I'm surprised the author didn't complete the analogy -- if Bitcoin and ham radio are both "clunky and old-fangled," what was the internet at its inception?
The internet didn't start in "1991" it started in 1966 with ARPANET and it was so hard and expensive to use it would make using Bitcoin feel like using a toy.
The tone of this article gives me Krugman-on-internet vibes: "By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s"
You can tell the author is not a ham when he says hams "broadcast" their radio message. They don't broadcast (per FCC rule), they make transmissions.
I can see where the author is going here, but the analogy seems a little weird. It also ignores that there is an overlap in the bitcoin and ham world, namely the "prepper" types that assume someday the entire world will implode on itself. These tend to be a vocal minority though (at least in the ham world, I can't speak to bitcoin as much).
The comparison seems flawed though because ham radio has never been about money (except maybe saving on long distance charges in the 70's/80's), and when money is involved (in whatever form) it certainly has an outsized influence on behavior (good or bad). As such I'm not sure you can draw and realistic comparisons between bitcoin and ham radio without stretching the analogy.
> If five years from now everyone in the world has become a bitcoin user, that could only be because something very very bad has happened to the regular monetary system. Perhaps hostile aliens have enslaved us and are using the payments system to control what we can buy, sort of like Margaret Atwood's Compucounts in her dystopic Handmaid's Tale. And so bitcoin has gone mainstream, but only because we have all been forced to become under-the-table bitcoin users in order to buy stuff we need.
I'm not sure the author is paying attention to what really is happening to money around the world.
- Local currencies are being weaponized in various ways from countries to individuals, including surveillance, sanctions, and civil asset forfeiture.
- Physical currency is being withdrawn incrementally around the world, forcing citizens into electronic payment networks with greater weaponization potential.
- The dollar's position as global reserve currency and asset have placed unprecedented stresses on the US financial/political system. there are only two options: default on the national debt(s) or devaluation. It's not going to be default. So, for as long as the global dollar short squeeze[1] rages, the Fed's balance sheet will expand, fuel devastating bubbles, and cause rational people to look for alternatives in the strangest places.
- Gold is increasingly becoming problematic if held abroad. Venezuela recently discovered that gold stored in UK vaults can be stolen by men in 3-piece suits. This makes the picture around gold as a settlement asset increasingly murky.
Bitcoin may or may not offer solutions here. But to brush off obvious problems with the world's financial system at this moment in time seems rather short-sighted.
Bitcoin is an amazing project. And in fairness, has survived 11 years as a target for every malicious actor and curious mind out there.
That said from both an applied cryptographic point of view, and from an economic perspective I think Monero is just fabulous.
Given its fungible and private, its a lot closer to “money” than Bitcoin.
I think it has a strong probability of becoming an important part of global payment options. Its daily transaction count is also at an all time high.
«No, bitcoin isn't going to become a mainstream kind of money. It's too awkward for most people.»
This strikes me as something written by someone who is fundamentally not a problem solver. It's like someone seeing the first cars in the late 19th and early 20th century: awkward, unreliable, etc, and thinking "clearly, cars are NEVER going to become mainstream".
Really? You can't think of any way the technology and tools could improve to make using Bitcoin less awkward?
«Crazy price gyrations are far too wicked for the regular money-using public to tolerate»
Objectively, volatility has significantly decreased over the last 11 years, and will continue to decrease, which is perfectly expected with maturing financial markets.
These posts always seem to focus on Bitcoin which of course is easy to dismiss and isn't likely to make any major changes anytime soon. If you want to talk about a financial network and something end users would actually use then articles should focus on something like Ethereum which does support decentralized finance applications and has easy to use interfaces such as Argent that normal people can use without technical knowledge.
>Crazy price gyrations are far too wicked for the regular money-using public to tolerate
This is what stablecoins such as DAI and USDC are for. People will use stablecoins for their everyday lives as it's built for being a medium of exchange.
>It's too awkward for most people
This is still true to an extent but most people would have no problem using Argent.
Average people need easy to use savings accounts. Easy ways to save and invest their money for the future. One click ways to purchase products. These can't happen on Bitcoin but they already exist on Ethereum and DeFi. All possible in a trustless way.
There's a lot of development happening on web3 right now but if you focus entirely on Bitcoin you will miss the important parts of what make this space interesting.
As a Bitcoin Core contributor[1] and recent Ham radio adopter, the author mistakes a key point:
> This lack of a gate keeper means that there is no one to soften the user experience.
This is true of Ham radio[2], but it is not the case with Bitcoin. Like the internet, and unlike Ham radio, Bitcoin as a system/protocol is open to people creating centralized resources atop it and serving as gatekeepers.
The fact is that today a significant amount[3] of Bitcoin is stored in centralized exchange accounts, controlled by gatekeepers by way of hosted exchange wallets. Likewise, hosted web and mobile wallets are a significant element of the ecosystem, for example, while work on refining self-sovereign/non-custodial lightning network wallets continues, hosted/custodial mobile lightning network wallets are simpler to use, because the hosted gatekeeper can obviate concerns such as opening channels and managing liquidity. Several of the top lightning network wallets[4] are custodial gatekeepers.
Yes, Bitcoin enthusiasts are often hobbyist tinkerers of the sort you might see in Ham radio. At the same time the broader community is served via institutional exchanges and custodial wallets with no such effort required. Often it's the tinkerers who end up running the service providers.
While this decentralized tinkering is an initial hurdle to overcome - it would certainly be easier to have a single company build out all of the initial infrastructure, rather than a host of companies - the result is much more robust against the single failure or control of any one participant. Bitcoin benefits from each service provider, but isn't dependent on any of them. Like the internet, and unlike Ham radio.
[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commits?author=Empact
[2] Largely due to the peculiarities of antenna installation and frequency selection.
[3] https://news.bitcoin.com/new-list-claims-1-9-million-bitcoin...
[4] https://blog.bitrefill.com/top-11-lightning-network-wallets-...
The mind boggles at the absurdity of this comparison.
The amount of social good, emergency preparedness, advancement of technology and just plain fun is what ham radio is about. Bouncing signals off the moon, communicating across the world with just 10 watts--these are common activities.
Can you compare the energy consumption of a ham radio conversation with the amount of energy bitcoin requires to buy a pizza? Many orders of magnitude.
Insofar as being old and clunky, digital modes such as FT8, FT4, Olivia and associated technology is far from clunky.
If there is a disaster that affects the financial system, bitcoin is not going to help--it will be just as paralyzed as the rest of it.
One is expensive fantasy, the other has an ongoing practical use with social benefit.
Blockchain is a database. Bitcoin is a blockchain database with an cryptographic identity layer where transactions are mostly immutable. If all of the people who run Bitcoin don’t all agree on governance then the database is formed into two versions where the transactions before the fork are kept but after the fork the second group will have a different set of transactions (like bitcoin gold) . Ethereum has a super set of features which adds the ability to run a stored procedure which enforce a contract that will be run on the network but have the resources of a microcontroller .
Since the hello world of your own cryptocurrency can be done on ethereum it makes it popular in that respect. Stablecoins are coins pinned to currency values because of the volatility of the underlying coin poses unique issues due to people paying each other in bitcoin or any altcoin.
Bitcoin is the most mature implementation of a blockchain due to being in existence longer . Ethereum has had unique security challenges and transaction issues but since databases are hard to make correctly it will win out due to age .
Bitcoin has proven itself to be able to support speculative investment and faster transaction times than a SWIFT transfer . Ethereum has been used to implement altcoins and stable coins and also encompasses bitcoins feature set too).
> If five years from now everyone in the world has become a bitcoin user, that could only be because something very very bad has happened to the regular monetary system
If you ask a bitcoin “true believer,” many will tell you that something terrible has already happened to the regular monetary system. This crowd is typically very concerned with the level of debt in society, especially US government debt, and the devaluation of the dollar during WW2 and the Vietnam War.
As someone who works at a large cryptocurrency business, and who's welfare is thus bound to the ongoing success of cryptocurrencies, I would like to state my unequivocal support of the notion presented in this article.
I think the potential of life improvement for many unbanked people in non-first world countries extends a little beyond the life improving characteristics of ham radio, but overall his sentiment on how inaccurate the "BTC is basically 90's internet" people are, is entirely correct.
>But when regular service is restored, it becomes a hobby again. And that's fine.
A hobby that burns 1% of the words electricity and costs literally Millions of dollars every day. If that should stay like that It would need to be a very very popular hobby. Like watching soccer matches popular. The thing is 99.9% do not participate in Bitcoin as a hobby on alternative money. They speculate on gains in the regular money. If there is no more uptrend and crazy gains it cant sustain as a small hobby with only a fraction of the people left paying for the actual running costs which are now still payed by the block reward.
Last time I checked you didn't need to buy special equipment, study for a test, pass that test and register with the government to buy or hold cryptocurrency.
While the clunky UX and low speed of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies definitely remind me of packet radio of early 90s, it was pretty amazing to transmit data wirelessly like that, and now we have 4g (and soon 5g and satellite internet) everywhere. I definitely don't think we are at early IRC/netscape/email level experiences yet.
I think you can also only stretch the analogy so far through, and like others have commented I think the future of decentralised cryptocurrencies has more to do with the actions of central banks and the phase of the fiat mega cycle we are coming to.
There has to be a stable store of value that also works well as a currency, and these days it has to be digital. I don't know if it will bitcoin - it's too volatile and not particularly good as currency - but there will be something. Perhaps it will be backed by something physical with finite supply, or perhaps by just algorithms - we will find out. Sometimes I wonder what advanced enough AI would use as a medium of exchange and a store of value - if anything?
I completely disagree. The amount of c02 dumped in the atmosphere from this product is unfathomable. HN is full of environmentalists and I don't understand why they don't speak out against bitcoin and like technologies that are doing tremendous damage to the planet.
Whether intentionally or not the article entrenches some narrow ideas of what blockchain is. At this point talking about Bitcoin as _the_ blockchain is an ancient narrative and does not see wood for the trees. Bitcoin fulfills a certain goal but the world of blockchain (and related to them) systems has become extremely diverse, with many systems racing to fill many niches in various ways. We should drop the Bitcoin == blockchain narrative. It's a narrative for non-technical people and maximalists. We should even stop using the word "cryptocurrency".
Let's take Baseline project as an example of one that defies our ideas of what blockchain is meant to do. Baseline is a protocol developed by a few parties, in particular EY and Microsoft, that means to reduce friction in _communication_ between business entities. If, say, a factory needs more parts delivered it's SAP system communicates with the supplier's Oracle system through a public mainnet protocol encrypted via Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Yes, the system could potentially also handle transfer of value, but it's more than that. It's not bitcoin, it's not a currency, transfer of values isn't even the main point, it's a system of record and communication.
The money use case is cool, but only really that helpful if you want to evade the law. A much broader use case is building applications. This will not work for all apps (eg social networks that produce massive amounts of data), but many apps in the business world (eg accounting systems) do not produce a lot of data.
The advantages are that it will be easier to build apps this way because no outside server is needed. This is great for prototyping and bootstrapping. Apps built on Bitcoin have other advantages like maintaining data provenance (useful for audit purposes), managing data ownership (who is allowed to update a piece of data), or storing cryptocurrency atomically with data.
Frameworks along these lines are starting to pop up. One example is the Bitcoin Computer (http://bitcoincomputer.io/): It allows you to write an app entirely as frontend code and gives you simple provisions for persisting data on chain with a single line of JS code.
What this article misses is that Bitcoin is not a protocol but a name. You might say a currency. Let me explain:
The dollar started as a gold backed piece of paper with a certain type of look.
At that time, nobody would have accepted a payment via credit card with today's fiat dollars.
But today, we still pay in "Dollar". Even when no paper at all changes hands.
The same can happen to Bitcoin. All kinds of future protocolls might be used to transfer "Bitcoins". These future "Bitcoins" might coexist with current "Bitcoins" during the transition phases.
In fact, in the early days, the Bitcoin protocol did change. But the "wealth" of each holder was preserved.
Saying "Bitcoin isn't going to become a mainstream kind of money. It's too awkward for most people." is like someone 30 years ago saying the dollar must be replaced with a different currency because eventually people will pay digitally instead of moving paper around.
"Bitcoins" are not bound to a certain technology.
"Ham radio" is a technology.
This is a failed argument. Internet is already decentralized; there's no need for ham radios. This comparison would make some sense if there was just a single website controlled by the government, and ham radio was the only solution for freedom of information. Current money systems are centralized and controlled by the governments. Bitcoin fixes that.
Here's a telling fact about the Bitcoin community: this article is auto-censored in a prominent online Bitcoin forum.
We don't need the entire system to collapse for bitcoin to become mainstream. This can occur with slow integration. It's probably a good thing the halvings occur every 4 years since these tend to drive bull cycles, and are spaced out enough to give time for the technology to catch up with the market cap.
The difference between Bitcoin and ham radio is money. Money is an extremely powerful technology that has changed the world, but one of the most profound ways it’s done so is to distort the minds of those trying to harness it.
When your intellect is a servant of your lust for shiny digital metal, something has gone badly wrong.
Wow the old "bitcoin is an energy hog" argument. (kidding)
Terrible jokes aside, I like this take, but from the standpoint that Bitcoin is a "primitive", almost analogue type technology. But it demonstrates clear innovations over the old existing "normal" payment systems. So the conclusion, in my opinion, that Bitcoin is only for hobbyists in extreme circumstances, includes a fallacy, and one piece of evidence is the increased efficiency in using Bitcoin for intl settlement / remittance.
But Bitcoin is not the end-all of cryptocurrencies. It has flaws and its iteration is relatively frozen.
We need a sound settlement layer first and that settlement layer will need to obtain some degree of generalization in programmability.
Bitcoin is an incredible technology. It can survive on its own. Bitcoin is an important piece of future money. Bitcoin is not the new internet protocol. The system is slow moving and hard to change. Bitcoin can be compared to ham radio. But it can interact with other systems. This is how Bitcoin is different from ham radio.
I see Bitcoin as the first puzzle piece. We're searching for more pieces to construct the future of money puzzle. I think a missing piece is a crypto with inflation. I started a project to explore this:
This does fit with what I think is the most interesting use case of bitcoin that I'd read about: A Ukrainian living in the Russian controlled portion of the country getting out with his wealth intact.
The border was controlled by corrupt Russian guards that would steal things of value. You could pass the border occasionally to visit family on the other side, but it was risky to take anything.
He put all his wealth into bitcoin, memorized his wallet seed words like his life depended on it, crossed the border with nothing, and then regenerated his wallet on the other side (and then presumably transferred the money back into a usable fiat currency/bank account).
I thought that was pretty cool.
It'd be interesting if the community put a guide together to make it easy for people that need to escape hostile countries with their wealth intact to do so, something I might try to do if I find some time to write it up.
I think the game changed a while ago. It is not Bitcoin mainstream if/when something bad happens to the monetary system anymore.
It is many blockchain building alternatives to the monetary system. With Bitcoin being a digital gold, Ethereum being a decentralized central bank for layer two solutions running decentralized finance system (with stable coins and financial instruments) and perhaps other blockchains with different roles (payments anyone?).
The crypto boom of 2017 was fueled by the launch of new trading platforms making it easy to trade for small investors. Most of those investors graduated to stocks and options, and never looked back. There has not been anything to increase the valuation of Bitcoin as an asset since then. I say this as someone holding >$10k of crypto assets in case I am wrong.
Bitcoin being ham radio rather than the Internet would be problematic, because it is priced as if it's the heir to the Internet.
Like HAM radio, there is an incredible amount of metadata that is necessarily public.
(Seriously, any use case for which Bitcoin is a privacy solution puts Bitcoin up against strictly superior implementations of decentralized BFT value exchange protocols which I will not list as to not come across as a shill but are all things you have probably heard of).
I usually filter out articles when they make arguments like "no, x isn't going to y" either in the title or inside them. It shows that the author is passionately biased against what he is writing and wants also to show how right he is, traits that don't go well with factual realism
Most people think Bitcoin is a gambling chip, but it is first and foremost a new form of money. Let me repeat Bitcoin's benefits:
- You can pay anyone and been paid by anyone without anyone's permission. Not so with government money.
- Can't be counterfeited. You don't need to check the bills under UV light, no need to check if your gold bullion has lead or copper inside.
- Can't be inflated
- No one can take it from you. No one even knows that you have it and how much.
- Safe for merchants. If they got it, they got it, no risk of transaction being reversed because the shopper paid by a stolen credit card. Because of that, merchant doesn't need to ask for your name, phone number, home address and other information required to sue you in case of a fraud. So the shopper in turn enjoys better privacy.
- With second layer solution in place, such as Lightning Network, transactions will be fast, cheap and private. We are not there yet, but will be in a few years.
I don't use bitcoin because every method of converting fiat to btc (or vice versa) takes an absurdly high fee. It's even worse when buying stablecoins.
I'm just waiting for whatever crypto/digital finance thing that comes along next that actually works and lead them to crash.
crypto is a nice idealistic idea. would work well, on a local level. however, since money is invested into crypto all logical thought goes out of the window, compared to radio operators. now people function by pure emotion. to tell someone they've invested into a bubble, is a personal attack. as we noticed, into the late 2017 crypto bubble.
There are massive flaws in the logic of this piece. In order for JP's metaphors to be accurate, the following would need to be true:
1) CELL PHONES CAUSE HURRICANES. 2) HOSTILE ALIENS ENSLAVE US EVERY YEAR.
First, let's not get hung up on Bitcoin alone. Bitcoin is designed for a specific use case (store of value) while other cryptocurrencies have different use cases (means of transaction, etc.). Bitcoin is also version 1 of a new category. So maybe Bitcoin will end up being like Netscape and will pass the baton to other cryptocurrencies which go on to be successful.
I will use JP's hurricane metaphor against him. He basically compares "mainstream" telecommunications (cell phones, 911 call centers) to fiat currency. He says mainstream telco is preferable to ham radios just like fiat currency is preferable to cryptocurrency. Fine. Here's where the metaphor breaks down:
Mainstream telco doesn't CAUSE hurricanes.
Fiat currency CAUSES (leads to) hyperinflation crises. If mainstream telco usage CAUSED hurricanes, I guarantee alternative communication methods would be given more attention.
JP also claims a breakdown in the fiat system would be similar in magnitude and probability to a situation where "hostile aliens have enslaved us." Wrong again.
There have been 34 episodes of hyperinflation in the LAST 30 YEARS (https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/workingpa...).
Just because you are lucky to live in a place where hurricanes haven't affected you (erm...Canada) doesn't mean hurricanes aren't a problem. Also, these "hurricanes" don't just hit the coast. Argentina had a population of around 30 million people when hyperinflation was raging in 1990, impoverishing millions in a matter of months.
In order for JP's model to be accurate, modern telecommunication equipment would cause hurricanes and hostile aliens would enslave us roughly every year (34 times in the last 30 years).
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fix a little bug in fiat currencies where every so often ALL THE PEOPLE USING THAT CURRENCY ARE SWIFTLY IMPOVERISHED. I think it's worth keeping an eye on crypto.
If Bitcoin is like ham radio, then Ethereum is more like the early internet.
I think Bitcoin is not at all like ham radio.
I think Bitcoin is a dangerous fad that just conjures money out of the pockets of rubes to enrich a few.
Bitcoin should die, and all the cryptocurrencies with it. They solve no relevant problem but they cost our society dearly.
Bitcoin is more like an environmentalist's worst nightmare.
Oh the good old "Most active and vocal Bitcoin fans are talking non-sense all the time so the Bitcoin is not that important" narrative.
bitcoin -> ham radio ethereum -> computer chainlink -> internet
$0
Ham radio is heavily regulated and (as a ham with an AE license) mostly occupied by clueless boomers.
Bitcoin is unregulated and mostly occupied by smart young hackers.
In every practical way that I can think of, Bitcoin is more like the early internet.
I don’t think anyone has any illusions than random tech-illiterate people will be managing their own private keys, just like random tech-illiterate people don’t host their own servers or set up their own firewalls. If bitcoin has a place in the future, it will probably be as infrastructural technology that is mostly abstracted away for normal users. The important thing is that advanced users have the option to plug directly into the underlying system, if they want to.
Perfect analogy. Just like Ham Radio. Pretty cool but of little practical use.
There's a pretty key quote in here and an attendant logical fallacy:
"If five years from now everyone in the world has become a bitcoin user, that could only be because something very very bad has happened to the regular monetary system ... Surely no bitcoiner would actually want such a dark future."
That statement is absolutely true, as a conditional. But the logical fallacy it represents is "If X happens, that would be unthinkably bad. Therefore, X will not happen." (Similar thinking is behind coronavirus-denial and climate-change denial.)
I think that most hardcore Bitcoin aficionados (the group that's still in it, even now that the bubble has burst and you can't get rich off of it) would accept the above premise. If Bitcoin becomes successful, something seriously bad has happened to the monetary system.
The difference is that most hardcore Bitcoin investors also accept the premise that something seriously bad is going to happen to the monetary system. There's a very heavy overlap between folks who hodl Bitcoin and folks who believe that the Fed is going to continue to debase the dollar, we'll get hyperinflation, the government will collapse, and we'll all end up pledging allegiance to a variety of crypto-anarchist communes that conduct commerce through cryptocurrency. Many of them also include guns, stockpiles, and bug-out bunkers in their contingency planning. If you accept that premise, the goal is not "How do I get rich?", it's "How do I minimize the impact of this collapse to myself and give myself a leg up in the post-collapse world?"