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The cryptocurrency bubble is strangling innovation?

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Re: The cryptocurrency bubble is strangling innovation?

#101

Post by dragontamer »

overcast wrote: post #42
dragontamer wrote: post #13

No? Because before cryptocurrency, dumb money was in dumb apps like "Yo". The problem isn't cryptocurrency or fads. Its stupid investors spending money on stupid things. I mean, its fine, its their money and all. But obviously, if investors spent the money on more useful things, it'd be better innovation for everyone (and those investors would surely get better returns). At the moment, we're in an "everything bubble"…

People aren't investing in cryptocurrency, I don't care what /r/bitcoin has to say about it. People are speculating in hopes of making a lot of money off of a bigger fool.

> People aren't investing in cryptocurrency

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/investing/long-island-iced-t...

Erm, yes they are. And they're doing it in roughly the stupided manner possible. There's a ton of people who literally hear the word "blockchain" and then just throw money at it.

That's why these no-name penny stocks go up 200%+ when they change their Facebook page to include the words "blockchain", even if it makes no freaking sense.

Re: The cryptocurrency bubble is strangling innovation?

#102

Post by viggity »

acdha wrote: post #76
viggity wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't solve a problem that average american has right now . The key feature of crypto currency (to me) has always been that it can't be easily manipulated by a government. Specifically with bitcoin, were it not so expensive and have such high fees, it could be of real use in countries with hyperinflation and black markets (Venezuela, Zimbabwe, etc). Hopefully bitcoin and the myriad of alt-coins can fill the gap. On…

What reason do we have to think that will work, however? Governments have a lot of angles for control and it especially seems to me that it would be personally risky to rely on downloading software, making easily identified network activity, and recording your activity in a public ledger to do anything which is officially banned. Besides being more workable without pervasive internet access, hoarding USD / Euros have…

I agree that bitcoin's public ledger isn't conducive to anonymity (even with address mixers thrown in, and those are totally worthless given the high transaction fess).

But that doesn't preclude a new layer on top of bitcoin, or using an alt-coin (monero) that has anonymity baked in.

I would say that USD/Euros do have the risk of deanonymization (unlikely as it may be). The government would simply need to say "all bills $20 and over will be worthless in 2 weeks, you need to exchange them for new bills at your bank where your transaction will be recorded". India just did that with not 100 Rupees and higher.

Re: The cryptocurrency bubble is strangling innovation?

#103

Post by overcast »

dragontamer wrote: post #101
overcast wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't investing in cryptocurrency, I don't care what /r/bitcoin has to say about it. People are speculating in hopes of making a lot of money off of a bigger fool.

> People aren't investing in cryptocurrency http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/investing/long-island-iced-t... Erm, yes they are. And they're doing it in roughly the stupided manner possible. There's a ton of people who literally hear the word "blockchain" and then just throw money at it. That's why these no-name penny stocks go up 200%+ when they change their Facebook page to include the words "blockchain", even if it…

None of those people are going long term, which is what I consider investing. They are looking for quick money.

Re: The cryptocurrency bubble is strangling innovation?

#104

Post by acdha »

viggity wrote: post #102
acdha wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reason do we have to think that will work, however? Governments have a lot of angles for control and it especially seems to me that it would be personally risky to rely on downloading software, making easily identified network activity, and recording your activity in a public ledger to do anything which is officially banned. Besides being more workable without pervasive internet access, hoarding USD / Euros have…

I agree that bitcoin's public ledger isn't conducive to anonymity (even with address mixers thrown in, and those are totally worthless given the high transaction fess). But that doesn't preclude a new layer on top of bitcoin, or using an alt-coin (monero) that has anonymity baked in. I would say that USD/Euros do have the risk of deanonymization (unlikely as it may be). The government would simply need to say "all bi…

> But that doesn't preclude a new layer on top of bitcoin, or using an alt-coin (monero) that has anonymity baked in.

Perhaps, but I'd want that technology to exist and be well peer-reviewed before even considering recommending it in a sensitive context.

> I would say that USD/Euros do have the risk of deanonymization (unlikely as it may be). The government would simply need to say "all bills $20 and over will be worthless in 2 weeks, you need to exchange them for new bills at your bank where your transaction will be recorded". India just did that with not 100 Rupees and higher.

Note that I was talking about that in the context of a stable currency used in an unstable country, where e.g. the Venezuelan government can't force the US Mint to do anything.

However, either way that seems like a much better situation to be in because cash doesn't have a permanent history associated with every bill. Unless they setup the infrastructure to require everyone to record every transaction, all you'd need is one transaction to break the chain — take those new bills and buy dinner and who can link you to the change?

Re: The cryptocurrency bubble is strangling innovation?

#105

Post by Goladus »

viggity wrote: post #33
acdha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing has to be noted, while there is a constant parallel drawn with dot com people forget that there was at least 7-8 years head start for a layman to understand "internet". Bitcoin has been around for 8 years so it's not like there hasn't been enough time. The difference is that the internet was easy to explain to people because it had a number of immediately useful applications: you could almost immediately…

Doesn't solve a problem that average american has right now . The key feature of crypto currency (to me) has always been that it can't be easily manipulated by a government. Specifically with bitcoin, were it not so expensive and have such high fees, it could be of real use in countries with hyperinflation and black markets (Venezuela, Zimbabwe, etc). Hopefully bitcoin and the myriad of alt-coins can fill the gap. On…

The key feature of crypto currency (to me) has always been that it can't be easily manipulated by a government.

Right, instead of being easily manipulated by governments, it's manipulated by its founders right out of the gate, and anyone else that manages to get an outsized stake in the currency down the road.

"Only worthwhile (maybe) in a failed state condition when there is no other viable currency" is not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Re: The cryptocurrency bubble is strangling innovation?

#107

Post by hndamien »

Robotbeat wrote: post #23

Reading the original Satoshi paper, the point of Bitcoin is to be decentralized/trustless and to enable microtransactions by lowering transaction fees. Both these goals seem to have failed in practice, the latter spectacularly (although other cryptocurrencies have done better in this regard). To truly be trustless, you can't generate keys/addresses on some website like bitaddress or use some other online wallet, as y…

It doesn't have to be this way though. You can get Bitcoin by downloading some software, generating a key, giving some cash to somebody with Bitcoin and receive it on your wallet. You can do this with no identification points at all. The main trick is finding somebody with Bitcoin which is getting easier all the time. If you are using it as an investment vehicle that is different. But as a currency/ banking this is different. That said, faster transaction speeds and lower fees are very important.

Re: The cryptocurrency bubble is strangling innovation?

#108

Post by imtringued »

powvans wrote: post #71
Robotbeat wrote: post #23

Reading the original Satoshi paper, the point of Bitcoin is to be decentralized/trustless and to enable microtransactions by lowering transaction fees. Both these goals seem to have failed in practice, the latter spectacularly (although other cryptocurrencies have done better in this regard). To truly be trustless, you can't generate keys/addresses on some website like bitaddress or use some other online wallet, as y…

This is a great analysis. The lack of trust as a feature in cryptocurrency is really a bug in society. Bitcoin rose out of the previous financial collapse by appealing to people who have lost trust in institutions. The problem with building a trustless answer to that problem is that (assertions ahead) life isn't compatible with an absence of trust. Trying to build a trustless financial system is a quixotic undertakin…

Bitcoin ended up becoming a federated system instead of being a centralised system or decentralised system.

There are multiple providers. If one provider goes bust you can still move to the next.

There are a few minor differences.

The blockchain retains data accross providers as long as there is at least a single node. Traditional systems like email require you to migrate your data manually from the old provider to the new one. PoW is spam resistant because it costs money to send spam.

Re: The cryptocurrency bubble is strangling innovation?

#109

Post by kurtmueller42 »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #49
fortythirteen wrote: post #15

More than anything, the cost to transact with Bitcoin or Etherium (which this article weirdly focuses on), stagnates mainstream adoption. Sure, I could create my own coin to use as an in-app currency for my project, but why ? A coin is only worth what you can buy with it, and nobody is going to sell anything worthwhile with some random, in-app coin. Even Bitcoin was just abandoned by Microsoft, because it's so overpr…

>stagnates mainstream adoption Bitcoin/cryptocurrency is stuff for rich and tech-savvy people. - Folks with stressful and demanding jobs probably won't bother with full-time security measures to protect their wallets. - The same group won't have time to watch every piece of crypto news about which service or product is possibly bad/hacked (see electrum wallets). - Extremely high volatility means you need to be prepar…

It also doesn't add value in the first place. If you're a citizen in the USA for example, you probably have a credit card that you can use to instantly make payments either in person or online. If someone hacks your CC info, they don't get to immediately drain your bank account, and in fact usually you lose nothing after contesting it. The fees are generally avoidable, depending on the card.

The only significant benefit that cryptos offer is a scheme that allows you to make payments without handing over your credit card number in case you're not sure some sketchy site is legit. So really, the big appeal of crypto was being the new Paypal. Personally, I would like an open source or federated replacement for Paypal that makes it easy to pay everywhere online without entering a CC, but I would rather not try and create and buy into a new currency in the process of doing so.

Maybe something like GNU Taler can fix the credit card problem, but I'm not holding my breath on bitcoin.

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