this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
276 points (93.1% liked)
Technology
60052 readers
2937 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As far as a currency or store of wealth, Bitcoin is shit. Satoshi was/were an idealist(s), and for them it wasn't about the money, it was about the idea. Decentralized proof of concept that anyone on the internet can access and can't be censored without extreme global geopolitical cooperation. They chose to make it like a currency (Bitcoin) for adoption purposes, but the mathematical and technical concepts behind it can be used for any transfer of information that needs to be reliable, proven (signed), and decentralized, which makes it ideal for some things we are already using, and concepts we can't even imagine yet.
The idea sparked other blockchain concepts such as Monero which is actually designed to be used, like digital cash with tiny fee of pennies, not as a store of wealth or prospecting. It is essentially anonymous as the sender, receiver, and amount are never known except to those with access to the wallets.
Smart contracts still have a long way to go but have some very interesting uses as well.
Why does being around in 100 years matter for Bitcoin, though? It's unlikely that Bitcoin will even be around in 100 years and Satoshi likely knew that or would have made the halving rates longer. Last halving was 2020. In about a month (next halving) block rewards will be halved from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, which puts upward pressure on miners to innovate (find new ways of reducing energy consumption and increasing hashing power), increasing scarcity, and, historically, increasing price.
It's actually insane how low the Monero fees are, you can make a transaction that takes less than 5 minutes and the fees are gonna be way less than a cent