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Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future

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Re: Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future

#71

Post by aardvark291 »

mkirklions wrote: post #10
gourou wrote: post #5

Key take-away: > Once the cryptocurrency price bubble pops and takes all the hype with it, will the community be able to recover the energy it needs to build real, innovative technology once again?

Yeah because most people are putting fun money into the alt-coins. As long as people bought bitcoin and ethereum, they probably will end up positive. The people that are riding on 3 month old coins like IOTA or TRON will lose. Those risking everything on the future of Ripple or BCH or 1-2 specific coins will lose. Those that diversify impartially will come out major winners.

> As long as people bought bitcoin and ethereum, they probably will end up positive.

This isn't possible - the bitcoin market is literally a zero-sum game. One person's gain can only come from another's loss.

Re: Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future

#72

Post by dahdum »

simias wrote: post #23
mkirklions wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah because most people are putting fun money into the alt-coins. As long as people bought bitcoin and ethereum, they probably will end up positive. The people that are riding on 3 month old coins like IOTA or TRON will lose. Those risking everything on the future of Ripple or BCH or 1-2 specific coins will lose. Those that diversify impartially will come out major winners.

Speculation is worthless because unlike bitcoin it seems to be infinite supply. Tell me that you're able to predict what the cryptocurrency scene will look like 1 year from now and I'll call you a fool. Your thought process to reach that conclusion might prove more insightful however. So far it seems that cryptocurrencies move alongside each other for the most part, when the big ones go up the smaller follow. If you…

They rise and fall mostly with Bitcoin, Ethereum has shown recently to be more independent, but the biggest drops are usually spurred by panic about crypto regulation.

Regarding 2018, I'm your fool...here are my predictions:

Bitcoin will remain top market cap and crypto numeraire. Majority of the newest projects like IOTA, Tron, etc. will be down significantly.

Burned by vaporware projects, investors will become more cautious about "new" ICOs and enormous token issuances. None will rise as quickly as TRON, EOS, and others did.

Ethereum will remain #2 but at least once will have had a great run against Bitcoin, hitting 80% of bitcoins market cap.

Overall crypto market cap will rise 200%-300%.

Ethereum will continue to have most transactions, enterprise, and developer support. Could change in 2019 and beyond, but has a huge lead right now.

Ripple will crash further, but the platform will gain real world usage.

BAT will rise and support becoming common on enthusiast sites, like tipjar services.

Most of the smart contract chains in development will make no real progress, but I expect at least one "ethereum killer" to become a reasonable alternative.

Disclosure: I own Ethereum and Bitcoin, would buy some others but maxed out on my crypto exposure.

Re: Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future

#73

Post by zodiac »

jedberg wrote: post #65
zodiac wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What precisely do you mean by "The USD is backed by the courts of the USA"? Do you literally mean "if someone takes my USD by force I can sue them"?

Exactly. There are laws and rules about moving USD from one person to another, and if someone violates those rules, you have recourse in the courts. And if they don't follow the court order, someone with guns will come and force them to follow it.

If that's your definition, I could say that my Bitcoin is backed by mathematics and proof of work because "violating" the rules (by taking my coins without my consent) requires either guessing my secret key or mounting a 51% attack on the whole network

Re: Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future

#74

Post by xorcist »

meri_dian wrote: post #2

>"To deliver a peer-to-peer alternative to cash that, through decentralization, did away with the need for trust in financial institutions, which the 2008 crisis showed to be unscrupulous, and often corrupt." The sort of activity which led to the financial crisis would not be mitigated by the establishment of a decentralized currency. Decentralization would not do away with the need for financial institutions (or the…

> The USD is pretty decentralized already.

The decentralized aspect of using dollars in cash form(!), is something I would rather call permissionless. And that is exactly what Bitcoin set out to approximate for the Internet age.

(Indeed the "cash" reference in the whitepaper title refers to fungibility and permissionlessness, not tangibility or pictures of old presidents. This idea is much older than Bitcoin.)

Re: Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future

#76

Post by mrb »

«Once the cryptocurrency price bubble pops and takes all the hype with it, will the community be able to recover the energy it needs to build real, innovative technology once again?»

Of course it will recover. Blockchain technologies are so transformational that you need a lot more than a simple price crash to kill cryptocurrencies. Of all persons, the creator of a cryptocurrency (even a joke one) should understand this. In fact, people always seem to forget that Bitcoin (actually the crypto market at large) has already experienced 4-5 major crashes in the last 8 years where prices lost between 50% or 95%(!), sometimes remaining depressed for months, but the market has always recovered.

Re: Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future

#78

Post by jedberg »

zodiac wrote: post #73
jedberg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There are laws and rules about moving USD from one person to another, and if someone violates those rules, you have recourse in the courts. And if they don't follow the court order, someone with guns will come and force them to follow it.

If that's your definition, I could say that my Bitcoin is backed by mathematics and proof of work because "violating" the rules (by taking my coins without my consent) requires either guessing my secret key or mounting a 51% attack on the whole network

Don't be silly. We've already seen multiple examples of stolen coins with no recourse -- exchanges taking the money and going bankrupt, people issuing new coins and then just taking the money, etc.

And I don't have to guess your secret key -- I just have to steal your computer. Even if I get caught stealing your computer and have to give it back, if I've already compromised your wallet and moved the coins, there is nothing you can do to get them back.

Re: Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future

#79

Post by otakucode »

ummjackson wrote: post #4
meri_dian wrote: post #2

>"To deliver a peer-to-peer alternative to cash that, through decentralization, did away with the need for trust in financial institutions, which the 2008 crisis showed to be unscrupulous, and often corrupt." The sort of activity which led to the financial crisis would not be mitigated by the establishment of a decentralized currency. Decentralization would not do away with the need for financial institutions (or the…

(author here) I agree! I was calling out Bitcoin's initial goals in the article but don't 100% align with them myself. Financial institutions came to exist for a reason and I'm really not on board with everyone "being their own bank" as I feel it'd be a step backwards from what we have today. What I do agree with is the need for more audit-able, accountable systems so the institutions we trust are less susceptible to…

They did come to exist for a reason: geography. Primarily, they served as a way to deposit money in one physical location and withdraw it at a different one at a different time. In the modern era, more and more of the economy as a whole flows through these institutions who do nothing more than shuffle numbers down a network link - and yet they charge a percentage cut of the transaction. It costs no more to transmit a larger number, yet they see fit to take more and more depending upon its size. Payment processors are taxing bodies. Mostly unregulated and entirely non-governmental bodies that have as much, if not more, control over the supply of money in the economy than the Federal Reserve.

If the Federal Reserve sought to increase the supply of money in the economy, but the payment processors disagreed, who would (or even could) stop them from raising their rates for payment processing to directly counteract the actions of the Fed? No one. They could do it, and they will do it eventually. How anyone could be comfortable with middlemen who provide nothing of significant value sitting in on almost every single transaction which occurs in the entire economy and skimming off the top I have no idea.

Re: Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future

#80

Post by stale2002 »

un_montagnard wrote: post #63
wuliwong wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I think that the federal reserve's artificially low interest rates and essentially unlimited supply of money for the banks to loan out at these interest rates were at the heart of the most recent financial crisis in the US. A decentralized currency would certainly mitigate that.

No. The heart of the crisis is people believing they can easily make money by investing in a product they don't understand. I can sell a CDO on CDS in Bitcoin, and make a lot of money while the buyers are all getting screwed. And they will be even more screwed as nobody will print cash to cover or limit their losses.

The people who invested in CDOs SHOULD get screwed.

The rest of us who weren't stupid enough to do that shouldn't be forced to cover their losses.

That's the point.

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