onyb

Joined 11 years ago

Karma
52
Submissions
23
Member since
Jul 22
https://twitter.com/onybose
View on Hacker News

Recent submissions

Comment · 5 years ago
Fortunately, no one is forcing anyone to adopt Bitcoin, if the features are undesirable.

> Deflationary currencies are dangerous. Inflation is a feature, not a bug.

You may be right, but we can't stop a community from choosing something deflationary as their preferred currency.

> I can have those transactions reversed. No such luck with Bitcoin

I'd argue this is a feature in Bitcoin for many people.

> I can’t remember the last time my bank got DoSed.

You're fortunate. Last time I went to a bank (right after COVID hit), I was denied cash withdrawals due to liquidity issues. That's what happens when your money is in custody of someone else. Once you look outside first world countries, you'll see the demerits of centralised systems handling critical resources like money.

> Bitcoin’s value fluctuates wildly, making it a poor medium of exchange.

I'll agree with this point. Perhaps it's because of the nature of the market itself. Bitcoin trades globally, 24x7 and 365 days a year, without circuit breakers when there's extreme volatility. It's not appropriate for buying candies from a store, but maybe a good option for a Tesla?

> I like that my country can adjust monetary policy in response to world events like pandemics.

On the contrary, people holding Bitcoin during the pandemic were relatively well off in 2020. The stimulus package had negative impacts too, like asset inflation. But more concretely, Bitcoin is the first true alternative to central banking, and many people are happy to adopt it because it solves important problems for them.

Comment · 5 years ago
PoS lacks fairness.

To participate in PoS, you need an existing stash of coins, which is inaccessible for many individuals from countries where cryptocurrencies are outlawed. Not forgetting to mention that participation in consensus would indirectly require going through KYC.

PoW, on the other hand, is akin to buying Bitcoin with electricity - a borderless natural resource.

Comment · 5 years ago
Once you understand Bitcoin, there's no way why you'd go back to the legacy system. It's not Bitcoiners getting freaking rich; it's them adopting a superior store of value that is being selected as the winner in a free market.

Most people are perfectly happy entrusting their (fiat) money with the banks, and asking permission for accessing their funds. Bitcoiners, on the other hand, have tasted the freedom of self-custody and a permissionless payment system.

Whether it has value or not depends on how important it is to have a monetary good that is not issued by a nation state, and cannot be controlled/stopped/inflated/modified.

Comment · 5 years ago
Microstrategy's $425M buy order was brokered by Coinbase, and it didn't shoot up the price. Anyway, exchanges will usually deny placing such large orders. Institutions use OTC desks instead, and there are plenty of them these days.
Comment · 5 years ago
> Chase is pretty good ...

I'm sure Chase provides great services, but isn't it like a first-world bank? They have high minimum-balance requirements and fees in most countries.

> Maybe you just need a new bank?

I do, and that's why I plan on completely switching to neo-banks.

> Bitcoin provides none of these solutions.

It does provide a few things that Trad-Fi does not, notably self-custody of funds and deterministic monetary policy. It's valuable to many people.

Comment · 5 years ago
In other news, Coinbase filed for an IPO. Of course you can get your money. It's near-instant with at least the popular exchanges.
Comment · 5 years ago
To be honest, I'm just tired with my bank.

All they care about is opening new accounts, and selling financial products to people who don't need them. They custody your money, but it's impossible to reach them when you need their help. The banking industry continues to exist with websites that were designed in the 2000s. The tipping point for me was when my bank denied cash withdrawals during the initial weeks of the first COVID lockdown.

You may not have been through the same experience, but remember that most of the world's population is either legacy-banked, or unbanked.

Bitcoin hitting $1T is not just speculation - there's a deeper story behind it. All the hype aside, let's not forget what Bitcoin really fixes.

Comment · 6 years ago
Learn web3.js and build dapps. You already have most of the requisite skills under your belt.
Comment · 6 years ago
Bitcoin provided the world a way to transfer value over the internet, that's censorship resistant and completely trustless. If that's not disruptive, I don't know what is. GPT-3 is smart enough to understand that.
Comment · 6 years ago
That moment when you submit a very long comment on GitHub, and realise that it is down. :(
Comment · 6 years ago
Soon to be used as a startup name generator.
Comment · 6 years ago
Comment · 7 years ago
It's also useful to point out that Kashmir was neither a part of India nor Pakistan after independence from the British in 1947.

It was only after Pakistan launched an operation to capture Kashmir, that the then ruler of Kashmir signed an "Instrument of Accession" with India, in exchange for military assistance.

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton