Topic: Reflections from a journalist of a Year of Toying With Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 310 times)

I'm one of those average users. Electrum is pretty much the most "complicated" I've been into bitcoins. And even then I managed to use it for simple stuff like paying bills without going through all the trouble she's been through.

Can't blame the guy. Most of the people invested on crypto are in for the profit, and if crypto was centralized to accommodate the different parts of the world just to let it fit in, then it'll go haywire right from its core. It's either yea, it'll become centralized, or the world would be able to create a system where crypto and the current system could coexist beneficially OR meet halfwat at the very least. This requires a bit of thinking out of the box though, and a venture that could potentially make a lot of companies go bankrupt. Well, everything did come from a start, and losing something is inevitable, but if no one is ever going to pioneer this kind of system, then nothing is going to happen.

Yeah, I thought Bitcoin was unique. But it's not that big. For example with futures somewhat resembled existing currencies. The number of bitcoins is limited. However, the number increased in this case. Technically the same but increased in practice. Bitcoin opened the door of an era. However it needs to be developed that cannot remain stationary.

Let's be clear here: She didn't toy with bitcoin - she toyed with the Lightning Network, which is still in beta and still very much experimental, and not just using it, but setting up her own Lightning Node. Her first point was all about the difficulty she had setting up a Lightning Node. Could this be easier? Yes. Will it become easier in time? Also yes. Is it necessary for the average bitcoin user? Absolutely not.

Her second point is essentially it is not widespread enough yet to use all the time, and there are too many people who just hold it and never use it. I'll concede the second point,* but the first point is nonsense. It essentially boils down to "It'll never get big enough because it's currently not big enough".

Her last point is that customers had to give her shipping details when they paid in bitcoin, and so that requires trust. That's hardly a flaw with bitcoin, and customers can use single use addresses and mixers to maximize their privacy, or have it delivered to a Postal Box or other drop location if they don't want to give out their address.

I totally agree that there is work to be done to make things as easy as possible, but she's taken the hardest possible route (setting up her own Lightning Node), and then complained that it isn't straightforward, when she could simply have installed Electrum (for example) and displayed a QR code to her customers.

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*This is something I've talked about before. Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, and if we want it to become one then we need to use it like one. Just holding it and waiting for the price to increase does nothing for adoption. If you want to long term hold, that's fine, but next time you are buying consider buying a some extra to use as an actual currency in the meantime.

I guess this is the price to pay for keeping Bitcoin decentralized. It's very easy to get Bitcoin  usable or convenient like fiat currencies but at what cost? Centralizing the whole thing? I'd rather not use cryptocurrency at all.
Many of us were attracted to Bitcoin due to its unique features. If it can't be kept "unique" then it's really not worth it.

https://www.coindesk.com/hanukkah-reflections-on-my-year-of-toying-with-bitcoin


It's worth reading the entire article because they go into a lot of detail of exactly what goes wrong.

IMO there is too much cheerleading in the bitcoin space, and not enough attention to sorting out the issues needed to make bitcoin succeed.