
The first Bitcoin post on HN - neotrinity
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852
======
cs702
That four-year-old submission has just two comments: one expressing doubt, one
expressing optimism.

Interestingly, despite growing worldwide adoption of Bitcoin, comments about
it on HN continue to be more or less evenly split between doubters and
optimists. And I wouldn't be surprised if comments to _this_ submission are
evenly split between those same two camps.

No amount of evidence or reasoning seems to persuade either camp to change its
views!

~~~
sentenza
But it is not that black and white, is it?

While it is quite clear that Bitcoin has "value" as long as people are willing
to trade it (i.e., indefinitely), there is still no reason to assume that it
will ever stop having these extreme fluctuations.

To the contrary, I'd say that, as time progresses, we observe Bitcoin having
the same problems that the gold standard had, mixed with an additional
proneness to speculation.

~~~
Joeri
The value of a currency lies entirely in the perception of that value. I don't
consider bitcoin different from a traditional currency, except that its rate
of production is known in advance. It will keep having value because by now
enough people think it does.

~~~
this_user
Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the
sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value whatsoever.
Traditional currencies, on the other hand, are at least fractionally backed by
(usually) gold and government bonds which in itself are backed by a
government's ability to tax its citizens.

There is also a second problem in that BTC is deflationary by design.
Deflation leads to hoarding of currency units while reducing the velocity of
money and suffocating the economy. Most people will agree that deflation is
the worst thing that can happen to an economy which is why central banks will
do everything in their power to avert it. It is hard to imagine how a stable
Bitcoin economy could develop under these inherently flawed circumstances.

~~~
digitailor
>> _Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the
sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value
whatsoever._

It's backed by the tremendous amount of electricity required to run the
transaction processing network (ie. "mining"). Remember this is the world's
largest distributed supercomputer.

BTC is a proxy for electricity, that's why mining equipment ended up at ASICs
so quickly- in mining, less W = more $$. By a lot.

The USD is currently backed by absolutely nothing. There is no way we could
print the $2000 trillion dollars[1] of derivatives now in existence. You
couldn't cash out all of it or even too much of it.

The USD is "fake". And high finance is not ignorant to this fact, at all.

[1] Or more, no one actually knows. Goldman Sachs would have the best idea of
this.

~~~
jk4930
The costs of producing BTC or USD are not their backings. You can't exchange
your BTC back into electricity.

The USD (and usually most other currencies) aims to be indirectly backed by
the corresponding amount of goods they represent within the currency zone and
their legal status.

BTC isn't even indirectly backed. It just exists. And that's okay for its
purpose.

~~~
moocowduckquack
_You can 't exchange your BTC back into electricity._

Huh? Why not? Surely you could just buy some solar panels with bitcoins, or
convert them to another currency and then buy electricity from the grid.

~~~
DanBC
That's a tortuously inefficient way to get electricity.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Surely it is just what bitcoin miners have been doing anyway, the difference
remaining being their profit.

------
applecore
Here's the first popular post (with 20+ comments) referencing Bitcoin on HN:

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670)
\- _Bitcoin P2P Cryptocurrency | 1217 days ago | 24 comments_

Some other early, popular posts about Bitcoin:

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1942708](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1942708)
\- _Imagine your computer as a wallet full of Bitcoins| 1088 days ago | 36
comments_

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998144](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998144)
\- _How to Get Started with Bitcoins | 1072 days ago | 47 comments_

~~~
easy_rider
I love the comments by illumin8 in that first one. It describes the seemingly
only legitimate threat at the moment for the future of BitCoin (long term).
I'm suspect that governments are now probably more interested in the
'monitoring' of the system rather than governing. In the case of Silk Road,
feds seem to have done their homework when it comes to tracking down the
money. But they cracked down SR, and BitCoin dipped slightly, and the
crackdown actually seemed to boost confidence in the currency. There are
points to be made I think that governing entities would want to keep a system
like BC alive (for a while), solely because it would be used as probable
platform for money laundering. However if indeed, they are not confident that
they can track down on money, or will be able to in the future, they would
surely want to shut down BTC as soon as possible. In the age of the war on
terrorism, organized crime syndicates and drug cartels. One could think of
many reasons to give when opting for that solution.

I might be considered a conspiracy nut: But "decentralized, anonymous, crypto"
\+ "currency" sounds like a contradictio in terminis to me. Especially the
"anonymous" part.

~~~
zymhan
It may sound like a contradiction to you, but that certainly doesn't mean that
anonymous currency has to be a contradiction.

------
pg
How much money would you have made if you'd bought $1000 worth of bitcoin on
that day?

~~~
jeffasinger
This was posted in May 2009. On October 5th, 2009, $1 = 1,309.03 BTC [1], so
you'd have bought about 1.3 million bitcoin. Which means you'd have over $500M
dollars in Bitcoin. I bet that spending $1000 back then would have
considerably changed the exchange rate though, and selling $500M now would
definitely aversely affect the economy.

1: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History)

~~~
cfinke
_so you 'd have bought about 1.3 million bitcoin_

There weren't even 1.3 million bitcoin in circulation at that point [1]. If
you bought every bitcoin, you could have accumulated about 1.1 million BTC for
$850.

[1] [http://blockchain.info/charts/total-
bitcoins?timespan=all&sh...](http://blockchain.info/charts/total-
bitcoins?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=)

~~~
Steko
I see claims like this all the time but it's important to realize that the
price you can buy a small amount of something is generally the lowest price
any seller will take, not a price all sellers will take.

~~~
codebolt
This holds for financial markets, but I can think of several examples where
the opposite is true (i.e. bulk buying gets you a better price).

------
r3m6
One of my favorite quotes (forgot by whom): " Great ideas are fragile at birth
because they are indistinguishable from crazy stupid ideas."

~~~
plainOldText
Yeah, I think the lesson I've learned from not embracing Bitcoin sooner, is
that I should spend more time analyzing a novel idea, and not be dismissive of
one that might seem crazy initially. However, with all the information flow
these days, it's kinda hard, but sure worth the effort.

~~~
bottled_poe
Especially when the stupid ideas far outnumber the great ones. But hey, if you
think you have excellent judgment, perhaps it is worth your time.

------
pearjuice
"Why did you buy a bitcoin?" "Because I don't want to enter too late!"

The absolute problem with bitcoin is, is that it cannot be used as a currency.
If one bitcoin can buy you one "x" today, two "x" tomorrow and in a week only
half an "x", what is the point of spending it? Its value fluctuates way too
much and that's why so many people are getting on board. They want to be in
the elevation towards another all time high.

I am not saying that Bitcoin does not have a future, but key in this future is
that all those investors and startups on the get-rich-quick-with-a-very-high-
potential-to-loose-a-lot-scheme have to abandon ship. The value of Bitcoin has
to _stabilize_ because at this point it is not a viable currency. Currently it
is just an asset so many people are interested in, which drives the price only
further up.

As soon as it stabilizes or drops we will see what it will d o with Bitcoin
its popularity and acceptance for other goods and services.

~~~
DevX101
When don't you spend all of your USD money today since inflation will make it
worth less tomorrow?

~~~
thesimpsons1022
to be fair, that comparison isn't too valid. Look at the wild yearly
fluctuations in bitcoin, compared to the steady rate(3 percent) of inflation
of the dollar throughout history. On the other hand, OP is wrong because
bitcoins will eventually slow down massively in production(almost to a halt)
and stabilize at that point.

~~~
pearjuice
>OP is wrong because bitcoins will eventually slow down massively in
production(almost to a halt) and stabilize at that point

Eh, quite the contrary. If this rate of growth continues and production
becomes 0, it will not stabilize at all because demand increases yet supply
stays constant. Which results in the existing supply getting worth even more.
This will make it an hoarded asset even more _still_ not able to function as a
currency as fluctuation will still be too drastic.

~~~
thesimpsons1022
that is debatable, as is anything economic. I as a Keynesian would agree with
you but Austrians would disagree.

------
vinhboy
It's really not fair to dig these things up and call people haters for
doubting it.

I bet the list of failed companies and "haters" who called it accurately is
much much bigger.

Although I do like the nostalgic value of these posts.

~~~
crassus
Bitcoin could revolutionize the foundation of the world's economy with a piece
of software some guy wrote in a few months. You'd figure that would be the
kind of thing that hackers would get excited about, as opposed to social-
sharing startups (which are just a replacement for reality TV)

~~~
Nursie
I, for one, will be very sad if it does revolutionise the foundation of any
economies, because deflation is bad and creating a new aristocracy from a few
BTC hoarders is also not something I consider useful.

Crypto-currency good. Bitcoin not so much.

~~~
Houshalter
Some people getting rich of bitcoin doesn't make everyone else worse off. And
a "new aristocracy" is a huge stretch. A few people will get rich off it but
not like that.

And the value of bitcoin won't deflate forever. Eventually the price will
stabilize.

~~~
Nursie
If you view a change in currency as fundamentally pretty useless, then yes,
giving massive amounts of financial control of resources and labour(which is
what money represents) to people with BTC hoarded does indeed take away from
others.

And if BTC were to become (for instance) a primary currency for a country, and
that country were to experience economic growth, then deflation must
necessarily continue.

~~~
Houshalter
>If you view a change in currency as fundamentally pretty useless, then yes,
giving massive amounts of financial control of resources and labour(which is
what money represents) to people with BTC hoarded does indeed take away from
others.

People are voluntarily paying them for their coins because they, for whatever
reason, value them. You can say that's silly but it's not like you are being
forced to buy bitcoins or anything.

>And if BTC were to become (for instance) a primary currency for a country,
and that country were to experience economic growth, then deflation must
necessarily continue.

Isn't the same true for any other finite resource? Everything will
deflate/increase in value relative to rest of the economy.

~~~
Nursie
>> People are voluntarily paying them for their coins because they, for
whatever reason, value them. You can say that's silly but it's not like you
are being forced to buy bitcoins or anything.

I'm saying it would be a bad idea to adopt as a de-facto currency, that's all.

>> Isn't the same true for any other finite resource? Everything will
deflate/increase in value relative to rest of the economy.

Currency isn't and shouldn't be a resource, it's a medium of exchange. If BTC
is a resource then cool, but lets stop pushing it as a currency.

~~~
Houshalter
>Currency isn't and shouldn't be a resource, it's a medium of exchange.

Well why not? A medium of exchange is a resource. There are exchanges and
markets for currencies, people speculate on them, etc. They are definitely a
resource.

~~~
yen223
Resource in the sense that the item in question has some _inherent_ value. If
I can't exchange Bitcoin for anything, then Bitcoins have zero value. If I
can't exchange rice for anything, that rice will still have some value to me.

It's important to realize that all currencies, including Bitcoin and the USD,
are only as valuable as the stuff I can buy with them. There's no point in
having a million dollars, if I can't buy anything with it. That makes
currencies distinctly different from "resources".

------
steven2012
Can someone explain how the idea that every single transaction has to be
stored in the ledger is scalable? Won't wider adoption mean that the ledger
grows even quicker, to the point where it makes using btc harder and harder?

~~~
kaoD
There are plans to implement Merkle tree pruning.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Storage](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Storage)

------
pinaceae
and let's revisit this discussion 5 years from now.

right now there is so much fluctutation within BC it might as well be tulips.
maybe it will become a stable currency, maybe it won't.

~~~
mpg33
Hate when people use the tulips comparison. The basic protocol of bitcoin that
allows people to send value anywhere in the world and solves the double spend
problem must have some value unto itself. I don't know it's worth $0.10, $100,
or $1000000 per bitcoin to use the protocol but to compare it to a plant seems
kinda ridiculous.

~~~
TomGullen
The easiest way to refute the tulip argument is simply point out Bitcoins
total money stock is fixed at 21 million units, wheras you can plant new
tulips at will. (The skill/time required to do this is irrelevant to the
point).

~~~
gwern
Actually, the interesting thing about tulips is that that's _not_ true. I
don't mean to single you out here, but this is a demonstration of how most
people know jack shit about Tulipomania (even though many of them are
perfectly willing to bloviate about it and compare Bitcoin to tulips).

One of the revolutionary things about tulips at that time was that the unique
patterns caused by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip-
breaking_virus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip-breaking_virus) were only
_partially_ inherited: after a few generations, the bulbs are too weakened to
survive, and the particular pattern disappears permanently, no matter how
lovely and beautiful it was.

If you read up on a book about Tulipomania, you'll notice there are no
contemporary photos of tulips like Semper Augustus. Because Semper Augustus no
longer exists.

So you can 'plant new tulips at will' the same way you can 'paint new
Rembrandts at will' ie. slap some paint on a canvas and hope it looks vaguely
similar and that's the best you can do, since you can never ever get another
real Rembrandt or real Semper Augustus.

~~~
TomGullen
Interesting thanks, what's a good book to read abou it all then?

~~~
gwern
If you just want some correctives to the popular mythology of Tulipomania, you
can start with _Famous First Bubbles_: quick read which demolishes a lot of
the platitudes and simplifications, and covers the virus & other issues.

~~~
TomGullen
Thanks, have ordered it!

------
crystaln
Likely the best investment opportunity ever posted on HN, possibly in the
history of the world, for simple buy/mine and hold ROI.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
~40,000,000% profit over 4 years? Yeah, not too shabby.

------
lcasela
>Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that
anyone is going to have any faith in this currency.

Hah!

~~~
marvin
People should be required to place a monetary bet whenever they make a bold
claim in public. I think we would see less comments like this one.

~~~
joosters
For all we know, the comment might be proven right next week/month/year. It's
just right _now_ that it's plainly wrong.

How much is your monetary bet then?

~~~
smtddr
Which brings us to an interesting question... how long does something have to
go before we consider it a success even if it fails later? When something
comes along to defeat Facebook, are we going to call Facebook a failure? Was
Myspace a failure?[1] The fact that Bitcoin has ran this long, given some huge
payouts and legit(albeit small) businesses accept it as payment, I'm almost
ready to call bitcoin a success even if it fails 6 months from now.

1\.
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/aug/13/observerre...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/aug/13/observerreview.onlinesupplement)
Myspace listed among the top 15 most influential sites.

~~~
joosters
And if/when it fails, Bitcoin can reasonably claim to have shown that
distributed computer-based currencies are feasible and people will use them.
Even if a successor comes along and solves Bitcoin's problems, you could
justifiably say that it only succeeded because of Bitcoin.

------
josephagoss
It just shows that many people are quick to be negative and for some reason
unwilling to consider alternative possibilities.

Remember that negative and critical viewpoints are normally perceived to be
from the the more intelligent person. Unfortunately people who are more
accepting of new and novel ideas can at first seem like the less intelligent
of the group. (Probably because they are not quick to dismiss and put down a
thing, and thus have less to say at first glance)

The only solution is to think for yourselves and research the positions
presented.

~~~
baby
> many people

many people ? Are you generalizing over a single post ?

~~~
josephagoss
It's a thing I have noticed in intelligent forums such as HN and also in real
life.

------
hardwaresofton
'always be naysaying' is the mantra of about 80% of HNers

~~~
vitalique
Well, yeah, but more like 97,89%, from what I gather. From time to time I
fancy this idea of toying with some NLP package to calculate percentage of the
HN comments that go like "Yes, but no", "Cool, but meh" or "Sure, but no way".

Oh wait, what did I just do?

~~~
notahacker
The ~97% of comments that are "nice idea but..." is probably not far off the
percentage of nice ideas discussed on her whose implementations don't quite
work out :)

------
chaostheory
funny - I don't remember posting it

~~~
conformal
hah. nice try, satoshi!

------
shocks
Hindsight is 20/20 [1].

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

~~~
colinbartlett
Actually, I didn't like Dropbox then and I still don't like it.

I wonder how many people who make bold public statements about things ever
change their mind? Or if they just become entrenched in their opinions.

~~~
astrodust
Why not? What's not to like?

As far as a hosted shared drive goes, Dropbox does a great job.

~~~
galapago
You need to install propietary software to use it.

~~~
j_s
I use Dropbox as a glorified large email attachment distribution system,
touching only the web interface.

Edit: obviously not clear enough, I'll try again: Is it true that ' _You need
to install propietary software to use it_ '? No.

~~~
dublinben
The web interface is proprietary too.

~~~
sejje
Which is largely irrelevant to the claim of "forced proprietary software
install."

------
singold
I hope, chaostheory doesn't have something related to Tor hidden services
posted anywhere on the internet :P

------
neotrinity
I quite liked the polarity of the 2 comments in the post .. Hence I posted it
!

------
BrokenPipe
Mark my words: The US regulators will do to Bitcoin what they have done to the
Internet ecommerce, i.e. providing strong incentives like reduced taxes and
simplified rules.

There are plenty of new bitcoin merchant and users every day and the USA won't
stand while the rest of the world adopts THE next store of
value/currency/commodity/new category.

------
ghostdiver
Perhaps it was posted during wrong time of the day or was crowd power pointed
to front page.

It is also possible that people here on HN do not have enough intuition about
ideas, which could possibly change the world just like bitcoin is doing it
right now. It's fun to read retrospective posts here on HN, but apparently
innovation starts elsewhere..

------
tomasien
jdoliner's comment is a good reminder to forget the haters

~~~
kamjam
Just because someone expresses skepticism that makes them a hater?

~~~
tomasien
Skepticism is different from hating, absolutely, but the user didn't say they
were skeptical - they said there was "no way". That's hating and you have to
ignore it - skepticism and critical feedback you value, treasure, and seek
out.

~~~
DigitalJack
It's a just a firm opinion.

~~~
tomasien
No, it's a haters opinion. Being a hater doesn't make you a terrible person or
mean you can't or shouldn't be allowed to have opinions, it just means you're
a hater and your opinions should be ignored.

------
khawkins
jdoliner's comment is interesting, because it's almost true. At the time,
hardly anyone could find faith in the currency. But what he failed to
understand that if "someone" could find faith in the currency, then others
would follow.

It's an interesting property of markets that they can seemingly boostrap
themselves, just so long as there is support during the initial growth stage.
You don't have to believe in Bitcoins to trade in them, you just have to
believe someone wants them. This might be why black markets and transaction
privacy are so essential to making the currency work. Since there are a large
number of people who need to make their payments private, the rest of the
market believes that the currency has intrinsic value in its exclusivity in
certain transactions.

------
sireat
What google-fu did you use to find the first post on bitcoin on HN?

I am asking, because I tried to find the first post on reddit.com (obviously
before /r/bitcoin was created) and couldn't really retrieve anything useful.

I was searching by date ranges on site:reddit.com and was getting user
profiles not posts.

------
sidcool
If the vice president of ReThink DB could be wrong, I have all the liberty to
make 100s of mistakes

~~~
kamjam
Make as many mistakes as you want, it didn't kill anyone (or yourself) and you
can only learn from those mistakes.

The only person that I know that is always right is my wife.

------
techprotocol
How many people had the slightest clue that books would be replaced by
Kindles, CDs by iPODs, tablets selling as much as laptops. The comments show
that people underestimated the impact bitcoin would make.

I still believe its just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Bitcoin.

~~~
aestra
Wow! Books surely have not been replaced by Kindles! Not by a long shot. 40%
of readers still use only print books.

Here's some random data to back that up.

[https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/03/25/print-b...](https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/03/25/print-
books-vs-e-books-whats-the-future-of-reading/)

~~~
nly
40% is lower than I imagined. That's a frighteningly low figure

~~~
aestra
We are talking about people who have read at least one book in the last year.

40% - That's _exclusively_ print books.

58% of them own an e-book reader, that's including the iPad.

The charts are a bit hard to read but..

Now, only about 5% bought _only_ e-books. This of course doesn't include
borrowed books, library books, etc. MUCH much more people haven't purchased
either print or e-books than have purchased _only_ e-books! I hate to
generalize but some people, many in the HN crowd, seem to think libraries are
"beneath" them or "outdated" but the data suggest otherwise. Paper books are
not DRMed after all.

About 38% of people bought only print books. A mix between print and e-books
wins out.

Here's the important stat. About 50% said they like print books and e-books.
Only 10% said they like e-books only. A FULL 90% OF READERS STILL LIKE PRINT
BOOKS!!!!

It's incredibly naive to say they have been replaced. Its beyond obvious
anyway, just take a commercial flight and observe people around you reading
print books.

------
dschiptsov
Very telling, a reply of a sceptic and of a dreamer, everyone else just
ignored.

I wish I could be such a dreamer, capable to understand the idea and its
potential and have a bit of drive and courage to give it a try.

------
shashwatak
I could be so rich right now. I missed the bus completely on this one.

~~~
ye
You haven't.

Various estimates for the future BTC value range from $2,000 to $1,000,000.

------
rheide
This one has a more interesting discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670)

------
jcfrei
I was relieved to see I hadn't even joined HN at that time.

------
tlrobinson
I'd like to see a "where are they now" of the commenters' views on Bitcoin.

------
totti
I don't know about you guys but I found this really motivational.

------
infra178
> jdoliner 1655 days ago | link

>Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that
anyone is going to have any faith in this currency.

> joedoliner.com jdoliner@gmail.com
> [https://twitter.com/jdoliner](https://twitter.com/jdoliner)

~~~
BlackDeath3
Good idea. We really need to make sure that everybody is forever held
accountable for everything that they ever say online. I like where that's
going.

~~~
neotrinity
That never was my intention when I posted this ..

Like I said, I quite liked the polarity of the comments and the fact that it
was the first post on bitcoin in HN ..

But it snow-balled into this !

~~~
nulltype
jdoliner just walked over to me and told me how he was laughing along with
everyone else at this guy who posted on the first HN bitcoin post until he
realized it was him.

~~~
neotrinity
Lolz ...! No offence meant though ... I can only imagine ...

