But instead it turned into a game of "hodl" to get rich.
Scams were openly perpetrated in the forums.
I became completely disillusioned. What exactly does bitcoin offer the world today?
Aside from perhaps gold, bitcoin is the most successful currency in the world not associated with a central bank and state.
It's the most liquid asset that is not issued by a central bank. At any point you can issue a transaction to anyone else in the world, without the possibility of a third party intervention. I've had issues pulling cash out of banks, or limited sizes available for money orders, or having debt/credit card transactions incorrectly flagged as fraudulent and blocked.
The now much more diverse mining space is much better than completely centralized in one entity current system.
And bitcoin community has a way of working to fix weaknesses wherever they find it... there is active campaigns to diversify mining, as you pointed out those are pools-- and pools are being made obsolete. behind those pools are thousands or tens of thousands of mining operators, of all sizes, as it's viable at industrial as well as individual scale-- many use it to heat their house for less than the alternative, the earnings don't have to cover the full cost to be beneficial to people.
The top comment on /r/AskEconomics is:
"The cantillon effect doesn't really exist in any significant capacity. Central banks nowadays announce their actions well ahead of time, that means before the actual expansion of the money supply, people know this expansion will happen, and markets price in that expansion. So there really isn't much benefiting from being "early".
Beyond that there really isn't much empirical evidence on the cantillon effect to exist in any significant capacity."
Since I know little about this topic I'd appreciate HN's view.
The FED is quite powerful and US strongly influence many other banks but that’s by situation, not by design.
> the "ownership" of the Reserve Banks by the commercial banks is symbolic; they do not exercise the proprietary control associated with the concept of ownership nor share, beyond the statutory dividend, in Reserve Bank "profits." … Bank ownership and election at the base are therefore devoid of substantive significance, despite the superficial appearance of private bank control that the formal arrangement creates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve#Legal_status_o...
See also https://www.atlantafed.org/about/federal-reserve-system/just...
"It exists" is correct
"It doesn't exists" is incorrect, exists becomes exist, "it doesn't exist"
the "does" in "doesn't" absorbs subject-verb the conjugation, does is now the verb that needs to agree with the subject, it. Exists returns to it's infinitive (unconjugated) form, exist.
"They arguments doesn’t hold" typo they ought to be the, those or their, not sure what you meant. Since arguments is plural you want don't, not doesn't, alternately "the argument [singular] doesn't hold"
'national ones creates money' subject verb agreement again, either one creates or ones create
"and the are" s/the/they
"bitcoin pools mentioned ahead": ahead doesn't quite apply to comment threads, like on a road you have cars in front (ahead) and in back (behind), but with comments it's above and below, because you scroll up and down, not forward and backward. You could also say aforementioned referring to something mentioned earlier.