Ask HN: What will be the future of Bitcoin? - p3rry
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JamesLeonis
My prediction: Bitcoin will be remembered as the first successful application
of a new wave in decentralized technologies. However Bitcoin itself will not
be used except in museums, like the first Google server.

The revolution is how decentralized technologies from the past (BitTorrent,
GNUtilla, DHT, etc) met with cryptography and game theory. Even more
revolutionary is the wave of consumer-facing cryptographic identity tools,
libraries, and browsers. By tying the notion of Public-Private keys to the
metaphor of wallets (hence value) incentivizes end-users to keep and protect
their keys. Decentralized Internet-level consensus combined with widely
distributed cryptographic tools is huge!

Bitcoin's durability for years demonstrated the resiliency of these tools
under the pressure of a hostile open Internet. It was the first serious test.
And it passed with flying colors.

I DO believe that forks from the Bitcoin network will proliferate for a while.
Bitcoin's technical and governance problems will doom it, but the value it has
now will be distributed to finance other projects (e.g.: Ethereum) that will
move the space and technology forward.

~~~
sodafountan
Bitcoin will never go away and certainly won't ever be the product of a
museums (What does that even mean?). The problem with your shortsighted line
of thinking is that the technology doesn't have to work "as intended" to work.
Bitcoin now has global name recognition, every major exchange allows you to
exchange it, it's owned by hundreds of thousands of people and it's the most
battle tested blockchain in existence. Bitcoin is now essentially a virus that
won't be stopped, for as long as there is greed and speculation in this world
Bitcoin will continue to spread.

This is not to bash the technology like so many people do here on hacker news
(for reasons that are beyond me, this forum used to like cool technology, idk
what happened (see the down-votes this post will get as testament to that)) I
think bitcoin is good for the world. Bitcoin could be the answer to the
consumer and national debt crisis the world faces because it's a form of
currency that actually has a limited supply.

If you think this technology is going anywhere except into the wallets of
millions of human beings all over the world for the betterment of finance then
you're sadly mistaken and I'd be willing to bet you on it. Bitcoin doesn't
die.

~~~
innoprenuer
What happens when most of the governments declare Bitcoin mining and trading
illegal? South Korea is already acting on it. China has raided mining stations
in the past. Even Indian government is planning on taking harse stance against
bitcoin exchanges in India and bitcoin holders. What happens when you are not
able to trade bitcoin legally at all? This will hinder growth of Bitcoin
community.

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kleer001
Financially it will continue to be a bubble machine and generate periodic
spikes and pops that cross successive powers of ten in BTC:USD until in a
decade or so it reaches a couple or a dozen trillion or so market cap
($750K/$1Million : 1 bitcoin). After that governments will start to really get
worried and it's anyone's game. A few people with new obscene wealth will
change a little bit in the world, but in general nothing will change.

~~~
rajacombinator
Governments are already quite worried. If it reaches the 10s of trillions
marketcap it may be too late for them to stop it. And you’re not understanding
the scope if you think that means nothing will change.

~~~
kleer001
I'm looking at the scope of generations, of centuries. By nothing I mean the
human condition will still persist. Power will momentarily move from some
families to others. Some will have enlightened ideas about how to treat the
vulnerable, and a few will enact it. But that's about it. Power will continue
to corrupt.

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sdx23
Bitcoin will be doing something for a few years. Possibly high volatility
which continuously decreases. But with a few peaks of excitement (positive and
negative) when breakthroughs or breakdowns are announced.

Then, at some point it will start. At first only small transactions that
nobody really notices. Very small hints. People ensuring that their wallet
cannot have been hacked. Nobody believes them. Nobody really realizes that
large cashouts are commenced.

Then rumours spread that indeed strange transfers exist. Transactions nobody
can explain. Even the 7500 coins, believed to be lost on a UK waste dump, are
now moving again. The cashouts increase. Rumours about a critical flaw in the
concept of bitcoin circulate.

It will take some time. Then the realization sets in. Somebody out there has a
quantum computer equipped with enough qbits to break ecdsa-256...

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atmosx
I was watching Bloomberg Davos live streaming. Every major Bank’s CEO was
asked about their take on Bitcoin. It was like hearing a chorus, everyone was
praising the block chain but no one had anything positive to say about bitcoin
apart from the fact that it worked. Some pointed out the inefficiency of
bitcoin to scale, which was quite impressive.

So there you have it :-)

~~~
companyhen
Will the lightning network fix some of the scaling issues?

~~~
grover_hartmann
Yes, it will and it's already working.

[https://www.ccn.com/lightning-network-
reaches-1000-mainnet-p...](https://www.ccn.com/lightning-network-
reaches-1000-mainnet-payment-channels/)

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p3rry
What do you think will be future of Bitcoin 4 or 5 years down the line. I am
not talking about cryptocurrency or blockchain, just bitcoin specifically.
After hitting heights it has became more of a commodity/stock rather than a
currency.

~~~
sodafountan
I think it'll continue to be a very volatile store of value. For as long as
there is greed in this world the price will continue to fluctuate. The key is
that the supply gets cut in half every four years, so theoretically, as long
as people continue to want to purchase bitcoin it will get more valuable with
time.

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matchmike1313
Not sure right now, we will see what happens with the lightning network and if
that can help solve the speed and cost issue. As far as the price goes,
hopefully it will bounce back after this shill...

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SirLJ
no future so far... maybe it can change, but the whole blockchain fad is
basically a solution looking for a problem...

