And what about losing 100% of my funds when my key is lost or stolen? All keys are lost/stolen - it doesn't take a rocket degree to have observed that from human behavior.
Who enforces splitting of equity when some rich dick beats his wife into submission? The courts don't control any bitcoin keys.
The problems of bitcoin are proportionately larger than then problems with fiat. The only people saying otherwise are those that are profiting from the opposite perspective.
If we are not a bitcoin miner, then how will we get the funds to begin with? Right now I can trade fiat for it, but in the future my children would not be able to trade fiat for it (assuming it's as good as you say it is). So, they will become indentured servants to the bitcoin miners.
> refunds when corporations rip us off?
Easily implemented in various ways. One old scheme is a simple 2-of-3 multisig, where the keys are buyer, seller, and arbitrator. If buyer and seller agree, the arb doesn't have to be involved, otherwise the arb decides where the funds go.
> what about losing 100% of my funds when my key is lost or stolen?
Hence Vitalik's advocacy of social recovery wallets: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html
> Who enforces splitting of equity when some rich dick beats his wife into submission? The courts don't control any bitcoin keys.
No, but courts have effective ways to make you pay up even when they don't directly control your funds, including putting you in jail for contempt.
> my children would not be able to trade fiat for it
If Bitcoin or whatever isn't available to anyone besides miners, then I don't see why it would have any value at all. Cryptocurrency that succeeds is out in the economy, not locked up in a small group of professionals. There are plenty of cryptocurrencies owned only by a small group of enthusiasts, and they are nearly worthless.
I’m also in the grandparent’s boat and I just want to get another view on this.
Who is the arbiter? Who pays for the arbiter? Do I have to negotiate for an arbiter for every purchase I make? There's a candy store down the street that takes Bitcoin. Am I really supposed to figure out an arbitration scheme just to buy a tub of popcorn?
How do you do it with traditional financial instruments? You probably sign a long-term contract with some agency just as you would if you were signing up for a credit card. Or you could simply not worry about arranging any kind of arbitration for such a low-value purchase, or simply just use fiat currency for those things (there's no reason it can't continue to coexist with cryptocurrencies).
>> If we are not a bitcoin miner, then how will we get the funds to begin with? Right now I can trade fiat for it, but in the future my children would not be able to trade fiat for it (assuming it's as good as you say it is). So, they will become indentured servants to the bitcoin miners.
I don't quite understand the point you are trying to make here? Cash just don't magically appear today either. Why wouldn't they be able to trade fiat for crypto in the future?
With fiat controlled by banks, most liquid assets are frozen during these sorts of disputes for the above reason. A threat of jail in the future also doesn't really help the other person during that timeframe.
Cash does magically appear, actually. It's printed by mints and released via monetary control.
Consider how it'd be easier to catch criminals without the fourth and fifth amendment, but it is thought to be more important that we provide protections against government overreach.
Cash doesn't, but money does. The principal function of central banks is controlling the rate of money creation to ensure that the money supply supports economic activity.
Asymmetric cryptography is a completely separate, much older technology that has nothing directly to do with cryptocurrencies.
Furthermore, Bitcoin does nothing to solve the kind of fraud problems you are talking about, and in fact makes the consequences of them much worse, since you no longer have a central authorities that can reverse fraudulant transactions and the like. The "double spend" problem refers to a problem in distributed systems, not applied security.
It does, Bitcoin wouldn't work without it, the whole thing relies on cryptographic signatures.
> The "double spend" problem refers to a problem in distributed systems, not applied security.
Is it not both? It's a security issue present in distributed systems.
Only by you. Read more carefully.
It's just another comment by someone who tries to fabricate a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Efficiency improvements on the base chain, 2nd layer technologies like Lightning Network and ultimately increasing the base block size limit.
> What happens when the mining phase completes, or if there is a drop in value?
Mining doesn't "complete". There have been many massive drops in value in Bitcoin's history, not sure what you're asking about, it just keeps working?
> What is a sustainable transaction fee for miners to take absent mining incentives?
Anything above 0 is sustainable, you can mine for free if you're using the energy to heat your house.
The question is how much energy the network needs to spend to remain secure, that I don't know, depends on how much any potential attackers are willing to spend to attack it.
> What happens over long periods of time from hardware failures where wallets are lost?
Bitcoin deflates? If some coins are lost but demand remains the same the value of the remaining coins goes up.
Could you please expand on that? Why?
I work in information security, and have seen first hand how our existing financial infrastructure is held together with string and scotch tape. For 10 years or so, every time I heard about some big credit card theft, or wire fraud, or SWIFT hack, I would go see if anyone had figured out how to do cryptocurrencies yet. Then 2009 rolled around and I got an email forwarded to me from someone named Satoshi who had apparently figured out a really solid mitigation for the double spend problem, and had actually released some working PoC code in the form of Bitcoin.
Yes, there are a ton of problems with Bitcoin. I've been extremely critical even since that first email, but those problems are nothing compared to the existing systemic problems plaguing traditional finance.
Getting rich was never a draw for me. I'm not quite retired (though this year has been pretty good) but I have spent 10s of thousands of Bitcoins over the years building up various aspects of the economy in order to maximize the utility of the network. I could easily be living on my own private island if I had held onto the coins I CPU mined in the early days, but I have no regrets at all about how I spent those coins. I'm more passionate about this than most, I know, but I 100% believe that legacy finance is a massive hindrance to the sustainability of our species, and crypto-economics will be a key aspect in building healthy incentives for a technologically driven society.