Topic: Why there was a Bitcoin hype (Read 4609 times)

I expected you'd take a different spin.

Few revolutionary ideas are born from established interests. Rather they come from the underground, perhaps from a marginalized minority, outside the box, and if the idea survives and reaches the mainstream, the established interests will stop fighting it and act as though they created it in the first place. This is most obvious in the arts, though I can't think of any culturally significant shift that didn't evolve in this manor.

Margaret Mead-esque: "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world. Indeed, nothing else ever has."

The original nature of Bitcoin is as an underground currency... Many of the new Bitcoiners want to be financier giants in a new, “legit” Bitcoin economy.

The development community has made a great effort to distance itself from 'criminal' activity, for understandable reasons. But one has to understand the correlation between the price development earlier this year and the public's perception of Bitcoins.

To date, Silk Road has been the single most daring and unconventional business idea related to Bitcoins and it has given people hope that fundamental change was possible. I'm convinced, it was the boldness and openness with which the business was conducted that excited and elevated people's spirits and drew them to buy. It defeated fear (for as long as the party lasted) and the people thought they had -through a technological breakthrough- reached sovereignty over the state, its laws and the threat of legal prosecution. And consequentially, be able to avoid having to go criminal by definition. In one word: Freedom. It could be observed even with those who obviously weren't customers to that particular service.

People choose to take sides with daredevils and winner attitudes. Silk Road clearly offered that and it gave Bitcoins a kickstart more than anything. The 'bad news' and opposition from authorities only made newly aware people understand that Bitcoins were to be taken seriously.

With Silk Road going into hiding, prices plummeted.

There may be many reasons for why prices rise or decline but it's good general practice to look at the biggest possible picture.

With the lead currencies going down, naturally, a competing new currency should be going up. But it isn't right now. It's declining in unison with the rest, slowly and gradually.

And the reason for this may be that it isn't actually competing anymore.

Reading the news and public statements by key figures within the Bitcoin community I have found that, since Silk Road, a lot of energy was put into making Bitcoins look acceptable and harmless. Into making it conform to what's already there so that established entities would 'adopt' it. Be it government, Amazon.com or the banking world.

And this goes contrary to what initially made the value skyrocket, namely, that it was going by itself and offering a radical alternative as a whole. There is nothing more sad than a powerful force that pleads to its enemies for adoption and help whom it vowed to challenge.

One doesn't even have to read between the lines of what Satoshi has written to understand competition is what he intended. If he had seen any need for Bitcoins to comply with rules and regulations to be successful he wouldn't have written it in the first place.

A price development graph shows many things, but in its essence, it indicates direction.

When Bitcoin gives people what they want, the curve goes up, when it gives the opposite, it goes down.

It becomes evident, the people want something new. Something that contradicts the current state of affairs.


Upshot:

Bitcoins are revolutionary in themselves, so they should cater to revolution. That's the target audience. That's where the money comes from.

The people want a revolution because it's that time again. And they will support that which gives it to them.

Before 1933, there wasn't a competitor. This time, Bitcoin is the competitor.

Developers and entrepreneurs will have to put their khakis and insurance plans into the closet and get out the war dress.

What I propose could also be run over Tor, but solves the one-way-only issue.

Maybe "damage" is too strong as a word. What happens is that, if you're behind Tor, the IP you show to other nodes is that of your exit-node. If other nodes try to open a connection to an exit-node, they won't find anything.

Bitcoin will never become Tor. Doing network anonymity in a secure way is very hard, and bitcoin should not take up that responsibility. Just run it over tor or another proven onion-routing network, if you want onion routing.

Bitcoin could implement a Tor-like network itself. Any node can encrypt a transaction and send it to any number of nodes. Any node can and should eventually send transactions in plaintext, either their own or from other nodes. No node will know if a transaction comes from the sender, the sender's sender, or numerous hops away.

Can you expand on the network damage which could result from using Tor?  I am not familiar with the hidden services you're refering to.

One thing I'd appreciate to see coming from the developers is, for example, ways of rendering bitcoin more anonymous to the average Joe. Like, distributing a preconfigured bundle bitcoin+Tor+I2P would already help. But that would be dangerous to the network if it doesn't come together with a patch that makes the client capable of reaching hidden services, so, yeah, it needs some development.

I'm going to bet you've never been to a place where people don't live in abundance. You may be pleasantly surprised.

People are selfish and you can bet this is even more apparent where people don't live in abundance.

Lol, I understand the whole 'killing them with kindness' issue, but I think you're taking it a little overboard.

Their business model basically seems to be to sell kits for AAVs and stations to anybody who wants them:

Has bitcoin ever reached phase hype? I can't seem to remember

It's dead obvious, but most people seem to persistently neglect it:

Silk Road.