Personally, I just get annoyed at the libertarian dreamers. It's not that I hate bitcoin or even that I want it to fail. On balance, I'm probably in favor of it succeeding. But it's really hard to keep wanting that after hearing all the ideological claptrap.. I find myself hoping it'll crash just to shut these people up.

A movement that started as a reaction to the failures of communism has become just as ideological and unrealistic. "The whole world would have peace and prosperity if only people acted the way we think they should." That's aside from the libertarians who are basically just garden-variety tribal Republicans but want to be hip.

I'd also note that, for the purpose of this discussion, "liberals/progressives/moderates/whatevers" basically includes everyone who's not a true libertarian believer.

Do you see it the same way you view goldbugs?

I can grok all sorts of reasons to speculate on gold, but I see that as speculation and not some rational investment that provides a greater value to society. It's ok, as long as it's a niche. The bitcoin rage seemed, IMO, to be about speculation wrapped in anarcho-libertarian talk about threatening the existing financial world. It's one thing to be a niche, it's another if it's destructive (whether it is capable of that or not, but just the perception).

Some other thinking that makes me wonder about that: http://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2013/12/bitcoin-what-again...

Fine to upend reality if you can produce a cogent explanation of how everything will work afterwards.

True believers will not be swayed by catastrophic failure, or any other evidence, that is what makes them true believers.

Well, I never said moderates. I guess I primarily meant 'pro-regulation', specifically when it comes to currency, who tend to inhabit the left side of the political spectrum. I've seen quite a few others who find the whole thing interesting, but also a lot of hate, so it looked like it was being used as a proxy to hate on libertarians. I'm just intrigued by the whole thing, and have a few friends who made pretty good money by mining up coins early (made money in spite of burned out graphics cards).

EDIT:

Should I have used the phrase pro-existing-regulations-or-more? That's basically what I meant. I'm personally a fan of some level of regulation when it comes to my legally recognized 'can pay the IRS this and they will probably not send you to jail' kind of tender.

That's the ideological thing I'm talking about. "Pro-regulation" is literally 100% of people on some level, aside from anarchists. It's a meaningless statement.

EDIT: But yeah, a 'proxy to hate on libertarians' is sort of correct, although from my viewpoint a better wording would be 'reaction to ideological statements and straw-manning by libertarians'. I think a successful online crypto-currency whether it's BTC or something else would be a good thing for the world, but there's only so much nonsense I can hear before hoping it'll crash just to take some people down a peg.

Here's the short version from Charlie Stross: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-wa...

Personally I'm a progressive who is somewhat supportive of the privacy potential of the cryptocurrencies but after the Silk Road bust it seems like the bitcoin community only cares about speculation and hoarding...

Charlie Stross also doesn't even understand why he hates BTC. He complains that it's deflationary, but then completely botches the reason why standard left wing theories claim deflation is bad.

http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2014/bitcoin_critics_not_e...

Jbooth was far more honest than Stross: "Personally, I just get annoyed at the libertarian dreamers...I find myself hoping it'll crash just to shut these people up."

So, it's because its the digital equivalent of a 'digital gold standard' that is hard to track and tax (by design). I guess that explains why it rustles many jimmies, even moreso when it keeps gaining value and marketshare.