Not really a revolution when most people just trade it (mostly via fiat money). The original idea was for Bitcoin to be a currency, unfortunately the "hodlers" won, now its only reason to exist is to be more expensive. Boosters are still milking the original premise as some revolution they're supporting, when of course, if you ask how much of their crypto assets they've actually used/spent, the typical answer is 0%.

Satoshi is dead, the dream is dead, people are just trading the corpse

L2s and decentralized stablecoins keep the dream of a free decentralized economy alive. It's a smaller community for sure (as most pretend enthusiasts aren't actually interested when there's no Ponzi in it for them, and most detractors would rather focus on easier strawmen), but it exists and it's thriving.

Stable coins do not solve the money printing problem at all. Their existence is mostly for avoiding tax events when speculators sell tops and buy dips. Also they are as centralized as it gets.

The term "decentralized stablecoins" itself precludes the USD-pegged voucher tokens you're referring to.

I'm talking about things like Reflexer's RAI[1], which is designed to have stable value independently of any singular currency, and whose most centralized component is price oracles (so not very centralized).

[1]: https://reflexer.finance/

Are you sure that if the dev team will ababdon the project tomorrow it will b existent and people will trust it 5 years for now? If not, it's centralized. Also, how can it be a stable coin if there is nothing explicitly stated as peg?

I can use Bitcoin to safely, reliably and conveniently send money to people/organisations the US government doesn't like - eg, Wikileaks.

It is hard to understate how radical that is. Such an act of quiet resistance against the powers that be was somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible in 2005.

You can pretty much make the same case for the Internet. "Before I couldn't do X, bcs repression, mass media elite etc. but then the internet etc." The "quiet resistance" narrative is overshadowed by its primary function to make people money.

And so what if it does make some people money? Its other use cases all work just the same and as the points above mention, it can be used for a number of good things.. Does criminals using house purchases to invest laundered money make buying a house evil? It does not, but the hate just keeps getting dumped on bitcoin by people who should know better.

People don't hate Bitcoin, they just hate the MLM style marketing pitches from randos.

Sounds great btw, amazing product, can't wait to sell it to my friends and neighbors.

Then there are cases like this, one example among many in which there is a genuine case to be made for bitcoin and crypto. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28453256. This is not to mention all the others that are possible and have been the case. For example, how do you think Sci-hub continues to function financially?. Regardless of how certain whales and other speculators use bitcoin et al to pump and dump, or how criminals use them to get and launder money, these negative things are secondary to two basic points that deserve much more respect than they often get:

1. At least so far, Bitcoin and the rest do indeed let you and anyone send or receive money regardless of what political institution, corrupt government or censorious, politically pressured private company prohibits or selectively permits (think Visa/mastercard/paypal and their bullshit arbitrary restrictions on all kinds of things they or some politician decided to call "immoral")

2. Anybody can access the BTC blockchain and most other blockchains with minimal cost, extremely minor technical knowledge that they could easily pick up, and use them for money transfers. Playing along with the pump and dump bullshit or falling victim the bubbles is strictly optional.

In these things, it is indeed revolutionary in a quiet but important way, and I have a hard time understanding the sheer amount of snarky, hateful commentary from so many people on this site. Where the goddam fuck did the scrappy, freedom-loving respect for technologies that help individuals avoid arbitrary rules go?

It's snarky bcs people are sick of hearing sales pitches for moon money.

What has happened in those 12 years has been a great deal of scams, get rich quick scheme a and instability. Bitcoin has also become dominated by a few major players and is a power structure in itself, not really benefitting ordinary people much at.

Bitcoin is NOT dominated by a few major players. A few years ago when some large commercial players wanted to increase the block size, they weren't able to do so because a majority of nodes on the network rejected their code.

The Bitcoin network has stayed remarkably stable and it's still possible to run a node on a raspberry pi, which is done exactly because the Bitcoin community value the ability of normal people to participate and be able to verify their transactions and that of the whole chain.

Concerning scams. Let's look at another relatively open technology. Email.

The vast majority of emails are actually spam, and a lot of those are scams (phishing, Nigerian princes etc.). In the beginning a lot of people fell for email scams, many still do, but by and large people are aware they exist and are able to use email productively without constantly falling victim to scams.

Exactly the opposite has happened: most players, including the lead developers, wanted block size to increase, because of the insane fees. But a small minority, who happened to hold the passwords to some major sites like bitcointalk, bitcoin.org and /r/bitcoin succeeded to wrangle control over and through bans and censorship took over the bitcoin project. They promised to deliver a solution to the problems of fees in the form of Lightning network, but it failed - still doesn't work reliably after all these years. Now that governing body gave up on Bitcoin development and advance their own projects based primarily on Tether. As a result, Bitcoin development has stagnated compared to competition, which is reflected in its market share diminishing.

Most people who have Bitcoin don't spend it, only trade it. If you're only trading it, then your only interaction with Bitcoin is via exchanges. A handful of exchanges control most of the trades.

Well said.

the ecosystem from 12 years ago is radically different from what it is now. Heck, it's radically different from what it was just 2 or 3 years ago.

And well, it benefits (smart) ordinary people. That is, those who have invested or are investing. Smart money is here - and small investors are here too. And I'm saying purposefully "investing" as opposed to "trading". The former doesn't require any technical skills.

As for "ordinary people" not versed into technologies doing what their government is telling them to do (bans, warnings, hackers, criminals, murderers, ...), well... I'm feeling sorry for them, but crypto cannot just replace local country currencies without government consent. Now think again: who is to blame?

Yeah 12 years ago people actually thought they'd be using Bitcoin as it was intended: as a currency. Now most people know better than to do anything but trade it.

It's designed to be harder than gold. When there is a shortage of gold people starting mining it. With Bitcoin there is always a shortage of money. I don't know why people think expensive money is good money. It really isn't.

oh come on. - defi? - Twitter introducing tips in crypto? ..

personally speaking I'm paying every day with a crypto card (which gives me a few % cashback ..). But that's ok, you seem to purposefully want to miss the train, can't help people against themselves I guess :shrug:

For the past year your train cost you <$1<$4 for every dollar you spent.

You do know you're missing the train by spending your crypto?

Spending does not prevent stacking… The more you spend sats, the less you need Fiat…

Also velocity will get rid of volatility !

And value. One of the reasons Bitcoin is so expensive is bcs most of it isn't being traded. If people actually start using it and loosen the supply, value goes down.

who says I'm spending my crypto? I'm spending my Euros moved over to my Crypto account...

lol

> Bitcoin is open source, the original founder is nowhere to be found, there were no VCs involved in its creation or in the distribution of the coins and the entire network is run out in the open. The Bitcoin network is a commons.

Hmmm. You've conveniently danced around any suggestion or mention of the fact that the "creator" of bitcoin mined 1.1 million - 1/20th of all bitcoins that will ever exist(!) - coins in private before launching bitcoin publicly and holds them to this day.

This isn't true. The genesis block references a Times headline published on Jan 3rd 2009, so that block was created no earlier than that. The source code was published and publicly available on Jan 9th 2009, which is 6 days later. Blocks were mined much slower than the target of every 10 minutes in the beginning. Block number 17 was mined on Jan 10th 2009. At 50 bitcoins per block we are talking at most 850 bitcoin or so mined "in private" before launching bitcoin.

Even if that analysis were accurate, that isn't mining "in private" before "publicly launching" as you claimed.

That's fair, my memory was incorrect. However, I don't think that makes a difference w.r.t. calling the coin premined.

I do not think the term should be used in this case because anyone could've mined at that point; others that actually did pre mine did so when only a few insiders could as well, like a pre IPO.

As far as we know Satoshi himself was rather selfless. The Patoshi[1] miner suggests he actually calibrated his own mining to foster the network's health and decentralization in its early days, in detriment of his own output.

I'm absolutely on board to criticize the amazing amount of grifters in crypto. But letting this corrupt the image of the few people like Satoshi (and Vitalik Buterin and many others basically absent from the media), who willingly strayed from the opportunity to be among the richest individuals in the world, in order to instead focus on building something they think can better humanity, is not right. You don't need to look far to find the real grifters, they're showing ads in US media and paying millions to celebrities for product endorsements right now.

[1]: https://bitslog.com/2020/06/22/a-new-mystery-in-patoshi-time...

Those coins have never moved in all these years. You would think that Satoshi would want to spend and enjoy some of his riches right? To me this points towards Satoshi likely being dead (e.g. him being Hal Finney).

Also, AFAIK those were mined because Satoshi was the first miner, not because he purposefully kept it private in order to get the most for himself before anyone else could participate.

Satoshi isn't Hal, and please stop suggesting it is. You put Hal's family in danger with this nonsense.

Some of those coins moved in the last year or so [1]. Just because they haven't moved for a long time doesn't mean they won't tomorrow.

1. https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/satoshi-is-that...

Those are coins from 2010, not 2009 when Satoshi started mining and they're not from the same addresses.

And he never spent them. It's the most selfless act I've witnessed in my life.

Might not be especially hard to use them as collateral for a loan, though. Live like a king and then eventually sell them, repaying the loan from the (now rather generous) proceeds.

This absolutely is not the case, as any collateralize loans require you to transfer custody to a 3rd party making the loan.

Otherwise, you could just steal the coins straight after handing over the private keys. And even if that wasn't the case, the loaner will want exclusive control and move them to another key they control anyway.

If it was a loan, you would have blockchain records of movement of Satoshi coins. This can be proven not to be the case, and so we can be quite confident there was no loans to Satoshi.

Not sure I understand. Why couldn't you just escrow the private key with a mutually trusted third party, and back the whole thing with a contract. You know - with a traditional bank, that has a contract with you, knows your identity, and can report you to the authorities - and sue you - if you default or sell the collateral you've provided for the loan?

Because he's dead.

May be I am too old but completely fail to see any value in the notion of NFT. I do see value in Bitcoin. Bitcoin has basically thrown a wrench into all government controls on cross border payments. I don't know if Bitcoins will be very successful or not, but I am pretty sure the concept will last very very long.

NFTs on other hand appears to be equivalent of selling Golden gate bridge to tourists.

Do you see value in rare baseball cards selling for millions of dollars? That's the same, but the card's authenticity can be verified cryptographically rather than through complex means like radionuclide analysis and such.

Yes. A rare baseball card (physical one) might be worth some non zero money to many people. But only as long as it is physical card. Any digital asset that represents it would be valuable to if it is NFT. This is nearly same as holding some bits of data in your bank account. Those numbers are valuable because they map to real world currency which the bank is holding for me.

Physical goods would still need the same authentication if they were tied to an NFT, and may be rare as a consequence of their nature.

What's the value of pretending an easily duplicated digital thing is rare?

I realize that an NFT minted on a given chain is unique, but so what, that doesn't make it unique and interesting they way a baseball card might be.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to cryptographically sign a physical object (like what, enumerating all of it's atoms and their positions?). NFT is only valuable if the creator promises she will never sign any more identical objects in the future. And she is incentivized to do so by way of receiving royalties on all future resales.

I don't see any such conflation, nor do I see any rejection of cryptocurrency's future potential. This article is primarily about what is happening with cryptocurrency right now:

> Whatever cryptocurrency might someday be For All Mankind, it is most urgently and avidly in this moment something that people tell weird lies about in hopes of getting richer.

You seem intent on spreading such get rich quick and utopian dreams on cryptocurrency. How much do you have invested in the ecosystem?

Edit: In my opinion, people who genuinely care about the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin need to avoid feeding the hype train that helps normalize the sketchy lieing behavior in the ecosystem and simply work on building that future instead.

> You seem intent on spreading such get rich quick and utopian dreams on cryptocurrency.

Please point me to where I spread get rich quick dreams in my comments.

yea bitcoin is open sourced, but with a substantial stake already mined by the founder (anonymous and which could also be an individual, VC, country etc who knows) so while the most popular is not exactly the best defense of the blockchain tech.

You need to buy crypto“currencies” to get into NFTs as far as I know; there's no conflating.