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I see a lot of biased posts on Hacker news regarding Bitcoin. How it will replace fiat, how it will revolutionize banking, how it will continue to go up in price.

The fact is that the technology powering Bitcoin is not great. There are better alternatives to Bitcoin, transactions still take a long time to finish on Bitcoin. And the alternatives themselves need to be refined too.

There are also still a lot of scam coins in play, I personally know a few founders (no relation and no business doing work with them), where they admitted to me their coin was a scam in them getting rich.

So I’m skeptical, very very skeptical. These “friends” got rich off poor chaps looking to make a quick buck. I am almost envious, then I remember that the feds or IRS or some other institution will come after then at some point.

One of them is paying off their current user base because they got hacked.

discuss

vulturalcptlst|5 years ago

You're missing the entire importance of balance. Unfortunately, I'm not sure you understand what makes Bitcoin valuable.

It's a balance between: Decentralization, Security, and Speed of Transaction but still doesn't compromised on the other two. Bitcoin is balanced with immaculate conception. There's no 'altcoin' that will be able to achieve this.

josalhor|5 years ago

There has been some work being done by the EU to make a digital euro [0]. China [1] and the US [2] are also exploring digital alternatives. I believe if these alternatives are well implemented they are going to change banking forever. Banks could become a frontend to that digital infrastructure that would only add features to the network (safety, insurance, help keep your transactions anonymous...). Naturally, everything that I am saying is 100% speculation, but I don't see a world where the current digital currencies (Bitcoin et al.) get backed by the governments.

[0]: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2020/html/ecb.pr2010...

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-to-expand-testing-of-a-di...

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/08/22/digit...