alt Hacker NewsPeople downvote this but Bitcoin has some very nice properties:
- easy to verify/impossible to forge (as opposed to gold and paper currency)
- fixed supply (as opposed to paper currency, oil, and even gold)
- easy to transfer from one party to another (as opposed to gold, oil, and physical cash)
Replies
It has at least one fatal flaw: the math it is based on. I feel like it won't be too long before a few major weaknesses are found and bitcoin will lose all security.
But Bitcoin is backed by nothing. At least the USD is backed by the sole superpower in the world (at the moment).
Suffers from no government having a stake in it. If it causes them problems, it can easily become illegal.
Just because frivilous money printing is bad does not mean that a fixed supply is good. A fixed supply is a terrible property to have in a money system. It's very beneficial to have a money supply that can grow or shrink according to demand.
> easy to transfer from one party to another
"Let me just set up my P2P connection to the Bitcoin network and pay mining fees and hope a miner validates the block"
vs
"Here's a bar of gold mate"
Sure, real easy
It’s dumb because it requires uninterrupted access to an incredibly complex system. The cognitive dissonance of people who see bitcoin as resilient is hilarious.