Why is Bitcoin getting so many features on HN?
Snake oil and charlatans? There's an app for that.
The cognitive dissonance is maddening. Something so esoteric and technical, which required great intelligence to even use, let alone build the cottage industry around... continues to make these intelligent young, white, libertarians look like simple con targets.
The shovel and panning sellers made loads (mining rigs and exchanges). Everyone else who hasn't exited is holding the bag.
If you lived through the dotcom bubble, this is a repeat in slowreck motion. People will lose 95-100% of their investments until the rest freak out and bolt.
Very smart, young, white guys built up expensive trading stations and lost their shirt daytrading on dotcoms. It's like buying a mining... nevermind - nobody's listening.
Your bitter prognostications about "young white libertarians" says more about you than anything else, IMO. And invoking the dot com bubble doesn't help your point - the internet was, indeed, the next big thing, but the bubble was misinformed and 10 years too early. Long term, though, "dot com" was and is real, and many are hoping and working towards cryptocurrencies travelling the same path.
Do you feel special and useful guys? Or does it take $19B to be real special?
But still, HN kicks ass no matter what :)
But that's not why bitcoin is important. bitcoin uses cryptography and peer to peer technologies in a very clever way to create the first internet transferrable, widely accepted currency where you don't need to trust someone else like a government or a bank. It's a true peer to peer currency.
Have you seen the movie Dot-Con by Frontline?