Could Bitcoin Be More Disruptive than the Internet?

http://www.foxycart.com/blog/could-bitcoin-be-more-disruptive-than-the-internet#.UoGhoZR4aMQ

by freework • 13 years ago

37 49 13 years ago

wonkus• 13 years ago

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.

eof4• 13 years ago

"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.

glesica3• 13 years ago

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.

lukifer• 13 years ago

wasting electricity and making global warming worse

We do plenty of this already with conventional currencies (micro-trading algorithms for stocks and currency speculation, for instance). Doesn't make either okay, just want to maintain perspective.

I'm not going to claim that BTC is good or evil, but it's for damn sure both disruptive and interesting. I think we'll also have gold and petro-dollars for quite some time, though.

wyager• 13 years ago

If you're worried about the environmental impacts of Bitcoin mining, you may want to consider a priority re-evaluation.

mscarborough• 13 years ago

Pretty much. Once you get past having kids, eating animals, driving cars, or even riding a bike 24/7 you're pretty much using more energy than some bitcoin miner.

Geee• 13 years ago

There will be hardware devices that sign Bitcoin transactions securely. Your private keys will never leak or become compromised. See Trezor: http://www.bitcointrezor.com/

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

Personally I expect if "normals" are to use bitcoins, it will probably be structured with financial institution(s) holding the BTC much like a bank holds USD. As we move further away from cash, ordinary folk could very easily just have a BTC debit card, and never worry about bitcoin wallets and bitcoin clients.

MaysonL2• 13 years ago

But why the fuck would they bother?

ekianjo• 13 years ago

Please stop destroying the planet.

That has to be the worst argument against Bitcoin I have ever seen. Why stop at the planet, you could have said "Please stop destroying the known universe", that would have made just as much sense.

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

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

skrebbel2• 13 years ago

For the slightly less well-informed: 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, 'reflecting the positive connotations of "standing out from the flock"'.

(edit: removed bitterness)

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

"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.

epaga• 13 years ago

quarterto's law: Any headline which ends in a question mark will have a comment on it citing Betteridge's Law.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5742893

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

I would have phrased this as a corollary.

Fomite• 13 years ago

No.

a3voices• 13 years ago

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

antonius• 13 years ago

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.

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

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

pmarca• 13 years ago

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

Tarang• 13 years ago

I'd think its more than an idea its something that might already be happening in some places.

There are places that are over regulated when it comes to exchanging currency. Bitcoin offers a legal or at least gray way to buy/sell stuff.

I guess not everyone likes change

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

Enthusiastic promoters inevitably breed equally enthusiastic critics.

pg• 13 years ago

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

lukestokes2• 13 years ago

Thanks for your comment. Kind of made my day when a team member mentioned you posted here. :)

everettForth• 13 years ago

Today's xkcd is relevant: http://xkcd.com/1289/

oleganza• 13 years ago

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.

Zarathust• 13 years ago

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.

l0gicpath• 13 years ago

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.

jedunnigan3• 13 years ago

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

mtgx2• 13 years ago

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.

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

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.

jedunnigan3• 13 years ago

Haha yes! Qualifying the importance of things against one another is usually a silly exercise.

csense2• 13 years ago

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.

eof4• 13 years ago

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.

csense2• 13 years ago

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

adrianwaj• 13 years ago

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.

lukestokes2• 13 years ago

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. :)

Could Bitcoin Be More Disruptive than the Internet?

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