Is Bitcoin Struggling to Find Its Star Power After Miami Conference? (fastcompany.com) 82
Fast Company reviews the Bitcoin 2022 conference held in Miami this week — arguing that it was actually Ethereum that sparked 2021's boom in cryptocurrenies. (And that with NFTs and DAOs, Ethereum still remains the flashier, main driver of popular crypto culture.)
Their conclusion? There's "a real sense of desperation for some kind of star power that can elevate Bitcoin from digital gold for the techno-libertarian set to the true mainstream cultural movement it needs to be in order to actually catch on." In fact, the issue of what influencers or celebrities can do for the Bitcoin community came up directly on Thursday morning, during a panel featuring Odell Beckham Jr., Serena Williams, Aaron Rodgers, and Cash App's crypto product lead, Miles Suter. Beckham and Rodgers have both made headlines recently for taking their salaries in Bitcoin; Williams is heavily involved in the Bitcoin startup world.... It was pretty far away from the high energy radiating from the world of NFTs, and it was clear that the event's bigger names aren't sure what else to do other than just tell the audience to buy Bitcoin over and over again. A lot of people make fun of NFTs, but they're an easier cultural product to point to and talk about than trying to have a fun conversation about lightning networks....
Bitcoin's attempts at going mainstream feel like a real two-steps-forward-one-step-back situation. Its most vocal supporters see it as a war-ending miracle technology. Alex Gladstein, the Human Rights Foundation's chief strategy officer led a panel on Thursday that argued it could lead to peace on Earth. It's not uncommon to hear presenters at Bitcoin 2022 argue that Bitcoin could end all wars forever. But that flies in the face of the conference's wilder, bawdier attractions — the big robot bull statue, the wild after-parties, the endless panels about cancel culture and Twitter drama.
And these competing attitudes within the world of Bitcoin came to a head on Thursday afternoon, when chaos briefly erupted in the conference's main stage when it was announced that Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy had dropped out of his much talked-about panel, titled "Bitcoin Is Fuck You Money". Portnoy has not issued any explanation for why he dropped out, but he did spend the rest of the afternoon live tweeting the PGA Masters Tournament. For someone who claims to be all in on the technology, the so-called "baron of Bitcoin" didn't even stay for his panel.
"Fuck you, Dave," the emcee gleefully told the crowd as they cheered and booed in response.
The article reports that other speakers at the conference included:
Their conclusion? There's "a real sense of desperation for some kind of star power that can elevate Bitcoin from digital gold for the techno-libertarian set to the true mainstream cultural movement it needs to be in order to actually catch on." In fact, the issue of what influencers or celebrities can do for the Bitcoin community came up directly on Thursday morning, during a panel featuring Odell Beckham Jr., Serena Williams, Aaron Rodgers, and Cash App's crypto product lead, Miles Suter. Beckham and Rodgers have both made headlines recently for taking their salaries in Bitcoin; Williams is heavily involved in the Bitcoin startup world.... It was pretty far away from the high energy radiating from the world of NFTs, and it was clear that the event's bigger names aren't sure what else to do other than just tell the audience to buy Bitcoin over and over again. A lot of people make fun of NFTs, but they're an easier cultural product to point to and talk about than trying to have a fun conversation about lightning networks....
Bitcoin's attempts at going mainstream feel like a real two-steps-forward-one-step-back situation. Its most vocal supporters see it as a war-ending miracle technology. Alex Gladstein, the Human Rights Foundation's chief strategy officer led a panel on Thursday that argued it could lead to peace on Earth. It's not uncommon to hear presenters at Bitcoin 2022 argue that Bitcoin could end all wars forever. But that flies in the face of the conference's wilder, bawdier attractions — the big robot bull statue, the wild after-parties, the endless panels about cancel culture and Twitter drama.
And these competing attitudes within the world of Bitcoin came to a head on Thursday afternoon, when chaos briefly erupted in the conference's main stage when it was announced that Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy had dropped out of his much talked-about panel, titled "Bitcoin Is Fuck You Money". Portnoy has not issued any explanation for why he dropped out, but he did spend the rest of the afternoon live tweeting the PGA Masters Tournament. For someone who claims to be all in on the technology, the so-called "baron of Bitcoin" didn't even stay for his panel.
"Fuck you, Dave," the emcee gleefully told the crowd as they cheered and booed in response.
The article reports that other speakers at the conference included:
- Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang
- Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary
- Paypal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel
But the article ultimately argues that the conference "feels like a low-level comic convention that's being held in the same event space as an economic forum."
Re: In Miami? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's an odd take on it. Where do you think most of the USD comes from that is spent on blockchain assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum to drive up its price?
Re: (Score:2)
BZZZT wrong
Blockchain asset prices are being propped up by QE. Indirectly, but it's happening. Or rather has already happened.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd wager that 95% of Floridians on the street, like most everywhere else, couldn't provide a correct definition of quantitative easing if you gave them an open book test.
No, the conference is in Miami because that city is the new hotness among tech bros. It has nothing, nothing to do with the 21 million iother people living in Florida.
Re: (Score:1)
Never did understand why anyone with a bunch of money would want to live in Miami. I-95 traffic is indescribably bad, and the climate is the worst combination of hot/humid/rainy almost all year. Also, frequently you'll encounter store/restaurant workers who can't help you because they don't speak English (I'm completely serious - it's yet another one of Florida's idiosyncrasies).
How's that old saying go? If I owned homes in Miami and hell, I'd rent out the place in Miami and live in hell.
Pyramid Scheme (Score:5, Informative)
So, in other words they need to find new suckers?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pyramid Scheme (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Is Apple a pyramid scheme because Jobs and Woz did well?
Re: (Score:3)
Yes but how often is 10 years later not yet enough time to get out of a pyramid scheme?
Well, the (second, after crypto currency) largest in history lasted at least 15, possibly as long as 35 years before it collapsed.
Re: (Score:2)
I invite you to consider it is more like a typical enterprise in which initial stakeholders do well vs late-comers.
I invite you to read a high school level economy book and learn why a company has value and then try to understand why bitcoin has value. It may help clear some things for you.
Re: (Score:1)
Like everything else, it has value as long as people think it has value.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it wasn't started as a pyramid scheme (probably.) Not that it's uncommon for big-money pyramid schemes to take a decade or more to explode - see Enron.
Amway's still in business too, along with 1000 other MLM schemes. Those don't ever collapse. They've managed to arrange things such that the scheme can continue in perpetuity, as long as new blood keeps getting brought in at the bottom levels.
Re: (Score:2)
What percentage of BTC has never been traded? Something like 50%?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
so far the suckers are the ones who missed out completely.
Even with a time machine, you'd actually have to go pretty far back in the cryptocurrency timeline to achieve a rags-to-riches result.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that is exactly how the greater fool concept works, so you're not wrong. (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/greaterfooltheory.asp)
Everyone who doesn't get in early enough is the fool. Everyone who's still around when the obvious non-currency that's being manipulated almost 100% solely as an investment (read: gambling) instrument) goes belly up... is a fool.
Some people got really rich selling, trading, and facilitating the trading/selling of tulip bulbs... but those left with a bunch of diseased pla
Re: (Score:2)
Over the past 2 and 5 years BTC has had a CAGR of 100%. Great. Over the past 1 year it has been -30%.
Apple has had a 5-year CAGR of 35%; Tesla 74%. Over the past year, AAPL is up 35% and TSLA is up 39%. Sure, you looked really smart up until last year investing in BTC... this year not so much. Risk adjusted, I would go for AAPL and TSLA any day.
Re: (Score:1)
How are crypto currencies still a thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean I could understand that 5 years ago there would be people still believing in that. After all back then you could actually buy stuff with Bitcoin. Today transaction fees alone make it impossible to actually be used for anything.
If we look back further we see that all goals have been given up on. Crypto currencies are no longer de-centralized as both the "money" is centralized among a few "whales", but also the mining is centralized among a hand full of huge mining pools. Somehow crypto currencies managed to become even more centralized than "real" money.
Proof of work is actively destroying the planet, while Proof of stake is an even more direct way of making it centralized by skipping the "buy and operate hardware" stage.
Re: (Score:3)
You're wrong about Proof of Stake, but that's another matter for another time.
As to how it's still alive, people serious about blockchain turned their backs on Bitcoin years ago.
Re:How are crypto currencies still a thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a co-worker ask me about bitcoin a few days ago.
Here is how I explained it:
Bitcoin started life as a means of enabling non-centralized currency transactions; Basically, anonymous purchases, not tied to a knowable human identity.
However, it soon became completely overrun by speculators, who altered its primary use case away from anonymous transaction processing, and toward pure speculation bubble inflation.
As time has passed, the anonymity features of bitcoin have vanished. It is no longer realistically possible to conduct anonymous purchase transactions using the crypto currency. That leaves *ONLY* the speculation bubble economy.
I gave a quick elaboration on what blockchain is-- including the example of prime factorization as a math problem that is hard to solve, but easy to verify-- and said that the mining process itself is what facilitates authentication that transactions have taken place on the blockchain ledger.
I advised that as an investment, it is a terrible idea, unless you want an investment vehicle that is 100% bubble, and 0% fundamentals, and are willing to lose everything in just minutes.
Re: (Score:2)
There are actually some intermediate steps like when it was possible to mine Bitcoin on Graphics cards.
Here's a talk by Dan Kaminsky from 2011 about the topic:
https://media.ccc.de/v/cccamp1... [media.ccc.de]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I gave a quick elaboration on what blockchain is
It's the most wasteful, inefficient method mankind has ever devised for maintaining a secure financial ledger. Furthermore, because it's so fundamentally broken in its implementation, the bulk of cryptocurrency transactions take place on centralized exchanges anyway.
Well, it's an investment vehicle in this sense ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I advised that as an investment, it is a terrible idea, unless you want an investment vehicle that is 100% bubble, and 0% fundamentals, and are willing to lose everything in just minutes.
If you follow the advertisers the investment should be in bitcoin, NFT and gold right now. Even though gold has basically been flat since 2011. When everyone is advertising to buy something, time to ask who is making money from the advertisements.
Re: (Score:2)
Fully agree that you'll probably want to
Re: (Score:2)
Gold is bought more as a hedge than as an investment; the price tends to go up during times of economic trouble. It rose following the crash of 2009, during COVID times, and recently with the invasion of Ukraine. The time to buy gold is during times of economic growth and stability. That doesn't mean you can't make money off it as an investment though; the price has varied roughly between $1000 and $2000 per oz. in the past decade. Not what I would call "flat".
Fully agree that you'll probably want to stay away from investments that are being hyped in ads. BTC seems to have stalled (swings of 50% which is common, but no clear trend for a good while now), and perhaps the last group of investors have bought in. We're moving out of a time period that saw incredibly low interest rates, and an utterly astounding amount of money eagerly looking for a decent return. With rising interest rates and tougher economic times, we might see a few people wanting to divest at least some of their BTC. I wouldn't buy gold now either unless you have cash and worry about runaway inflation (as a hedge rather than an investment). And NFTs were never worth the paper they're not printed on.
Agreed, but as you say, gold always gets hyped when its value is high and a lousy investment. I say flat since 2011 as the current price of gold is about the same as it was in 2011, it only went down in between then. If you want to go buy on the dip and sell on the peak, then gold can definitely make money, if you want to buy something that will be worth more 10 or 20 years from now... gold investment 20 years ago would have made money to now, but gold investment 10 years ago would have been worse than a
Not anonymous (Score:2)
The entire point of bitcoin is traceability with the blockchain. It was never meant to be anonymous.
Re: (Score:2)
You kind of left out the part where the original design was flawed and couldn't scale well enough to actually be a system of payments.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It was almost $4 not a month ago. Still, $1.35 on every transaction, for what's intended to act as currency, is fucking outrageous.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's not even specific to capitalism. It's the economic law of gravity. Nations and economies are categorized mainly on how well and for how long they defy it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Cardano:
3202 stake pools
https://adapools.org/ [adapools.org]
Many of which are bare metal validators, like this one:
https://twitter.com/OTG_WCat/s... [twitter.com]
Transaction costs about 17 cent.
Transaction time lately below 1 minute. Under high load usually less than 5 minutes.
Some blockchains are a mess, to be sure. But if you ask me, Cardano shows what the future of blockchain can be. Many people poke fun at it, as if producing many research papers and being built on scientific foundations were a "dumb" thing to do. Most competitors
Re: (Score:2)
Says the Cardano investor.
Now, will everyone please jump in and buy some so the price goes up and he can cash out?
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, fuck off. Always the same shit.
Tesla builds great electric vehicles, said the Tesla investor, and it doesn't make it less true. IPhones are the best smartphones said the Apple investor. Google has the best search engine, said the Google investor. Carrots are healthy said the carrot investor!
Re: (Score:2)
Reading comprehension is a thing.
Transaction time != number of transactions
Network ping time != bandwidth
Cardano has hundreds of individual transactions per block. With the Hydra update, this will scale into tens or even hundreds of thousands.
Re: (Score:3)
Most crypto stuff is a "bigger fool" scam, i.e. you buy it in the hope that an even bigger fool will come along for you to sell it to at a profit.
NFTs are the purest form, but most crypto coins qualify as well. Part of the scam is hyping the coins up, e.g. by taking out an ad in Times Square. When fools see the ad they assume that the coin is valuable, I mean the people behind it can afford to advertise in Times Square so they must have made a boatload of cash, right?
Same with the conference. If they can ge
Re: (Score:1)
Please take a few moments to familiarize yourself with Proof of Space based coins. I would mention the main one but people consider me to be shilling for it if I do. It is being used today to circumvent the POW and POS issues to which you refer.
Money Laundering (Score:2)
After that FOMO brought in speculators. There's a ton of retirees with a bit of money but not really enough to retire on, and they're easy targets for ponzi scams. Lax regulation mean pump and dump is legal.
Elon Musk went on Twitter, said "we're taking Doge and Bitcoin!", sold his holdings for
Re: (Score:2)
Bitcoin was a prototype (Score:3, Interesting)
Bitcoin was an absolutely brilliant concept, and first implementation. However, it quickly became apparent - with slow, expensive transactions and huge hunger for mining power - that Bitcoin was just a prototype. Later implementations were far better.
Crypto does serve useful purposes. Providing a means of payment outside government-controlled currencies is important in certain circumstances. Providing smart contracts is also useful. Yes, there are also stupid uses (NFTs, just to name one), but those do not negate the useful applications.
Since Bitcoin refuses to fix its problems, it should fade into obscurity, and be replaced by other, better implementations.
Re:Bitcoin was a prototype (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, no not really. I do agree that 10 years ago it looked as if it may be possible to somehow find ways to address the flaws of Bitcoin, but so far nobody managed to do so.
Looking at it from a distance, there probably is one main problem everyone failed to address so far, and that is that people act in their own interests or make mistakes. A good example are smart contracts. They might at first sound like a good idea, but then you realize that there are people who make errors while programming computers. Smart contracts combine all the negative aspects of contracts while making it hard to update/fix them in case a change is necessary.
I also don't understand what people find so bad about "government-controlled currencies" as those provide useful features like inflation. Inflation is one of the few instruments to distribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Deflation, like it's present in crypto currencies, does the opposite.
Re: (Score:2)
Inflation distributes money from the rich to the poor? You're mad. It's like the 1970s never happened to you. The working middle class was gutted by rising prices and stagnant wages. Take a look at what percentage of an average worker's income was necessary for a house or a car in 1970 and then 1980. You'll see what I mean.
Inflation only favors the working poor if it's primarily driven by increasing wages (such as those brought on by a shortage of workers). In favors the rich if money is being printed
Re: (Score:2)
"In favors the rich if money is being printed in vast quantities and then handed out to investment bankers and their cronies."
See, that was the problem with it, not inflation itself. Money was also printed for the "New Deal" which brought prosperity in the US for decades. Imagine money was printed to invest in infrastructure instead of banks.
Now look at crypto currencies, it's all just investors. You cannot buy a loaf of bread with Bitcoin or any other crypto currency any more.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Inflation only favors the working poor
False. Inflation favours those looking for work as well (as it provides stability to the economy). Lack of inflation as well as excessive inflation both fuck the poor, middle class, working, looking for work as well as not looking for work by sinking the economy.
It's like the 1970s never happened to you.
It's like you never took basic economics and thing "concept x = bad" without considering the wide ranging externalities that make up a macro economic system.
Re: (Score:1)
It's like the 1970s never happened to you.
It's like you never took basic economics and thing "concept x = bad" without considering the wide ranging externalities that make up a macro economic system.
I think its fair to look at the 1970s (over inflation combined with gasoline shortage) and apply that lesson to the current economy. Where you run into issues is when you start applying that lesson to inflation in general. Inflation is a motivator for the economy, so long as its kept in check.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not about distributing wealth, it's about productivity.
Re: (Score:2)
Congratulations. You're on the nose, unlike most other posters here. The time is long overdue for investors to abandon Bitcoin and move to other projects. It survives on name recognition alone by this point.
Re: (Score:2)
New buyers know Bitcoin and flock to it when considering blockchain investing. Name recognition sells.
Re: (Score:2)
The time is long overdue for investors to abandon Bitcoin and move to other projects.
Problem is, most other projects were created with the goal of giving another set of folks a chance to be at the top of the pyramid. The only flaw they saw in Bitcoin was that they had missed out. If you were to actually fix all of the issues that makes Bitcoin suck, you'd ultimately end up with cryptocurrency that isn't really useful as a speculative investment.
Re: (Score:2)
So you mean, it might actually be useful as a currency instead? That would be much better to have a digital currency where transferring money was next to nothing in cost.
The speculative nature is the entire problem with all crypto. Want to gamble? Then pick one of the other ways to do it. There are many.
Re: (Score:2)
You're looking at the wrong projects.
Re:Bitcoin was a prototype (Score:5, Interesting)
Bitcoin was an absolutely brilliant concept, and first implementation. However, it quickly became apparent - with slow, expensive transactions and huge hunger for mining power - that Bitcoin was just a prototype. Later implementations were far better.
Since Bitcoin refuses to fix its problems, it should fade into obscurity, and be replaced by other, better implementations.
You're forgetting that for 99.9999% of Crypto-coin owners it's not a currency, it's a way to speculate. They're hooked on the gambling aspect, they don't care about any technical aspect. All the power usage, etc., is Somebody Else's Problem.
They're not going to move on from Bitcoin, it's still the biggest fish.
Re: (Score:3)
Bitcoin was an absolutely brilliant concept, and first implementation. However, it quickly became apparent - with slow, expensive transactions and huge hunger for mining power - that Bitcoin was just a prototype. Later implementations were far better.
The crypto ecosystem needs to continue to evolve. Unfortunately, there's too much money tied up in it to do so. The current batch of crypto investors/speculators believe they are making lots of money. Any change is perceived to be an unnecessary risk to their "earnings."
The crypto market needs to implode to enable reform.
If Peter Thiel comes to your event (Score:2, Troll)
you should ask yourself "Are we the baddies?".
I mean seriously that guy is the closest real-life thing we have to a "James Bond"-villain.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you used to work at Gawker? Also have you heard of George Soros? He's like Elliot Carver combined with Auric Goldfinger.
Re: (Score:2)
Thiel is an odd duck. He’s gay and republican which seems to make little sense given the laws that republicans implement. Like Katelyn Jenner being shocked that she’s very unpopular when making Fox news appearances.
Re: (Score:2)
I've actually known several gay Republican types on a fairly deep (and gay) basis.
It seems like after 2015 or whenever it was gay marriage was legalized nationwide and mostly dropped as an issue for Republicans to hammer on, now they feel that it's OK to support them. Seeing as how Republicans don't have a platform to run on besides this type of stuff, they've brought in hate against transgenders to fill that gap in their bullet-point list of everything wrong with society.
I'm certain this was a demographic
Jo Jorgensen (Score:1)
Nice diss of the OTHER presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen who was on the same panel as Yang, sitting right next to him...
bias much?
Lack of Spam funding is a good thing (Score:2)
If there is a ton of money to hire stars to shill things, make glitzy promotions, or push other expensive marketing campaigns, I would argue that is actually quite a bad sign.
You don't see gold bullion holding rallies or hiring celebrities. Sound money is supposed to be boring, its not supposed to have a a marketing team.
When you see the cloud of buzz and expensive marketing around NFT's and Defi's, that should serve as a warning that its something to be avoided. Glitter means its bait.
Shhh... don't tell anyone (Score:2)
I like etherium and many similar cryptocurrencies which actually do something different including privacy coins. I love the ideas and it is possible to combine some of these tools with a reserve of BTC to do great things.
The same bells and whistles which make them interesting make them insecure functionality means complexity and complexity means compromise. That is why you see these coins get hac
Re: (Score:1)
btc is not a pump and dump? Great. Glad to know it's backed by something.
It is backed by something, right? Anything? Gold? Silver?
Oh, there is no guarantee you'll EVER get anything out of it.
So how is this not a P&D scheme? LOL.
They could outlaw it tomorrow. China and Russia have already done that. BTC is primarily used by criminals they say.
Re: (Score:2)
It is backed by innate value, goods, and services. And yes there are many places which readily exchange gold/silver for BTC.
"Oh, there is no guarantee you'll EVER get anything out of it."
There are no guarantees you'll EVER get anything out of anything and where there are guarantees they are written by liars and fools. I can go use half a dozen cryptocurrencies to buy gold, silver, and any fiat currency on Earth right now... both real and fake. You k
Re: (Score:1)
"It is backed by something, right? Anything? Gold? Silver?"
It is backed by innate value, goods, and services. And yes there are many places which readily exchange gold/silver for BTC.
And how is that done? It's converted into an equivalent fiat currency that can be wildly different than yesterday. BTC lost 40-50% of its value recently. It's not tied to gold or anything else. It's fake.
"Oh, there is no guarantee you'll EVER get anything out of it."
There are no guarantees you'll EVER get anything out of anything and where there are guarantees they are written by liars and fools. I can go use half a dozen cryptocurrencies to buy gold, silver, and any fiat currency on Earth right now... both real and fake. You know what I can't buy? Fake Bitcoin.
Think so eh? You just keep on thinking you can't fake bitcoin. There's a way. If you think about how transactions are performed and mined you'd realize how it can be done. People have already had their accounts hacked and lost all their bitcoin. Now what? It's not real. You can't go to the police over value
Re: (Score:2)
No, that is done by transferring BTC to the person who hands me the gold/silver/services etc. There are literally nations using it as a currency.
"BTC lost 40-50% of its value recently."
False. It didn't even lose that much of its price on the speculative market.
"Think so eh? You just keep on thinking you can't fake bitcoin. There's a way. If you think about how transactions are performed and mi
Miami - the new echo chamber for Crypto (Score:1)
It will bring world peace, make your laundry whiter than white, and ease indigestion.
What else can Bitcoin bring to the table?
Frankly, I'm surprise the value has held up as long as it has. I don't see it moving much either way unless one or more whales decides to cash out, then look out.
Former Prime Minister Candidate Kevin O'Leary (Score:2)
Our political system is a bit different but O'Leary ran for leadership of the Conservative party [www.cbc.ca]. If he had stayed in the race and won he would have had a shot at becoming PM in the 2019 federal election.
It's not clear how serious his campaign actually was, he seemed to have been inspired by Trump to go in as a celebrity businessman but then quit while he was actually leading in polls.