It is not safe to say, but rvz likes to keep saying it. When the blocks stop, it has failed.
It’s a timechain, a decentralized clock.
Tick Tock Next Block.
> It is not safe to say, but rvz likes to keep saying it.
Yes it is. Assuming you have read the whole article, it is safe to say that it has failed in its original purpose. I and and many others keep saying it because it is an irrefutable fact after many years of its existence. In the case of the author on Bitcoin and the contents of this article, he has made that totally clear.
Hence, can one use it for on-chain payments as described in Satoshi's white-paper which was supposed to be better than the current system or even as a currency?
Please think about your response to this question before answering.
Broadly, I agree with you, Bitcoin has not yet lived up to the hopes and dreams of the early days.
But that isn't the whole story, and it is not really honest to pretend like it is. While it has not become a widely-adopted currency, or even a widely-used payment settlement mechanism, it has become wildly successful as a speculative investment and on that basis it has burrowed deeply into the public consciousness.
So while it's normally the case that when a new innovation comes along and fails to cross the adoption "chasm", we can close the book and say that it has "failed"; the odds it will have another chance are approximated by zero.
But it appears that time remains on the side of bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Look how many headlines there are about crypto at the moment. We're talking about it on Hacker News, and the whitepaper was released in 2008. Crypto will almost assuredly get many more chances to eventually cross the chasm... perhaps someday it will succeed, when volatility has settled down and L2 technology is mature. We are still in the "periodic block halvings drive crazy bubbles" stage of life, but the impact of the halvings are sinking exponentially into irrelevance.
In the end, you might be right; Bitcoin may never be a currency used for mundane payments. In fact, I personally agree that you probably will be right about that; the competing solutions are much, much better than they were in 2008. But it is simply too early to say, and it is definitely not "totally clear".
that's some great mental gymnastics and goal post moving.
"original purpose", "irrefutable fact", "many years of existence", "author of Bitcoin", "supposed to be better"
yes, people use it for payments. yes, it is better than the "current system" as it literally cannot be censored (as shown by its banning - multiple times - in China).
There is no goal-post moving from me as it is straightforward to understand what the whole point of Bitcoin is about as explained by Satoshi Nakamoto himself in the white-paper.
Assuming that you have read it, so is Satoshi moving the goal posts for Bitcoin? or is it the maximalists?
> people use it for payments.
Like in El Salvador who has adopted it as its 'legal tender'? It is going great isn't it and especially better and envisioned by Satoshi as a form of on-chain payment system?
> as it literally cannot be censored (as shown by its banning - multiple times - in China).
That is because its due to it being on-chain which that is decentralised despite the bans, which that is the whole point of Bitcoin. Is that what El Salvador and others are using it for?
> Just because you keep repeating something doesn't make it true
My 'statements' and that 'something' that I am repeating are based on the contents of the article. That is why I am assuming you also have read all of it before commenting here and some of the author's previous articles.
So when are you going to refute them and answer a simple question?
Or did you just rush here to comment knowing that you cannot answer the question and just repeat 'Tick-tock next block' after the next commenter? Is that why you cannot refute me or the article?
"As for the crypto-maximalists screaming about Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system for on-chain payments and as a currency, it is safe to say that experiment has totally failed and that was found out the hard way."
Crypto has not failed. These are your words, not from the article. You are wrong, as you don't have any proof. Also, the onus is on you to prove your statement. Right now it's baseless and doesn't further conversation.
Is that clearer? Or do you need more words to explain your baseless position.
> Crypto has not failed. These are your words, not from the article.
And where in those words did I say that 'Crypto has failed'? Did I say 'about Crypto'? or was it 'about Bitcoin'?, the one who's author's name is 'Satoshi Nakamoto', and published a white-paper titled: 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system'?
Of all replies to me, everyone (except you) knew that I was talking about Bitcoin being a failure in its original purpose. The evidence that supports my claim(s) is all backed by the contents of this article and others by the same author, assuming you have read them.
But of course, if you needed to misinterpret my own sentence and create a straw-man out of it, that tells me that you still couldn't refute the article or my claim(s) about Bitcoin being a failure in its original purpose.
> Is that clearer? Or do you need more words to explain your baseless position.
Perhaps you need to explain why you're the only one that knowingly invented a straw-man to escape refuting the article and answering my question. If the majority of commenters to my reply recognised that I am referring to Bitcoin, it's more clearer to me that maybe the article and the replies here are beyond your own reading comprehension. Maybe that explains why you needed to find a way to escape refuting the article and answering my simple question, which is proving to be increasingly difficult for you every time you dodge it.
So are you going to finally refute the article and give a sensible answer to my question? Or do you still need more time to finish reading the article before you reply back and post something unintelligent again? Since it turns out you still haven't finished reading it and just rushed into posting here in the comments section.
Yes. Everyone here replying to me. Even in your replies, you still recognised I was talking about Bitcoin. Unless you want to admit to me that you did not read the replies?
> You are making vague overarching claims. When you get pushback you are moving the goalposts.
At most 24 hours is plenty of time to give you the chance to finish reading the article(s) and come up with a response that directly refutes the article and my questions if you think the claims made there are wrong.
So are YOU going to refute them and answer my question(s) if you think they are "vague", "overarching" claims?
Every time you hesitate or respond by avoiding the question(s) it is more clearer to me that not only they are difficult for you to answer, but you are unable to refute them.
So far cryptocurrency has failed for everything except facilitating certain illegal transactions (buying drugs, paying ransoms, evading currency controls). Someday we might find a real use case for it and then you can claim success, but that hasn't happened yet.
Here we go again with baseless statements generalizing crypto success or not. Please prove or at least give a source for a sweeping statement you make: "So far cryptocurrency has failed for everything except facilitating certain illegal transactions (buying drugs, paying ransoms, evading currency controls)."
Unless you can prove above it's worthless, and obviously you don't know this and as such your sweeping generalizations are worth exactly 0 (choose your currency).
There are problems with any currency/commodity/anything, but saying X is failed/stupid/useless or anything else is worthless without proof, and as I was saying in my previous comments, none can predict future, so these general statements about future or present are completely pointless and go against HN standards, as again ther is no proof.
That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. If you think that cryptocurrency has been or will be a success then the onus is on you to provide proof. So far it's just worthless garbage.
"If you think that cryptocurrency has been or will be a success then the onus is on you to provide proof"
The fact that crypto. exists, makes me correct and crypto success provable. Your statement is false as, again, crypto exists. As long as the crypto space exists and has value above 0, it is not worthless and that makes you wrong.
Not sure how basic you need this proof to be, but here is one more attempt. 1 > 0, 1 being crypto existence and 0 it not existing.
I don't see anyone paying $30k for any amount of lint. So not comparable. What's comparable is something you can get money for, like for example bitcoin. You can also use bitcoin as collateral to buy things. Example: https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/...
Now I want to see you bring an example of pocket lint being used as collateral. Pretty sure you cannot, therefore you're wrong again, and probably should admit so and learn something, instead of being ignorant.
It’s proven to be a great way to bootstrap new things that have heavy network effects. I think more and more businesses will take advantage of this effect—it’s pretty powerful.
