Pages:
Author

Topic: The Bitcoin environment seems toxic right now... has it felt like this before? (Read 11043 times)

sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 250
yung lean
Perhaps it's just the forums, but I feel like there's a lot of negative vibes coming from BTC right now. 
I've following Bitcoin and mining for a while but never bothered with forums until recently.  Is this common amongst forum-goers or is it really just Bitcoin in general?

I've been around in the bitcoin world since 2010. This feels a lot like when the price fell after the all time high of $35 back to $3. It might lose 90% again and go back to $100 but it will go back up. It always does.
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 250
Guys since people are dumping there bitcoins because of the tax law, ya better jump on the bitcoin wagon now, before the price zooms up in a few months.  I dont wanna hear, oh If I knew the price was going to go 1200 I would have bought 500 dollars worth of bitcoins.  boo hoo dont go crying.
hero member
Activity: 766
Merit: 509
Definetly a hazardous environment with all of the attention.  I would be happier if it was just quietly growing and not being eyed up by governments and banks.
sr. member
Activity: 417
Merit: 250
Quote:


"White is a factor because browner people are too busy enjoying the outdoor and natural life. The white males are stuck inside with winter and find indoor male hobbies. Females in general aren't going to adopt anything that is not super easy, not threatening, available in pink, and lovingly accepted by their peers."

"First of all Bitcoin (as it currently stands unless morphed as I say above) will be limited to reasonably affluent, white males mostly under age 50. Thus figure the upper limit of adoption is several hundred million. Note NE Asians are white."

Anonymint. If you want to break out of the rather small racial / misogynistic  bubble

My knowledge is based on wide-range of real world experiences and having actually lived in the third world for nearly 2 decades.

I grew up in all black inner city slums in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and my mother and stepfather were very liberal. And I grew up believing that women and men are equal.

Later on life taught me the truth the hard way.

A racist or misogynist is someone who discriminates illogically against race or gender. Rather I am forming rational conclusions by employing falsifiable tests. This is known as the scientific method.

you are opining from you could research what Mpesa (Kenya based, with hundreds of millions of Africans as a customer base, skin color other-than-white) is doing with bitcoin. Implementation being lead by a young woman who spends more time with African bankers than barbies.

Or not. Your choice.

Someone mentioned tersely "1 in 3 Kenyans use Bitcoin" in another thread 2 days ago, and two of us requested a citation and the poster did not reply, so I didn't google it. That was the first time I'd heard that claim. Your post incited me to dig:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-18

Quote
Dozens of mobile-money systems have been launched, so why has Kenya’s been the most successful? It had several factors in its favour, including the exceptionally high cost of sending money by other methods; the dominant market position of Safaricom; the regulator's initial decision to allow the scheme to proceed on an experimental basis, without formal approval; a clear and effective marketing campaign (“Send money home”); an efficient system to move cash around behind the scenes; and, most intriguingly, the post-election violence in the country in early 2008. M-PESA was used to transfer money to people trapped in Nairobi's slums at the time, and some Kenyans regarded M-PESA as a safer place to store their money than the banks, which were entangled in ethnic disputes. Having established a base of initial users, M-PESA then benefitted from network effects: the more people who used it, the more it made sense for others to sign up for it.

So now I see why it succeeded there but failed here in the Philippines. We have SmartMoney and Globe Cash here but it is not widely used. Filipinos prefer cash, even though they are SMS capital of the world and top 3 country in the world for using digital media. There are also vendors here every where for loading your cell phone prepaid balance.

But there isn't a big incentive to move away from cash. Cash works and when you need to send cash money, there are peso padala branches on every other block.

Whereas in Kenya the chaos meant they didn't have these well developed cash markets, so they needed something. And this monopoly by one phone carrier made it possible to get the economies-of-scale whereas we have 3 main phone carriers here.


But whoever says Kenyans are using Bitcoin is smoking dope:

http://www.bankinnovation.net/2014/02/mpesa-is-smoking-bitcoin-in-number-of-transactions/

In spite of the correction to the chart on that page, Bitcoin transactions are not a significant percentage of M-PESA transactions. That is global Bitcoin txs shown in comparison and besides upt 59% of BTC txs were SatoshiDice at some point in the past and many txs are mixers, etc.. Lets try to find some hard data on BTX txs in Kenya? Scientific method.

You fundamentally don't understand relative wealth. This is not a mistake I would expect rpietila to make:

http://www.cgap.org/blog/10-things-you-thought-you-knew-about-m-pesa

Quote
4 – You thought M-PESA’s success meant it is now a huge systemic risk The accumulated balance of all the M-PESA accounts represents just 0.2% of bank deposits by value. M-PESA is far from exerting a systemic risk. In June 2010, M-PESA transactions amounted to about 70% of the volume of electronic transactions in the country but were only 2.3% in value. M-PESA’s success means there is a real need for small electronic transactions and storage of value. It was designed with limits on how much can be transacted (no more than 70,000Ksh leaving the account daily) and stored (maximum account balance is 50,000Ksh). Cash-in, cash-out and P2P transfers are limited to 35,000Ksh per transaction.


So again, I stand by my original statement. Only the white boys have a need for the illogical 10 minute transaction system called Bitcoin.

Still feeling smug white boy?

You should be banned for life. I still think you work for a bank.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
Quote:


"White is a factor because browner people are too busy enjoying the outdoor and natural life. The white males are stuck inside with winter and find indoor male hobbies. Females in general aren't going to adopt anything that is not super easy, not threatening, available in pink, and lovingly accepted by their peers."

"First of all Bitcoin (as it currently stands unless morphed as I say above) will be limited to reasonably affluent, white males mostly under age 50. Thus figure the upper limit of adoption is several hundred million. Note NE Asians are white."

Anonymint. If you want to break out of the rather small racial / misogynistic  bubble

My knowledge is based on wide-range of real world experiences and having actually lived in the third world for nearly 2 decades.

I grew up in all black inner city slums in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and my mother and stepfather were very liberal. And I grew up believing that women and men are equal.

Later on life taught me the truth the hard way.

A racist or misogynist is someone who discriminates illogically against race or gender. Rather I am forming rational conclusions by employing falsifiable tests. This is known as the scientific method.

you are opining from you could research what Mpesa (Kenya based, with hundreds of millions of Africans as a customer base, skin color other-than-white) is doing with bitcoin. Implementation being lead by a young woman who spends more time with African bankers than barbies.

Or not. Your choice.

Someone mentioned tersely "1 in 3 Kenyans use Bitcoin" in another thread 2 days ago, and two of us requested a citation and the poster did not reply, so I didn't google it. That was the first time I'd heard that claim. Your post incited me to dig:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-18

Quote
Dozens of mobile-money systems have been launched, so why has Kenya’s been the most successful? It had several factors in its favour, including the exceptionally high cost of sending money by other methods; the dominant market position of Safaricom; the regulator's initial decision to allow the scheme to proceed on an experimental basis, without formal approval; a clear and effective marketing campaign (“Send money home”); an efficient system to move cash around behind the scenes; and, most intriguingly, the post-election violence in the country in early 2008. M-PESA was used to transfer money to people trapped in Nairobi's slums at the time, and some Kenyans regarded M-PESA as a safer place to store their money than the banks, which were entangled in ethnic disputes. Having established a base of initial users, M-PESA then benefitted from network effects: the more people who used it, the more it made sense for others to sign up for it.

So now I see why it succeeded there but failed here in the Philippines. We have SmartMoney and Globe Cash here but it is not widely used. Filipinos prefer cash, even though they are SMS capital of the world and top 3 country in the world for using digital media. There are also vendors here every where for loading your cell phone prepaid balance.

But there isn't a big incentive to move away from cash. Cash works and when you need to send cash money, there are peso padala branches on every other block.

Whereas in Kenya the chaos meant they didn't have these well developed cash markets, so they needed something. And this monopoly by one phone carrier made it possible to get the economies-of-scale whereas we have 3 main phone carriers here.


But whoever says Kenyans are using Bitcoin is smoking dope:

http://www.bankinnovation.net/2014/02/mpesa-is-smoking-bitcoin-in-number-of-transactions/

In spite of the correction to the chart on that page, Bitcoin transactions are not a significant percentage of M-PESA transactions. That is global Bitcoin txs shown in comparison and besides upt 59% of BTC txs were SatoshiDice at some point in the past and many txs are mixers, etc.. Lets try to find some hard data on BTX txs in Kenya? Scientific method.

You fundamentally don't understand relative wealth. This is not a mistake I would expect rpietila to make:

http://www.cgap.org/blog/10-things-you-thought-you-knew-about-m-pesa

Quote
4 – You thought M-PESA’s success meant it is now a huge systemic risk The accumulated balance of all the M-PESA accounts represents just 0.2% of bank deposits by value. M-PESA is far from exerting a systemic risk. In June 2010, M-PESA transactions amounted to about 70% of the volume of electronic transactions in the country but were only 2.3% in value. M-PESA’s success means there is a real need for small electronic transactions and storage of value. It was designed with limits on how much can be transacted (no more than 70,000Ksh leaving the account daily) and stored (maximum account balance is 50,000Ksh). Cash-in, cash-out and P2P transfers are limited to 35,000Ksh per transaction.


So again, I stand by my original statement. Only the white boys have a need for the illogical 10 minute transaction system called Bitcoin.

Still feeling smug white boy?
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
For me, coding is most fun when at the end of the day I have less lines of code than at the beginning of the day.

A lot of people don't understand that.  

That is why I use Scala when I can. Much more concise, because I can express higher-kinded category theory polymorphisms (JustSaying is me). As far as I know, higher-kinded typing is only supported by Scala, Haskell, and ML. You may not realize that Haskell doesn't have subtyping, it is faked. ML is very powerful but very obtuse.

But when you are writing something new, then LOC production is a positive metric.
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1000
https://youtu.be/PZm8TTLR2NU
Who remembers the vitriol that was hurled at culture sharing (piracy) in the dawn of the torrent era?

Same thing here. It's about authorities fearing their loss of control and profit, that's why so much negativity is being vomited in Bitcoin's general direction.
legendary
Activity: 1162
Merit: 1007
For me, coding is most fun when at the end of the day I have less lines of code than at the beginning of the day.

A lot of people don't understand that. 
donator
Activity: 2772
Merit: 1019
I want to learn programming but I'm extremely lazy. I took a course a few years back in college and it was really boring so I couldn't get into it. But it is an increasingly-useful skill in today's world.

Programming is difficult, but a very worthwhile challenge.
You can keep reaching way above your current skill level.

Programming is extremely tedious. It is boring unless you are extremely motivated and find the challenge interesting.

I wrote about 800 LOC yesterday (not including whitespace nor comments). This is considered to be quite high.

https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=average+LOC+per+day

I didn't think I could still do that. I used to be quite a prolific coder.

For me, coding is most fun when at the end of the day I have less lines of code than at the beginning of the day.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
I want to learn programming but I'm extremely lazy. I took a course a few years back in college and it was really boring so I couldn't get into it. But it is an increasingly-useful skill in today's world.

Programming is difficult, but a very worthwhile challenge.
You can keep reaching way above your current skill level.

Programming is extremely tedious. It is boring unless you are extremely motivated and find the challenge interesting.

I wrote about 800 LOC yesterday (not including whitespace nor comments). This is considered to be quite high.

https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=average+LOC+per+day

I didn't think I could still do that. I used to be quite a prolific coder.
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 1040
A Great Time to Start Something!
I want to learn programming but I'm extremely lazy. I took a course a few years back in college and it was really boring so I couldn't get into it. But it is an increasingly-useful skill in today's world.

Programming is difficult, but a very worthwhile challenge.
You can keep reaching way above your current skill level.
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1008
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
Smart phones and toilet paper are technologies just about everyone needs (note I don't use the latter).

Trolls don't use toilet paper.  Yep, sounds about right.

Blah blah blah properly designed altcoin...
Blah blah blah white males under 50
Blah blah blah it would be good if bitcoin hit $300
Blah blah blah transactions take 10 minutes
Blah blah I'm smart and I've analyzed things and I can use big words

What a cute little misinformation campaign you've got going!
sr. member
Activity: 417
Merit: 250
Bitcoin only seems environmentally toxic to some because they are mentally toxic to themselves.

If you are sitting all day reading the sometimes goofy comments in Bitcoin forums, are you really doing something with Bitcoin? Get out there and make Bitcoin work in a unique way.

Everybody can teach himself/herself programming. Everyone can see a need. Learn programming and fill the need. You just might become rich doing it... rather than sitting around and waiting for Bitcoin to become less toxic so that you can ride to fame and fortune on the coattails of the likes of Satoshi and the Bitcoin devs.

 Angry

Understanding the world of bitcoin is, so far, extremely difficult for most people (see video). Explaining bitcoin on an individual basis is a much needed service right now, and you can help by coding the concepts of bitcoin into an understandable forum post. Many examples of this work populates this forum, and they are helping out a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd19SboRhVY


It's the trolls you should be complaining about.
sr. member
Activity: 280
Merit: 250
Knowledge is Power
I want to learn programming but I'm extremely lazy. I took a course a few years back in college and it was really boring so I couldn't get into it. But it is an increasingly-useful skill in today's world.
legendary
Activity: 3990
Merit: 1385
Bitcoin only seems environmentally toxic to some because they are mentally toxic to themselves.

If you are sitting all day reading the sometimes goofy comments in Bitcoin forums, are you really doing something with Bitcoin? Get out there and make Bitcoin work in a unique way.

Everybody can teach himself/herself programming. Everyone can see a need. Learn programming and fill the need. You just might become rich doing it... rather than sitting around and waiting for Bitcoin to become less toxic so that you can ride to fame and fortune on the coattails of the likes of Satoshi and the Bitcoin devs.

 Angry
newbie
Activity: 7
Merit: 0
FUCK THIS SHIT!!

You seriously MUST be CRAZY to have anything to do with BITCOIN!! This is my observation after only three months!!

If you think this is the new frontier in currency, unfortunately you are DELIRIOUS!

My posts are now being moved, and I am called a troll for my negative, BUT HONEST experiences and posts made about the SCAM that is BITCOIN.

My technical issues were never solved, I had two payments never received, even though they were on the blockchain, they were never accounted for in the QT and no "EXPERTS" here have ever solved the problem.
Subjects and posts left are now being manicured, and I'll even go as far as saying it was GRUE who intercepted my P.M., logged onto my PC through Teamviewer, stole my Private keys and deleted the TeamViewer history.  

NOW I'm getting allegations of being pseudo and quasi!!

I cannot even find one soul to take what I am saying seriously and offer help.

BITCOIN - Just one giant Ponzi scam run by criminals!


I will taking my own advise given and will be returning with a vengeance!!



You shouldn't be using a program like TeamViewer. There are botnets that actively scan the web for vulnerable systems running programs like TeamViewer or VNC and they will brute force access.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
Now for a dose of reality on those illogical $million price projections for Bitcoin...

- Technologies have a known adoption cycle

Logistic S-curve adoption.

But the breadth of adoption depends on the utility of the technology.

Smart phones and toilet paper are technologies just about everyone needs (note I don't use the latter).

Unless Bitcoin will be morphed via offchain reserves to correct glaring weaknesses in its technological design, then it can not and will not appeal to most of the population.

If you are not factoring that into your FA analysis, then your FA is flawed.

First of all Bitcoin (as it currently stands unless morphed as I say above) will be limited to reasonably affluent, white males mostly under age 50. Thus figure the upper limit of adoption is several hundred million. Note NE Asians are white.

So we may already be at that adoption "chasm" you mentioned, or it will come on the next run up and peak in price.

- To adopt Bitcoin, you must buy bitcoins
- Buying bitcoins from a rigid stock increases its price to induce existing holders to sell

Assuming the stock is rigid and hasn't morphed into an offchain reserves coin.

- The value of Bitcoin network is correlated with the number of its members
- The purchasing power of one bitcoin is roughly linearly correlated to the number of bitcoin owners in the world and it can be expressed with the following equation: 0.0005*U (USD/BTC), where "U" is the number of bitcoin owners.

And so Bitcoin's value will not approach fiat for general commerce without being so morphed.

Given the above argument, you can see why a dip below $300 is psychologically important. We ain't going to da moon, so a lower entry price builds enthusiasm and bullish resolve.


P.S. White is a factor because browner people are too busy enjoying the outdoor and natural life. The white males are stuck inside with winter and find indoor male hobbies. Females in general aren't going to adopt anything that is not super easy, not threatening, available in pink, and lovingly accepted by their peers.

Add:

Andreas M. Antonopoulos claims in the developing world Bitcoin is approached by a different class. However if as it appears be he is referring to his experiences in South America, there is a huge influx of former European immigrants there.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
CoinMode maybe you are the sock puppet of CoinCube, who they claim is my sock puppet (even we posted our photos to show it isn't true), so maybe you are my sock puppet. Sock puppets are known to create fake antagonists to create scenarios where they win arguments.

Bitcoin the first attempt at Virtual Currency? No, not by far, so go do more research you ignorant curmudgeon.

First one to be decentralized.

What do you think a cpu-only, botnet resistant coin can do to Bitcoin? Suddenly everyone who has heard of Bitcoin, can download and mine.

Bitcoin stands no marketing chance against that, it will spread by word of mouth "hey I got free money by turning on my computer".
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
FUCK THIS SHIT!!

You seriously MUST be CRAZY to have anything to do with BITCOIN!! This is my observation after only three months!!

If you think this is the new frontier in currency, unfortunately you are DELIRIOUS!

My posts are now being moved, and I am called a troll for my negative, BUT HONEST experiences and posts made about the SCAM that is BITCOIN.

My technical issues were never solved, I had two payments never received, even though they were on the blockchain, they were never accounted for in the QT and no "EXPERTS" here have ever solved the problem.
Subjects and posts left are now being manicured, and I'll even go as far as saying it was GRUE who intercepted my P.M., logged onto my PC through Teamviewer, stole my Private keys and deleted the TeamViewer history.  

NOW I'm getting allegations of being pseudo and quasi!!

I cannot even find one soul to take what I am saying seriously and offer help.

BITCOIN - Just one giant Ponzi scam run by criminals!


I will taking my own advise given and will be returning with a vengeance!!


You do have a valid point but Im sure the problem with receiving payments to your wallet are from you downloading malicious software/rootkits. Letting some stranger from the internet teamview into your machine is not the smartest idea ever. If you did any kind of research installing software from teamviewer or logmein opens you up to vulnerabilities that anyone on the internet can exploit.

I've been keeping up on bitcoin since 2010 even mined a few coins back then because I'm a geek and thought it would be cool just to say I have some. The bitcoin platform is not bad its the community and the way its used for bad is our problem. Not only newbs (dont take the word as an insult) but my self get the same scammer/unprofessional vibe but that is something we all can change and is something we for sure need to work on if we all as the early adopters of bitcoin expect to see this thing last.
sr. member
Activity: 417
Merit: 250
If you think mattboldfield is my sock puppet, you are losing your sanity. Just study our writing styles. Consult an expert in writing analysis.

Both of your arguments are exactly the same on every point. You might as well be twin sock puppets.

Bitcoin the first attempt at Virtual Currency? No, not by far, so go do more research you ignorant curmudgeon.
Pages:
Jump to: