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Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

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Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#61

Post by cm2187 »

jondubois wrote: post #59
cm2187 wrote: post #33

It's hard not to think of tulips at this stage

Maybe, but tulips still cost something these days. I think the same will apply to tokens. They will always be worth something so long as banks keep charging transaction fees for moving money around and so long as a reliable network exits to support the token. Even if you assume that nobody wanted to hold Bitcoin for longer than a few minutes (long enough to complete a transaction), it would still have value because i…

Actually you can't create an unlimited of tulip. I can create an unlimited number of block chains.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#62

Post by epicide »

repomies691 wrote: post #34
chvid wrote: post #28

I remember the .com-bubble; it kind of made sense that companies like Amazon were very valuable as they had the promise to transform whole industries. But this one; it is just stupid. Massive amounts of electricity and hardware wasted to keep a distributed ledger safe; an army of computer nerds facilitating fraud, narcotics sale and money laundry; and finally the bankers sensing bucks to be made on a large number of…

"Massive amounts of electricity and hardware wasted to keep a distributed ledger safe; an army of computer nerds facilitating fraud, narcotics sale and money laundry; and finally the bankers sensing bucks to be made on a large number of idiots." Well to me that sounds just like business as usual... Except now transactions are stored in a permanent decentralized ledger, unlike before. And also previously there less co…

Computer nerds, finance nerds... what's the difference when they're resting on their (others') laurels?

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#63

Post by dageshi »

simias wrote: post #52
zapt02 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very one-dimensional view of things. Blockchain technology carries with it the possibility to change how we think about and use money. Bitcoin is a zero-trust system that still manages to hold $41 billion dollar in value. However, I agree that almost all ICOs are cash-grabs. In my opinion we already have coins for all verticals that matter.

>Blockchain technology carries with it the possibility to change how we think about and use money. That's the type of fluff I keep hearing coming from the bitcoin enthusiasts but I have yet to read a compelling argument about what it'll enable and how exactly. "Bitcoin will kill the banks", "bitcoin will prevent the evil government from stealing your money", "bitcoin will cure cancer and polio". How it'll do any of t…

The internet native versions of previous offline technologies have a long history of revolutionising their respective industries. MP3, video codecs all internet/computer native versions of things that already existed offline but which have swallowed entire markets.

I wouldn't bet against cryptocurrencies doing the same thing, that's not to say I know how they're going to do it.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#64

Post by cableshaft »

richardknop wrote: post #42

Investing in crypto is like a gambling addiction. I know some people who were paper millionaires based on their BTC during the days before Mt Gox collapse. They lost their entire savings once Mt Gox collapsed, since then they have spent years working hard to recover their savings and now they are investing all of it in ICOs. This won't end well. Seems to me like the story is repeating. On a side note, the brigading/s…

I know Mt. Gox made it difficult to withdraw your money/coin from the exchange near the end, but they learned a hard lesson not to keep their coins sitting on the exchange (I sympathize, it's something I struggle with too periodically, it's just so easy to keep it sitting there).

The digital currency landscape is still in kind of a 'Here be Dragons' unmapped territory situation. No one knows exactly where it's going to end up, but they know there's riches to be had if you can figure out how to maneuver through it, or get lucky.

I'm pretty obsessed with both bitcoin and several altcoins, and I admit that I'm gambling with them, possibly more than I should, but I don't trust ICOs at all. Almost all of them seem to be money raising (for the company) schemes for what's essentially total vaporware. I'm sure some will manage to hit it big and make people a lot of money, but I fully expect a large percentage of them to crash and burn once the initial novelty and exuberance wears off and a lot of those companies to take that money and vanish, and there doesn't seem to be any decent method to evaluate which ones are the good ones and which ones are the total stinkers.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#65

Post by Master_Odin »

simias wrote: post #52
zapt02 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very one-dimensional view of things. Blockchain technology carries with it the possibility to change how we think about and use money. Bitcoin is a zero-trust system that still manages to hold $41 billion dollar in value. However, I agree that almost all ICOs are cash-grabs. In my opinion we already have coins for all verticals that matter.

>Blockchain technology carries with it the possibility to change how we think about and use money. That's the type of fluff I keep hearing coming from the bitcoin enthusiasts but I have yet to read a compelling argument about what it'll enable and how exactly. "Bitcoin will kill the banks", "bitcoin will prevent the evil government from stealing your money", "bitcoin will cure cancer and polio". How it'll do any of t…

Until bitcoin stops being so heavily speculated and volatile in its price, I doubt it'll ever really have a legit use case as why spend x BTC for a good when next week I could have payed (x +/- $1000) BTC for that same good!

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#66

Post by mannykannot »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #48
lambdadmitry wrote: post #20

Above all, I feel sorry for the small guy. Sure, ICOers are raising money for their dreams . And the "whales" "investing" in those ICOs are mostly lucky tech-ish folks who behave irrationally (like investing-1/4th-of-Whatsapp-in-a-service-with-a-few-hundred-users-irrationally). Whales will not suffer much in the end and ICOers will drive their Ferraris. It's those who believed in "invest in cryptocurrencies" hype in…

That's pretty much what banks were doing with tech IPOs anyway (maybe other IPOs?).

IPOs have at least three pesky features that an ICO lets you avoid:

1) A functioning business.

2) Actual investors - i.e. people who own a portion of your enterprise, with all the obligations and expectations that go with that.

3) Regulation and oversight.

I suppose an IPO without 1) is possible in principle, but then it is hard to get 2) and you have to be careful of 3).

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#67

Post by cm2187 »

hendzen wrote: post #47
phkahler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end, the continually growing computational requirements to maintain the ledger become infeasible even for the ASIC folks and the currency dies. It's all a ponzi scheme.

It's a hyperponzi. A ponzi combinator. As much as I find the actual technical details of blockchain technology interesting (it's basically nerd crack) - the severe lack of utility to general society and the constant price bubbles are really astounding. There are multiple levels of bubbles... the short term ethereum-led ICO bubble we are currently in, which is kind of overlaid on top of the long term bubble of cryptoc…

With a regular ponzi scheme there is zero million to earn. With a crypto-ponzi scheme there is zero billion to earn!

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#68

Post by richardknop »

cableshaft wrote: post #64
richardknop wrote: post #42

Investing in crypto is like a gambling addiction. I know some people who were paper millionaires based on their BTC during the days before Mt Gox collapse. They lost their entire savings once Mt Gox collapsed, since then they have spent years working hard to recover their savings and now they are investing all of it in ICOs. This won't end well. Seems to me like the story is repeating. On a side note, the brigading/s…

I know Mt. Gox made it difficult to withdraw your money/coin from the exchange near the end, but they learned a hard lesson not to keep their coins sitting on the exchange (I sympathize, it's something I struggle with too periodically, it's just so easy to keep it sitting there). The digital currency landscape is still in kind of a 'Here be Dragons' unmapped territory situation. No one knows exactly where it's going…

Most of these ICOs that I have read about have no reason why they need their own token. They could use existing blockchains but they introduce a custom token just to grab some free money from this ICO craze.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#69

Post by VMG »

simias wrote: post #52
zapt02 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very one-dimensional view of things. Blockchain technology carries with it the possibility to change how we think about and use money. Bitcoin is a zero-trust system that still manages to hold $41 billion dollar in value. However, I agree that almost all ICOs are cash-grabs. In my opinion we already have coins for all verticals that matter.

>Blockchain technology carries with it the possibility to change how we think about and use money. That's the type of fluff I keep hearing coming from the bitcoin enthusiasts but I have yet to read a compelling argument about what it'll enable and how exactly. "Bitcoin will kill the banks", "bitcoin will prevent the evil government from stealing your money", "bitcoin will cure cancer and polio". How it'll do any of t…

> How it'll do any of that and why it's a good thing, that's left as an exercise to the reader.

I'll give an additional hint to reader: who benefits from encryption that even law enforcement cannot break?

Who benefits from TOR?

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#70

Post by zimpenfish »

VMG wrote: post #69
simias wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Blockchain technology carries with it the possibility to change how we think about and use money. That's the type of fluff I keep hearing coming from the bitcoin enthusiasts but I have yet to read a compelling argument about what it'll enable and how exactly. "Bitcoin will kill the banks", "bitcoin will prevent the evil government from stealing your money", "bitcoin will cure cancer and polio". How it'll do any of t…

> How it'll do any of that and why it's a good thing, that's left as an exercise to the reader. I'll give an additional hint to reader: who benefits from encryption that even law enforcement cannot break? Who benefits from TOR?

> who benefits from encryption that even law enforcement cannot break?

People who live in countries with regressive regimes where law enforcement can be legitimately dangerous?

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