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Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

nytimes.com

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Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#81

Post by secabeen »

392c91e8165b wrote: post #70
dboreham wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the Internet had gone mainstream in 1992 when I was passed by a UPS truck with their URL painted on the side..

Are you sure it was 1992? Wikipedia says that there were only 50 web servers in the world in January 1993, and my recollection is that were all at educational and research institutions. I don't think for example that any of the major computer companies, e.g., Microsoft or Apple, had web site that early. (They had internet connectivity, domain names, mail servers, ftp servers -- but back then, ftp servers did not have…

Yeah, 1992 is way too early for that. Even then, it wasn't fully mainstream until advertisers felt able to drop the http://www from the url. When companies could just put coke.com at the end of their TV ads or on the can, it was as mainstream as anything.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#82

Post by dangero »

it bears mentioning here that the vast majority of cryptocurrency investors seem to be male, and their Twitter discourse tends to be less than refined, with insults often lodged at devotees of rival currencies.

The vast majority of cryptocurrency investors probably don't even have a twitter account. This seems like a big logical jump to make.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#83

Post by wingerlang »

honestlyreally wrote: post #80
wingerlang wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means they are holding $2000 of your money. And if you send it to another bank then it means they send it to them and now the other bank is holding your $2000. Nothing hard about that. Bitcoin might be easy if you're a techie and interested in it. I am not interested in it and I barely even know where to start. What does it mean to mine stuff? Blockchain? What.. There is no way my parents would remotely get starte…

If everyone wants to take their $2000 out at once, can they? In most countries that's highly unlikely, so is it really $2000? Or something entirely different?

I think it is common knowledge that banks use money to invest, lend to others for profit and so on. So no, not everyone could take it out at once as it would crash the bank.

I guess you could say that they hold your $2000 most times, but at times they use it for something else and are in debt to you.

I don't think on the user-level it is complicated at all. You can literally go to a bank, have them create your account and give them physical money. Then take it out.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#84

Post by mrb »

irishasaurus wrote: post #49
mrb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fees are always optional. Right now $0.25 will make a tx confirm in under 70 minutes (typical 225-byte tx, 40 sat/B: https://bitcoinfees.21.co ). Solutions are being developed left & right to further reduce this: alts, segwit, block size increases (segwit2x, BCH 8MB blocks), payment channels, etc. (Answer edited. Yes merchants care indirectly about fees.)

How will the average user be able to avoid these fees considering they'll probably be using some 3rd party app? Appealing to the common person is going to involve larger exchanges how will digital coin grow and still keep digital currencies decentralized? I apologize for my ignorance in advance. I'm really just trying to learn more about this, and can't find any consensus, even within blogs/articles authored by the s…

Most Bitcoin wallets give users some control on how much they want to pay in fees.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#85

Post by davnicwil »

mathgenius wrote: post #66
dcw303 wrote: post #7

We're a long way off mainstream. Take the Web as an example: When my university lab computer got trumpet winsock and Netscape installed, it wasn't mainstream. When Hotbot was launched and could actually search with some degree of efficiency it wasn't mainstream. When I learned html and javascript from reading Webmonkey posts it wasn't mainstream. When I switched to this new upstart called Google it wasn't mainstream.…

Perhaps the comparison should be to linux. Barely anyone knows what this is and yet it runs on most of the phones of the world & is behind most websites aswell. Linux had a long runway to get there. Rusty Russell has a nice talk about this: https://medium.com/@rusty_lightning/transcript-my-20-year-jo...

Yeah, I also suspect this may be it. Cryptocurrency will be useful to consumers 'directly' in exactly the same sense that linux is useful to consumers 'directly' - it runs behind practically every service they touch every day.

The fact that many won't need to know or care that's the case, what it is, how it works, may be similarly irrelevant.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#86

Post by AgentME »

skshetry wrote: post #14

And, now, we have two bitcoins. Cash and umm, Bitcoin.I wonder what effect it has(will have) on the future of cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin Cash isn't the only altcoin. It's just a recent popular one that forked from Bitcoin's blockchain history.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#87

Post by AndrewBissell »

stronglikedan wrote: post #25

Regardless of whether it will ever go mainstream in the near future, and as a newbie to cryptocurrency, is it expected that, whenever it goes mainstream, the value will? 1) Dramatically rise 2) Rise 3) Behave as usual (depending on current trend) 4) Fall 5) Dramatically fall I just curious. I dabble because some eTailors give discounts for Bitcoin, but I can also invest a bit at any time (just not enough to seriously…

It depends on how "mainstream" bitcoin gets. Lots of commentators use the current total value of various liquid asset markets, such as gold or M1 money supply, as a rough idea of the market cap bitcoin could grow to.

Taking gold as an example, the ten largest central banks hold a total of about 33,000 tonnes of gold, worth about $1.6 trillion. If bitcoin could cut into, say, one quarter of that, it implies a market cap of $400 billion, or a price of about USD 20,000 per BTC. (Of course, there are good arguments to be made that central banks will never use bitcoin as a reserve asset like gold, but this just shows one example of a rough reckoning for bitcoin's value.)

The price forecasts get more zany & bullish the larger the market you look at, and the larger share you assume bitcoin will take. I personally view it as an option on the potential creation of a new monetary order (with all the risks implied in option ownership). The more that governments and banks use their control over money to dictate the financial lives of their denizens and depositors, the better bitcoin will do.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#88

Post by legulere »

mrb wrote: post #30
CPLX wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these…

" What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? " International payments confirmed and spendable in minutes not days. Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext. Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees. Receiving monetary donations for organizations that might be victim of oppressive censorship. Participating in modern e-commerce for the u…

> International payments

When was the last time you made an international payment? I never made a payment outside of the EU and inside the EU I already have free wire transfers. For most people this is not interesting.

> unbanked/underbanked

You have the right to a bank account in the EU.

> Allowing merchants to save 2% in credit card fees

Currently Bitcoin is more expensive for typical transactions. And there's direct debit which is practically free at least here in Germany.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#90

Post by alexandersingh »

legulere wrote: post #88
mrb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? " International payments confirmed and spendable in minutes not days. Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext. Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees. Receiving monetary donations for organizations that might be victim of oppressive censorship. Participating in modern e-commerce for the u…

> International payments When was the last time you made an international payment? I never made a payment outside of the EU and inside the EU I already have free wire transfers. For most people this is not interesting. > unbanked/underbanked You have the right to a bank account in the EU. > Allowing merchants to save 2% in credit card fees Currently Bitcoin is more expensive for typical transactions. And there's dire…

According to Wikipedia, remittances were in excess of $560 billion last year, faciliated by 250 million migrant workers[1].

You and I are not the user demographic ;)

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittance

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