
Is Bitcoin the Future of Money? - pmcpinto
http://www.thenation.com/article/179620/bitcoin-future-money?page=full#
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doczoidberg
Bitcoin maybe is the future of money because:

\- it's inflation safe

\- no corrupt bankers or politicians can manipulate it (easily)

\- there are no men in the middle (edit: or only for a short time. Of course
you should not save your bitcoins in a marketplace for a long time frame)

\- it's cheap for all sorts of transactions

\- it doesn't know borders (in democratic nations)

When the next bigger inflation of Euro or Dollar will arrive bitcoin exchange
rate will skyrocket. Though that only means you should invest in it maybe it
will also become money with exchange character in future.

~~~
FeloniousHam
As a American consumer, Bitcoin doesn't have any value to me. In addition to
the volatility, difficulty of actually spending it, and its vastly higher risk
as a store of value (theft, "beta" implementation), the US Dollar is already a
cross-border virtual currency.

The increased transaction costs in current cards is transparent, and I get
1.5-5% cash back as a result of those fees. Anonymity is almost never a
concern of mine, and if it is, there are simpler ways of moving dollars
around, as either cash or one time debit cards.

Inflation is not an unalloyed evil, and as clumsy as Fed manipulations might
be, I just don't feel that a free market deflationary Bitcoin wouldn't have as
many (but different) downsides.

I can definitely see the value to countries unstable or hyper inflated
currencies, but Bitcoin requires a substantial first world infrastructure
undergirding it.

And from my emotional perspective, I resent that the inventors will pocket
millions from being at the top of the pyramid.

~~~
aianus
You can use it to play poker. US players have been shut out of poker sites
since Black Friday in 2011 and with bitcoin you can withdraw from the site
daily to reduce your exposure if it goes bust a la Full Tilt.

Also, you get 3% cashback on anything on Amazon by buying with bitcoin through
gyft. That's better than any credit card I've seen even if it costs you 1% to
buy the btc.

~~~
faet
I've been playing poker online over the past year. I did a transfer from my US
bank. It is a bit slower to withdraw, takes about 2 weeks for a check.

I get 5% cash back from my credit card when buying on amazon. And any points I
earn can be used via amazon without an extra step. And I get fraud protection
vs losing a gift card.

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vertex-four
I don't think Bitcoin will replace money, due to the time-to-confirmation and
scalability issues. While I understand that 0-confirmation transactions are
possible and currently used by the likes of BitPay and Coinbase, that's not
going to be secure forever. I also think the current crowd are, well, a little
too an-cap-focused to actually pay attention to issues that real people have
with using Bitcoin.

However, Bitcoin's going to stick around for a long while, even without mass
appeal, and cryptocurrencies will eventually win as the dominant form of
money. There's one thing we still need to wait on; zSNARKs for arbitrary
computations[0] have to become faster, somehow.

After that, it's trivial to build a network of block chains which incentivise
distributed storage of the chain, and allow for entirely arbitrary, complex
computations and transactions to be mined. Much safer currencies, with complex
rulesets, that any 50 cent microcontroller can use and verify, can be built on
top of that.

You could set up cryptographic guarantor or proof-of-funds systems built on
whatever infrastructure you like (whether semi-centralised or varying levels
of decentralised), so that entities that you are transacting with have proof
that you can't scam them by way of double-spends, for in-person and digital
goods transactions, while using the regular double-spend-resistant
confirmation system for all other transactions. This system can also be
modified and extended without ever changing the protocol, depending on its
users' needs for security.

[0]
[https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/507.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/507.pdf)

~~~
NAFV_P
> _Much safer currencies, with complex rulesets, that any 50 cent
> microcontroller can use and verify, can be built on top of that._

Find a 50 cent microcontroller that can mine bitcoin.

~~~
seabee
You don't need to mine bitcoin to use it. The point of the cheap
microcontroller is to enable devices to send and receive transactions.

~~~
NAFV_P
> _You don 't need to mine bitcoin to use it._

I'm aware of that, if this weren't the case, it wouldn't be classified as
currency.

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blueskin_
Too unstable and too slow to actually _replace_ money, but it's definitely got
a future as a supplemental currency.

~~~
gnaritas
Too slow? It's faster than money, how is it too slow?

~~~
blueskin_
Sometimes I've had to wait 15-30 min for multiple confirmations. Standing
around in a shop for that long would not only suck, but be completely
impractical.

~~~
gnaritas
Credit cards take 90+ days to confirm; any shop making you wait for a single
confirmation is doing it wrong. A zero conformation broadcast to the network
with verification that several nodes have seen it is more than enough for POS
uses and is near instantaneous.

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VMG
Behind paywall for me, even when in Incognito

~~~
quchen
Try disallowing Javascript.

------
servowire
The Bitcoin protocol will play a somewhat larger role in finance, but as
"money" \- I'm not sure. I am sceptic how the Sidechain implementation will
be. And the volatility of the currency bitcoin (as one of the first Bitcoin
apps) is still the elephant in the room.

~~~
riffraff
IMVHO the larger elephant in the room is bitcoin's deflationary nature.

~~~
phaemon
Neither of these is an example of an "elephant in the room". Both issues are
discussed continually.

~~~
riffraff
I think we disagree on the definition of elephant in the room, the issues are
most certainly discussed, but they are not addressed.

The bitcoin faq regarding deflation basically says "we don't know what's going
to happen", and regarding volatility the current solution for merchants to
cope with volatility appears to be "convert everything to fiat ASAP".

~~~
phaemon
> I think we disagree on the definition of elephant in the room

Yes, I was basically saying your definition was wrong: that's not what the
phrase "elephant in the room" actually means. It means something that _isn 't
discussed_.

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kolev
Bitcoin is the present of speculation.

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makosdv
Bitcoin does not meet the requirements for being money (neither does the US
dollar or Euro or Yuan, etc). It definitely has the potential to change the
future of currencies and banking though.

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mkesper
No.

~~~
ds_
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

------
thejosh
previous discussion from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7696981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7696981)

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wesley
Proof of work will not succeed in the long run. I think we'll be moving to a
proof of stake currency instead.

Examples are peercoin and Nxt.

~~~
andreasklinger
Could you briefly explain/outline proof-of-stake in a nutshell ?

I read the wikipedia page but i am not 100% i really understood it correctly.

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hellbreakslose
Is it?

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Hermel
Interesting how persistently Bitcoin can make it to the hacker news front
page. I would have expected interest to fade over time.

