculation and fraud... but we're fighting "the man" so it's all good?

Any "social justice" goals are misconceived or a lie. Bitcoin was literally created to implement a gold standard based on goldbug conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve.

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/the-conspiracist-gold-b...

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Re:Bitcoin study: Period of exclusivity encourages early ado... by zer0tonin on Friday July 14, 2017 @07:46AM (#14769052)

This article is just basing itself on a single paragraph out of the quite long Nakamoto publication.

Also stating that traditional currencies require a lot of trust in banks, especially central banks is a fact.

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Re:Bitcoin study: Period of exclusivity encourages early ado... by davidgerard on Friday July 14, 2017 @10:22AM (#14769997)

It's based on considerably more. Literally everything about the design of Bitcoin only makes sense in the context of the anarchocapitalism of the Cypherpunks list and its successors. They largely accepted goldbug crank economics as completely normal.

This is why Bitcoin economics is so weird and doesn't work in the real world. The process is:

1. If you buy into this weird ideology, you'll get rich for free!

2. Don't worry if you don't understand it or it doesn't make sense - just keep doing the things and you'll get rich for free!

This is why the worst Bitcoin advocates come across as fanatical cultists, and why they got the social reputation they have.

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