Topic: Why bitcoin can't survive as it is (Read 2433 times)

Exactly. It never fails to amaze me that people imagine the early adopters multiply their net worth by 100 and then just let it all sit in BTC. Then of course in the next breath they say Bitcoin is going to fail or is worthless so who would want it? Doublethink at its finest.

I hope not. That didn't end well for usenet.

Op,


No! for the 21milth time!  Speculation, YOUR DOING IT WRONG!

 

Op,

Sell your coins and be done with bitcoin if you really believe what you say.

Bitcoin won't be widely adopted any soon but it's not about what OP said.

We're nearing the block size limit. Just eyeball linearizing the current exponential trend, the number of transactions (excluding most popular addressess) has grown tenfold every year. We're now at about 25,000 daily. There's a hard limit of about 600,000 /day, and it will take at the very least several years of development to do away with it. At the current pace, we'll hit the soft limit (which is going to be lifted in May) before the end of this year, and the hard limit shortly after.

There's actually a significant controversy about the need of changing the hard limit at all. The one thing that is sure is that we'll see the effects of the limit before we can agree about changing it.

I knew this would be rubbish before I even read the OP

They have hundreds/thousands of bitcoins and want to make a fortune by selling them when the price reach 1000$/1000000$ mark. Sorry, my friend, but u've chosen a wrong place to criticize Bitcoin's deflation mechanism. This mechanism is the core of their way to become rich. Get rid of it - and they will lose a chance to become millionaires.

PS: 99.999% of early adopters don't care about Bitcoin's future. All they need is fiat, as much as possible.

I always find the way people come up with their idea of the future very interesting, but remarkable limited.

The figures above are very limited because they don't mean anything - even the time scale is a nonsense.

Why not start again, with some kind of big picture guidance of how technology moves into the mainstream?

The most interesting indicator I can highlight is the theory to commodity timescale. Most products that become life changing (these are things like cars, microwave ovens, mobile phones, computers etc) take around 30 years.

Software is quicker to make it, but you are still looking at 10 years for a radical software concept to go from version 0.1 to 'everyone' using it!

So, next issue - people numbers.

Who is going to use bitcoin?  Only Americans? Only the US and the EU? Maybe the whole of the world who currently have mobile phones?
50 million users is what exactly? people who own a bitcoin or a bit of a bitcoin? We are probably close to at least 2-3 million people who are in that box already.  Look at the forum growth for an indicator of where we are today - its going to take far longer than 3 years!

I was one of the first 1% of internet users and it was lonely, but slowly, we grew to what we have today! - For bitcoin to make a dent in the real world, we just need people to not give up using it.  This isn't exclusively using bitcoin - its just the number of people with the means to use a bitcoin to make a sale.


Finally, the killer point that needs to be understood - bitcoin is just an experiment in crypto currencies.  Its very unlikely that bitcoin will ever become the big alternative digital currency by itself!  It will however help people understand the concept so that they will feel more comfortable when they use Litecoins, PPCoins and whatever Altcoin we find that can do whatever flaw kills bitcoin.

This is a very long game, and I would be looking at 2020 before you will be surprised when you DON'T see bitcoin or other altcoin in the same list as Paypal on every website.

As for you big worry about no trading going on, it takes time to convince people the price isn't going to go up any further and its safe to start spending.  That will be the magic that makes it start happening!

I have been in bitcoin since mid 2012. I have made some good money on it, and still have some coins. I have been investing in the stock market for more than 20 years before that.  I understand the basic principles of the technology, and I definitely understand market mechanisms and its dynamics. I share the facination for bitcoins and Satoshi's breakthrogh with most of you guys. But I believe the issues I try raise here are very important for bitcoin's future, and the kind of responses I get does not change that, it only disappoints me.

^ apparently not all Jr. members are created equally 

Dear {NewToBitcoin},

If you want anyone to take you seriously, you really must author a competent message, which includes an explanation of why {HorribleProblem(s)WithBitcoin} is indeed a problem at all. If you really want to make a quality contribution, do a quick search for similar objections and if your mind is still not changed, please include a few rebuttals to the most common objections to {HorribleProblem(s)WithBitcoin}.



Why?


Coins are redistributed all the time. It's called spending and whether users spend their coins to buy fiat or "normal" goods, coins change hands. If it makes you happy, you are free to consider this process "magical".

That's admittedly a bit of a glib answer and is easily objected to, so I will follow my own advice from above and counter the most obvious object that while there are plenty of transactions, it's predominately the same coins over and over while the "old coin" remains unspent.

For an idea of how many "old" coins are actually spent, try taking a look at blockchain.info's "bitcoin days destroyed" and filter it by "min age 1 year":

http://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed-min-year

(use the 7-day average to more easily evaluate the area under the curve).

For reference, bitcoin days destroyed is defined as (input size) * (input age), with units of bitcoins and days, respectively. Thus, a 10 bitcoin spend of a 1 year old input would equal 3650 bitcoin days destroyed. The average per day this year has been around 4 MILLION bitcoin days destroyed.

The coinciding peak with the exchange rate seems to indicate a substantial number of "old coins" being converted to fiat, resulting in some nice profits for those early adopters and some "magical" redistribution for you.

looking at this guys older posts... people have been trying to explain to him how bitcoin works... looks like he is just refusing to understand it... and really want to get his early coins... so sad... (me is still sitting here very happy finding out about it in 2013, instead of 2016, or 2020)

This isn't exactly impossible at this point. At all really.


This is wrong, irrelevant, and silly.

MTGOX doesn't do codes anymore

Magic distribution process?  Hmm, like buying/selling bitcoin on an exchange for other currencies?  Not exactly what I would call magic, and certainly not a problem.   

It is the Eternal September

Oh. You're right. PM me your address.

the reason for the post is that the guy has probably premined his blockchain and wants to make bitcoin sound bad to get some free advertising for his coin.

what he doesn't realise is FIAT can take days to transfer. yet shops accept it instantly. why? because they use escrow services. we commonly call these FIAT escrow services banks or credit cards. but hell... i can think of many other methods to get around the confirmation times.

bitcoin does not need to change. its the infrustructure around it such as bitpay and mtgox that should change to streamline the small/instant transactions.

take starbucks. if they open a mtgox account and start accepting MTGOX codes. then customers simply deposit a daily amount into mtgox while taking their morning shower and then its fully confirmed to make codes with by the time they walked to a starbucks.  bish bash bosh.. instant transaction with confirmed funds. no waiting around

it doesnt have to be mtgox. i purely used mtgox accounting system as a example of a system already inplace

Well, even though im against the TS, i'm a reader and BTC user.. Other places... That Jr member statement shit is bullshit.. hehe