
Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far - imartin2k
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/
======
Laforet
And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed?

To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly
centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth.
The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture
of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the
crash comes it will be over before you knew it.

As for the wider field of blockchain/DLT, it bears an uncanny parallel to the
early days of nuclear physics when radioactivity was first discovered by the
Curies: The science behind it was be sound, yet any benefit to mankind was
overshadowed by the cottage industry selling radioactive snake oil for a long
time before the mania died down. And people died when basic precautious were
not taken.

It may work down the road and it may not, but right now all I see is woo in
every direction.

~~~
aedron
So annoying to see triumphant declarations of victory of bitcoin, based solely
on the price increasing.

Speaking as a bitcoin owner and proponent, there is zero (actually negative)
market uptake of bitcoin as a payment platform (which I happen to believe is
bitcoin's primary use case). This is because no work has gone into scaling up
transaction throughput, which has predictably suffered as a result of
increased mainstream interest (even with practically no merchant adoption).

The narrative has shifted recently that bitcoin is now a 'settlement layer',
only that makes the situation even worse, because there is no 'payment layer'
on top of it, only pie-in-the-sky designs.

So yeah, I don't share in the exhilaration over $4000+ bitcoins.

~~~
dreit1
There is a sense of victory because millions of people view Bitcoin as a good
place to park their money over fiat currency.

Unfortunately no one runs news stories on the growth of unique addresses in
the bitcoin network

~~~
TeMPOraL
Do they now? I feel people still see Bitcoin mostly as a high-risk/high-reward
no-barriers-to-entry alternative to the stock market.

~~~
speedplane
I understand buying and selling BTC-backed securities that are backed by a
trustworthy bank... but keeping your life savings on your laptop is just cray
cray.

~~~
marcosscriven
I read a story of people losing a huge amount to theft:
[https://medium.com/@CodyBrown/how-to-lose-8k-worth-of-
bitcoi...](https://medium.com/@CodyBrown/how-to-lose-8k-worth-of-bitcoin-
in-15-minutes-with-verizon-and-coinbase-com-ba75fb8d0bac)

------
phasecode
Why does it seem like more and more sites are requesting permissions to send
notifications...makes it hard to consider this a "trustworthy" site when the
first thing you're trying to do is ask for permissions to send notifications.

~~~
tobyhinloopen
Yeah I never accept that. Who would?

~~~
pvdebbe
I don't even know what it means for a website to send a notification. Does it
mean a flashing tab in firefox?

~~~
scarlac
Depends on your OS. For Chrome on macOS, it'll show a chrome-styled square box
with an icon and a piece of text in the upper right hand corner, kinda like
macOS notifications (but they look nothing like it). In general, web
notifications (can) work the same way they do on your smart phone. They can
arrive from an active tab as well as from a background service.

Safari (on macOS) will use the native macOS notification system to display
notifications AFAIR. I have no idea what IE on Windows does.

~~~
matt-attack
But in either case the browser has to be running I’m assuming? Seems kinda
flawed.

~~~
spoiler
JS service workers allow a JavaScript thread to run in the background while
the browser chrome (the window) is closed. So, in theory, the browser doesn't
need to be open. Also, notifications can be useful with an open browser too
(or, multiple tabs with a tab in the background for example)

------
ftw45
No, it didn't die and it won't die anytime soon. But dollars, Euro's and all
other physical currencies are about to die(soon). Why? Because just like the
change from gold and silver coins to almost worthless nickel, this type of
currency creates a whole new universe of possibilities.

With nickel and paper money, banks can create as much cash as they like, it's
virtual value, not real. Crypto currency is just like that, but more secure
and not (yet) controlled by the banks. And again you see the allegations that
crypto would be a pyramid scheme etc.. Do people notice that our actual
economy/financial-system is a very proven pyramid scheme? All money flows to
the rich. And especially those people in power now, are getting a little
nervous seeing they might lose some control.

Crypto currencies can be a boon for humanity, unless governments are going to
criminalize it and only allow banks to use the technology.

~~~
SCdF
> But dollars, Euro's and all other physical currencies are about to
> die(soon).

Are you seriously suggesting that in 10 years there will no longer any
physical currencies? Or is soon 50 years? Or 100 years? Can you give a
concrete vision for how that would work?

> banks can create as much cash as they like, it's virtual value, not real.

No they can't? The government can, but not arbitrary banks.

> And again you see the allegations that crypto would be a pyramid scheme etc

As I understand it, it's more that it's incredibly unstable, and can be taken
over by whomever has the most cpus at any given moment.

I'm sure crypto currencies have lots of uses, especially for more cases around
the edge (people in countries with dodgy governments etc), but I can't
understand what value it provides outside of that.

I am no expert. At the moment though, if I want to buy a widget online, and I
have visa or bitcoin as my options, my choices are either to trust visa, the
company that is bound by at least some regulation, has a physical office and
PR that can be damaged, or trust a random bitcoin conversion service which is
not bound by any regulation, could literally just disappear with my money,
could record an internal log of every single transaction and tell it to third
parties etc… and then disappear into the night if something went wrong.

Maybe this is all incorrect. But this is the perception that I and others
have. So it's either an actual issue, or an issue of bad marketing.

~~~
drcross
>Are you seriously suggesting that in 10 years there will no longer any
physical currencies? Or is soon 50 years? Or 100 years? Can you give a
concrete vision for how that would work?

Physical currency is already less than 10% of currency.

>As I understand it, it's more that it's incredibly unstable, and can be taken
over by whomever has the most cpus at any given moment.

Stability decreases as value stored in it increases. You can't bootstrap a
global decentralised currency without some growing pains. The thing about
bitcoin is that is constantly crashes _upwards_.

>I'm sure crypto currencies have lots of uses, especially for more cases
around the edge (people in countries with dodgy governments etc), but I can't
understand what value it provides outside of that.

It prevents fraud from Governments. Instead of allowing them to print money
when they want, they can't. It allows for global transactions in minutes, 24
hours a day (every day) for far lower transaction fees. It allows an internet
of money.

>or trust a random bitcoin conversion service which is not bound by any
regulation

You are mixing up a currency with a payment merchant. There's no reason that
Visa wouldn't be able to use Bitcoin and charge you like it currently does.

~~~
SCdF
> Physical currency is already less than 10% of currency.

I got my terminology wrong here. I didn't mean physical currency like notes or
whatever, I really just meant currencies backed by a government, £/USD etc.

> It prevents fraud from Governments

Doesn't it just replace it with another form of fraud, but this one without
any ability to democratically replace it? Specifically, consensus algorithms
that fall over if you manage to own enough computing power?

> You are mixing up a currency with a payment merchant.

Sorry, you're right. As someone who has tried to learn about bitcoin et al and
never seen the point, the fact that I have to trust another payment provider
for no obvious benefit is where I lose interest.

Presumably in the future that won't be the case.

------
paxpelus
Many people on HN are so negative in bitcoin that it seems that they are
focused on the tree instead of the forest. This technology can solve the main
problem human society faces and this is corruption. Human greed is what keeps
bitcoin alive but this is not a bug, it is a feature.

~~~
ship_it
To be honest, Bitcoin in no way does solve corruption. Actually, Bitcoin in
current state can only increase corruption in society by giving a sense of
anonymity. Political corruption on other hand, might be solved through it, but
thats the case we are left to see.

~~~
knocte
Maybe the OP refers to corruption as two political/financial practices: QE and
fractional reserve banking.

~~~
lawlessone
>QE and fractional reserve banking.

Those are features.

~~~
knocte
Nope, those are the main bugs of our current system.

------
firefoxd
I think bitcoin is a lot like Snapchat. A lot of people dismiss it because it
doesn't make total sense. But those who do, are trying to work with it.

Yes, it may die next week. But next week may also bring another reason to
stick with it.

Even if it dies, we already had a taste of it, what are we gonna do? Not try
again?

------
WheelsAtLarge
The reality is that bitcoin has the first mover advantage. Any other virtual
currency has a big mountain to climb to catch up to it.

100 years from now bitcoin will be around since there is no one entity that
defines it and control it. What the community has shown is that they are
willing to adapt to the situation. Right now bitcoin has problems but as time
moves the code will be modified. What's happening now is that bitcoin is being
locked into people's mind as a currency with real value. Whether one can
justify it or not is irrelevant. As long as one person is willing to trade
goods and services for it will survive. No one throws away a stack of money if
they can help it. The community will not let bitcoin die.

The mistake people make is that all the current bitcoin constraints are locked
forever. I had the same idea but I finally realized that it is not true. The
currency is defined by code and code can be changed. It's very hard to change
since the majority of the community has to agree but its possible and people
will find a way to keep it going.

One way to think about bitcoin's future is to look at what software was like
40 years ago and then look at what it looks like today. There's a big
difference. Bitcoin still has a long way to go before it can be defined as a
mature technology. I have no doubt that what we call bitcoin now will not be
what we call bit coin 40 years from now. It will evolve in to the currency and
store of value people are hoping it should be.

No, bitcoin is not dead.

~~~
speedplane
> What's happening now is that bitcoin is being locked into people's mind as a
> currency with real value.

I'm not certain that's true. Most of the trading in bitcoin is based on
speculation that it'll rise in value, and secondly, that'll become more
commonplace. Currently, it's not a useful (or usable) form of currency for the
vast majority of the planet. So there's no value backing it (yet).

The true test is in X many years, whether BitCoin will be used as actual
currency, in which case the value will keep climbing, or whether it'll remain
a speculative investment, in which case it'll crash.

I learned about bitcoin when it was less than a dollar, and I'd love to
invest, but it's just gambling.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
Keep in mind that there people growing up now that will think of bitcoin as
having true value. Bitcoin will not be a thing that suddenly appeared in the
world as it did for us. So they will be more comfortable using it. They will
just think of it as another monetary asset. The boom and bust aspect will
slowly disappear. One of the problems with it is the lack of things you can
buy with it. As more people get used to it as a currency the more goods that
will be available for purchase. Then we'll know what the true exchange value
of it will be. Right now the value is basically guessing and it's driven by
greed and fear. That will change. Chase's CEO might be right that it's a
bubble but that does not mean it does not have value. The reality is that we
don't know its value as a monetary unit. It might go to a million or crash to
1. No one knows. As the problems with it get ironed out we'll find out.

People forget that the only reason fiat currency has value is because you can
always find someone that will exchange it for goods or services. It has no
value on its own. It's a believe in people's mind. Bitcoin will have that same
trust in time. One big advantage over fiat is that the community is world wide
and it's not locked to one country. I can see a country disappearing from the
world but by definition bitcoin is a world monetary unit that's slowly
embedding itself into the world psychic.

I truthfully believe that in less than 40 years it will as common as the
dollar is now. My only fear is that the world's countries will fear it and
outlaw it. That doesn't mean it will go away but might slow it down.

BTW, I was a anti bitcoin guy but after a little analysis I've come around.

------
wruza
I assume my question will be lost in comments, but I'll ask it anyway here,
because it seems to be very interesting side of cryptocoins. My boss is
somewhat educated in economy and routinely tries to model the bitcoin
economics. He came to the conclusion that the amount of bitcoin turnover is
supported not by regular players, but by country-sized economies like China
and probably few other states. Most of capitalization comes from really,
really huge amount of money, because there is not so much many money even in
criminal activities like drugs, trafficking, arms, etc. Bitcoin is alive not
because of blockchain mining and not because of human's freedom, but because
it enables to move capitals and gray industry volumes across the borders with
no usually defined penalty.

If that is true, there is strict confidence that it's not going away in near
future. But that also means that it is surely regulated or at least heavily
monitored. Or it leads all of us to such economical crashes that world never
seen (and can't just deal with). Idk where it goes and how one evaluates it,
do you have any ideas on that hypothesis?

The basic idea that regular people use it for freedom and security is parallel
to this one, and is of no interest since the volume of it in ordinary
currencies is too low to consider.

------
harwoodleon
A balanced view is that all the articles hold some substance. But the
technology is more at threat through its own community than any external
force.

One question that I don't really understand is how can the total supply of BTC
serve its own growth.

If the market cap reaches the same value as gold for example - how long before
one Satoshi becomes too large a divisible unit to be useful?

Can you divide Satoshi?

~~~
lokedhs
Isn't the greater problem that the total market cap of bitcoin is always going
to be 22 million? In other words, the single bitcoin I own will always be
worth 1/22M of the entire market cap, regardless of how much it's used.

And I only own one. There are lost of people out there who owns thousands of
bitcoins. 1000 bitcoins is 1/22k of the entire market cap.

How could this be sustainable?

~~~
tete
Compare this with the global economy. The number of Bitcoin users is still
increasing, so the wealth is distributing.

If you compare that with the global economy, the wealth is accumulating at a
single point.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/Share_of_weal...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/Share_of_wealth_globally.png)

I do however agree that's a problem.

I also think that gold and precious metals are doing good, despite being
(currently, essentially) limited.

~~~
ianai
You actually can’t compare bitcoin to gold and silver. The stock of gold and
silver may appear constant,but th supply does actually grow. The supply grows
in relation to their demand and current market factors. Bitco8n does have a
hard limit. They’re not alike.

------
kbody
I am mostly commenting on a big amount of comments deeming Bitcoin a failure
or similar.

The Bitcoin of ~a month ago is not the same as today, that's a big power, to
have upgradable decentralized money. Certainly Bitcoin is not perfect, but the
good thing is that there are a lot of talented engineers working on the issues
and new features, the majority of them even before Bitcoin really was worth
much. But having it being valuable at the moment also acts a huge security/bug
bounty and an incentive for more people work on it and make it better.

= All about the price

Even if the price crashes horribly, unless there's a unrecoverable
catastrophe, it will keep on going because there's an ecosystem around it and
clear price-independent advantages. Using Bitwage to be paid in Bitcoins and
avoid crazy cross-border/currency fees of banks will be still an advantage no
matter the price of bitcoin. Same goes for prepaid/debit cards backed with
bitcoin. Doing commerce painlessly without crazy procedures with Africa &
Latin America or wherever. Being immune to capital controls and asset
seizures.

= Hype

I hate the hype everywhere, but it's not the tech's fault so many cluessless &
irrelevant gold-diggers try to ride the wave, just with a lot of things you
can just ignore. If you follow the devs, they are pragmatic and don't try to
pump-up things like most altcoins do, that's something I greatly respect.

Anyway, there's a long way to go, but just because there are flaws at the
moment, it doesn't mean it's dead, it's a live technology. Being pragmatic is
key, Bitcoin is not some Utopian perfect invention, but it's good enough for a
lot of things at the moment and I see it getting better every year.

Bitcoin offers true permissionless commerce and ownership of wealth and it now
might not make any difference in a lot of democratic countries until it begins
to do.

------
mirimir
I've followed digital currencies for many years. As I recall, there were two
libertarian threads that culminated in Bitcoin. One focused on evils of fiat
currencies and central banking. The other focused on rights to private
commerce, without state interference. And the potential to starve states, by
making taxation impossible.

Bitcoin handles both pretty well, in my experience. Except for the
transaction-scaling problems, anyway. Price fluctuations just reflect its
miniscule capitalization, and movements of capricious investors. When Bitcoin,
or more likely, one of its descendants, reaches fiat-currency scale, that
won't be so problematic.

~~~
lawlessone
Thing is, with a public ledger bitcoin is only partially private.

~~~
mirimir
The ledger is public, to avoid double spending and other stuff. But addresses
and wallets can be as unlinked and anonymous as you like.

------
geraldbauer
My humble analysis why blockchains (and bitcoins on the blockchain) are like
tulips. Like tulips you can always grow more and with blockchains you can
always build / start your own blockchains. Building your own blockchain lets
say in Ruby is about 20 lines of code. See the point? It's easy (not rocket
sience ;-). See the [Awesome
Blockchains]([https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-
blockchains](https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains)) for more
(about building your own blockchains in Python, JavaScript, Ruby, etc.) in
minutes.

~~~
tashoecraft
My humble analysis why paper currencies are like tulips. Like tulips you can
always grow more, and with paper currencies you can always print/start your
own. Creating a paper currency on say, paper, takes only 1 minute. See the
point? It's easy (not rocket science ;).

My humble analysis of why startups are like tulips. Like tulips you can grow
more, and with startups you can always build/start your own. Building your own
startup is easy, just think of an idea, say Uber for toilet paper, and it
takes only 1 minute. See the point? It's easy (not rocket science ;-).

Sorry but I had too, the easiness to _create_ something has no barring on how
hard it is to make it a globally used system. Whether you can create a new
blockchain in minutes is completely irrelevant and offers nothing to the
discussion.

------
steeleduncan
One of the early obituaries on that list mentions that the finite supply of
bitcoins, combined with lost crypto keys and hoarding will eventually lead to
a situation where there aren't enough coins for it to be a viable currency.

Clearly, in that situation you can subdivide coins as far as required, so it
isn't a risk to bitcoin as such. However, I have often wondered if there is
any estimate of the "effective supply", that is to say ("minted coins" \-
"coins where the private key is lost")?

~~~
nkkollaw
I bet a lot of people lose their private key, but I bet that if there's
anything in your wallet you'll be careful.

So, there are probably a lot of private keys that get lost, but not a lot of
bitcoins.

~~~
steeleduncan
Pragmatically, that is probably true, and bitcoin won't last for millenia
either (e.g. if sha-256 has a weakness, or quantum computers render ecdsa
useless).

Nevertherless, there is >0 probability of multiple harddrive failure, or much
greater probability of incompetence, so there must be some rate of loss of
bitcoins over time, and i'd be interested to know what that is.

I think it is interesting because once the speculation dies down, the market
will set the fiat price of bitcoins according to the actual supply and demand,
so this attrition has a real affect. For example, imagine if the coins
believed to belong to Satoshi (1 million coins out of the current 16.5
million) were to move. The mere knowledge that they can be moved would
increase the effective supply by 6-7% overnight, the effect could be dramatic.

------
dmitriid
In any other world a change of 30-40% _per day_ in any direction would be a
cause of concern.

Bitcoin enjoys a reality distortion field that keeps it inflated beyond any
reason. It's not _that_ different from any other coin on these lists:
[http://deadcoins.com](http://deadcoins.com),
[https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-
Graveyard/](https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/)

~~~
fsniper
In what sense this lists, and bitcoin are different from these?
[https://trader2trader.co/2012/11/28/list-of-590-dead-
currenc...](https://trader2trader.co/2012/11/28/list-of-590-dead-currencies-
demonetized-r-i-p/)

~~~
notahacker
Well for a start half those dead currencies were replaced with new currencies
issued by a different authority and their holders compensated, often at
parity.

As for the ones that collapsed, they tended to involve dictators and wars
rather than people simply deciding they weren't worth wasting time on because
nobody was interested in exchanging them.

~~~
cesarb
> Well for a start half those dead currencies were replaced with new
> currencies issued by a different authority and their holders compensated,
> often at parity.

Indeed, I see on that list the several Brazilian Cruzeiro/Cruzado currencies.
The only difference between each of these and their predecessor is that three
zeros were cut: if you had 1000 of the old currency, you had 1 of the new
currency. The last of these was replaced by the current currency (Real) at a
slightly different rate (2750 instead of 1000). That is, it was more like a
renaming than the currency actually dying and being replaced. And there was no
different authority in these cases, they were all issued by the same central
bank.

------
dcchambers
Bitcoin, as it was originally envisioned, IS dead. It's not a replacement for
cash. It's prohibitively expensive to use for regular transactions. It's also
a colossal waste of energy. It's become similar to stocks/ETFs...something
people trade/speculate on/gamble with to try and get rich.

When I had bitcoin first explained to me in ~2011 I was told that it would
save us all from the evil that are banks, transaction fees, and the
government. Six years later, bitcoin has made a few people very, very wealthy,
but us laymen still can't use it as a cash replacement and the people with
decision making power in the Bitcoin community are not interested in ever
letting that happen.

It was a fun experiment, but it failed its primary goal.

------
giancarlostoro
There's way too much for me to know it all about Bitcoin but say I want to
learn more about building a blockchain, is there a spec for just that from the
Bitcoin spec, or is the spec all inclusive? I have to admit I never read the
original paper(s) I just mined BTC back in 2009 when I (somehow) heard about
it, and have left it alone since. Funnily enough I was ignoring it all, till I
realized my mining pool had all my BTC so I transfered it out (nothing
significant enough, but just enough to allow me to peek curiosity again). I'm
curious if anyone has designed their own Blockchain based tech that is focused
on that aspect that has several industries interested in Blockchain
technology. Minus any Bitcoin specifics that is.

------
nkkollaw
It's almost as if writing about Bitcoin crashing sold newspapers/pageviews...

Weird.

~~~
speedplane
Journalists discussing BitCoin is in some ways a form of mining BitCoins.

~~~
nkkollaw
...and undermining journalism.

------
jlebrech
I wish it went down to $80 again so I can invest. really missed the boat.

~~~
kabes
You can still buy $80 worth of BTC and you'd have the same chances you had 3
years ago.

------
vinchuco
The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the sun
will rise tomorrow.

My point is not to confirm or deny the bear or the bull, but to point out this
is simply noise.

When are market news reliable indicators of supply and demand?

~~~
cesarb
> The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the
> sun will rise tomorrow.

If the sun has risen at least 166 times, the probability that it will rise
tomorrow is at least 99.4% according to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_problem)

------
aorth
Original is behind a paywall on Wall Street Journal:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-wild-ride-shows-the-
tr...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-wild-ride-shows-the-truth-it-is-
probably-worth-zero-1505760623)

~~~
cottsak
and some kind of page bug that hangs my Chrome tab

~~~
cottsak
or was that my ad blocker.. ?

~~~
Roshie5u
Yeah, I recently saw anti-adblock script trying to look like a browser error
and I totally fell for it. Only i didn't read the message and after few F5 i
just closed the tab.

------
mirimir
That's a great compilation. Definitely worth a bookmark.

------
magma17
obviously FUD to keep poor people poor.

------
rajadigopula
Most analysts from traditional mindset making the mistake of analyzing bitcoin
like they do stocks or fiat currency which can rely on a country's economy or
political scenarios or a company's decisions to make profits. But, Bitcoin is
like anything they have seen before or learnt in their college. Most
volatility corresponds to news of it's survival at the moment and due to the
reason the market is failing to agree with a fair value as no one knows it's
future but is aware of the nobility of the technology and how it skipped the
hands of any one controlling it by being decentralized. As the world keeps
adopting to it the demand is getting increased. And there is still a lot of
geographical terrain to cover.

When a traditional wall-street analyst sees a peak, he was trained to freak
out and sense it as an extreme point of the crowd's greed. And shows off his
training by telling the world that it's a bubble and it's going to burst, as
the peak is occupied mostly by greedy investors who panic on losing their
money and sells off double the speed they entered the trade. But this stands
true when the value of the instrument surpasses the intrinsic value of the
asset way too high. But with bitcoin no one knows hence majority investors
still think it cheap and keep piling up.

