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[–][deleted]  (5 children)

[deleted]

    [–]belcher_[S] 37 points38 points  (4 children)

    The wham line:

    It may be that Bitcoin’s greatest virtue is not its deflation, nor its microtransactions, but its viral distributed nature; it can wait for its opportunity. "If you sit by the bank of the river long enough, you can watch the bodies of your enemies float by."

    [–]linktype 8 points9 points  (2 children)

    Gotta keep on hardening the network

    [–]WalksOnLego 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    While softening the user experience at the same time.

    [–]trnbays 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    So hard then soft. Is there a sign to pullout? Or just go with whatever. I would feel better with protection.

    ​

    But yes, the user experience still needs a lot of work. Decentralized consensus is the greatest virtue by far. Everyone says "blockchain" but that means nothing if it is not distributed and immutable.

    [–]agostini2rossi 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Or, you can just sit there waiting while they work and get stronger. What a braindead joke of an anecdote.

    [–]jron 16 points17 points  (2 children)

    Nick Szabo's counter to the above article: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html

    [–]olddocks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    That may be farcry from today!

    [–]coinmoz 8 points9 points  (1 child)

    nice read. not another rewrite

    [–]topress-in 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    the original stuff but not all useful

    [–]Trrwwa 24 points25 points  (8 children)

    As everyone is saying it is worth a read. I stayed and went through some of his other posts, his about me, and meandered through his Reddit posts. His writing style is unique and endearing, but a self assured arrogance is pervasive, though sometimes charming. He is an admitted contrarian, and his contributions to Haskell and other lesser known/used projects lead me to believe he more than likely has a tendency to root for an underdog and attack a victor. He is primed to wax poetic on the shortcomings of successes while boasting about the heroics of losers.

    I think his thesis is a bit misguided. This isn't a case of there being better alternatives to bitcoin, this is the case of the pieces for bitcoin being invented, but not put together. We've got wheels and gears but no be car. He also glosses over the importance of decentralization and how it was the primary attractant for most early adopters.

    It would be a fun discussion, but ultimately bitcoin is better to certain people with certain use cases or wants in the same way Haskell, though elegant, is worse. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/07/11/why-arent-more-programmers-using-haskell/amp/

    [–]rustyBootstraps 8 points9 points  (2 children)

    his contributions to Haskell and other lesser known/used projects lead me to believe he more than likely has a tendency to root for an underdog and attack a victor.

    Or is more likely to favor correct ideas over popular ones.

    [–]Trrwwa 7 points8 points  (0 children)

    I was attempting to say the following: if a and b are equal he would be predisposed to favor whatever is less popular.

    He is clearly a contrarian and has put a lot of effort into something that has only reaffirmed those beliefs.. which aren't always true. Sometimes the popular ideas are more "correct" and, while I'll admit this isn't a subject I've ever spent time researching, I imagine better technology normally succeeds. But It shouldn't be surprising that sometimes worse technology succeeds.

    Going back to his original argument, I don't think he made a convincing argument for better alternatives. All of his examples were either pieces of the puzzle or lacking essential key elements.

    [–]buwaytress 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    Yeah, if he were truly just rooting for the underdog for the sake of it, there're a lot more lesser-known projects to shill for. Correct is also not necessarily a perpetual condition.

    [–]BlazedAndConfused 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    hes not entirely wrong. if bitcoin is a car, its a pinto at best right now. its inefficient. ugly. prone to disasters. However, it will get you there. we've yet to see the Saleen S7 or even honda accord of the blockchain environment just yet

    [–]Zer000sum 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    His primary thesis is in the title = what tech goes viral and mainstream is counterintuitive and very hard to predict. Like RSS feeds failed, but this ridiculous 140 char thing called Twitter is now everyone's RSS feed. That's why every crypto poll predicting the next year is wildly wrong every year as far back as you wanna go.

    [–]horsenickels -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Finally someone said it. The guy is a massive wanker writes the most boring and banal takes, and is hailed as some sort of genius. He is basically the ESR of crypto.

    [–]IllustriousRace 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    It’s really worth reading

    [–]lbsterling 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    Note this post dates from 2011. For me anyway, it was one of the key moments in a change of mind over the course of three days from "bitcoin is retarded" to "keep an open mind about this stuff, it might change the world" which continues to this day. Gwern, like others endowed with brilliant minds and the will to follow his own intellectual star, is a treasure given by the gods to humankind.

    [–]RUencryped 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    It seems that in short time we'll start to treat bitcoin and the rest (altcoins) as a normal thing in our lifes.

    [–]ElainaClayton 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Agree

    [–]sunnyg92 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    couldn't understand ...

    [–]mbrochh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Fantastic! Thanks for stickying this!

    [–]dollacurrency 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Thank you for such useful information. This is really a new and unique article that contains a lot of need for learning information and knowledge. I have been looking for something like that for a long time.

    [–]cipher-space 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    This is not a guy who seems to have the interest of decentralization at heart lol. This was year ago already when Roger flipped out and kept repeating how rich he is. And people wonder why Bitcoin is still the king.
    https://youtu.be/oCOjCEth6xI

    [–]GrouchyEmployer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I'd like to ad ubiquitous adoption of laptop computers. I haven't really completely though out why, but it seems necessary. I don't think it would have got much attention if everyone had to be at a desktop to interact with forums, github, checking prices, etc. etc. etc.

    [–]bitedog1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Bitcoin is better。

    [–]dlerium 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    This is actually good news.

    [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    Mining bitcoins should be a like doing a startup for intermediate programmers. From my perspective, all the programmers gotta do is figure out how bitcoin mining works and write a program to make the program mine faster and using little steps.

    [–]Sonata-ai -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    lol, nice post. the most intereseting part in article "the worst thing - bitcoin is ugly" :D thats rally not true - its really beautiful if you transfer it to the power