Slashdot Mirror
Why Charles Stross Wants Bitcoin To Die In a Fire
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "SF writer Charles Stross writes on his blog that like all currency systems, Bitcoin comes with an implicit political agenda attached and although our current global system is pretty crap, Bitcoin is worse. For starters, BtC is inherently deflationary. There is an upper limit on the number of bitcoins that can ever be created so the cost of generating new Bitcoins rises over time, and the value of Bitcoins rise relative to the available goods and services in the market. Libertarians love it because it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish and it doesn't look like a "Fiat currency". You can visualize it as some kind of scarce precious data resource, sort of a digital equivalent of gold. However there are a number of huge down-sides to Bitcoin says Stross: Mining BtC has a carbon footprint from hell as they get more computationally expensive to generate, electricity consumption soars; Bitcoin mining software is now being distributed as malware because using someone else's computer to mine BitCoins is easier than buying a farm of your own mining hardware; Bitcoin's utter lack of regulation permits really hideous markets to emerge, in commodities like assassination and drugs and child pornography; and finally Bitcoin is inherently damaging to the fabric of civil society because it is pretty much designed for tax evasion. "BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions," concludes Stross. "The current banking industry and late-period capitalism may suck, but replacing it with Bitcoin would be like swapping out a hangnail for Fournier's gangrene.""
“Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the rest.” Thus the
Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you: "If you want profits, you must
rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and
who are the ruled?"
-Muad'Dib's Secret Message to the Landsraad from "Arrakis Awakening" by the
Princess Irulan
Because shitty /. articles keep being submitted about it.
This article has been flying around for the past couple of days, and it's so riddled with misconceptions and pure falsehoods about Bitcoin that this guy should be laughed out of his job.
You know what has a carbon footprint from hell? The whole payments industry, and industry that could go away overnight if retailers, service industry, and wholesalers switched to digital currency.
Anti-malware software simply hasn't caught up yet, but sucking someone's power for pure financial profit sure is better than sucking someone's power to barrage others with email. Sure, there's still evil here, but Bitcoin itself is not the problem: there will always been viruses doing something.
Bitcoin's lack of regulation is not a Bitcoin deficiency, but rather a legal one. Blame government for treating Bitcoin as a commodity instead of as a currency, subject to the same laws as cash. Oh, wait, it basically is subject to the same laws as cash, except it's a whole lot easier to carry and the government can't create more of it out of thin air (which is a good thing, if you want your money to have the same or better purchasing power tomorrow as it did today).
At least he didn't give the argument "There isn't enough Bitcoin to go around." I'm sick and tired of defending that. There's 21 quadrillion units of Bitcoin (That's enough for 3000 satoshis per person on the planet), and it would be very easy to convince miners to further subdivide it.
This author reads like the worst kind of Keynesian: the kind that misleads and lies about alternatives, rather than attacking the principles and stability of the system itself.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I liked the comment explaining where Internet Libertarians come from:
And if you grow up in your parent's basement, then you are shaped by an environment where the fundamental constraints on what you want to do are shaped neither by scarcity nor malignance, but _by genuine good intent_. Your relatives probably don't wan't you to spend all day smoking pot and playing video games; in some cases they will over-estimate just how much of a bad thing that is. And even if they _are_ right, it's not like anyone facing such hectoring is going to admit it.
Pretty much every libertarian position can be understood in that frame of restrictive but benevolent authority being the root of all 'real' problems. It's a rare parent who literally tortures their kids, so torture is, at best, not a 'real' issue, not a priority. But many make them do stuff for their health, so mandatory health insurance is a big deal. Pretty much no parents kill their child with drones, many read their diaries. And so on.
So to libertarians, Bitcoin is like wages from a fast food job as opposed to an allowance; lets you buy what you want without someone else having a veto. Only money that doesn't judge you can be considered entirely yours...
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Every time there are arguments made like this I remember something I read in the late 90s. It was a scholarly book by a broadcaster (I believe it was about HD TV) that had a section about why Internet video wasn't going to take off. It stated things like "postage stamp-sized video," jumpyness, bad audio... all those problems that were inherent in the early versions of Quicktime and MPEG.
The flaw in the argument comes in the unspoken assumption that what they are looking at is a final version. I personally don't think bitcoin will ever "replace" monetary systems across the world and there is a lot of reasons to hope that it doesn't, but a lot of these arguments make the assumption that no adjustments will ever be made and the ideas and tech. will never improve. And that just *doesn't* happen.
I hate being a grammar nazi but, this Stross guy being a writer, I think it's warranted. Lack of mastery in his own craft makes me distrust his research a bit, even if it's a bit of an ad hominem on my part.
to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions, as seen both in TFA and the Slashdot summary, lacks possessives and looks just plain bad.
Bitcoin comes with an implicit political agenda attached
Whose?
Libertarians love it because it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish and it doesn't look like a "Fiat currency".
One, any currency is a fiat currency. People have to agree to use it, be it beads, dollars, bitcoins or polished turds. Just because you have a problem with libertarian views (I do on some), does not mean an insulting argument is valid or appropriate
Mining BtC has a carbon footprint from hell as they get more computationally expensive to generate, electricity consumption soars;
Printing and minintg currency has a big carbon/environmental footprint as well.
Bitcoin mining software is now being distributed as malware because using someone else's computer to mine BitCoins is easier than buying a farm of your own mining hardware;
It is always easier to steal someones wallet than work for it. There will always be those that try to do just that. Your point?
Bitcoin's utter lack of regulation permits really hideous markets to emerge, in commodities like assassination and drugs and child pornography;
This one really gets my goat. These markets (whether hideous or not), exist already, regardless of the currency. It doesn't matter if you by crack with blowjobs or acid with BTC, the market is there.
and finally Bitcoin is inherently damaging to the fabric of civil society because it is pretty much designed for tax evasion. "BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions," concludes Stross.
The blockchain is public. Once a wallet is tied to an individual, all its transactions are public, be they income that is untaxed or 'hideous market' purchases. Even years down the road, if a wallet I used to buy ecstasy in 2012 is tied to me in 2042, that purchase is now and forever tied to me (as well as all other transactions done with that wallet).
Silence is a state of mime.
Since libertarians are sort of getting to be the "new Jews" (i.e. a misunderstood community targeted on the basis of what their enemies say about them), here's a recap: 1. Libertarians favor peace over war. 2. Libertarians don't want to run other people's lives (or have their own lives run by other people) 3. Libertarians don't trust government because it is made up of individual people and don't understand why those who don't trust individuals trust government. Libertarian views on bitcoin are divided, much like views on everything else. Trying to say "bitcoin is a libertarian ideal," is the same as saying "war is a government ideal."
So you are going to pay for a loaf of bread with your American eagle gold coin? Awfully expensive bread, because I'm not making change. A lot of libertarians are pretty dumb going nuts buying gold and silver, you are buying it at the highest inflated prices and IF the economy collapses it will drop in value like a stone. so your $1000 an ounce gold becomes worth about $5.00 an ounce as trading coins.
Worst investment in your life is gold and silver right now because it is overinflated.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Try adding all the assesinations and drugs and child pornography that is financed by bitcoins, and compare that with the number (even done by governments) that is financed by the competing fiat currency , is like a drop of water compared with the ocean. I suppose that being descentralized instead of being printed by the Federal Reserve plays against it.
I agree the "gold bugs" are a little misguided. Gold if you use it as a wealth store at all is purely about playing a 'long game' that is it almost always recovers its original value at some point if you hold it long enough. You would have to exchange pretty close to the same number of oz in gold for the cash required to get a similar quality house built in 1813 as you would in 2013.
If you have amassed a great fortune you want to preserve across generations gold might be a workable way to do it. It might even work fairly well if you plan to buy before a panic and don't expect to sell until 10 or 15 years later when the recovery is complete.
The notion that having gold is going to anything for you during mass panic is silly. Because you right nobody is going to trade something useful like food or transportation for a mostly inert metal.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
...worthwhile BitCoin post on /. , ever.
Bitcoin is inherently structured as a pyramid scheme. Users who adopted it early had an easy time obtaining BTC, and they're incentivised to recruit others so their stockpile has value.
If pictures of parts of the human body presented for education are a problem, you're in the wrong society.
I long ago concluded that I am indeed in the wrong society.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I have. It would suck. The rich can avoid debt and sit on their wealth while it accumulates. The poor however can watch as their mortgage increases with value alongside their wages rather than gradually getting smaller. Deflation encourages hoarding wealth and inflation encourages investment and wealth creation. Ideally you don't want a huge amount of either, but a small amount of deflation is certainly better for the economy than deflation.
The idea that someone who owns a £10 million property would hate deflation is nonsense. If he thought that cash would get a better return than property he could sell the asset and hold cash instead. Look at the median networth of an American. It's pretty much sweet FA so who cares if their savings are going to go uup by a couple of % a year when their debts will as well and they often have debts that outweigh savings. Deflation is no use to anyone who isn't able to accumulate, or hasn't already accumulated, money.
Well, he's a sci-fi author, so he's probably spent a lot of time thinking about disruptive technology. He's a geek at heart, with a sysadmin and programming background, so his opinion probably isn't any worse than most of Slashdot's subscribers. On the economy? Well, none of us are probably very qualified to discuss it.
I would highly recommend his Laundry series, though.
I view with suspicion anyone who tries to use bogeyman arguments such as drugs and child porn as excuses to not adopt stuff.
0) Bitcoin transactions aren't magically anonymous.
1) HSBC laundered BILLIONS for the drug lords and got away by paying just 11.1% of their net profits. Other big banks did similar things and got similar weak "punishments". So I can safely say that bitcoin will never be as big a part of the drug problem as the US Government is.
That's what I understood, but even so, this part in the synopsis: "...with a Libertarian political agenda in mindâ"to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions," really bothered me.
WFT does the state have any reason whatsoever to monitor my financial transactions.
If you think something illegal is going on with me, get a warrant, but otherwise, just fuck off and leave me alone, eh?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
All I know about your opinion on bitcoins is what you've posted about it in this comment (that you think it's worthless).
Charles Stross, on the other hand, has posted more than merely his opinion: he's also posted a cogent rationale for that opinion - one that contains details (with specific citations) that many a technically qualified geek may not have yet considered.
Taken in the context of his demonstrable interest in and fondness for the idea of decentralized societies and you have a critique that's worth considering - particularly by his reasonably large fan base (many of whom are slashdot readers, as evidenced by many of the above comments).
With deflation, it's difficult to get people to spend money because the "something valuable" will be cheaper if they buy it later.
Like computers. No wonder they failed so epically.
Thought experiment:
Alice, Bob and Charlie constitute a complete economy, each have one T-dollar.
It is determined that there are not enough T-dollars for their growing economy, it is decided to increase the number of T-dollars by one.
What is the fair way to distribute this T-dollar?
Know how it happens currently?
The government gives that T-dollar to Charlie.
Every time.
You are not Charlie.