The OG Bitcoin business model works fine

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3 years ago

I took a break from the insanity that is US politics and their sociopath president and relaxed by reading Tobias Ruck’s article on how Bitcon’s original business model is broken. In a nutshell he argues that:

  1. The OG Bitcoin business model is “Buy Bitcoin, Adopt Bitcoin, Profit”.

  2. After 11 years we still haven’t a viable replacement for USD, and that is proof that the model is broken.

  3. That the existence of other projects with supposedly sound business models is more proof that Bitcoin’s model is broken.

I think the article is well written, but let me try to explain why I think he’s completely wrong.

False claims of USD superiority

Tobias writes that USD is faster, cheaper and more reliable and therefore Bitcoin and it’s forks aren’t a viable replacement for USD.

I do agree that cryptocurrencies cannot replace USD easily, but I do not agree that USD is superior in the ways Tobias claims.

  • 0-conf are just as fast as credit cards, PayPal and others.

    You see, when a payment arrives after a credit card payment you don’t actually receive the money until later. What you get is a payment notification, which is exactly the same as a 0-conf payment. (And of course a credit card payment only becomes irreversible after weeks or months.)

  • When he writes that credit cards and PayPal are free, he means that it’s only free for customers.

    What he fails to mention (maybe because it doesn’t support the point he’s trying to make or something?) is that businesses are charged 3 or 4% for every transaction, on top of other minor charges. That’s 4% cheaper to accept Bitcoin or it’s forks.

    This alone invalidates his central thesis that “there simply is no money to be made directly from replacing the USD with Bitcoin”, but that would make for a pretty short article and there are some other points I’d like to make.

  • He claims that USD is more reliable because it’s backed by the government… A few paragraphs after posting a graph of the insane USD inflation.

    I don’t think that’s what reliable means.

  • He also writes “that there’s always someone you can call to get your transaction handled”.

    Except that one of the big points of Bitcoin is that not everyone has access to credit cards.

11 years is not a long time

Of course not everything he writes is wrong. In particular I think he hits the nail on the head with this comment about USD:

it’s basically accepted everywhere

Which is the answer why USD is better for payments and it dwarfs any other reason. (Including price stability as if everything was priced in BCH then it wouldn’t matter if it would fluctuate against something else.)

Now where we differ is that he thinks Bitcoin no replacing USD in 11 years is a sign of failure, but I think it’s amazing how far we’ve come in only 11 years. Bitcoin went from $0 to +$10,000 and is accepted in tens of thousands of shops around the world in only a decade. That’s a world changing event that could be attributed to the OG Bitcoin business model.

Maybe it’s the modern generation that has an attention span of a goldfish and needs constant stimulus to not lose focus, but 11 years is a really short time to disrupt something as huge as the USD. Just look at how many decades it took for the car to become mainstream. Or the computer, electricity, the internet or the light bulb. And presenting an alternative to the USD, today’s “world currency”, would be something as big as any of these inventions.

It doesn’t matter if Bitcoin was 10x better than USD in all technical aspects, it would still take a long time to convince people to switch.

Adoption has been set back by attacks

And Bitcoin didn’t even have a normal adoption curve as it has been severely set back by large and disruptive events. (Call them attacks if you like.)

The absolutely largest is of course when small blockers successfully changed Bitcoin from a “peer-to-peer digital cash” to a “store of value” coin, causing Steam, Stripe and others to drop Bitcoin as a payment method.

Bitcoin Cash has taken up then mantle but the network effect is very difficult and time-consuming to rebuild. I’m convinced the small blockers set back cryptocurrency adoption many, many years.

Bad examples of sound business models

As proof of Bitcoin’s broken business model he lists some examples:

  1. He uses Liquid as an example, but it wasn’t created until after the small blocker takeover. And besides, it’s a centralized shitcoin so who cares?

  2. The treasury of Dash is referred to as a viable business model, but Dash is itself a failed project in large part of it’s poor governance structure that’s made to enrich the ones in control. (Sort of like ABC’s IFP.)

  3. Ethereum is another project that supposedly has a viable business model, yet Ethereum is very far from the peer-to-peer electronic cash ideal because the benevolent dictator can, and has, censored transactions on the protocol. (Lookup the DAO controversy.)

  4. BSV supposedly took good part of the “data-on-chain” people, yet their chain is completely full of nonsense transactions that only exist to create an illusion of activity.

  5. AVAX has a coin distribution that’s extremely lopsided, putting many shitcoins to shame. This is incredibly serious in a proof-of-stake coin, which throws away any semblance of decentralization.

  6. ABC is brought up as an example, but the fork hasn’t even happened yet and so far it seems only a very small minority will follow it (including Tobias).

I don’t know about you, but if these are supposed to prove how successful cryptocurrencies with a “sound business model” are, then consider me underwhelmed.

Instead let me give a counterexample of a successful project that uses the “OG Bitcoin business model” (other than Bitcoin Cash):

Monero follows the vision of peer-to-peer electronic cash faithfully. Monero has developed best-in-class privacy, outclassing the privacy delivered by ZCash (where 20% of the miner reward instead goes to founders, early investors and certain developers). It’s propelled forward by enthusiasts and the community funds projects via the Community Crowdfunding System, and the supposedly inevitable burnout is nowhere to be seen, as Monero is stronger than ever.

Who cares about decentralization?

Tobias references Elinor Ostrom and her tips on how to “govern the commons” and how to manage a public good. (I’m not convinced that Bitcoin is a public good either, but let’s play along shall we?)

The only problem with her 8 principles is, as Tobias notes, that they don’t fit Bitcoin because there’s no central party in control. This is a core assumption of Ostrom’s work, making it not applicable to us.

Tobias concludes that to fix this we must introduce a central party. A worthy goal some might say, and a trade-off that many projects in the cryptocurrency space has made.

But.

In the process we invalidate the whole idea of Bitcoin.

Maybe that’s why a lot of people in the Bitcoin Cash community, including some of it’s most prominent members, oppose the Global Network Council and the IFP so hard?

Because decentralization is so important and so central to the goal of peer-to-peer electronic cash, that we absolutely cannot compromise it. It’s truly unfortunate that some in the community forget this fact as soon as there’s a possibility to get some of those juicy IFP coins.

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3 years ago

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I took a break from the insanity that is US politics and their sociopath president and relaxed by reading Tobias Ruck’s article on how Bitcon’s original business model is broken. In a nutshell he argues that:

The OG Bitcoin business model is “Buy Bitcoin, Adopt Bitcoin, Profit”. After 11 years we still haven’t a viable replacement for USD, and that is proof that the model is broken. That the existence of other projects with supposedly sound business models is more proof that Bitcoin’s model is broken. I think the article is well written, but let me try to explain why I think he’s completely wrong.

False claims of USD superiority

Tobias writes that USD is faster, cheaper and more reliable and therefore Bitcoin and it’s forks aren’t a viable replacement for USD.

I do agree that cryptocurrencies cannot replace USD easily, but I do not agree that USD is superior in the ways Tobias claims.

0-conf are just as fast as credit cards, PayPal and others. You see, when a payment arrives after a credit card payment you don’t actually receive the money until later. What you get is a payment notification, which is exactly the same as a 0-conf payment. (And of course a credit card payment only becomes irreversible after weeks or months.) When he writes that credit cards and PayPal are free, he means that it’s only free for customers. What he fails to mention (maybe because it doesn’t support the point he’s trying to make or something?) is that businesses are charged 3 or 4% for every transaction, on top of other minor charges. That’s 4% cheaper to accept Bitcoin or it’s forks. This alone invalidates his central thesis that “there simply is no money to be made directly from replacing the USD with Bitcoin”, but that would make for a pretty short article and there are some other points I’d like to make. He claims that USD is more reliable because it’s backed by the government… A few paragraphs after posting a graph of the insane USD inflation. I don’t think that’s what reliable means. He also writes “that there’s always someone you can call to get your transaction handled”. Except that one of the big points of Bitcoin is that not everyone has access to credit cards. 11 years is not a long time

Of course not everything he writes is wrong. In particular I think he hits the nail on the head with this comment about USD:

it’s basically accepted everywhere

Which is the answer why USD is better for payments and it dwarfs any other reason. (Including price stability as if everything was priced in BCH then it wouldn’t matter if it would fluctuate against something else.)

Now where we differ is that he thinks Bitcoin no replacing USD in 11 years is a sign of failure, but I think it’s amazing how far we’ve come in only 11 years. Bitcoin went from $0 to +$10,000 and is accepted in tens of thousands of shops around the world in only a decade. That’s a world changing event that could be attributed to the OG Bitcoin business model.

Maybe it’s the modern generation that has an attention span of a goldfish and needs constant stimulus to not lose focus, but 11 years is a really short time to disrupt something as huge as the USD. Just look at how many decades it took for the car to become mainstream. Or the computer, electricity, the internet or the light bulb. And presenting an alternative to the USD, today’s “world currency”, would be something as big as any of these inventions.

It doesn’t matter if Bitcoin was 10x better than USD in all technical aspects, it would still take a long time to convince people to switch.

Adoption has been set back by attacks

And Bitcoin didn’t even have a normal adoption curve as it has been severely set back by large and disruptive events. (Call them attacks if you like.)

The absolutely largest is of course when small blockers successfully changed Bitcoin from a “peer-to-peer digital cash” to a “store of value” coin, causing Steam, Stripe and others to drop Bitcoin as a payment method.

Bitcoin Cash has taken up then

$ 0.00
User's avatar pro
3 years ago

Nice

$ 0.00
3 years ago

O my god!! This article is so good. I am interested to read your other articles 😍

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Hmmmmn 👉Tobias references Elinor Ostrom and her tips on how to “govern the commons” and how to manage a public good. (I’m not convinced that Bitcoin is a public good either, but let’s play along shall we?). 😂😂 This line reminds me of someone.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

USD is not superior is a broad adopted payment form, but it didn't come to be in 11 years. Let's remind historically there were another coins accepted almost worldwide, and lost momentum over the years. BTC is coming hot from several years now, and it's not so far away the day it comes to be the very best alternative (yet tx irreversibility and network scalability countinues to be a pain in the...)

$ 0.00
3 years ago

https://read.cash/@Sujana/to-epikheirimatiko-montelo-og-bitcoin-leitoyrghi-kala-b6e6f006 Sorry without permission I translate your article in Greek language . Hope you don't mind and surely you like this.your article is always exclusive in any language.😊

$ 10.00
3 years ago

No problem! You gave me credit so it's all good.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Really nice point

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Very good and Important article. Thank you.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Nice 4

$ 0.00
3 years ago

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$ 0.00
3 years ago

bravoo

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Very Beautiful

$ 0.00
3 years ago

This is very huge but educative

$ 0.00
3 years ago

My opinion is that cryptocurrency trading has a perspective, but it is necessary to follow the price of altcoins.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

I will love to be part of the business (Bitcoin)

$ 0.00
3 years ago

When your mind is corrupted, it becomes the Vista to wish you interpret things...mind what think

$ 0.00
3 years ago

In my personal opinion, virtual currency can never overcome real money,virtual currency may circulate all over the world but from inside,virtual currency stands on support of rela money

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Woow great article dear. Thanks for the sharing it with us dear friend.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Really awesome article I was really fascinated to read

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3 years ago

Well! I personally believe that USD is not superior . Somehow USD has edge over Bitcoin . But i m hopeful for positive change

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Nice, beautiful, amazing article.please subscribe me ,l subscribe back and please give me any dollar,my family is very poor please give some dollar please.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Oh my friend i was so very envy because you have a huge amount of upvotes my gosh its really so unbelievable my dear friend, i hope someday i can be a greater writer like you especially your niche of crypto information and influence in our political world. Can you share a little upvotes there my friend... Thanks for sharing this information to us my friend 😘 congratulations 🎊

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Well! I personally believe that USD is not superior . Somehow USD has edge over Bitcoin . But i m hopeful for positive change

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Sir ,please give me 50 or 100 dollar,my mother is very sick,my family very poor.please give me some dollar.please transfer my account some dollar.please, please, please!

$ 0.00
3 years ago

this article is very nice

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Nice article. Worth reading

$ 0.00
3 years ago

O my god lot of amount you got upvote.you are really deserve this.your article is so useful for us.can i translate my own language?thanks you so mach sir for your article.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

why do u think you will get juicy coins from an airdrop. this will not happen and you can sit and write more BS on the subject. to anyone who donated here like of Marc an Ver. both should put the money into something good example Silver. as apmex accepts bch and btc.

finally on november 15 ABC will have majority hash and wipe out the opposition.

An if not an the price goes to double digits very unlikely then also fine as we will continue to run our machines even if the rate goes to 1 cent per th/s.

that is how low we will go even today should the rate go to this we will still run at a loss as this is still winning in our eyes.

how low will you Americans go?

$ 0.00
3 years ago

He wont get coins from the airdrop but he's hoping to get some of the coinbase reward which will not be directed to ABC.

Also I'm not an American.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Great read! You absolutely nailed this one.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Great post, very good

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Great article

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Nice

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Nice

$ 0.00
3 years ago

buonissimo

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Very Good article sir

$ 0.00
3 years ago

How to increase MY dollar

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User's avatar pro
3 years ago

Valuable information sir. Keep it up. Pls upvote me sir

$ 0.00
3 years ago

First time to see this huge amount of upvote from marc de mesel.. Wow.. But it really deserves..

$ 0.00
3 years ago

You nailed the information. I would like to share this article on bengali language if you give me the permission. Thanks.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

As long as you give me credit then knock yourself out.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Brother, can I translate this article of yours into Bengali?

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Cool thank you.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Okay..

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Why do you think that you need permission for that?

$ 0.00
3 years ago

O my god lot of amount you got upvote.you are really deserve this.your article is so useful for us.can i translate my own language?thanks you so mach sir for your article.

$ 0.00
User's avatar pro
3 years ago

thanks

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Thank you very much, for your article!

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Very interesting read overall. I’m new to read.cash but I went ahead and subscribe because I liked your content. Keep it up 👍🏼

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Thanks

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Good articale

$ 0.00
3 years ago

You nailed it.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Good article

Thanks for info

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Can I translate your article into another language?

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Just do it, why shouldnt he want it and why would you have to ask him for permission anyway?

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Thank you very much

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Thank you very much..I translate this article Greek language.here is this link: https://read.cash/@Sujana/to-epikheirimatiko-montelo-og-bitcoin-leitoyrghi-kala-b6e6f006

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Cool thank you.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Welcome 😍

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Wonderful post sir , it deserves 1 million dollars tips

$ 0.00
3 years ago

You're so right. Tobias is dead wrong on so many accounts and he has totally misunderstood what Bitcoin is about.

$ 5.00
3 years ago