Why do so many in tech dismiss Bitcoin?
Dec 5, 2021
166 Comments
My guess is because of the insane cognitive dissonance induced from missing out early on. I would figure most engineers in tech have heard about Bitcoin way earlier than the average person and understood the tech behind it as well, but missed out on buying some.
comments
Arguments:
1. Slow network Pt1: Base layer prioritized security (decentralization) over speed (inevitable centralization). That's why the Block Wars took place. Lightning Network builds upon secure L1 and has already been implemented for daily purchases in El Salvador.
2. Slow network Pt2: Need to remember that even "slow" ~10min block confirmation time is for *true final settlement*. While you can swipe your credit card instantly, final settlement with Visa or other payment processing companies is anything but instantaneous - taking a couple days to post finality.
3. "Can't buy anything with it." This is short-sighted. You couldn't do much with the internet in 1995. Didn't mean internet wasn't life-altering - just meant the world (and infrastructure) needed to play catch up. I recently re-watched Jobs's first iPhone keynote: he spent half the time selling the benefits of the music player and the phone function itself vs. having the mobile internet in your hand. We of course know how that story turned out. When the world plays catch up with Bitcoin, merchants everywhere may start accepting it, and we'll see salaries in BTC (we already are to a very small degree already).
4. "Too volatile to buy anything with." That's certainly true now - but it's been a 12-year ride only and the value in fiat went from no price to $69K and counting. We're in price discovery now, and most likely will be for decades to come until adoption arrives closer to global ubiquity, and we near 2140, when the last Bitcoin is mined. Think the former is impossible? 2 years ago you would have thought a company owning BTC on its balance sheet was impossible β not to mention a country adopting it as its actual legal currency. First, it goes gradually, then suddenly.
Strongest money system ever created, and fits the digital age we're living, in where something tangible to represent exchangeable value is becoming more and more meaningless.
Of course I agree that some people are interested in trading convenience for this risk and that is what centralized exchanges / other layer 2 solutions help with, but it would be a mistake to try and think that BTC network is broken for lacking these. It would be broken if these were added.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
Diamonds: hold my beer
The % of people that are knowledgeable is probably higher than that of the general public, simply because engineers are involved in new technology more often.
That said the overall % of people clueless about the tech, both across the general public + engineers is very high.
Technically, UST is not *backed* by USD, just pegged -- but that doesn't really matter to me, because I don't need to do the UST -> LUNA -> exchange -> fiat dance.
KuCoin supports Terra's network, so you can just move UST to KuCoin, sell it for USDT (or, if you want to move it to an exchange you trust for, do something with a low txn fee like XLM -> your exchange -> sell for Fiat (or swap to whatever stablecoin you want)
That being said I do buy but only as an investment not for Blockchain or decentralization.
I first started buying in school so 2012-13, lost em lol then forgot about it and restarted properly in 2018
It's a mania and it'll end badly for so many. People will look back and question what were they thinking.
NFTs, Meme stocks, and crypto are all just signs of froth in the market and evidence that we are in a speculative mania. Likely near the end of it. Don't be left holding the bag.
We need to return to sound money, but bitcoin and crypto is not sound (doesn't make a sound when you drop it, originally where that phrase came from)
Second reason the "unlimited crypto" argument doesn't work is network effects. The tech to build a clone of FB exists, but FB has built a moat around it, largely due to network effects. For a new product to kill FB, it would have to be a 10x-better product than what FB currently offers for people to move. Not 0.5, 2, or even 5x better. Other people, companies and even governments have had 12+ years to build a 10x better BTC money. They haven't done it, even as BTC code is transparent/open source. My bet is as even more people join the BTC network, it will become harder and harder to supplant.
On your final comment, going back to gold is like going back to writing letters by hand. Society has advanced too far to go back to this.