Splain this to me.
They are all blinded by the idealistic nature of the currency for the libertarian/ancap utopia they think it's going to usher in. /r/bitcoin is, as a whole, very naive. A lot of those people are heavily invested in a speculation game for the first time in their lives, and have seen massive gains, and I believe most of them are just riding that wave that "this is it. this is really it!" They say they just want a currency, but they are never more excited than massive price swings in the up, and never more depressed and suicidal then when there's a massive downswing. They stay positive because they want everyone else to stay positive and keep investing, because that makes their coins worth more. I also find it hilarious that they are all slowly realizing why regulation of a currency is a good thing as they keep getting hit with all these shady companies, but they will never admit it.
The problem with right anarchists is they are blind to the idea that companies can be dishonest and that market forces don't always lead to wanted outcomes. The lefties have their own problems.
I think it has to do with the echo chamber effect that reddit has. A couple months before Obama was reelected, there was a front page post saying (approximate - from memory), "Based on reddit, there is no way that Obama could not win. But he's close in the polls and a lot of people are still saying Romney has a chance. ??" You see the same shenanigans happening in /r/politics and /r/atheism. If you put a bunch of likeminded folks in the same room, you get likeminded answers that don't accurately reflect reality. There are a lot of early adopters on /r/bitcoin and there are a lot of believers. But, in order to have a productive and accurate conversation, you need to have a varied set of opinions. Reddit's overall demographics have diversified from 6-7 years ago (when it was almost exclusively programmers) but it is still a bunch of younger, mostly male, technology literate folks. I would guess those demographics are only intensified in /r/bitcoin.
I agree with your assertion but not with the Obama example because Nate Silver. Reddit is designed to privilege majority views.
I think it's just a case of the Sunken Cost Fallacy. And I also believe that a new cryptocurrency will soon (within two to four years) eclipse Bitcoin with better technology, mending the weaknesses. Although who knows, maybe Bitcoin will be worse is better, and whoever is first to ship gains the most mindshare for a while... I hope not, there's some big changes that need to take place for it to become a legitimate currency, and not just a commodity and/or Internet money.
if you look at the year view early adopters are still in the money I guess but there should be some fussing
/r/bitcoin has a large contingent of speculators, libertarians, and kids. That said, the recent crisis is MTGox's crisis. If they had been more responsible (less criminal?) like the other exchanges appear to be, the current crisis wouldn't really exist. I think most assume that bitcoin will survive the demise of MtGox. Bitcoin will need regulation. It's too easy to steal people's money.
Wasn't MTGox supposed to be the big stable one? Bitcoin will skid on for a while longer. This will be seen as the second wildcat bank era.
There needs to be a crypto-currency where the wallet is integral and simple.
Ah, humans. Why does it always have to be about tribes? Just as the maligned r/bitcoin subreddit - and much of the Bitcoin 'community' in general - coalesced around the libertarian banner, the discussion here appears to be more about the fuzzies of reaffirming your membership in the 'not them' tribe than a desire to learn something new. The thing is - Bitcoin is not libertarian (or of any other political persuasion). It speaks nothing of regulation. It's just an idea with a very rough, imperfect early implementation. To entertain it long enough to get anywhere near to grokking it requires a non-trivial commitment and I believe what is happening here is that we take shortcuts in deciding whether this commitment is worthwhile by following our tribe. It's a great optimization most of the times (you have aligned yourself with these people because of a significant overlap in your world views) but in case of something as completely out there as Bitcoin, this optimization will inevitably lead to a suboptimal outcome. As it happens, some of Bitcoin's properties look a lot like what libertarians value which is likely why their tribe aligned themselves as it did and their optimization fails the other way - they embrace an idea that may well be diametrically opposed to their interests once it fully plays out. What is the point in slinging insults at the other tribe (those blind idiots in their silly echo chamber) when they're not even around to debate you? The schadenfreude part of it irks me in particular because it's just such a fucking ugly trait. As a definite non-libertarian, what I see in Bitcoin is another piece of the puzzle in mankind's potential transition from organizing in hierarchies to peer to peer. We may be seeing the first glimpse of a dawn of new society that will perhaps view ours the way we view the medieval feudal system. And the thing is - the genie is out of the bottle. The idea is now unleashed and you can ignore it all you want - it won't unthink itself. The most productive thing to do now is to help steer it in the direction that will cause the least harm and produce the most good. As for the OPs question - there's no crisis in Bitcoin. The protocol continues to exceed my expectations both on the technical side and from a game theory point of view. It's tragic that so many people lost more money than they could afford and it's tragic that Mark Karpeles has put himself in a position he was in no way competent for and I can't help but empathize with him as his life now appears to be unraveling. The reason why many people are not 'flinching' is because so many of us saw this coming for a long time - Mark has repeatedly demonstrated that he is completely out of his depth as his exchange was hacked and DDOSed repeatedly. MtGox was seen as a massive liability just waiting to explode and people have been warned repeatedly. One reason those warnings were not heeded is the sheer power of the collective greed - the same greed that Bitcoin is using as a fuel right now to bootstrap itself into existence.
I'm not so sure that JakobVirgil was being as critical as curious. He's a pretty laid-back guy. From one perspective (especially the one presented by the MSM), bitcoin is/was indeed in a crisis. There was some schadenfreude for those that see the libertarian contingent of the bitcoin community facing the downsides of an unregulated economy, but I think the question about the resilient optimism on /r/bitcoin is valid. As I mentioned elsewhere here, I think a large number of folk on /r/bitcoin: have a personal stake in it, are very idealistic about it, or are simply immature. Those folk might be unrealistically optimistic. But, like you, I feel that it wasn't so much a bitcoin crisis as a MtGox crisis. I am still bullish on bitcoin. Some might be blindly optimistic about bitcoin (and I believe some on /r/bitcoin could be), but you needn't be blind to be optimistic about it.
Defensive much? The recipe for a cult (movie, band , religion or now currency) The thing has to defend-able and need to be defended. That way the cognitive dissonance can really get going. Example: Blake's 7
It is a low budget BBC program written by the guy that invented Daleks for Doctor Who.
It has some great scripts but possibly the worst special effects of any show makes 80's DW look like Avatar. The great scripts make it defend-able the crap production make it need defended result there are grown men that think it is the best show ever myself included (It pretty obviously is not the best show). As for greed is the engine thang that is a contestable and political position not a fact of science. (it comes from libertarian economics). also Game theory is bullshit I am published in it so if you want a fuller explanation I can provide it.