
Could Bitcoin Be More Disruptive than the Internet? - freework
http://www.foxycart.com/blog/could-bitcoin-be-more-disruptive-than-the-internet#.UoGhoZR4aMQ
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lukestokes
Hey all. This is my first Hacker News comment and the first time one of my
posts got shared. Thanks for that.

Sorry the title is lame, but I went with something which would get attention
at BarCamp Nashville. Not all of them are tech savvy, so the title served its
purpose and got the talk selected.

Moving on from the title, what do you think of the content?

There are a lot of Bitcoin haters out there, but also a growing group of
supporters. From what I've seen, few informed people argue against the actual
technology while some argue about the politics or economics. To my knowledge,
we've never seen a deflationary currency (outside of some babysitter
experiment). We've never seen a store of value with no third party risk which
can be transferred anywhere in the world immediately. As for wasted energy
concerns, my understanding is the system is more efficient than the overhead
associated with ACH, Credit Card, PayPal or other networks for securing
transactions.

Either way, curious what you all think about the content. As this is my first
HN comment ever, please, be nice. :)

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jacques_chester
This is one of the more egregious Betteridge's Law violations I've seen today.

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skrebbel
For the slightly less well-informed:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines).
Notably, 'Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline
which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."'

Also, for the non-native speakers:
[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/egregious](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/egregious),
'reflecting the positive connotations of "standing out from the flock"'.

(edit: removed bitterness)

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jacques_chester
"As smart" isn't fair. "As smug" or "as familiar with a nominal rule-of-thumb"
would work better.

Edit: It always gets nominated for hyperbolic headlines. I just happened to be
the first on the scene.

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skrebbel
Agree. Took all the bitterness out.

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wonkus
No. Normals are easily pwned. You remember all those botnets that steal
normals' internets? They will now stead their bitcoin wallet instead. Normals
will lose their bitcoin to theft and never trust it again. End of story.

The only thing you accomplish with bitcoin is wasting electricity and making
global warming worse. Please stop destroying the planet.

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eof
"end of story" so so silly. this thing is 5 years old and tens of millions of
dollars of wallets have been stolen. the story is currently peaking, not
ending. the real way the story will play out is that solutions will come into
existence so the 'normals' don't get pwned as much.

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glesica
You mean like currency that is centrally controlled and physical and can be
kept nice and safe in a bank? Oh wait, already have that, people call it
"money".

Most people don't want to live in the wild west, that is a fact, and that's
why the wild west went out of existence. There will always be some people who
want to live dangerously / adventurously, but their experiences and
preferences do not generalize to the entire population.

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eof
the problem with your counter argument is that it ignores the basic,
undeniable fact: what you are referring to as "money", presumably government
fiat: euro, dollar, yen, etc.. has certain flaws that bitcoin does not (not to
say bitcoin doesn't have it own, different flaws), namely: government fiat,
historically, has always been deflated; with the vast majority of fiat
currencies eventually becoming worthless due to the government abusing the
currency or losing their power; and, contemporary "money" is subject to
restrictions, capital control laws, etc.. which _some_ people find to be too
cumbersome.

bitcoin has answer for these undeniable flaws; and besides.. no one is saying
that "the entire population" needs to do anything. bitcoin can (and at this
point, almost certainly will) exist right along side all these "real" monies
you refer to; and people can choose, or not, to use bitcoin (and part of what
is appealing to me, and likely others.. is that regardless of what any laws
say, I can still "choose" to use bitcoin even if some jurisdiction delclares
it illegal--unlike fiat.. where if the government decides i shouldn't have
access to my money they can simply shut me down with zero recourse if the
courts (or despots, depending on jurisdiction) don't see my side.

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MaysonL
Whereas bitcoin is computational fiat money.

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eof
i'm not sure fiat means what you think it means

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pmarca
Ladies and gentlemen, Hacker News 2013. Standing by to shit on every
provocative idea microseconds after posting!

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jacques_chester
Enthusiastic promoters inevitably breed equally enthusiastic critics.

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pg
You could go beyond inevitably and say reflexively. Which is exactly the
problem.

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jacques_chester
> _Which is exactly the problem._

I don't follow you.

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everettForth
Today's xkcd is relevant: [http://xkcd.com/1289/](http://xkcd.com/1289/)

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oleganza
Except Bitcoin could potentially remove a lot of war from the Earth. If it
becomes the world currency, it'll kill "deficit spending" which is used to
move billions of dollars for production of jets and bombs.

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antonius
If anything, the web provides a strong medium for bitcoin and this helps with
the buying/selling process. Bitcoin wouldn't survive without the major
benefits the web provides it.

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hkmurakami
Reminds me of people who say the internet is more disruptive than personal
computers, which in turn are more disruptive than microprocessors :P

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csense
Claim: The answer is no.

Proof: Bitcoin requires the Internet to function. Therefore, the things
disrupted by Bitcoin are a subset of the things disrupted by the Internet. The
Internet can be used for disruptive things other than Bitcoin, so the things
disrupted by Bitcoin are a _proper_ subset of the things disrupted by the
Internet.

Since the total number of things in both categories is finite, this means
fewer things are disrupted by Bitcoin than are disrupted by the Internet.

QED.

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eof
I originally thought this; but ultimately have to disagree.

Several problems:

1\. "the internet" is a pretty nebulous term. bitcoin certainly requires
computer networks, which generally require tcp/ip; but bitcoin could
technically function on a darknet, which could arguably be "not the internet".

2\. the internet relies on the power grid, which itself relies on copper wire;
which essentially, and eventually, says, by your logic, that the internet is a
subset of the things disrupted by copper mining.

now i actually agree that in the end the internet is a bigger disruptor; but i
don't think your proof holds.

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csense
The Internet could have happened on a planet without copper. Could Bitcoin
have happened on a planet without the internet?

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l0gicpath
It's certainly disrupting a lot of people's peaceful nights with all the
stories that are showing up of exchanges disappearing or supposedly being
hacked. But then again, I'd presume given the nature of its economy, you'd
have to be a fool if you didn't consider these outcomes possible.

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adrianwaj
The correct heading would be: "Could Bitcoin be the most disruptive thing to
arrive on the internet since the web?"

Rather than look at bitcoin, best to look at the websites that it brings
about, and the ones it minimizes -- especially the ones that don't embrace
bitcoins, such as banks. You could also measure it as a proportion of internet
traffic vs web traffic. The key is that websites use bitcoins, and to take
that into account.

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jedunnigan
I saw this earlier, I still don't get the logic of the conclusion. Can you
really qualify technology B (Bitcoin) as being more disruptive then technology
A (internet) when B requires A to operate?

Maybe if you look at the technologies in the vacuum in which they were
created, but in reality you'd want to contextualize them as extensions of one
another, otherwise you get a biased picture of their disruptivity.

edit:sp

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mtgx
You make a great point, which is probably true. By that logic the Internet is
also less a revolution than transistors, which I guess it is. Unless we talk
about "hidden" vs "obvious" revolutions. Because people don't really know
about "transistors", but they do about the Internet, and "use it" every day
knowing they do so. So in a way, you could use the argument that the Internet
is a more obvious and practical revolution (closer to the end user). Bitcoin
could be the same vs the Internet, although I don't think we really need to
qualify them like that. They could both be very important.

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jacques_chester
I suppose this means that the question is whether you pay kudos to the
immediate thing or to its necessary causes.

We can follow this line back to arguing that nothing is more disruptive than
the Big Bang.

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jedunnigan
>We can follow this line back to arguing that nothing is more disruptive than
the Big Bang.

Well yes, but the Big Bang was not a discovery/invention made by man.
Discovery of how to start a fire would probably be a good candidate for the
most disruptive tech.

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jacques_chester
Part of the difficulty is that many discoveries and inventions reach the
threshold of being necessary causes of the modern world. Once you pass that
threshold, how do you rank them? The removal of _any_ of them (eg fire, the
wheel, mathematics, steel, steam ...) renders the current world impossible.

Are there degrees of impossibility? I'm not sure. We may be looking at a
partially-ordered set here.

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Zarathust
Internet allowed the creation of things such as Bitcoin. Btc is only making
the Internet impact larger, if such a thing is ever measured and matters at
all.

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Fomite
No.

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a3voices
More disruptive than the Internet? No. More disruptive than Facebook? Yes.

