The future of Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://blog.8thlight.com/steven-degutis/2011/08/15/future-of-lisp.html <comment><USER2> This was not a very well written article. It's full of opinions that don't come with good reasoning. It completely omits popular flavors of Lisp, like Racket. And it also shows a hint of critiqueless fanboy-ism with Clojure, when he goes on rambling about how writing Cocoa with Nu is a mess when using Java libraries with Clojure is almost just as bad (or someone has already written a wrapper layer). He also likes to bash C++ and Common Lisp while not really giving good reasons why - I guess it's popular to say bad things about C++/Common Lisp/Java/COBOL/any language with an ANSI or ISO standard.

Not to mention that it doesn't have any insight about the future of Lisp - apart from the fact that the author thinks that Clojure is the ultimate Lisp which is his own opinion.

<comment><USER3> Horrible typography, too: faint grey "smoothed" (blurred) font on white.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hm, I don't really like the tone of that article. He made some good points but just brushing Scheme and Common Lisp (CL) aside as "dead" made it hard to read the rest of article objectively.

I'm not into Scheme but while CL isn't as popular as Python or Ruby there's been an enthusiastic and ever growing community for at least the last 10 years. One of the biggest objections against CL, library support, is getting less and less of a problem by the month.

Also don't forget that Clojure's Rich Hickey donated to the SBCL crowdfunding drive[1]. I'm still waiting for Larry Wall to chip in.

[1] <http://www.indiegogo.com/SBCL-Threading-Improvements-1>

<comment><USER5> Why Larry?

<comment><USER6> "Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in."

<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_Wall>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Insulting Perl helped Python and Ruby, but I doubt that insulting Common Lisp and Scheme will help Clojure.

If the Clojure community thinks that its better to attract more Ruby and Java programmers, and alienate other lispers, please, keep producing ignorant crap like this.

Claiming Common Lisp is dead and comparing it to C++? Why should anybody listen to somebody's extremely narrow minded opinion on THE FUTURE OF LISP, when that person has shown that he knows _NOTHING_ about lisps past and present.

Mr. Fogus, you know much better that to post such ignorance to Hacker News. Keep Clojure awesome, don't let the fanboys spread FUD. Inter-dialect respect, yaw! :)

<comment><USER8> Being overly defensive about your favorite programming language is also not productive. This just one guy's opinion not some "community".

No programming language is beyond criticism (Clojure has plenty of warts), and certainly the mainstream ones are positively filled with teeth-grinding flaws - otherwise you wouldn't see such active work and interest around new programming languages.

<comment><USER7> I love most lisps I've had the pleasure to study. When clojure prospers, I'm happy. When individuals express such _opinions_ clojure does not prosper, because the rest of the otherwise excellent community now has to explain that not all clojure programmers are ignorant fanboys, the same way Common Lisp programmers now have to explain that it's not a dead language that's like C++ with more parenthesis, and scheme isn't all just about teaching, and yes, there are libraries we can use. Its hard enough to use lisp, why make it harder? No lisp dialect needs to push others down in order to prosper, were better than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like half-serious, half-trolling to me. He (or his troll persona) seems to have written no line of Scheme or Common Lisp ever, and he has obviously no contact to the respective communities.

I can imagine that he has a point with Nu and Cocoa, but I have never worked in that ecosphere, so I cannot judge that.

His comments about REPLs look completely lunatic. Scheme and Lisp practically _invented_ the interactive REPL, and the parenthesis-based syntax makes the implementation of a REPL almost trivial (where does a unit of computation end in Python?). The claim "The s-expressions inherent in Lisp simply won't allow for that." is just bullshit.

So, dear Steven, talk about Clojure, but don't talk so dismissively about things you have no idea of.

</comment><comment><USER10> A good read, but it is opinionated in an opposite direction to my own experience. Almost half of my consulting work in the last 18 months has used Clojure. Based on the quality of projects written in Clojure and some very good decisions that Rich made, Clojure's developers' market share will continue to grow.

That said, Common Lisp is a great platform and for some applications, Scheme is a fine language choice. Common Lisp has a high learning curve and many developers will not want to invest the resources to master it. About 10% of my consulting work in the last 10 years or so has used Common Lisp and before that I used some form of Lisp for many projects at SAIC starting in the early 1980s. Although the Scheme library situation is getting better, I personally use Scheme for my own small projects that tend to be all new code, often just to think about a problem. Gambit-C with its custom Emacs interface is probably my favorite coding/experimenting environment.

I would say that the future of Lisp is looking good.

<comment><USER11> I did think he was a bit harsh on CL - it may be the ultimate "big ball of mud" programming environment but there are some truly lovely parts to it (CLOS/MOP and the loop macro being my favourites).

"APL is like a beautiful diamond - flawless, beautifully symmetrical. But you can't add anything to it. If you try to glue on another diamond, you don't get a bigger diamond. Lisp is like a ball of mud. Add more and it's still a ball of mud - it still looks like Lisp."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_ball_of_mud>

<comment><USER12> _CLOS/MOP and the loop macro being my favourites_

I agree with CLOS & MOP, but the loop macro is more like a pair of scissors that has been stuck into the Big Ball of Mud; it doesn't fit in with anything else, and makes it harder to use it for what it is really good for.

<comment><USER13> s/ CLOS and MOP seem like they are welded on to an otherwise good language, whereas loop is beautiful in all its loop DSL glory. /s

(In truth, I find that both have their uses).

Basically, different people disagree about which part of Common Lisp it is that they dislike. Unfortunately, this leads many people to believe that Common Lisp is not a very good language for programming in. To the contrary, people simply end up with very strong opinions about the different parts of Common Lisp that they _do not yet_ understand.

This is largely because it is trivial to implement your own object system or loop construct, so people think about the language in a completely different way. There is a mentality of 'Hey, I could do this better than what the standard does.'

You think about the way languages work differently.

My evidence for this is that I have never seen a C++ programmer complain about the for loop and describe a better for loop, you rarely see java programmers talking about how much better a different object system would be.

<comment><USER14> Again, this is covered in RPG's "Good news, bad news" (I'm busy, google it) and, to a lesser extent, "The bipolar Lisp programmer".

RPG's main argument is that Lisp is "MIT-style" the Right Thing, while C is "New Jersey-style" solve-the-right-problem-at-the-right-level. In other words, Lisp is like an expensive speaker system that's hard to configure correctly for ordinary sound systems, while C is something that works better for the average user.

The economics upshot of this is: target Lisp at the high-level critical applications Erlang and Haskell are targeting -- big telecom routing logical problems, flexible quant finance modelling, etc. Stop trying to replace the Scripting Language du Jour. You can't compete against C++; it's everywhere from Facebook to Arduino.

<comment><USER15> I have a blog post about this in the making, but in the meantime, I'd like to point out that there is _zero_ quantifiable evidence to RPG's worse is better thesis. There are many aspects of Lisp/LispMachines vs C/Unix that can account for why they're used where they are, and he completely ignores the obvious ones that people have (and continue to!) complain about: C/Unix is cheap/free and runs everywhere. This wasn't the case for Common Lisp until the early 2000s!

I think RPG's good news, bad news came to the wrong conclusion and made some inappropriate dichotomies (Right Thing vs Worse is Better) that unfortunately have become memes that lead people astray.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree with the author that Clojure is great, but I think he overly dismisses Scheme. There's not a standard library for Scheme as a whole, but Scheme is almost an idea, not a language. You have to look at the implementations, and Racket (<http://racket-lang.org/>) has a great library. I'm always surprised that PLT Scheme/Racket hasn't caught on more.

<comment><USER17> Also, the whole SRFI project (<http://srfi.schemers.org/final-srfis.html>) is an attempt to create APIs that are not part of the core language, but are common across implementations that choose to support them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think this is a reasonable article. Among other things, he offhandedly dismisses Common Lisp. Common Lisp _does_ have at least one implementation that is pretty Mac oriented. Clozure I believe, but don't quote me on that.

He is right that the JVM library set has helped Clojure. I hope to see a Common Lisp port to .NET one day.

One thing this world doesn't need - IMO - is another Lisp trying to be an industrial standard. If Common Lisp by itself doesn't cut it, DEFMACRO your way to what would cut it. If it requires compiler-level modifications, start working on contributions to the best compiler in the area you are working in ( _I_ think SBCL is _the_ premier CL implementation, and should be centralized on, but that's just my opinion). Please don't write another Lisp, helping to fragment the market even further. (this is my primary beef with Clojure, too. :-) )

<comment><USER15> Clozure (<http://ccl.clozure.com/>) is good at being better than SBCL in some areas (like, its compiler is a lot simpler). But there's room for the current CL implementations. CLISP for example is the only Common Lisp implementation doing JIT compilation. ABCL deploys on the JVM. It would be nice to have a CL deploy to JavaScript. And really nice to have a new JITed implementation that takes ideas from LuaJIT.

Don't forget the commercial CL implementations. Lispworks is pretty awesome.

What's really needed is to treat Common Lisp as a platform like the JVM. And for that to happen the current Free Software system libraries (networking, I/O, threading, Quicklisp, ASDF, FFI) need to continue to be improved, and need to run well on _all_ CL implementations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _And there's no sane interoperability from an algorithmic language like Lisp to a processor-driven language like C or a spaghetti-driven language like C++._

What is _sane interoperability_? How can a processor "drive" a language? And _spaghetti-driven_? WTF?

This must be the result of the "release early and often" habit that is often encouraged here. He would probably do better to write in detail about something he has done or is doing, rather than write vaguely about what he has been thinking about.

<comment><USER11> I spent a lot of time bolting strange things onto Common Lisp systems in the early '90s through a foreign function interface and I thought it was pretty straightforward.

[Note: Strange things being C++ simulations generated by Lisp code directly from systems of nth order ODEs. Other non-Lisp types also wanted to use the simulations, which is why they were in C++].

<comment><USER12> That sounds like the makings of a good essay :)

<comment><USER11> What was _much_ more fun was the fact that we also had NeWS based user interfaces connected to our Lisp applications by some glue C/RPC code.

Developing in Lisp, C and PostScript on the same codebase _was_ a lot of fun (PostScript being surprisingly Lispish - which I would never have suspected had I not been developing in both at the same time for a couple of years.)

I therefore got quite excited (in an RPN kind of way) by the reference to Forth in the "Let Over Lambda" book featuring on HN today! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Author's dismissal of CL and Scheme stands opposite to the fact that most CLs as well as Racket have tons of libraries right away; plus the general tone in their communities is "Racket/SBCL/whatever is for the doers".

That people speak from their experience. It would seem that the OA just repeats some heard opinions.

</comment><comment><USER20> I disagree with the author about the lack of market for a fast lisp, essentially a Go Lisp. Clojure's arguably greatest advantage, the JVM, is also a drawback. Think of how long it takes to start the JVM or how sluggish Eclipse is.

I write Lisp primarily because it's the prettiest language and that it allows the greatest amount of freedom.

What we need is a modern CL, inspired by modern dialects like Clojure and Arc, but with design decisions that allow for high performance, e.g. dynamic binding and static type inference. Some have pointed out that solid module support is also important for fast community growth. In other words, I'm arguing for a dialect that centers around the compiler, doing evaluation as a side-effect, perhaps through JIT compilation. The reason this has not been done, I believe, is not because it's impossibly hard (as some people have argued), but because it's a lot of work. Creating a necessary, good run-time from scratch is a large undertaking.

<comment><USER8> On my machine the JVM takes less than 1 second to start. Eclipse felt slow in 2004. Not so much in 2011.

Clojure _is_ high performance and _has_ dynamic binding. Typed Racket has shown that you can get static type inference via macros.

Which isn't to say the world doesn't need a Go Lisp. But Clojure certainly delivers (or could deliver) on all your points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't think he talks about Lisp. He seems to talk about another scripting language like Ruby or Python on the JVM or a compiled static language like Go or something else. Maybe.

</comment><comment><USER22> Java has no libraries either:

[http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/j3TOC....](http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/j3TOC.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> The "java schools" movement JWZ warned about has come to its fruition. Worse is better, indeed

</comment><comment><USER14> This should be titled "The present state of Lisp", or better yet, "A review of current Lisp-like languages". Compare this with the classic "Good news, bad news", which wasn't about implementations, but about the more general societal dynamics (within the developer community) by which Lisp thrives or stalls.

<comment><USER24> > This should be titled "The present state of Lisp", or better yet, "A review > of current Lisp-like languages".

"A review of my misunderstandings of, and obvious lack of experience with, current Lisp-like languages" would perhaps be even more accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Steven Degutis is apparently unaware of Clozure Common Lisp which makes Mac development easier and more fun. Or Embedded Common Lisp which makes iOS development easier and more fun.

Neither CCL nor ECL seem any deader than usual :-)

<comment><USER26> Or is he? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hey guys, pwpwp wins. Thanks for playing!

<comment><USER26> I know, I'm just as surprised as you! I didn't even know anyone _could_ win in blog post comments! But sure enough, he did.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Experimental Artifical Life system running in a browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwOkHt7Qmws <comment><AUTHOR> Another short video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4bGyyaGBGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4bGyyaGBGA)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> (Some specifics copied from Reddit r/alife post)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/alife/comments/ger9r4/show_ralife_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/alife/comments/ger9r4/show_ralife_something_im_going_to_release_soon_to/)

\---

As you can see this is running on the browser - the possibilities of this are limitless..

What I have planned is to have a connected universe of these running on peoples browsers with possibility for the creatures to traverse between the environments (can of course be turned off)

Any questions are welcome.

I'll probably write a blog post about this in some near future when I release this.

About my background: I'm a long-term alife enthusiast that has done lots and lots of things because some 25 years ago I got inspiration from Tierra to do some experiments of my own. This lead to trading on financial markets with genetic algorithms etc but that's totally another topic..

ALSO: I need a better name for this. Any comments? I'm planning to set up a server to connect the world on different computers. I think I'll set up a possibility to open portals between worlds or something similar - I don't have the details though in detail yet.

The colored pixels/boxes are the "creatures" which are basically virtual CPUs that run code in a custom assembler-like programming language. I just did an improvement so now the code is a tree-like structure.

The green dots are "food" that the creatures can and must eat to survive. The food is distributed in patterns that vary over time to make the landscape "interesting" and to facilitate improvement in the creatures.

Each food gives X amount of energy, when the energy runs out or the creature gets too old (currently at 2000 command executions) it dies.

Yes the code evolves with mutations, there are various mutations that modify the structure.

Here is an example of a program from a live session:

        if r0 > r1
          if r0 < r2
            set_reg r6 = 86
            copy_reg r2 = r1
            subtract_reg ro -= r5
            inc_reg r0 += r5
          push_stack 2
          if r0 > r8
            if r0 > r7
              set_signal 1 r1
              wait
              get_creautre_reg r0 => r0
              attack
            push_stack 4
            copy_reg r3 = r0
            if r0 > r4
              get_energy r0
            get_creautre_reg r5 => r0
            attack
          wait
        multiply
        get_signal 0 r0
        turn_left
        get_signal 0 r0
        eat

I do have plans to publish the details of the (experimental) programming language and maybe let the users to create programs. I think that would be very interesting.</comment>


Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers - <AUTHOR> https://seymour-locksmiths.co.uk/bitcoin-locksmith/ <comment><USER3> Bitcoin has the same sort of issues that plague Linux Desktop and why Linux never took off as the defacto standard for PC OS.

It's the lack of user focus. Setting up a bitcoin account, understanding the security implications, hardware wallet, secret keys, the whole enchilada is too big for an average consumer to digest.

Somewhere in Jobs' biography by Walter Isaacson, there is a snippet about how products often fail when they're designed by geeks, engineers and technology people - they make products to sell to customers that are like themselves. I'm an engineer myself and I also think the contrary is also true - products and services developed by "MBA" kinds often fail because the people in charge of the company roadmap have no fucking clue about the technical details and trade-offs of the product.

Bitcoin transaction process is designed for the most part for the nerds, not for the average Joe. I know there exists Coinbase and other "easy" setups for Bitcoin. But I'm talking about what happens when an average joe Googles "How to setup a bitcoin account". Instant "nope" - I don't have time for this shit and my personal money is at stake if I mess this up.

<comment><USER4> I have a better analogy: Bitcoin has the same sort of issues as TCP/IP. It's weird that people are expected to interact with it on the protocol level.

I think the term "cryptocurrency" is the "Big Data" of 2018. The term itself has been somewhat tarnished, but the underlying technology is super useful and will find its way into a lot of applications.

And no, I don't mean "blockchain". I mean Bitcoin... it's rather nice as a business or individual to be able to send large amounts of money around the world without snaking through the nightmare that is international banking. Inherent in that idea is the notion that the coin itself has value independent of a particular application.

<comment><USER5> Most of the issues with "international banking" are infact just issues with North American banks.

I can transfer large sums of money around Europe and it will arrive in few days at the very latest. Within the same country transfers mostly arrive the same day (often it's under 1 hour), and sometimes that happens internationally too. Oh and I don't need to pay anything for that.

A few years ago I was working in the Middle East, and before I moved back I transferred my savings from there (~€50k) back to Europe without any questions from either bank. I just did the transfer online, and it arrived in a few days.

Now I'm working for a US company, and it took them a few weeks to setup paying me with their bank. It usually takes at least a week from when they tell the bank to pay me, until I receive the money in my account - to a USD account also in the US.

<comment><USER6> > Most of the issues with "international banking" are infact just issues with > North American banks.

This. Whenever someone says that Cryptocurrencies solve money transfer problems, I look where they are based and 99% of the cases it is the US. In Europe, transferring money is the same internationally as it is nationally. Type in the IBAN and the name of the recipient and they get it the same day, or latest the next day. I made seven figure international payments that went through in 24 hours.

This is not a technical problem that Cryptocurrencies are somehow uniquely placed to solve. Technically, a money transfer could take miliseconds - updating a couple of database rows. National payments in Europe at least are actually pretty much instant since they are now fully automated. International payments can take up to a day due to an actual human checking the correctness (and perhaps doing due diligence for money laundering).

<comment><USER4> So? There's a huge amount of currency flowing to and from North America to Europe, Asia, etc. Just because the euro zone has standardized their banking system doesn't mean a) that America will ever do the same ( _cough_ the metric system _cough_ ), or b) that all movement of money across borders should be strictly the purview of banks.

In Canada alone people send $23.3B/year back to their country of origin in the form of remittances (China, India, the Philippines, etc.). Historically they've been massively overcharged for the privilege of doing so because they're held captive to our oligopolistic banking system - sometimes upwards of 20% because they regularly send smaller amounts to minimize risk.

<comment><USER7> Nobody mentioned the Euro Zone before you did; they're talking about Europe "as a continent", for the most part.

Living in the UK, national payments are _instant_ , with very few exceptions. And having lived in both Switzerland (where they use CHF), and Germany (Euros), I can say it's much the same across Europe.

International payments within Europe are fast too; a couple of days if you're changing currencies, and faster if both sides are in the Euro Zone.

Banks don't have to be slow. The only real issue I have is that the bank's exchange rates are criminal!

<comment><AUTHOR> >bank's exchange rates are criminal!

Transferwise is easy and are about 0.3% off interbank.

Interactive Brokers are a pain to set up but some tiny amount off like 0.02%

<comment> frosted-flakes I love TransferWise. I live in Canada, and had 2k USD sitting in a Canadian bank account. I was going to convert it to CAD, but the bank's exchange rate is atrocious. So I opened a free US-based account with my bank's US division, transferred all my USDs there 1:1, then sent it through TransferWise to my Canadian account. A bit convoluted, but I saved close to $100 and it didn't take long to set up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At Scribophile, I set up an option to pay for a membership upgrade directly with Bitcoin, i.e., without an intermediary to USD like Coinbase. Customers would be given a Bitcoin address to send a certain amount of Bitcoin to for a 1-year upgrade purchase, and once the transaction was verified, their account would be upgraded.

In the ~5 years we had the option, I think we had about 3 purchases with Bitcoin.

I kept it as an option for a long time because I was mildly interested in the _philosophy_ of Bitcoin. That is, its use as an alternate currency for everyday transactions, not its use as an intermediary for USD transactions or its use as a Ponzi scheme to separate the stupid from their savings.

But with such a poor sales rate I finally removed it some time last year. It was interesting while it lasted but Bitcoin is clearly nowhere near being useful for e.g. buying a bag of flour.

After some thought I decided that the entire cryptocurrency space, in its current pump-and-dump/outright scam incarnation, is mostly stupid, and unethical at best and criminal at worst. I could have kept Bitcoin payment as an option indefinitely--it's not hard to keep a static page up--but I felt that doing so would be in some small way promoting an unethical industry. (Unethical not because of what people are buying with crypto, but because today crypto is being used as a thinly-veiled scam to trick gullible people out of their investment money.)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's about time we admit the emperor has no clothes. BTC/ETH/XYY/123 can store value (I don't care to get into the fluctuations right now) and moving it around can be a lot easier than outdated systems like ACH but they are terrible for paying for things. Maybe something like the lightning network or similar will be able to solve part of that but accepting BTC has always been more of a fad/PR-move than an actual business decision.

Unless you are running in the gray/dark web (Silk Road-type, Torrent/nzb trackers, seedboxes, etc) your customers are not going to jump through the hoops required to spend BTC.

<comment><USER10> Users that already have a Bitcoin wallet don't have to jump through any hoops to spend BTC. It's just as easy as any kind of digital money transfer.

Obviously using BTC to pay for anything is a huge hassle if you don't already have a wallet with some BTC in it. But that's like saying Apple Pay is inconvenient because your customers have to go to and buy an iPhone first.

<comment><USER11> except i don't need to wait for blockchain confirmations on apple pay, it's instant.

<comment><USER12> It's also reversible.

With bitcoin, it might take a bit longer, but transaction are non-reversible after a few confirmations.

 _Any_ other system can reverse payments even 6 months down the line. Sucks for businesses.

<comment><USER13> I've heard this argument a few times now and while yes this is true for Bitcoin, there is nothing stopping another project from implementing this feature. Smart contracts, for example, make this type of feature open to any developer who wishes to code it.

In my view, Bitcoin is like MySQL and cryptocurrency/blockchain is SQL. Sure bitcoin has specific limitations but any other generic cryptocurrency doesn't have to implement features in the same way.

<comment><USER12> "Blockchain" is a database, but bitcoin is much more than its storage backend. The reason you can't simply replicate it is due to the monetary policy. In a world where anyone can make their own cryptocurrency, and we have "bluejellybeanBucks" and "sparkieSterling", how much value are these silly currencies going to have?

Their value will converge towards zero as more of them are printed and less of them are actually useful for representing value. The whole point of Bitcoin was to solve this inflation problem. If you don't care about inflation, you don't need a "blockchain" to begin with.

Bitcoin has the network effects, and it also required the creation (inflation) of some initial set of distributed digital asset because it was the first of its kind, and could not piggyback off of some other scarce, verifiable asset. Every other "cryptocurrency" that came afterwards, _could_ piggyback of a scarce digital asset and avoid the inflation problem. They had Bitcoin to piggyback off.

In future, all "blockchain" projects will be implemented as sidechains to bitcoin, or as payment networks which transact in Bitcoin and therefore don't create inflation by design. Things like the Liquid sidechain, Sidechain One (drivechains), Rootstock, Lightning network, etc. These are the "implementations" which will be competing for users, but they'll all be functioning on the same currency, because any currency other than Bitcoin is destined to lose value with time, due to the inflation they designed into their system.

<comment><USER13> >"Blockchain" is a database, but bitcoin is much more than its storage backend.

Blockchain in this context is referring to a specific set of implementation details to create a database. They are similar but not the same, a blockchain is a database but a database is not a blockchain.

>The reason you can't simply replicate it is due to the monetary policy.

I'm not fully grasping what you are implying here, mind explaining further?

> In a world where anyone can make their own cryptocurrency, and we have > "bluejellybeanBucks" and "sparkieSterling", how much value are these silly > currencies going to have?

This world already exists and the value of each should be somewhat independent, "bluejellybeanBucks" may have a feature that creates far more value than "sparkieSterling" for example. I would postulate that the majority of the currencies created will be low value but I don't really see this as an issue with cryptocurrency in general.

> Their value will converge towards zero as more of them are printed and less > of them are actually useful for representing value.

I don't actually see an issue with this as market forces can handle this. If I have a street with a single Starbucks (bitcoin) serving the population adequately I can still open 20 more shops. The value will converge towards zero as more stores open, thus the closure of failed stores should occur.

>The whole point of Bitcoin was to solve this inflation problem. If you don't care about inflation, you don't need a "blockchain" to begin with.

Do you have a source for this claim? Although a touted difference between fiat and bitcoin, the idea of deflation isn't limited to bitcoin. I could create bluejellybeanBucks to include the same mechanism that bitcoin does. I could also decide to print the currency at specific times or even give control to a central authority that will print money when deemed fit.

> Bitcoin has the network effects, and it also required the creation > (inflation) of some initial set of distributed digital asset because it was > the first of its kind, and could not piggyback off of some other scarce, > verifiable asset.

While true Bitcoin does had the network effects, this does not mean another contender will be unable to rise to the top. Any cryptocurrency that one chooses to create can implement it in a way that mirrors bitcoin or piggyback off of some asset.

> Every other "cryptocurrency" that came afterwards, could piggyback of a > scarce digital asset and avoid the inflation problem. They had Bitcoin to > piggyback off. Well, they didn't have to and again, this is a choice in the > development of each specific asset.

> In future, all "blockchain" projects will be implemented as sidechains to > bitcoin, or as payment networks which transact in Bitcoin and therefore > don't create inflation by design.

This is a little absurd to me and I don't really see this future happening. In anycase, any predictions of the future here is mainly speculation.

> Things like the Liquid sidechain, Sidechain One (drivechains), Rootstock, > Lightning network, etc. These are the "implementations" which will be > competing for users, but they'll all be functioning on the same currency, > because any currency other than Bitcoin is destined to lose value with time, > due to the inflation they designed into their system.

Sure, the implementations you described are on bitcoin, but again, solutions of this sort can be applied generally to other cryptocurrencies. Any currency other than Bitcoin is NOT destined to lose value with time. If you are specifically talking about a currency that has inflation built in, sure I would agree, but when discussing a currency this isn't necessarily the case.

<comment><USER12> > I'm not fully grasping what you are implying here, mind explaining further?

Bitcoin catches the interest of low time preference people who want to be able to store assets (accumulate capital) in a way that a government could not come and steal their money. Inflation is one form of theft, it's a hidden tax on savers, continually picking small amounts of their stored value. The "blockchain" is interesting technology to achieve this, but if there were an alternative which provided the same security guarantees then it too would be just as good. It's not the "blockchain" which is the interesting development, but the innovation of censorship resistant, permissionless, non-inflationary money. A blockchain is really just an application of a Merkle-Tree, something which has been around for decades and is used in many systems already.

> This world already exists and the value of each should be somewhat > independent, "bluejellybeanBucks" may have a feature that creates far more > value than "sparkieSterling" for example. I would postulate that the > majority of the currencies created will be low value but I don't really see > this as an issue with cryptocurrency in general.

I think it's a mistake to look at a cryptocurrency as "creating value". They do nothing of the kind. Money does not create value. Lending money can create value by allowing enterprises to expand in exchange for some of the profits, but in order to lend money, it needs to be worth something to begin with.

Imagine if I went around lending "Hasbro Monopoly Money" to people and expecting them to "create value" from it. It's absurd. Cryptocurrencies in general are no different from Monopoly money. Printing your own money does not create any value at all, because anyone can do it. Cryptocurrencies have precisely the same problem, that anyone can create one. Nobody has a leading edge, because the ideas can be copied too. Cryptocurrencies are trying to forcibly grab some network effect to make them appear to be more than Monopoly money, but they only attract speculators and gamblers who want to make a few bucks. Nobody is interested in the "technology" behind Dogecoin. It's hype + marketing + memes.

As the hype dies down and reality gets a hold, these cryptocurrencies will all be competing for a share of the declining "dumb money" which comes into the crypto space. Lets say we had some objective measure of value of this value, call it V. If we have one cryptocurrency, then the value of each of its tokens will be a function of V over the total supply of its currency. When you introduce a second cryptocurrency, it doesn't increase "V". It merely increases the number of tokens which V is split among. Each token will therefore hold less of a portion of V than before. Keep adding cryptocurrencies and splitting V further, the only outcome is that they become worth effectively 0.

The mistake cryptocurrency proponents believe is that V will increase due to their "innovation," and not just because they're collecting easy (gambled) money. Far from _creating_ value, they do nothing but _extract_ value from laymen and enrich their creators. There is nothing in economic history which suggests that new value will be created _merely_ by the creation of a new money. Even Bitcoin didn't "create" value in itself, it relied on people exchanging it for other value initially. Bitcoin has created value in industries surrounding it, but this doesn't increase the value of bitcoin itself unless people are willing to exchange some other value for it.

> I don't actually see an issue with this as market forces can handle this. If > I have a street with a single Starbucks (bitcoin) serving the population > adequately I can still open 20 more shops. The value will converge towards > zero as more stores open, thus the closure of failed stores should occur.

I'm not contesting that the market will deal with it. I'm just telling you the market's outcome in advance, because it is inevitable. Either Bitcoin will come out as the winner, or all decentralized cryptocurrencies will become worthless and we'll end up with digital fiat.

> Do you have a source for this claim? Although a touted difference between > fiat and bitcoin, the idea of deflation isn't limited to bitcoin. I could > create bluejellybeanBucks to include the same mechanism that bitcoin does.

It was hinted in the Bitcoin whitepaper (the removal of inflation altogether), and other texts written by Satoshi Nakamoto. However, it was _implied_ to the cypherpunks who were already interested in digital money, because it was a fundamentally unsolved problem. Various digital monies had come and gone before it, but it wasn't until Bitcoin that both the removal of trusted entities _and_ the removal of inflation had been achieved together. This is what made Bitcoin successful, and it's a success that cannot possibly be repeated, because it already happened. You can't invent the wheel a second time, it was already done.

Because their value is measured _in terms of Bitcoin_ (due to bitcoin being the ramp by which alts are obtained), new cryptocurrencies which print their own money (ie, Litecoin) are simply adding inflation to the (overall) digital currency system. There are 21M bitcoins and 84M litecoins. If one Litecoin is worth (via speculation) 0.013BTC, then 84M of them is ~1M BTC of value. In effect, there are now "22M worth of BTC" in tokens, because people who don't understand economics think that LTC has some tangible advantage that Bitcoin doesn't provide.

As above, there is still a finite amount of value being put into cryptocurrency, V. The value of a bitcoin is now V/22M. If we now create XCoin, YCoin and ZCoin, each printing many millions, then you're just increasing the denominator but you're not actually increasing the numerator, V. People are going to stop putting money into bitcoin (or cryptocurrency in general) because it will become a terrible store of value, worse than fiat, because no cryptocurrency can hold value whilst there is no cap on inflation. This means V will acttually _decrease_ rather than increase, and the value of each coin will decrease in response.

The failure of people to understand economics and look at Bitcoin as merely a technical system means that no decentralized currency is going to have any value at all, unless only one of them does (to fix the inflation problem). People would have more faith in centralized shitcoins pushed out by Facebook et al than they'd have with an ecosystem of coins which cannot hold value.

> While true Bitcoin does had the network effects, this does not mean another > contender will be unable to rise to the top. Any cryptocurrency that one > chooses to create can implement it in a way that mirrors bitcoin or > piggyback off of some asset.

If anyone can create a cryptocurrency, then there is nothing that can set one cryptocurrency ahead of the others. If there is some interesting technology, that same technology can be reused by somebody else as a bitcoin sidechain, and then you'd have the same technology, plus the "inflation fix" of Bitoin. It would be superior to the coin which printed its own token. This is why it is extremely unlikely that any "flippening" will occur. Bitcoin has the network effects and the developers who are most focused on the principles behind it (financial autonomy etc). The thousands of others have a few developers who are trying to strike it rich by selling to people like yourself, or themselves, because most of the developers themselves have no grasp of economics.

That isn't to say that there isn't some use in other currencies. Monero is an example of one which has a real tangible use-case, for anonymous payments which Bitcoin doesn't provide yet. It's very likely that Bitcoin will get this functionality at some point, and since Monero is inflationary by design, it will probably not retain value. It's use case will eventually be assimilated by something pegged to Bitcoin. The same is true for other coins, although I'm not aware of any other currency besides Bitcoin or Monero which does offer a real tangible use case.

> Sure, the implementations you described are on bitcoin, but again, solutions > of this sort can be applied generally to other cryptocurrencies.

Put this into reverse perspective. If any solutions can be applied generally, then they can be applied to Bitcoin too, and take advantage of Bitcoin's larger network effect. Who is going to win then? The die has already been cast and Bitcoin is leading the charge by a very large margin. Loss of faith in Bitcoin would imply a loss of faith in cryptocurrency as a concept, meaning that if people decide to drop Bitcoin, it's unlikely they'll be replacing it with some snakeoil competitor of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many posts here about how Bitcoin is not user friendly, and how it can't compete with existing (digital) payment solutions in terms of UX. My experience with it is quite the opposite, and I prefer paying with Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies in most (but not all) situations.

My phone has a wallet app with some small amount of Bitcoin on it. If I have to pay for something, all it takes is opening the app, scanning a QR code, and clicking ok. For paying beers at a bar (which I have done) the setup is slightly less convenient than NFC touch-to-pay solutions but not significantly worse. But for things like purchasing digital goods or other items online, the process is sometimes significantly better than alternatives. If I purchase something from an online vendor it's the same process; QR code shows up, I scan it with my app, and press ok. For this scenario it is almost always more convenient than having to enter some payment information, or logging in to some payment processor like PayPal or whatever solution my bank has implemented.

The downsides are that my phone effectively has a bundle of cash strapped to it, and when I lose the phone my cash is gone too. Getting the money onto my phone is also not the most convenient process as I need some external service like an exchange to acquire the coins first.

Not all the problems have been solved, but things are slowly getting better. Just like Linux on the Desktop, people will keep repeating the same story that it's never going to happen, but the reality is that modern Linux distributions have nearly the same install-and-go ergonomics as Windows, with many happy users.

<comment><USER14> _> The downsides are that my phone effectively has a bundle of cash strapped to it, and when I lose the phone my cash is gone too._

you should have the root mnemonic of the wallet stored separately, in which case you would be able to regenerate the private keys and access your funds again.

i can recommend the eclair wallet, by acinq, for android. as well as traditional on-chain transactions, it also supports spend-only lightning channels. receive functionality is being tested on testnet and should arrive on mainnet soon.

<comment><USER10> It's exactly narratives like that, "you have to store this passphrase somewhere secure or you risk losing all your money", that makes anything in this space so much less accessible to normal people.

You can choose to ignore those complexities and just treat a wallet like a simple app that just sends and recieves money without understanding anything about how it works, and the UX is way better. You just have to live with the consequence that your money is gone if you lose the phone (which is the same as losing the cash in your physical wallet when you lose that). In my experience that narrative works much better for onboarding people, because it doesn't place any burden on them to do anything. They just have to choose their level of acceptable risk, which is something they are familiar with (carrying cash in their physical wallet).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find accepting it & having to pay US taxes to be a pain unless I convert it into USD immediately. Otherwise I have to use special software to figure out the USD price at the time of receipt & then the USD price at the time of conversion into anything else.

I would imagine for large businesses this probably isn't to big of a concern. I also wonder if they could get away with making significant amounts of money by picking the price highs & lows of the day of receipt and day of conversion to USD when reporting taxes.

On the consumer side, I can't imagine keeping track of BTC prices to pay for stuff if I used it as an every day form of currency. I would need special software to help me file taxes. It would need to keep track of every purchase of BTC and then the price of BTC/USD whenever I purchased something. To me this is a huge issue & would create a giant spreadsheet to turn in with my taxes. On the bright side, if more people did this maybe we would have different tax laws regarding cryptocurrencies in the US.

<comment><USER16> > I would imagine for large businesses this probably isn't to big of a > concern. I also wonder if they could get away with making significant > amounts of money by picking the price highs & lows of the day of receipt and > day of conversion to USD when reporting taxes.

Nope. The daily spot price is determined and that's the value you need to use in your accounting with currency conversion for tax purposes. It's set by taking the value at a particular time of the day, and that's the value set for the day. That also happens to be the busiest time of day in the Fx markets, unsurprisingly, as minor fluctuations in the price can have massive positive (or negative) impacts on banks businesses.

<comment><USER15> Good to know. I was under the assumption you were to use the price at the time of the transaction.

The daily spot price seems like a huge risk for businesses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm more up on the UK system than the US but how it kind of works here is technically the liability is the price at the time of the transaction but they don't mind you estimating or using approximate prices if it doesn't have a large effect on the tax liability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This should come as no surprise, but not for the reasons the author thinks.

>I could list 50 different reasons why but for us it boils down to two main facts. A very small percentage of our customers posses Bitcoin in a hot wallet ready to transfer and secondly, Bitcoin can be slow and expensive for small payments.

The main reason is that no one _needs_ to use Bitcoin to pay for their locksmithing. Bitcoin is not your neighborhood Visa competitor. Bitcoin is your last resort payment method/store of value--for when you don't have access to traditional financial infrastructure (for whatever reason). This article is a signal only that people are not ideologically using Bitcoin as a payment (which is a good thing, I don't care to store payments on my node that would be better served by Visa).

<comment><USER18> > Bitcoin is your last resort payment method/store of value

This is what people have traditionally held gold for. It feels to me like there are very few use cases that aren't already served by physical gold.

<comment><USER17> You can't use gold online in an trust-minimized way. One counterexample are industries with high chargeback/fraud rates. Bitcoin is perfect for merchants exposed to friendly fraud, it completely removes the leverage customers have over them.

<comment><USER19> But accepting _only_ Bitcoin is hardly an option even for those merchants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Regardless of what it was, it is really cool to see someone do a follow up on their experience being an early adopter of a technology in their business.

You see so many "why we're choosing this" and not so many "how it went a few years down the line" posts.

<comment><USER21> Agreed. I love retros too. Amazing that some people in this thread don't want to hear it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Bitcoin is more like gold or diamonds. Expensive to mine. Interesting as an investment and to store wealth outside normal currencies.

But nobody pays in the store with diamonds or gold. It's not practical.

<comment><USER23> Great analogy, I'll remember that one. BTC is only really useful to me when other payment methods surpass ~$100 of effort. For example, when paying contractors tens of thousands of $ internationally, it's impossible to avoid $50-300 fees from bank wires, TransferWise, or Xoom. So if both parties are fine with sitting down and figuring out how to send/receive BTC on their computer, only then it is worth my time.

<comment><USER24> I'm reminded of the guy who lost $400k by trying to do an international transfer of his own money through Quadriga at the point they collapsed.

<comment><USER12> If only he was using a trustless cryptocurrency rather than a "trusted" custodial entity, he would never have had that problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> My friend lost trustless cryptocurrency that would be worth well over $400k today by forgetting about it and formatting his hard drive.

<comment><USER12> He clearly didn't value it highly enough at the time.

You're implying that if he didn't accidentally lose his private keys, he would've had the nerve to hodl it till now and wouldn't have cashed out when it was valued less on the USD markets.

Some banks will shut your account after a long enough period of activity. There are statutes of limitations which may prevent you from claiming any assets you had lodged in the bank if you suddenly remembered you had the bank account N years later.

There are pros and cons to both Bitcoin and the traditional banking system. With Bitcoin, you can at least chose for yourself, whereas the decisions are made for you when you use custodians.

<comment><AUTHOR> He minded it on his mac back in 2010 or so when it wasn't really worth anything much and then forgot it was there when the machine malfunctioned. Easy come easy go I guess and it wasn't worth much at the time but would be now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or > linkbait; don't editorialize.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Actual title is "Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In"

<comment><USER26> _Since that day over four years ago and the time of writing, we have not had one customer ask to pay in Bitcoin, Dash or any other cryptocurrency._

I viewed it as a useful summary of the article, quoting from the article, not editorializing.

<comment><USER27> > Should my small business accept Bitcoin?

> We think accepting Bitcoin is a positive move for your small business. While > you may not get anyone paying in it now, it does come with other added > benefits

The change of title clearly misrepresents author's message by picking a single fact without context. It doesn't matter if you agree with the author, the message conveyed in modified title is _very_ different from what the article talks about. Don't like the message? Write your own blog post. But don't misrepresent others' intentions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> IMO, UX is a minor issue. Why would anyone spend hard money before fiat money? (Gresham's law) Also each spending could trigger a separate taxable event (depending on your jurisdiction) and that would be a serious accounting nightmare if done willy-nilly for casual payments.

Bitcoin is a store of value and a payment rail for significant sums. Currently it is not suitable for casual/small retail payments.

In near/mid-term future I expect new banking services to allow people to stay in bitcoin for "savings accounts" and offering traditional fiat credit in "current account" for daily spending (backed by bitcoin in savings account as a collateral). Settlement and transfers between savings and current account to be less frequent and easily trackable for tax purposes. This would allow a person to completely stay out of fiat while still having access to fiat payment infrastructure - this would cost some interest on borrowed fiat which I expect to go pretty low thanks to collateral (bitcoin) liquidity. See companies like BlockFi which are getting close to this model.

<comment><USER29> I think Gresham's Law explains it. I _could_ pay a locksmith in bitcoin, but I would rather keep my bitcoin and pay with USD. Bitcoin is harder to get and can be used for purposes that USD cannot (e.g.: donating to financially censored people and organizations).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The biggest argument against bitcoin, in my mind is this:

Regulators really only get involved in allowing/prohibiting innovations very late in the game. I'm thinking of how Air BNB and Uber were allowed to grow really huge despite being blatantly in violation of a lot of laws in a lot of places (for example restrictions around subletting in contracts between tenants and landlords, regulations around running businesses that are hotels or taxis, etc). Only after they had gotten really big did regulators start to think about whether or not they like what's going on, and then they shut down large parts of the sharing economy.

For bitcoin there are only two scenarios in my mind: Either it dies right now for the problems it is facing right now (network externalities around lack of merchants/customers outside darknet/illegal stuff, volatility etc), or it overcomes those problems, gets really big, and is then killed by regulators.

For the most part the trend in regulation of financial services and financial reporting has been: erosion of banking secrecy (even Switzerland and tax havens in the Carribean are now sharing data with law enforcement), anti-money laundering regulation tightened (FATCA/CRS), increased requirements around creating transparency about ownership of legal entities in cross-border corporate structures (e.g. "persons of significant control" register introduced in the U.K. and many European countries), increased reporting obligations around cash transactions even for small businesses (parts of Europe are now mandating the introduction of electronic cash-registers capable of reporting on a transaction-by-transaction basis even for small businesses like a self-employed taxi driver), etc. etc.

Allowing bitcoin to happen would not fit into that regulatory trend AT ALL.

It's just that bitcoin isn't big enough yet for regulators to even be thinking about it. But it'll happen.

<comment><USER10> Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are an active issue for regulators right now. Statements have come out from several parties that confirm networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum are not securities. The SEC is actively shutting down ICO schemes that are deemed securities. Things are moving slowly because it's a complicated topic, but we are seeing more and more guidance from regulators like the SEC and others.

AirBnB and Uber are doing pretty fine for companies that got killed by regulators.

<comment><USER30> I did not say AirBnB and Uber "got killed" by regulators. I said that it had, at one point, reached a level that was clearly beyond what was within legal limits, and that afterwards "large parts" of that got shut down. BTW: This is a trend that is still ongoing and we have by no means reached the end of it, especially in Europe where there is a lot more regulation around who gets to be a taxi or a hotel (see Madrid taxi strike raising awareness about Uber's illegal role in the market there)

The SEC ruling that bitcoin is not a security is not really saying anything much as there are many facets to it (should the law treat it as being somehow equivalent to cash? equivalent to transactions carried out by banks?). It's also not saying anything about this pesky little thing that Americans keep forgetting about called "the rest of the world" and even if bitcoin is not in voilation of any laws that exist now, that doesn't mean that new laws won't be brought in to outlaw bitcoin etc. etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I also run a small clothing business. We have received about bitcoin 6 sales over 5 years. Only 1 was offline though.

Bitcoin is too valuable to spent. Hopefully something like Grin or Dai will make more sense for spending day-to-day.

<comment><USER32> How many sales were purchased through gold bars? Probably only like 1 or 2 per year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A handful of people have requested that I add Bitcoin as a payment option to my store. But when I offered these people to purchase my app with Bitcoin, none of them actually bought a license.

As much as I like the idea of Bitcoin, it just doesn't seem like people really use it for buying legal things.

</comment><comment><USER34> We got a regular trickle of three to ten orders per month for about three years, until the rally to 5-digits broke the system because transaction costs started to surpass our order values.

...which was excellent, because we had forgotten the entire system even existed. We had accrued a few hundred orders in the $80 range, many paid at exchange rates < $100.

</comment><comment><USER35> Bitcoin is the most expensive method of payment when you factor the difference between exchangers and merchant gateways(i.e try using bitpay). It is more expensive than gift cards. Not to mention that the volatitlity puts the clients in a pretty bad situation.

</comment><comment><USER36> Are the drawbacks of Bitcoin (massive global electricity usage, makes email/malware extortion scamming much easier) worth the advantages (the ability to anonymously buy things online at a small number of places) overall?

I'm of the opinion that Bitcoin is a net negative (Bitcoin mining has wiped out all of the gains we've made from the recent renewable energy boom), but perhaps there a useful purpose that I'm unaware of.

<comment><USER12> Bitcoin is going to drive research into renewable (cheaper) energies faster than all of the G20 combined. The reason is simple: Mining profitability is measured in Hashes per Joule. Increasing hashes means bringing down the price of mining equipment, which is happening already, and it is reaching the limit of Moore's Law, meaning that the mining equipment will have a much longer lifetime, and the amount of energy it will burn in that lifetime will dwarf the cost of the chip. In effect, the "Hashes" in the above equation will become negligible - mining profit will be measured solely in Joules.

If miners want to remain competitive, their profit will be the difference between the bitcoin reward and the cost of their electricity. The mining reward is unpredictable, but the subsidy is going to decline over time. The clear path to increasing profitability then, is to reduce expenditure on energy!

Miners have an absolute requirement to invest in cheaper energies, because if they don't their competition will, and they will go out of business. Industrial mining is a race to see who can develop the cheapest, most abundant, lowest maintenance energy solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _It shows your customers that you are a forward thinking company._

Bit of a loaded assumption that; accepting bitcoin has nothing to do with being forward thinking.

Bitcoin appeals to human greed, that's it. The comments comparing this to Linux and TCP/IP is apples and oranges.

Why would I as a hard working member of _my_ society with a house and kids invest money into a system completely unregulated. I'm all ears.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Bitcoin appeals to human greed, that's it

Much of the motivation of the founders and enthusiasts was that governments and existing financial systems are flawed so it may be valuable to have a peer to peer financial system outside of that.

<comment><USER37> Flawed how? This is a problem solving furum keep in mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dunno - Szabo tweets a bit about Venezuela and the old communist famines. That kind of stuff I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Why does no one want to pay their local locksmith with Bitcoin?"

The reasons given (few customers have it in a hot wallet ready to use, slow and expensive for small payments) are _not_ the reasons! Even if many people had it, and the expense was lower -- few people would use it.

The real reason? Gresham's law: a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good".

Given 2 forms of commodity money in circulation, the more valuable commodity will eventually disappear from circulation.

A fixed-issuance token is _designed_ to Deflate (go up in value), if its uptake and utilization increases. Hence, Bitcoin will "disappear from circulation" as money, vs. almost _any_ alternative form of money!

Who's going to spend something that the believe is likely (barring catastrophic failure) to go up in value?

It is astonishing to me that this topic is even a question that people actually have...

<comment><USER39> You're mixing up two things. Gresham's law applies when the conversation rate is fixed, not when it is set by the market. It's not the same as a currency being deflationary.

Hayek wrote about the confusion: [https://fee.org/resources/denationalization- of-money/#VI.%20...](https://fee.org/resources/denationalization-of- money/#VI.%20THE%20CONFUSION%20ABOUT%20GRESHAM%E2%80%99S%20LAW)

<comment><USER38> Its original application was to coinage with a fixed face value and a fluctuating inherent (market) value, of course.

The "spirit" of Gresham's law applies to any money that is (or is likely) to become more valuable in the future than it currently it. The same mental process applies in the holder of the money: "why would I spend this potentially more valuable money, when I have this other less valuable money to spend?"

edit: the article mentions the German Weimar inflation as a counterexample; in fact, it is a prime example of this concept: _if_ a vendor accepts _either_ the Weimar Papiermark _or_ the US Dollar as payment, who in their right mind would pay that vendor with US Dollars? That vendor would probably never see a single US Dollar in payment! Bad money would have totally chased out good, from their perspective.

The real issue is not fixed exchange; in a free market, where vendors accept multiple forms of payment: unless forced, payors will always pay with "bad" money, and will keep the "good" money for themselves.

<comment><USER39> If the vendor is free to set the conversation rate, and it is generally acknowledged that the value of the Papiermark is falling, they will require more of it for the equivalent of a dollar. The aggregate effect of everyone doing this may inflate the Papiermark out of existence, but it has nothing to do with Gresham's law. In fact, it's the opposite effect, since the dollar would remain in circulation.

If the vendor _had_ to accept the Papiermark at a 1:1 rate, _then_ nobody would pay with the dollar and _then_ it would drive out the dollar. That would be Gresham's law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The only time I ever paid with bitcoin was for likely-illegal pharmaceuticals. And that's only because that's all the online pharmacy accepted.

I can't imagine it's much useful as a payment system for much other than that.

</comment><comment><USER41> Because Bitcoin is optimized for speculative investment, not as an actual currency.

</comment><comment><USER42> A shift in consumer habits require orders of magnitude in improvement over previous solutions to achieve mass adoption and become the new true "normal".

The reality is bitcoin and crypto are not much of an improvement (if any) for the avg consumer compared to cash/debit/credit card.

</comment><comment><USER43> Back in early 2016 I told myself that if BTC dropped below $200 I would buy one. The lowest I saw was $203. When it went meteor a few years later, I felt Fold remorse. Perhaps it is sour grapes, but every time I walk by the BTC machine at my corner store, I relish in seeing how low it has gone, though still well higher than $200. :/

More on topic, the only action the corner store BTC machine gets, apart from drug addicts, is scams. That I can attest to, twice some tech ignorant soul has walked in, dumped their savings, then asked the cashier for a receipt.

Unless crypto currency can be inoculated from speculation (impossible IMO) it will be some time, if ever, before it becomes a viable mechanism for general economic exchange.

<comment><USER44> What's a BTC machine? What happened to the money the poor souls dumped into it?

<comment><USER45> It's a vending machine for exchanging BTC and local currency. Depending on the type it may be linked to an account at an exchange or else rely on scanning QR codes for the receiving address (either the users or the machine's). Some only sell BTC, while others support both buying and selling.

I imagine that this was one of the models that was linked to an exchange account, since the QR-based versions make it fairly obvious where the funds are going and won't work unless you first set up a receiving account and present the QR code for the machine to scan.

<comment><USER44> I see.So the people didn't just lose their money then, or get scammed out of a portion of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Of possible interest, Moon, a company in our our accelerator cohort, lets people pay with crypto on any website that accepts credit cards: [https://paywithmoon.com/](https://paywithmoon.com/)

<comment><USER47> Why does it require a Coinbase account?

<comment><USER16> Most likely because intra-coinbase payments are instant, as they don't occur on the blockchain, but in the coinbase local database only

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> until cryptocurrencies are able to be as accessible, easy to use, and fast as everyday debit or credit cards, i fail to see any significant future for their usage beyond people well versed in tech

<comment><USER49> They never will be. I think people misunderstand cryptocurrencies because of the mania that surrounds them. Bitcoin, for example, is a protocol, and should be judged as such. The most important thing for the protocol is trust, reliability, and scalability. Not UX and convenience. That could/should come from the layers/products that get built on top of the protocol.

<comment><USER50> Satoshi Nakamoto did say this:

> The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet > purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that > with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost.

He clearly expected Bitcoin to cheaper and faster than credit cards and I've often wondered how he could have been so wrong about that.

<comment><USER51> That's likely because he expected the block size to increase in addition to second layer scaling solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The only advantage and attraction of bitcoin to date to the lay person has been capital gains, not so much lately but at least its semi-stabilised to most holders relief.

I suspect that was the secret attraction of most businesses who set up to accept it.

However in real life it is too awkward for the average joe or joan and if you want to "go dark" cash or gold much easier to use and understand.

Cryptocurrencies day will come but not until it is as easy to use as a credit card or cash

</comment><comment><USER53> ITT: Bitcoin as a store of value not a medium of exchange.

They should look into decentralized stablecoins like DAI (1 DAI = 1$). Particularly xDAI and BurnerWallet [https://medium.com/gitcoin/burner-wallet- at-ethdenver-was-fa...](https://medium.com/gitcoin/burner-wallet-at-ethdenver- was-faa3851ea833) are interesting.

<comment><USER54> I've been given some xDAI at an event, and spent hours trying to get them out of the burner wallet, to no avail. This left a very bad impression to many people there.

They're still stuck there.

<comment><USER51> xDAI is no more than a few months old, and DAI itself is a little over a year old. Give it some time... Come back in a decade or two if you're looking for super smooth user experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> There is still a pretty good chance that with Lightning it will change, because of minimal transaction costs, speed and scalability.

<comment><USER56> I've been hearing about Lightning for a couple years now, is this the new Duke Nukem 3d/Perl 6 or what?

<comment><USER31> No, Lightning has been released. It works. There are multiple implementations. It isn't perfect. Version 1.1 should fix a lot of the shortcomings.

<comment><USER57> It has routing problems that are unsolvable.

<comment><USER25> Unsolvable like internet/BGP routing? I guess internet doesn't work either.

Tech evolves, most teams working on LN are working on getting the basic cases to a rock-solid state before doing more R&D on different routing strategies although there are already proposed alternatives on the mailing list.

Layered-strategies are the way to go.

<comment><USER57> No, unsolvable like routing payments from A to B requires finding routes from A to B that are well enough funded to allow the payment to go through, but with no knowledge of the funding states of the channels (as this would be a privacy leak)

<comment><USER12> The Byzantine Generals problem was "unsolvable" until Satoshi Nakamoto sidestepped it to make Bitcoin work. You don't need perfect solutions to have practical applications.

It's such a stupid argument against LN. I can make the same argument that you connecting to Hacker News is unsolveable (there is no mathematical proof that you will be able to connect to HN, because various gateways could drop offline). What does this matter in practice? You can still get here most of the time.

In LN, if the first route from A to B does not have the capacity to make the payment, an alternative route is tried. Many routes can be attempted, because they're usually sub-second negotiations between peers. If it happens that there is _no_ route between A and B with sufficient htlc capacity that can be found in a timely manner, then you might be out of luck. Can always fall-back to an on-chain transaction. A LN invoice already supports a fallback bitcoin address. As the network grows this will become less and less likely because there will be an enormous number of routes to attempt for any payment. Chances of not making a payment will usually indicate your own or the payment destination nodes are the ones lacking capacity to make the payment.

<comment><USER57> Proof that I will be able to connect to HN is a lot different and less important than payments. It's also far from the only problem LN has.

If the network grows much, people creating and closing channels (two on-chain transactions) will start to gum up the system. If they don't close channels then they need to keep a node online or face various forms of attack. If they delegate that task to someone else, we've got yet another party to trust in a system that's already a failure when it comes to trustlessness. Even before all this, to make it work properly, vast quantities of BTC will need to be committed to the effort. The LN seems to me to be a joke.

And beyond that, well, what's this story about? Nobody really transacting in bitcoin anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I personally never got into, because it's not private. No regular person can verify their transactions without joining a public vehicle that _requires a credit card_. Even bitcoin atms require a photograph of your face. Mining is a huge loss of value.

Bitcoin itself was simply never a good idea for most people.

<comment><USER59> Bisq sort of solves that problem.

<comment><USER60> Bisq uses centralized intermediaries

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Solar panels and electric cars are not as prevalent as the media would have us believe either.

<comment><USER62> Did you comment to the right article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Bitcoin on-chain transactions are almost on its historical peak again:

[https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions?timespan=al...](https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all)

This forum has been denying bitcoin since the first time someone posted about it:

first time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793)

second time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852)

<comment><USER64> Less than 10 transactions per second while spending more electricity than several medium-sized countries.

Yup. Technology of the future that we are fools to dismiss.

<comment><USER63> The technology still evolving. 10 transactions is not and will not be the limit. The Lightning Network already proved that a much higher volume of bitcoin transactions can be made without slowing down the bitcoin network.

I like to think the energy consumption of the bitcoin network is an "idle energy":

10 transations/s = mid-size country

100 transations/s = mid-size country

10.000 transations/s = mid-size country

An increase in transations do not directly increase energy consumption.

<comment><USER64> > An increase in transations do not directly increase energy consumption.

So far this has always been the case

> The Lightning Network already proved that a much higher volume of bitcoin > transactions

It hasn't proven anything yet, and as already pointed somewhere in this discussion there's already a new version trying to fix shortcomings and limitations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Bitcoin needs to die in a fire.

</comment><comment><USER66> Well bitcoin is better for store of value, just use a CC for spending - <USER2> protection.

<comment><USER67> The only value Bitcoin has is group consensus. If nobody has a need to use it, the values of otherwise-meaningless numbers will trend to zero.

<comment><USER68> Literally true for every currency at some level. I suppose you could use a greenback as very poor toilet paper.

<comment><USER67> The part you're leaving out is that most currencies are backed by governments with significant economies and that backing creates a substantial market because you use those currencies to pay your taxes and government workers and contracts are paid using that currency.

In contrast, a pure fiat currency like Bitcoin has no inherent value and no built-in demand. If something else becomes popular, there's zero anchor for anyone who doesn't have a substantial holding and the pitch of "you should use this so I get rich" is not generally compelling.

<comment><USER68> Why I said "at some level": what are governments backed by?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Florida sheriff bans deputies, visitors from wearing masks - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/12/masks-florida-ban-billy-woods/ <comment><USER2> Alternative link: [http://archive.today/0qUUs](http://archive.today/0qUUs)</comment>


Ask HN: Recommend to me a good translation service - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
I'm currently wrapping up the finishing touches to a massive BugMuncher.com update.
Part of that update is internationalization, so of course I need a bunch of text translated into a number of languages (initially 5 or so).
I've never used any translation services before, and the HN crowd hasn't steered me wrong before, so I thought I'd call on your collective wisdom to recommend me one that won't cost the earth, but gives accurate results, in a reasonable time.
Thanks in advance,
Matt <comment><USER2> Try MyGengo.com, a Japanese startup here in Tokyo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip, they look pretty good</comment></comment>


Will do scraping project for free to have LinkedIn recommendation - <AUTHOR>

If you have any scrapping need please describe i will do it for free to have linkedin recommendation. I uses Scrapy ( a python framework )
Will pick only One thanks <comment><USER2> I'll do it... email me at editing at typewriterninjas dot com and I'll tell you about the project.

</comment><comment><USER3> can you scrap walmart ?</comment>


HR leaked my salary. Now my team knows I make 3x they do - <AUTHOR> http://www.brightjourney.com/q/someone-hr-leaked-salary-lunch-now-team-knows-make-3x <comment><USER2> First of all, sure the HR person is obviously out of line. Second of all, I hope I've never worked with any team of people who'd be disturbed with my salary. To me that's a sign that either I'm not worth my pay or they're being taken advantage of (or both). Throughout my career I've gladly told anyone who asked what I make, and ironically the only people who've ever asked are junior folks like the ones the author says are upset (because they want to understand how things go). Salary obfuscation serves injustice. I really think it's that simple.

Further... dunno what industry, dunno what market.. but in my experience in west coast software 3x a junior employee would be a bit fishy at a company that size. Sounds like someplace I would not want to work :)

<comment><USER3> If they make 50k and he makes 150k and they are all paid under market but have stock in the early stage company, this could make sense. Especially if the guy has tons of experience. (And obviously, this could be true at 60k/180k or 70k/210k, just depending.)

<comment><USER2> Maybe, but I doubt it. First off we know exactly four things for sure:

1\. It's a 30 person shop

2\. Author makes 3x the juniors

3\. The juniors don't think author is worth 3x them

4\. the HR person was a bad hire

Dollars to donuts this is a very poorly run company (each of 2-4 essentially prove so alone, so they definitely point that way in combination).

Let's assume developers (cause I'm not qualified to talk anything else). Let's assume the 50/150 since 150 I'd estimate is about market for a senior dev at least in CA at that size shop. Juniors are more like 70k (or more? I may be a bit out of touch), so 50k is 40% short.

The chances that the junior folks are paid well short of market with great equity and the senior hire is market with little equity? Yeaaaah.

Honestly in my experience it's more likely that everyone at this company is fucked for equity, and everyone that didn't know better was fucked for salary also.

<comment><USER4> The second and fourth are still unknown:

> Author makes 3x the juniors

That assumes the author accurately knows the salaries and equity positions of the employees, which is unclear and raises more questions if true.

> the HR person was a bad hire

This is a clever way to get someone to leave the company: create in-company tension in a way that drives the person to leave.

<comment><USER2> > This is a clever way to get someone to leave the company: create in-company > tension in a way that drives the person to leave.

Excuse my french, but companies that need "clever ways to get people to leave", are fucked. _SUPER fucked._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can see this being a problem if you think you are "pulling one over" on the folks making less, but if you've got some reasoning to back it up, you just own up to it. If it makes you "feel bad" then take a deep look inside yourself and ask why that is.

If your boss doesn't think you add 3X the value of one of your team then you've got a bigger problem still. One of the biggest challenges in tech is that people who stay at the same company for a long time can get 'ratcheted' up to a salary that is over their actual value. Correcting that usually involves a conversation about your future elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> Your comment strikes me as a bit odd ... Are you suggesting that one should be wary about making too much money and if you find yourself at a company for awhile and making a lot of money you should discuss with your employer about reducing your salary or moving to a future elsewhere so you can make less money? ...

Software is a strange, if not bizarre, place for people interested in money if that is the case.

<comment><USER7> At some point, after a series of raises for doing excellent work, your employer may reevaluate the situation and come to the conclusion that, while you're excellent, you might not be worth what you're getting paid. (This can get particularly fun when there's a high-performing employee who isn't very high up the totem pole, making more money than people with fancy titles). You aren't often the one who's going to initiate the next conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Either everyone knows you are worth it and respects you, or you are an overpaid fraud, or your teammates are underpaid. Either way, sunshine is the best disinfectant.

<comment><USER9> I agree with this more or less. I make about twice what my least employee makes, and about 1.5 times what my highest paid employee makes. Since I work for the government though, everyone knows everyone else's salary is, and if they don't it's just an IPRA request away (inspection of public records act.) In fact the local paper publishes the names and salaries of all the employees of all the local government entities every year online, and the top 20 (of which I'm one) in the print edition.

However, there are always some people (usually on the lower end of the pay scale, but not always) for whom pay, and specifically comparing pay, is an unremitting source of conflict. So, in a non-governmental setting, without easy access to other's pay information, the leak of salary information can move that conflict from general abstract anger, and give it a specific focus, which can exacerbate problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to know the actual numbers and the job involved.

Thinking in terms of developer salaries (just a hypothetical tangent here, there's nothing saying this lady [I assume lady based on the name?] is a developer), 3x is a pretty huge spread between one employee and the rest of them without some sort of jump into a clearly more senior level position, even when the others are all recent grads.

Looking at some specific 3x multipliers:

$100k->$33k

$150k->$50k

$225k->$75k

$300k->$100k

If it _were_ a developer job (and again, there's no specific indication it is) she's either making out like a bandit (consider that she said she works for a 30 person startup, not Google or Facebook) or her peers are really getting shafted relative to market rates.

</comment><comment><USER11> If it was HR, they should be fired and find a new career. If it was a recruiter they should sever ties with that recruiter.

<comment><USER12> I work in HR and it's unimaginable that the person wouldn't be fired. "Do not disclose anybody's salary" is as close to a Prime Directive as it gets in the HR world.

Edit: Thought it over for a bit and now I'm suspicious of the original story. "HR told somebody my salary over lunch and I happen to make three times as much as everybody else" seems really fishy...

<comment><USER13> > "Do not disclose anybody's salary" is as close to a Prime Directive as it > gets in the HR world.

This has been my understanding as a non-HR person, which contributes toward my personal discomfort over "let's all know everyone's salary by name and number as a matter of course" lines of thinking. Not to say I don't understand where these lines of thinking come from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some people say all salaries should be open by default. I am not sure if this would be a good idea, but it would a pretty strong incentive against cronyism.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is really interesting, I can see how this must cause a lot of negativity at work. It's one of the reasons we've made salaries completely transparent within Buffer to avoid situations like this: [http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at- buffe...](http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer- including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/)

Do you guys think open salaries can help with this?

<comment><USER16> Lots of CEOs' salaries are public, but that doesn't stop people from resenting them for making so damn much. It's really hard for people to accept that someone is 3X or 5X or 100X more valuable than they are--either way, it's not a positive thought. I think more important than exposing salary numbers is being transparent about _why_ those numbers are the way they are. Having the company tell me that Bill makes twice as much as me, by itself, might actually make things worse (especially if I don't think Bill deserves it), but knowing that he makes twice as much because he is highly specialized in a specific thing that the company really needs is useful because it gives me a hint as to how I can reach that level.

<comment><USER17> But aren't most salary discrepancies because you are a better negotiator than someone? Or what if the reason is that you are getting offers from other companies and so your company is giving you a higher salary to keep you around? The company wouldn't like to tell THAT is why they are paying you more, because then everyone would be "pay us more or we leave"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unless it is in a contract or some such, I am not sure that you have a right to privacy about your salary information.

Honestly though, this is the kind of thing that is probably best to clear the air with. If I was fresh out of school, I'd actually look at this rather positively, as there is room for improvement, and of course now I have leverage to ask for increases in compensation.

</comment><comment><USER19> How did this guy know he makes 3x, without knowing peers' salaries?

<comment><USER20> If you're senior or a team-lead or involved in hiring, I don't see why you wouldn't (I don't think it says that he's their peer in the post).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had similar incident at a former employer. HR sent out department list with all the remaining employees after a layoff. We noticed that the listing wasn't alphabetically sorted and few of us knew what each other made and quickly figured it out was sorted by compensation. One of the engineers replied all and pointed out it wasn't professional to send out a list sorted by compensation.

</comment><comment><USER22> The guy uses his real name on brightjourney (also his entire profile is up) and now this post is on the front page of HN just makes things worse.

<comment><USER23> seems like he made himself pretty untraceable because google and other people search sites can't find almost anything on him

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, 19 comments and not one of them questioning how the person knows their salary is 3 times their peers ? Isn't it obvious that anything that can be said about the HR's actions can also be said about the manner in which the person themselves got the information to make the comparison ? Why is this even a legal issue ? overreaction, much ?

<comment><USER25> He could have interviewed the junior employees. Perhaps even gave them their offers

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For people questioning why the other people are pissed, it could be because the company lied to them during the process and said they could only afford to pay a certain amount when being hired now this comes out and they feel they got swindled and he just happens to be in the crosshairs

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't have any idea why this person would want to get into the legality of this. If you didn't sign up for an open door policy, it is certainly a breach of privacy in an ethical sense but ... You're the one making more money, is this the worst thing imaginable? OK, you colleagues at a _startup_ may be unhappy with this fact but does this really matter that much in reality? On some level, it just seems like you should just take the money not care so much. Sure, if it bothers you, you should bring it up and perhaps the HR person should be disciplined. If it bothers you that much then probably you should move on but I don't think anyone would benefit by bringing discussion of legality here.

</comment><comment><USER26> Unless someone is being paid over or under what they're worth, this isn't a problem.

If they are being paid under, then now is the right time for them to leave to an employer who rewards employees fairly.

If you're been paid over, then it's time you got your butt in gear and worked your ass off to prove to everyone your worth! :D

Personally I believe in 100% transparency across the board from day 1 (at Trak.io and all my previous companies). That way, situations like this can't arise, and new people coming in are unlikely to ask for misaligned salaries they know wouldn't stand up under peer review.

</comment><comment><USER27> happened to me, too, some folks from hr and finance would disclose to their friends in the office over lunch and then word just spread like wildfire. however, i work abroad (shanghai), and sure it was awkward for me personally as there was lots of jealousy and spite amongst so called peers, but the main onus was on upper management to retain people, so you'd see someone clearly not my equal get promoted twice in a year. for the record, i worked in the states for a long time so my pay scale was obviously going to be different from local pay.

<comment><USER28> Beijing here.

Local companies are really bad about this, but international companies are more equitable between local and foreign employees, given that the environment would otherwise be quite hostile.

<comment><USER27> that happened at a multi-national company. nevermind hr/finance talking about it, but people also ask very directly about how much you make.

<comment><USER28> I was never asked by any colleague at my company in all my 6+ years, but this is Beijing and not Shanghai :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I would collect evidence of the recruiter having disclosed my salary and bring that directly to the CEO. Legality aside, it is highly unprofessional to discuss private information in that way.

<comment><USER13> > it is highly unprofessional to discuss private information in that way

I too feel this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I worked somewhere where I found out after the fact that I made twice as much as my peers. I also was given harder tasks and higher expectations. So you make 3x... do the work to show how you earned it. If they resent it, keep working.

At the end of the day, experience is one thing, but you need to show the value on a day to day basis, not just how you earned it in retrospect.

</comment><comment><USER31> Salary transparency is a good value. I think managers that are uncomfortable with other people knowing their wages, are uncomfortable because the people that know they do nothing, now know they are overpaid as well.

</comment><comment><USER32> The thing I've come to learn about salaries over the years is that, and I quote (myself): "If that person can get that, good for them. It's probably not their fault I didn't get it."

</comment><comment><USER33> So? Show some spine about why you earn that salary.

</comment><comment><USER34> Give it a month. If nothing happens, you have a Nash equilibrium and no further action is necessary.

</comment><comment><USER35> Probably should get a new HR manager.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think this is why bonuses/options were invented ... lol

</comment><comment><USER37> hhjjjbbggg</comment>


Shoeshine man catches a break - and some cash - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/05/MNVJ1817N1.DTL&tsp=1 <comment><USER2> The most irritating part about all this is that you need an ID card to give the government money.

(I found it very difficult to pay my state taxes in Illinois until I got an ID card. It should be easier to give people money which you are legally obligated to give them.)

<comment><USER3> I spent some time working in the UK. At that time it was illegal for a company to employ you unless you have a National Insurance Number, but one of the requirements to getting one of these numbers was having an employer. About the only to get one was to find an employer who was willing to let you work without a number on the understanding that you would then get one pretty quick (which of course then requires taking a full day off work, or two in my case)

Note: This was my experience in the late 90's. May be different now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great story. Even though SF screwed up in the beginning, I'm glad they handled it well.

We do need more citizens like this. Times get tough, and for some a hell of a lot tougher. The thing is, he had the resolve to get off the booze and try to make something happen. Not trying to sound all sappy, but this should be a motivating story for a lot of homeless people.

<comment><USER5> _Even though SF screwed up in the beginning, I'm glad they handled it well._

By "it", do you mean the splash of bad press that they weren't expecting to get? They totally turned that around, very slick of them.

I didn't read anything about them doing anything to prevent the next guy from getting hassled for a license fee he can't pay, though.

<comment><USER6> As I read the article, that was my first thought. The fate of one man is extremely significant to him; but it must be viewed in context. If his misfortune was exceptional, and the remedy a rapid return to form, then this story is reassuring; but that is not the case. Instead, his misfortune was commonplace, yet the remedy applied only to him, leaving untold others calcified in their situation.

In that case, his story is a meaningless aberration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Followup to:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=642677>

</comment><comment><USER7> I believe there is a lot of startup lessons here. Larry started up from very little (bootstrap), built a devoted customer base who want him to succeed.

And, it really seems to make a difference that he dresses up in a shirt and tie.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is the shoeshiner version of getting an iPhone App Store Rejection letter.

<comment><USER9> Not quite, because at least the city official told the guy what he needed in order to sell his services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's funny to see this here, just last evening as I picked up my wife, she told me this story as we drove by him.

<comment><USER11> Did you stop to get your shoes shined?</comment></comment>