Topic: Rise of the Bitcoin detractors... (Read 2368 times)

The other point is that it's easy to be optimistic and constructive when the bitcoin price is trending to new highs and also easy to be pessimistic and detracting when the bitcoin price is lower and moving sideways.

Add this to the financial and psychological impact of MtGox and couple it with a continuing long string of failed bitcoin exchanges, wallets and investments which rob individual investors of their coins against the backdrop of difficult regulation challenges for bitcoin to surmount and it's a fair bet that most of the detractors are just jaded and succumbing to a form of negative community groupthink.

They'll brighten up when the bitcoin price rises and the noobs and diehards start hollering, "Too the Moon!!!!!!"

 

How's the weather over there in the 22nd century?  And what's the price of Bitcoin?

There has been a huge surge in the amount of negativity on reddit's /r/bitcoin in the last couple of days (2014 time).  All the trolls are upvoting each other and downvoting everyone else.

I think jealous people and also paid shills will contribute a lot of negativity
let's not forget how many government paid shills comment on mainstream news sites to waiver opinion
always suspected, but proven with the nsa revelations by snowden

no doubt big bank and investment firm shills too


Agree with a lot

Who are? The bitcoin detractors on here? Not sure if you're being serious though.

Excellent Idea. I did have my daughter setup a wallet and send a request before she knew what I was up too. She watched the transaction come in and confirm and now has a wallet with something in it.

I had not noticed that people were not willing to help me. I noticed all this prior to making any posts. My posts have been limited mainly to comments. But, don't worry about me, I have had a few positive exchanges with a few others today.

Regards,
BBJ

duh...this should be obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells.

It's true that this forum is often not a pleasant place. You have to learn to ignore the many responses which will be uninformed, hostile, trying to scam you, etc etc. There are still a bunch of knowledgeable and helpful people though. You may find Reddit friendlier, though you always have to watch out for scams of course.


That is true, but I'd also put that down to the speculators just being the loudest.

If you think about it, people that are using Bitcoin as a currency aren't going to talk about that too often. Occasionally you will hear of a new retailer supporting Bitcoin, or someone enabling Bitcoin payments at their business. But by volume of posts it can't compete with the incessant every day deluge of people speculating, looking for analysis, reacting wildly to the latest bit of drama and so on.


It's not so surprising when you consider that on July 1st 2013 Bitcoin was at just under $100 but by November 30th 2013 it was just over $1,100. Since it has happened before, it's not impossible that a ten fold increase from previous high could happen again. I'm not saying it will happen, but some amount of people hoping that it will is only to be expected when they have seen it happen already.

Now mix them with a bunch of people who were early adopters who may well now be sitting on potential million USD sums worth of Bitcoins yet in every other aspect of their lives are not accustomed to being wealthy.

Now add in the fact that Bitcoin appeals strongly to people of a highly technical, anti-authoritarian, often anarchist or libertarian mindset.

Are you really surprised that some viewpoints that you might consider at best laughable or bizarre, at worst downright lunatic are explored?


The thing is that despite the unhelpful responses, we do tend to see the same sorts of questions posted every day on here and what amazes me sometimes is that regular posters don't simply lose their mind trying to repeat the same answers that could have been found with a small amount of research.

That is, if you ask a question, you will get answered, and at least some of those answers will be factual (if it's a factual question you're asking) or at least logically constructed (if it's something you could debate over).

So if you have questions that you feel have not yet been answered: ideally do some research and ask about anything that's still not clear. If you can't do the research, well OK, ask away. Best to do the research afterwards still. But ask and you'll get answers. Try to ignore any unhelpful responses.

The other thing to note is that there are some people who appear to hate Bitcoin, or at least have no faith in it whatsoever, yet for some reasons are not content to just make their case and then leave. They hang around, posting the same objections to the same issues, and ignoring all responses. Some of them have been doing it for years.

That might be where you're getting the "these bastards who dare to question bitcoin" attitude from, because at some point any given doubt has been expressed and answered and if a sceptic is not willing to accept the response then it's down to the sceptic to deal with that. It is unclear to me why someone who thinks Bitcoin is a dead end would spend their time on here repeatedly telling people so.

So again, if you have a concern that you don't feel has been answered, then speak up. But once it has been answered, if you don't like or agree with the answers, there's not much that we can do about that aside from to let time tell who was right or wrong.

That 10k is very possible by the end of the year if BTC stays in exponential mode rise, and everything tells it will because it's still really young tech. Also, the dreams you talk about are already achieved by many early adopters.

Yea, so stupid, 20-fold increase in 8 month, something like that has never happened to Bitcoin right? Yea, ok, i do think it will take a little longer than that to reach 10000, but it COULD certainly happen, 20-fold up (or down) in a few month has happened before. Calling someone stupid for predicting that is, well, stupid. Hm, I wonder if your attitude could have something to do with people not wanting to help you?

During the coming transition from local fiat to global crypto money, all stubborn fools will lose a percentage of their wealth in exact proportion to the staunchness of their opposition to Bitcoin.

In other words, Bitcoin detractors will be repeatedly financially punished until there are no more Bitcoin detractors. Prolonged loyalty to your nation's currency will hurt your wallet.

This is mathematically inevitable. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?

Young nephew: "Uncle, what's a store of value?"

Uncle: "You told me yesterday that you may want to go to college and learn about computer animation, right?  Well, a store of value is a way for us to slowly save over time so that when you are ready to pay for college, you will have the value to do so."


Young nephew: "Uncle, what's a speculative investment?"

Uncle: "You know those three video games you want?  Well, your allowance only gives you enough money to buy one of them.  A speculative investment is a way to put your allowance at risk, in hopes that its value grows and that you can buy all three of those video games if you choose.  But speculative investments are risky too; you may lose some or all of your allowance and then you won't be able to buy any video games until you save more.  An investor tries to determine if the risk of losing his allowance is worth the risk of increasing its value!  It's a difficult thing to do."


Young nephew: "Uncle, what is a peer-to-peer medium of exchange?"

Uncle: "Your peers are the people you encounter in your life and that you interact with.  Right now, when you buy a video game from that online store you like, your mom can't directly pay the owner of the store.  Instead she has to use a "middle man" who then pays the store.  But the "middle man" takes some of your money and is sometimes mean to the owner of the store.  But if we used a peer-to-peer medium of exchange, your mom could pay the man from the store directly.  This would lower the cost of your video games so that you could buy more!"


Young nephew: "Uncle, can you buy me some bitcoins for my birthday?"

I think a reasonable answer is "I am going to use them as a store of value, as a speculative investment, and encourage there use as a peer-to-peer medium of exchange."

It's viewed as investment BECAUSE its expected to be used as a currency.  I personally feel that people who are holding coins as an investment should also make an effort to buy a little bit more coins for the purpose of spending them, otherwise its kind of hypocritical : you're betting on adoption but don't use them yourself.  doesn't make sense.   

Please understand that by me being "shocked" I was not passing judgement on the whole investment vs currency thing. It is more that I was truly surprised, I didn't expect that.

Also, and it may go hand in hand, I was asked by my young nephew "what are you going to do with your bitcoins?" I didn't have a good answer for him except to say that I was going to hang on to them for the time being as finding a place and a reason to spend them, especially over Fiat, is proving to elusive.

Regards,
BBJ

I am sorry to hear that.  In my opinion, the forum has many intelligent helpful individuals who go out of their way to answer questions.  When I see a question posted that I know the answer to, I try my best to answer it if no one has already done so. 



This is the genius of bitcoin's design: it is in one's rational self-interest to grow the network.  Bitcoin is presently very useful to me as a store of value, exciting to me as a speculative investment, and each month bitcoin is becoming more and more useful to me as a medium of exchange.   

This is by design. 

Thank you. I currently use Multibit but have become concerned when its developers seem to blow off, in a rude way, a problem a user was having and Electrum was the next choice I ran into and am still considering it.

Regards,
BBJ

I think the basic idea behind spending
everything in a paper wallet is that you keep your
private keys inaccessible to the Internet with paper.  Once you go "online" with a paper wallet,
now you've introduced the security risk
again.

You can also created a signed transaction offline and import that onto an online computer, which I think avoids that issue.  

Generally you'll want to have a hot wallet with enough funds for day-to-day activities so you don't have to constantly do that.

I think once you use an address once though, the public key of is now public, as opposed to the hash of the address, so you go from 160 bit security to "only 128".. I'm not a GURU on this, but that is what i've been told. (128 bits is still fine)

But its more the fact that some malware or something could steal your private key if used online.

The issue with brain wallets are not having enough entropy (randomness) to the private keys.
People think they are choosing something hard to guess, but its really not.

Electrum wallet is great, it uses a random deterministic seed with enough entropy, so
you can use it as a brain wallet.

I believe that banking institutions have internet trolls on their payrolls in order to try to spread FUD regarding Bitcoin in an effort to influence public sentiment.  They will publicly deny it, of course, and claim that those who believe this sort of thing are conspiracy theorists.  Transparency isn't part of their modus operandi.  Strategic matters and covert operations of this nature are normally only discussed in private, amongst themselves, behind closed doors.

http://www.popularresistance.org/leaked-email-exposes-bank-of-americas-social-media-spies/

Bankers have a vested interest in trying to convince people that fiat currencies are superior to cryptocurrencies.  Bitcoin is a threat to the fiat monetary system that their business model, revenue streams, and profits all depend upon.  You can expect to see even more desperate attempts to scare the public with FUD from the shills in the future as more and more people choose to liberate themselves from the system that bankers are so fond of.

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I try to be polite, respectful, and helpful, unless someone is obviously trolling.
What questions do you have about Bitcoin that I might be of service to answer?

Thank you,

Jonald
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Thank you for the offer. But, I think for now I am set, have an understanding of the need to keep a wallet safe, private keys under my own control and not relying on an exchange to host the wallet, have found answers, or at least logical discussions on the questions I did have.

I understand the idea of a paperwallet, but get concerned with the whole idea of not "sweeping"(?) or transferring it all at once and risk losing the remaining portion of it. But the one thing I am still working through is the idea of a brain wallet. At one point it seems recommended, then I ran into a thread where most seemed to discourage it.

Regards,
BBJ