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Comment by madamelic | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin may not be dead but it is certainly being destroyed on its original purpose (being money).

The only reason to hold Bitcoin is the naive hope that more suckers (not even a better word for them) pay you to hold something they think will go higher (again: suckers)

There are networks that are faster / more secure than Bitcoin and therefore more valuable as usable money (which is what Bitcoin was supposed to be)

Bitcoin may be worth something, but it certainly isn't worth $11k in my opinion since it is just a community-decided value-store currently.

The same could be said for USD but at least USD is backed by the United States.

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NOT being backed by any one country or central bank is Bitcoin's primary value proposition.

sure not being back by one is a value prop, but not being backed by any is a miss in my opinion. I think the decentralized is great, but it's so decentralized it's basically thin ice.

>NOT being backed by any one country or central bank is Bitcoin's primary value proposition.

Absolutely.

But if no one is backing it and it has no purpose that supports its value, it shouldn't be worth a lot.

Monero is underpriced because it is actually useful and can support that price.

Bitcoin is worth something, just not 11k in my opinion.

Bitcoin is still the network that is least likely to see a double spend executed.

That depends on how much you trust a few chinese companies/government.

I tx no where near the opportunity cost of a double spend on bitcoin.

I take your point, but it honestly seems a little much to assume that multiple players will act as one because they live in the same country. I haven't seen any evidence that the chinese govt controls what blocks are minted. A great counter example would be slower conf times from tx going to anti communist party groups. Does Ai weiwei have a bitcoin address?

If someone is willing to speculate (let's say suspecting BTC will burst, but not for a while yet), and that person is using spare money and cashing out after a week or two even, how are they a sucker?

Any person who's asked me about getting some Bitcoin has seemed perfectly aware of what could happen.

I got BTC at $900 (now approaching $12k). First got Monero at $70, and it's close to $250. Maybe I'll pick the wrong time to sell, but it's a risk I'm aware of. I've lost much more money on speculative stocks (backed by actual businesses with real assets) than I have put into this.

For anyone throwing in $100 just to be part of the adventure, I'd bet they've spent more than that on a single night getting drunk at the bar.

https://medium.com/@jamesjunghanns/my-0-00000173120-btc-a-pr...

The size of the BTC network is a huge part of its value. It's already hard even for state actors to compromise the blockchain.

The hash power that left BTC for BCC momentarily around early November was conveniently 60%.

One can imagine the ability of China to mobilize capital infrastructure to dominate mining space, especially when they're manufacturing all the bitcoin ASIC hardware.

It seemed like there were grave concerns once ASIC hardware hit BTC, locking normal people out and introducing an attack vector disproportionately favoring existing capital to take over the network.

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