Hacker News Reader

Comment by once_inc | Hacker News Reader

There are actually quite a few companies doing things with bitcoin that generate revenue. Bitcoin isn't supposed to make you money; it's supposed to be money. Dollars on their own don't generate revenue, nor is gold locked in a safe. Bitcoin has qualities that make it better than fiat and better than gold, at the cost of an established history.

Perhaps the author just spoke to the wrong people, didn't get the fundamentals, or didn't ask fundamental questions.

View on HN

Well, let's see what was pitched at that conference. There's a list.[1]

- 24 Exchange Bermuda Ltd. - cryptocurrency exchange

- 5 Day Forecast - can't identify, name too widely used

- Bitex - cryptocurrency exchange in UAE.

- Bitmatrix - "High Risk Merchant Account Solution"

- Citizens of Bitcoin - "Global Mobility Assets for Bitcoin Hodlers"

- D2X Group - "The pan-European digital derivatives exchange."

- DIBA Global Inc - "The future of Digital Art building on #Bitcoin."

- Liquid Ventures - hydroelectric powered Bitcoin mining

- Moon - probably "Moon Bitcoin", a Bitcoin faucet app

- Satoshi’s Games - "integrate blockchain-based play-to-earn economies into ... games"

- Sazmining - crypto mining

- Shock Network, Inc. - ambiguious, but possibly "Shock Wallet", a hosted crypto wallet

So, not one of the companies pitched at the conference described in the article operates outside the crypto bubble.

[1] https://b.tc/conference/pitch-day

Show me one company that "does things with bitcoin" that

1. does things which aren't already solved for cheaper using standard finance (for example, splitwise makes splitting bills easier, there are disposable credit card solutions, within crypto multi-sig accounts for the masses could be one idea) 2. is not just enabling other people to do something with crypto or building out the "doing something with crypto" capabilities (i.e., the product is used to do what real finance does - facilitate and simplify services and manufacturing of goods. Not trading, not infrastructure for trading, not derivatives, not loans...) 3. Is profitable or generates organic revenue (i.e., has customers actually using their product and paying them for it)

Alternatively, show me one company or freelancer denominating their prices in bitcoin, without tying it to the dollar indirectly.

In my experience in usa it is cheaper and easier to buy real estate with btc. Can still use closing company, if you want to pay those fees. This is just starting, and your tastes may vary. It's nice to have choice.

In Europe, we just have functioning wire transfers. Fails number 1

In USA closing companies use certified checks. BTC is cheaper and faster than literally having the closing company clerk drive certified checks to various banks.

You don't have to use it, though it works well in some situations and very well in big transactions. But you must be in a position to pay the entire purchase price and not rely on fractional reserve lenders to provide the funds to purchase the property. Since I don't need lenders, why would I use the structures that are in place to protect the lenders?

> 3. Is profitable or generates organic revenue (i.e., has customers actually using their product and paying them for it)

Does an e-mail provider accepting payment in bitcoin count?

Fails number 1

"Bitcoin is supposed to be money" isn't the only pro-crypto position out there. A lot of its current value is driven by people holding and purchasing it from a perspective including things like "this will be the new backing infrastructure for every transaction in the world" not just "this is digital gold."

Isn't the point of Bitcoin precisely that it naturally becomes more and more valuable? If people want money that doesn't make money they can use stablecoins.

I certainly hope not! That's what the article's author was hoping for, but presumably Bitcoin will reach a long-term stable price level at some point. Maybe it already has, or did two years ago when it was at US$8000, or maybe at some point it will rapidly fall to $0 as investors switch to Ether or Grin or ZCash or whatever is popular ten years from now. Its volatility unfortunately appeals to get-rich-quick speculators, but hopefully at some point they'll get burned enough to quit and leave it to serious people. Assuming it doesn't evaporate completely!

The problem with "stablecoins" is that they reintroduce the single point of failure that sunk Digicash and e-gold, which Bitcoin was specifically designed to eliminate. Holding Tether is a bet that neither Bitfinex nor the Federal Reserve will decide to make their money machine go brrr. I don't know how you feel about the Federal Reserve but I wouldn't trust Bitfinex with my lunch money, much less my savings or my country's foreign reserves.

Agree.

Many people critize bitcoin for its current volatility and entirely neglect that it can totally change in the long-term.

It appears reasonable to me to expect the system dynamic along a pathway towards (possibly) wide adoption to go through various changes. Yes there are probably phases of hype and there's the influence of block reward halvings but there can also be effects in the long-term that stabilize: the more widespread and integrated in various parts of finance and the economy and actual day to day transactions or people's savings bitcoin were to become the more it would dampen volatility.

Why that? Because unlike purely speculative financial transactions, day to day transactions are very much restricted and influenced by and thus coupled to rather constant human needs, so a lot less volatile than the former.

Now don't get me wrong. I know bitcoin can't directly be used to replace cash because of settlement time and transaction fees. But that's why protocols on top like Lightning exist.

DAI is a stablecoin not relying upon off-chain backing.

Thank you! I didn't remember that, though I must have heard of it at some point. However, its metric of "stability" is apparently US$1, so by holding Dai you are still betting that the Federal Reserve will not decide to make its money machine go brrr. Holding Bitcoin involves no such bet on politics, though it certainly has a lot of short-term volatility.

The fixed number of bitcoins doesn't help you if people decide they want ether instead. Or if either are fine. Or something else in the future. That risk is very alive and well.

(I'd argue that the spread of multiple cryptocurrencies has had a major inflationary effect overall in the world economy in the last five years. Lot of people with suddenly fat bank accounts out of nothing.)

I haven't seen any profitable cryptocurrency companies which do anything genuinely useful for non-crypto people in the real world - all the profitable ones are inward-looking, i.e. engaged in "building out the ecosystem" (or "extending the pyramid scheme" depending on your perspective), e.g. the cryptocurrency exchanges. That's a big difference between the internet and cryptocurrency - the internet can be said to have started benefitting ordinary people within a few years, but there's no sign of cryptocurrency ever doing anything useful for the proverbial "man on the Clapham omnibus" after 13 years. In that sense cryptocurrency is more like the gold rush - some people find gold, most people make money selling the shovels, but the vast majority of the world are so far removed from it all that it doesn't impact them in any way whatsoever (except perhaps for the negative effect it has on their environment).

Bitcoin can't function well as money as it's too clogged up. That's why the narrative switched from money + adoption to digital gold + number goes up.

As opposed to other technologies out there, bitcoin does a very poor job as being money.

> Spoke to the wrong people.

So either the conference didn't have the right people, or this journalist is shit at their job. Which implication do you claim?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com