Is there any chance of you giving it a rest? We get it. You think Bitcoin and Bitcoiners are stupid. You passed Intro to Econ in college. You've drawn completely arbitrary lines in the sand and given nothing to justify them but emotional appeal. You, like many others, seem to waltz into every thread thinking that you've just independently come up with the fatal flaw of Bitcoin as it chugs along it's third year of existence.

You display a nearly D-K effect when you act as if these are foregone conclusions with your "Just....... jesus, man." Especially after the catastrophe that was the last paragraph about price&divisibility. It's completely nonsense from an economic perspective. And there are clear benefits in using a highly divisible currency (and especially since it can be represented as a whole number... rather than a float. Ironic, whoops).

Also if you want to be more interactive than your peers, will you answer a scenario for me? Now, I am actually asking for your opinion on this, not being a smart-ass. Ready? Let's go.

If we had a bunch of "units" of something we have 1 each and there are 10 total. We use them to buy melons and each 1 is roughly valued as 1 melon. Then people see the success our new system is having and want to use our units to buy melons as well. So, one of the 10 friends decides its a smart idea to sell his unit for 2 melons to someone who really wants to be a part of our cool club. The next day someone else sells their unit for 4 melons because even more people want in.

Is every unit now worth 4 melons now just because someone sold one for 4 melons to an outside trader? If I go to the store where I used to buy a melon for 1 unit and tell them now that I think I deserve 4 melons for a unit, what will they say?

Explain to me how you think storeowners should react or how Bitcoin is unlike this. Sincerely, I will listen as best I can.

> Is every unit now worth 4 melons now just because someone sold one for 4 melons to an outside trader?

Well, yes. That's why currencies increase in value, because they're in demand. That's why the value of the pound or dollar or whatever goes up and down.

> If I go to the store where I used to buy a melon for 1 unit and tell them now that I think I deserve 4 melons for a unit, what will they say?

Who knows? They might refuse to sell at that price. They might see that if they don't sell to you, you're likely to import melons more cheaply than you can buy them locally.

The storeowner should react by buying melons in bulk using his units and then selling them to you more cheaply than you can import them yourself. Bitcoin is not unlike this. It's the same. Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them.

My intuition says that the storeowner has no reason to accept. I think what a lot of the merchants are doing is using 3rd party processors, basically just saying "Fine yeah I'll take it" as long as a Bitcoin buyer is already lined up (which is essentially what a 3rd party exchange functions as). That way they get cash less transaction fee.

But really even if they accept Bitcoin for 4 melons that doesn't mean they have embraced Bitcoin. It is just a credit to the power of Bitcoin's infrastructure that the trading network is there to accept the coins, no?

That's my biggest worry. Bitcoin culture seems to believe that at a certain point all individuals will give up resistance and embrace/adopt Bitcoin, whereas there are many many barriers standing before that and I believe it is only the trading network that is strong. However, I do not believe Bitcoin is a stock, so I'm not sure what it is.

What do you think, sir/madam phaemon?

> My intuition says that the storeowner has no reason to accept.

Well, of course they don't. Things have just got worse for them. But that's exactly what happened to many local retailers when their customers realised they could get stuff cheaper by ordering over the Internet than they could buying locally. It's just how things go.

> However, I do not believe Bitcoin is a stock, so I'm not sure what it is.

It's an infrastructure. It happens to have a currency built in on top of it, but at heart it's an infrastructure. Its worth depends entirely on what people do with it, like the Internet itself.

So, it's a little meta to consider what a currency that's an infrastructure is worth in it's own terms, but no-one has to decide that....just let people pay what they want for their share.

eh you lost me, man. he still has the option to only take USD or use a 3rd party payment processor. At the moment, it seems that this approach is not costing any businesses in sales, since Bitcoin is still used infrequently as currency. The only point it actually becomes a currency itself is when the shop owner stops using a 3rd party processor and says "you know what? I'm comfortable just holding onto these". With the market volatility of Bitcoin this is unlikely to happen for a while, unless they are among the believers who think the value can increase indefinitely and accurately represented by trading prices.

I definitely understand the value as an infrastructure, but this is the web. Better solutions will emerge and could just co-opt the Bitcoin infrastructure. Like the way ISPs came in and bought access to the data lines of phone companies, same idea.

> eh you lost me, man. he still has the option to only take USD or use a 3rd party payment processor.

Uh, no he doesn't. He only takes Units. We're talking about your hypothetical melon salesman, remember?

> Better solutions will emerge and could just co-opt the Bitcoin infrastructure.

Probably. I would certainly hope so! That doesn't stop Bitcoin being valuable right now and new solutions being more valuable in the future. There's no reason not to have several competing digital currencies on the go.

Eh I get where you're coming from, but I'm tired of this shit too. this one really got to me. It's not that I think Bitcoiners are stupid, it's a combination of a few things --

All these threads are "Yay Bitcoin reached a new price plateau, proof that it's perfect!". So finally they pick an article that says it's a mess, but the thing is it's pretty much the dumbest article ever.

So then the Bitcoiners use it as a straw man, coming on saying "See this article's author is dumb he doesn't have our enlightened view of economics.... If you divide all the world's money by the number of Bitcoins I'm so rich!!!"

I'm sorry but even 3 years existence proves nothing, as there are many screwed up things in history with longer lifespans than that.

So yeah I'm frustrated as hell because this is pretty much the spam of the tech world now but it's front page news on HN every 20 minutes with some new story like "Researchers believe Bitcoin founder once visited zoo in Denmark". One could argue that it is a cargo cult, one could argue that it is a success, a failure. Many things could be argued.

The one thing that I think is for sure is that this whole phenomenon is tabloid-esque garbage that is mostly servicing greedy arrogant Bitcoin holders and their machine, since publicity seems to be one of the only true price correlates (nothin odd about that, huh?). I'm probly gonna get off this bent just because it's not worth the time but without the detractors Bitcoin is just like a digital Jonestown - every post is met with more mindless optimism and every criticism with a response that is a complete non-sequitur followed by boo-hooing about hurt feelings and poor etiquette. I'm not on an online forum to get popular agreeing with everyone I'm here to test the waters and see what kind of knowledge is floating around.

Those I've had arguments with fail to articulate even simple points. For example -- I agree that using a highly divisible currency is good. That was, in fact, my point. My issue is that a frequent explanation for the rapid price increase is "Well it's natural that the coins are going to gain a lot of value. Heck, maybe Bitcoin will surge in the real estate market and 1 coin will be worth a whole house!". With a highly divisible currency, why would the unit price have to increase to represent some arbitrary figure in the market (a house in this case). Because it seems logical to people? Because there are only a limited number of Bitcoins in circulation so of course there is scarcity and rather than using a different currency that can release more we simply have to bid the price up because "well, SN is god after all"?

If anything the fact that I want to argue should show that I do respect the potential of the community in that I actually want to take my time to interact with them. It shows that I give them the benefit of the doubt that even though I disagree I still think "well let's not write it off as a cult just yet". But when I get responses that are as cock-eyed and zombie-ish as the one above ("why analyze supply and demand curve when soon the entire planet will soon be bitcoin?!! i will own your country merely for investing now.") i will probably continue to lose my shit. So yes, I will need to stop looking.