I'm denying the ones I've commented on are important.
>implying that Bitcoin's usage is either stagnating or declining
I think it is but thats not what I'm implying. I'm implying that people heavily invested in bitcoin tend to use vanity metrics like this.
That said the things I look at that make me believe bitcoin is stagnating/declining are things like the continued slide of the price over the year, Bitcoin Black Friday 2014 being a huge failure, Overstock missing their bitcoin sales expectations by 17 million dollars. Basically every vendor I've seen comment on sales has said there have been pretty much none this year. The fact that 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin and there has been no breakout in the general public. Everyone seems vaguely aware of bitcoin but no one is investing any time in learning anything about it because it solves problems that most people don't care about(freedom) and creates problems they do(security).
Now I just see people in the community rallying around remittance and the killer app that will save bitcoin but the actual transfer of funds isn't the expensive part of remittance the compliance around the transfer of funds is and the existing services that do remittance cheaper using bitcoin only work now because they are ignoring compliance completely. They will either get more expensive or be shut down in the near future.
> The chart also intentially discards the first 4 years of Bitcoin trading data (2010-2013) where Bitcoin has actually gained the most.
Sure, just like the comment being replied to discards several hundred years worth of tulip sales to say "Tulipmania lasted 6 months. Bitcoin is now 8 years old."
Bitcoin has, until this year, largely escaped widespread public notice beyond "isn't this odd/interesting" pieces in the media.
> It never was 7 tps. 7 is the theoretical maximum
Wow, you mean Bitcoin fans were prone to exaggeration and unrealistic claims two years ago? I wonder if they still are.
Speaking of which, this graph you're showing me definitely has not quadrupled over the last two years. What went wrong?
> Investing x megawatt in a system that produces investments and jobs is hardly a "waste".
It is if the jobs never produce any actual value. Moving money around is not a good in itself. In fact a lot of Bitcoin companies have moved money in ways that are distinctly bad. Would you be celebrating MtGox as part of the Bitcoin economy if they still existed?
Of course whoever is currently holding the money is happy with it. Doesn't mean it's not a waste. People have profited from waste for as long as civilization has existed.
>Do you have a single fact to back up this extraordinary claim?
Name one single use of Bitcoin that legitimizes the trillion dollar market cap, and that fiat currency doesn't provide in a safer, more legitimate way. The "sneaking across the border with my life savings" scenario doesn't count. That has nothing to do with the current market cap of Bitcoin.
This misses the whole picture which is about both supply and demand, and mining is only one side of the equation.
You do mention demand afterwards, but
> Bitcoin's network effects have already likely reached "runaway" status, so Bitcoin will continue to grow as the network effect speeds up exponentially.
is debatable to say the least. Is there any legal niche group that would use it for at least 50% of their transactions? News articles about the experiment in El Salvador seem to indicate that people still prefer to use cash (USD).
> The total addressable market of Bitcoin is all monetary value on earth, so in the hundreds of trillions, probably.
Not sure how this is relevant, in practice 99% of the world can use the USD one way or another, but that doesn't mean it'll ever reach this point.
> Its volatility will continue decreasing as it grows to address more of the T.A.M. of global monetary value.
If you look at the past 7 years, it doesn't look like it has gone down. I had seen tables with yearly volatility averages (or whatever the measure was) claiming the same. Do you have a better source than this?
> Currency of my country lost 250% of its value over last 7 years.
I doubt population of your country at large can afford bitcoin transaction fees for their daily shopping.
BTW, are you saying that your currency has negative value now? I assume you mean a 2.5x inflation multiplier over 7 years, or +14% per year. That's mild compared to an order of magnitude walk of the BTC-USD rate over just one year.
The only real use case for BTC I see is moving capital between jurisdictions.
> Bitcoin has not proven market value beyond a speculative instrument and a vehicle for financial crime. In particular, it has failed in its original goal to be peer-to-peer electronic cash.
Very much has. Wild speculation moved on from bitcoin to altcoins circa 2015, from altcoins to ico in 2017 and from ico to defi in 2019. Bitcoin is old and boring.
Vehicle for financial crime - that’s just ridiculous, not even bothering to respond. Go google what fines banks paid in recent decade for financial crimes before claiming this bs.
And bitcoin is p2p cash for all intents and purposes. Ticks all the boxes for me.
> people in the market to buy cannot easily get more of the thing that they want
Yeah, you can’t get more bitcoin, it’s scarce.
> For people just wanting to speculate, other cryptocurrencies are substitutable.
Well that’s a dumb definition of scarcity, unless you also think gold isn’t scarce because there are tons of substitute metals for purposes of speculation on the market.
> I don't think I have been wrong? Like I said, the ability to actually buy stuff with Bitcoin is in decline. I'd change my mind if I saw evidence of increasing Bitcoin adoption in the real economy.
Based on what evidence exactly? Consider that an entire nation state has since adopted it as its national currency, along the USD in the last 3 years; that means it works in parallel with the USD. Not to mention that merchant adoption, while as you said may be in decline (citation needed), what you have instead is more and more commerce being dealt with on LN: as was always intended due to network bloat.
Listen, I get HN is entirely averse to BItcoin at this point (look at my post histpory, I prove it time and time again it's based on stuborness rather than fact), what I fail to understand is why you persist in this folly in thiking becasue it doesn't work for YOU, you assume no one else has any use for it.
Again, most here who work in tech are not c-level corps or founders so you don't understand very much about the narrow mechanics of day to day because you are not rewarded for doing so, and quite frankly are paid very well for your ignorance on these matters.
But try to understand that if even China has backed off with Hong Kong dealing with BTC, you have to come to terms with the fact that adoption in trackable and metric based analytics are out the window at this point. Exchanges are one way to track transaction volume and that has been as healthy (perhaps more so, I don't know I'm not a trader) than it was 5-6 years ago. I know this because I was there, helping scale this tech and giving it more usecases that even it's most ardent proponents couldn't see and used similar points of view as you are making now (hence USAF and it's MANY forks before that).
You are wrong, and the fact that you can't even admit that possibility is what makes your point even more invalid because you refuse to see a contrary POV.
> The asset that is not stable is the fiat currency because it's being depreciated all the time.
Checking accounts (M1) have grown by (only) 8%/year over the past 2 years.
Savings accounts (M2) have grown by (only) 6%/year over the past 2 years.
Physical cash in circulation has grown by (only) 5%/year over the past 2 years.
Even if we value bitcoin today only by it's future 0% emission rate starting at around the year 2036, bitcoin shouldn't have been rising more than 7 or 8% per year relative to the US Dollar. Anymore is unlikely to be sustainable. Am I missing anything?
>I mean the wikipedia article on Credit Card Fraud clearly states the average loss is just 0.07%.
That figure from Wikipedia is utterly wrong. The true figure appears to be about 15 times higher
I happen to know it's wrong, because I pointed this out to you on two previous occasions when you cited the same figure from the same Wikipedia page to support identical arguments against bitcoin. In fact, you even acknowledged that I was correct then.
Yet, here you are again, citing the same number and the same Wikipedia page yet again. How many other times have you used it to bolster an argument?
This is deeply depressing. What's the point of having a discussion if you simply ignore or forget facts which don't support your preconceived ideas? You're never going to learn anything.
I hope you won't find this insulting, but I suggest you ask yourself honestly why you keep citing a number that you've repeatedly been shown is inaccurate, in order to support the same argument over and over again.
> Sure, bitcoin has several terrible characteristics that have been exposed over the past few weeks (volatility, tons of speculation, new users don't understand wallet security, etc.)
None of these are new, bitcoin has been volatile, has had a large speculative market, and a problem with new users understanding it since 2009.
> Isn't one supposed to select a scale which allows the compiled data to be clearly and informatively expressed? And doesn't the data compiled so far fit comfortably on a linear scale?
It has nothing to do with scale. It has to do with change. The change in value for bitcoin is what we care about, we want to see how it changes over time.
> Would you recommend using a logarithmic graph because you expect Bitcoin use to increase exponentially
No, that's not why at all.
It's because if the value goes from $10 to $20 - that's exactly the same as from $20 to $40. A logarithmic graph shows that correctly, a linear graph makes it looks like 20 to 40 is twice as large as 10 to 20, but it's not.
Its a system of information, to discard the blockchain technology outright on perceived downsides is foolish. I'm not a huge fan, but it does have real world usage.
That exactly is my point. You list usage cases - but nobody is USING it.
Unless there is a meteoric increase in real world usage (i.e. non speculative) to match the valuations the whole crypto world is going to have a very ugly surprise.
You know what's a sure sign of a bubble? When people not even remotely in that world start asking me about this bitcoin thing - they heard it only goes up and it's easy money. Zero notion as to what it is beyond that. How's that for price discovery?
> > Lacking viable uses outside of the criminal underworld and speculation
You gave numbers for criminal activity, but the original claim also included speculation. If you take that into account as well, how much do you have left then? If Bitcoin remains primarily a vehicle for transferring wealth from new investors to incumbent holders by building hype, is it really a benefit to society?
Hardly. What, exactly, does bitcoin add to our world? Near as I can tell it's only use case is Making Money Fast (for the folks at the top of the pyramid, anyway) and scamming the bejesus out of all the rubes who fall for the con.
> How much energy do you and everyone else waste doing things that don't add value to my life or society?
Bitcoin is estimated to consume more than 0.5% of all the worlds energy. Many nations use less power than bitcoin consumes. Bitcoin can process a mere 4 transactions per second. Please go on and explain to me why this is even a remotely acceptable thing.
The whole space is a deplorable shame and people like you should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves. You are a drain on the planet's limited resources.
That's exactly what they're stating, that the metrics do not capture real-world usage.
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