
How Bitcoin Ends - dpapathanasiou
https://www.fastcompany.com/40537404/how-bitcoin-ends
======
tristanho
This article makes pretty blatant errors:

> We thought the net would break the monopoly of top-down, corporate media.
> But as business interests took over it has become primarily a delivery
> system for streaming television to consumers, and consumer data to
> advertisers.

Weird thing to say about an era where traditional publishers and news networks
have been entirely disrupted by random folks posting on twitter/facebook.

> At its core, bitcoin is just an extension of the old PGP, or Pretty Good
> Privacy encryption protocol.

I've never seen the word "just" do so much work. Bitcoin, notably, solved the
Double Spending problem[0] seventeen years after PGP was created.

> In essence, bitcoin is money built and maintained by nerds, based on the
> premise that good nerds will outnumber the bad nerds.

This is patently false. The _entire_ point of bitcoin is that miners and node
operators acting in _their own self-interest_ will secure the protocol, not
"good nerds". You can argue if the system fails this will be the case, but not
that this is the premise.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-
spending](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-spending)

~~~
brianpgordon
Yeah I'm also pretty critical of their narrative of how centralized currency
came about. Their timeline is _wildly_ wrong. The author makes it seem like
states started minting coinage in the middle ages, when the advantages of a
standardized coin with a mandated-by-fiat face value (possibly different from
the actual value) were well-known - and famously used to great effect by -
even the early Roman Empire.

Then there's this sentence, which is just nonsense:

> All money was borrowed from the central treasury, at a rate of interest set
> by the king.

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shiado
I have no doubt that Bitcoin will end someday, most likely from QC breaking
ECDSA, but this is perhaps the most illiterate and uninformed takedown I have
ever read on the subject.

~~~
kinghajj
That's not really a problem. Addresses aren't the entire ECDSA public key, but
a hash digest of it. The entire public key is only revealed once a transaction
is made from an address to another. So an address that has only received
coins, but never sent any, is entirely immune from QC. (This, by the way, is
why you're never supposed to reuse addresses, since once you move coins from
an address once, it's possible for someone offline to try and break the key.)

~~~
tromp
It is a real problem. Millions of BTC are locked in addresses with known
public key, due to either the formerly popular Pay-to-Public-Key script, or
the ever popular practice of addresses re-use that you also mentioned.

------
quocble
Aside from the flaws of the article, there are something to be said about how
centralized bitcoin has become. Most of the bitcoins are held by centralized
exchanges, or "qualified" custodian (locked up in ETF and other exchanges).
They essentially act like centralized banks, the exact thing we're trying to
avoid. The only saving grace is we can send to native wallet, giving us some
freedom from the institutions.

------
HashThis
This is how Bitcoin ends up...

* Bitcoin and Ethereum are grandfathered into not requiring KYC and AML. They are the rare currency with zero friction.

* All new currencies require KYC and AML. This is happening right now

* Other currencies can have some positives (backed by revenue generating assets, etc.). But they can be confiscated by governments

* Bitcoin always has a place, as the zero friction, no-KYC currency.

EXAMPLE: I did a wire transfer from the USA to India. Since it was sent in
Indian rupees, the receiving bank kept rejecting it. They claimed it didn't
pass AML. The real reason is that they wanted to take huge fees for the USD to
Rupees conversion on their receiving side. So they kept rejecting it, until it
is sent in US Dollars and they can scalp me on the conversion rate. I had 8
weeks of failed transfers.

That AML hostage taking can happen across all currencies BUT Bitcoin and
Ethereum.

In the future, people in China are taking their money out in bitcoin. People
across Africa, South America, also often move it into Bitcoin. They can cross
justidictions with nobody to stop them. There is a place to cut around the
hostage stakers at the AML level.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Have you tried TransferWise? I just tested in app, and they’ll convert $1000
USD to INR for $9 USD immediately.

I have their Borderless account and hold balances in several currencies at
once, with access using a debit card, wires, ACH (US), SWIFT (EU) etc. Highly
recommend!

~~~
polyakoff
There is plenty of services like this nowadays. I recall TrensferGO and
Revolut. There is even a service for fees comparison amongst those services,
developed be hackernews fellow reader:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819538)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Excellent resource!

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TooSmugToFail
So much nonsense in this article, don't know where to start...

~~~
IshKebab
Yeah I stopped reading after this:

> At its core, bitcoin is just an extension of the old PGP, or Pretty Good
> Privacy encryption protocol.

------
basicplus2
This is also about getting out of being "locked into" a larger overall economy
run for the benefit of a few and creating local economies.

People with land and/or skills could create new economies by trading directly
with each other with what they produce and opt out altogether..

In a way it is the final defence of a people against control and oppression or
insane hyperinflation, but is more dificult to do if you are stuck in a city
or additcted to modern technology.

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anm89
Are they trying to say Bitcoin will not remain a totally unregulated, totally
compromised and idealistic cryptoanarchocapitalist utopia forever? Are they
trying to say that Bitcoin won't solve all of the world's problems and
bringing on a new utopian era??

I refuse to believe it. Because if that were true bitcoin would surely vanish
into thin air.

------
Sargos
This article makes a good case about Bitcoin but even the original Bitcoin
enthusiasts and crypto community as a whole has admitted that it was a great
experiment but is now obsolete and settling in for a temporary (years) store
of value role.

I would like to see these same discussions after understanding the Ethereum
ecosystem which solves most of the problems listed in articles like these.
There's a stable form of value in DAI, high velocity and cheap money
transfers, and decentralized financial protocols that replace traditional
gatekeepers like banks and payment processors.

A long but interesting article by David Hoffman really sums it up in the best
way possible and is worth a read: [https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/ether-is-
the-best-model-fo...](https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/ether-is-the-best-
model-for-money)

