Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

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Speaking only with regards to engineering marketing outcomes: allowing people to trivially conjure Bitcoins out of the ether early in the lifecycle, then making them increasingly dear, is a good way to engineer having a base of committed evangelists. It's kind of like genes, right? Genes don't have good features or bad features. Genes only spread. The gene for sickle cell anemia wasn't designed to kill people and doesn't care that it does: it just causes chemical reactions which have a tendency, on average, to create more copies of itself in an efficient fashion. The successful currency/social network/software/etc won't be the best currency/social network/software/etc judged by any standard of quality engineering, it will be the spreadiest currency/social network/software/etc.

I am being very value neutral in describing this feature of Bitcoin. This is about all I can say without being very unneutral in a fashion that would transgress HN's norms about politeness.

The problem with this assumption of early virality being important is that the value of this property drops significantly over time. There is a critical inflection point where this pseudo-currency needs to provide value outside of the core group of true believers and if it fails to do so the bubble will pop as true believers eventually fade away and the circle of people who are willing to accept your confederate money becomes smaller and smaller. I see no reason yet to believe that bitcoin will make this transition and a lot of hints that it will in fact fail to make this transition (e.g. the currency is getting too much publicity too early -- it is making itself a target before it has any real social defenses.)

> it is making itself a target before it has any real social defenses

The system doesn't exactly have control over who notices it.

Some people are (rightly or not) excited about it and building services, sites, and the like around it. That aspect of its virality certainly isn't a bad thing if the community wants to live past that coming critical inflection point you suspect will happen.

Have you read The Selfish Gene, particularly the last chapter, which introduces the concept of a meme? It's good readin', and in exactly the same vein.

Nope, but my post was very much influenced by knowing something of how memes work, so that's a nice "comes full circle" moment.

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