from Hacker News

The conspiracy theory economics of Bitcoin

by IfOnlyYouKnew on 12/5/22, 2:33 AM with 2 comments

• by derangedHorse on 12/5/22, 3:12 AM

  I like interesting articles, both for and against Bitcoin, but the author seemed to be too dismissive of the technology to actually offer proper discourse. Good rebuttals acknowledge that the person who argues on the other side can make simple rebuttals back, but it looks like a lot of the critique was low-hanging fruit which makes the whole argument less persuasive

  > Pure commodities – gold and silver – haven’t done the job of money well for a few hundred years, and Bitcoin wants to be money but was set up to work like a commodity.

  What is the author's idea of doing "the job of money well"? Gold has kept it's value surprisingly well over time

  > This is despite its extreme volatility making it almost useless as a store of value

  It doesn't make a good argument to say an ongoing vision can't be accomplished because it's not currently established.

  > ...and despite it being way harder to use as money than any currency should be, even for its few use cases.

  Again, Bitcoin has the lightning network and technologically it's pretty easy to make a payment. If by "harder to use" the author means to spend because of low adoption, then again it's focusing too much on the now.

  > Bitcoin failed at every one of Nakamoto’s aspirations here.

  Except the quoted part didn't list clear "aspirations" and instead showed the faults in the existing financial systems. In terms of the whitepaper, I think Bitcoin does still adhere to the ideas.