Dogecoin's inventor looks to the past for insight into the future • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by trevelyan » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

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 sort of activity which led to the financial crisis would not be mitigated by the establishment of a decentralized currency.

It actually would deal with the issue that led to the GFC.

Remember --- the problem wasn't that there were fraudulent mortgages -- it is that these mortgages were packaged and repackaged in ways that deliberately obscured the risk involved so that people were buying stuff that had no underlying value. The lack of transparency is what encouraged the fraud and created the incentives for it, which is why the behaviour only stopped when there was a 65% fall in the value of pretty much all mortgage-backed-securities.

A mortgage CDO built on something like Ethereum would be programmatically transparent and anyone could look in real-time to see the value of their tranche. It would be trivial to distinguish between good and bad investments. And while there's still the potential for people to purchase things that do not have value, it becomes pretty much impossible for 2008 to happen again in a financial system run on crypto fintech -- intermediaries in the financial system would simply not be able to deliberately obscure transparency into which assets were owned and covered by which securities: if you wanted to check repayment rates you could script something to do the work in real-time by simply monitoring the blockchain.

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

#82

Post by yarauuta » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #49

throwaway30yo wrote: post #25

DOGE is a pretty good currency to use for moving money between exchanges. That is why its used. If BTC had low/no transaction fees and was fast, people would have less incentive to use DOGE. Overvalued? Its possible but I think the entire crypto market is actually insanely undervalued. I was talking to my financial advisor the other day and he said pretty much 100% of people now are asking him about crypto and are co…

If you're invested I wish you the best. But here is why I think all cryptocurrency is worthless: It is backed by nothing. The USD is backed by the courts of the USA, which in turned are backed by people with guns (law enforcement and the military). The YEN is backed by guns. The GPB is backed by guns. What is BTC backed by? If someone literally steals your BTC, what recourse do you have? There is no court to go to, n…

It is backed by its own price in the market and ubiquity.

You completely ignore the service that crypto currencies can provide.

I don't want to have a bank account, or if i really have to, i want banking services to be fast, simple, automated, cheap and lean.

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

#83

Post by sharemywin » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

madeuptempacct wrote: post #47

Where do you sell your dogies?

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dogecoin/#markets

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

#84

Post by sharemywin » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

mkirklions wrote: post #8

sharemywin wrote: post #3

It may have been meant as a joke but it has a purpose. but it's become a base market in several exchanges.

Uh? What exchanges? I've never seen a DOGE to anything. Right now, BTC is the most popular. ETH is second most popular. I know some exchanges support monero, but those are very limited in what can be converted.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dogecoin/#markets

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

#85

Post by andrewla » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #49

throwaway30yo wrote: post #25

DOGE is a pretty good currency to use for moving money between exchanges. That is why its used. If BTC had low/no transaction fees and was fast, people would have less incentive to use DOGE. Overvalued? Its possible but I think the entire crypto market is actually insanely undervalued. I was talking to my financial advisor the other day and he said pretty much 100% of people now are asking him about crypto and are co…

If you're invested I wish you the best. But here is why I think all cryptocurrency is worthless: It is backed by nothing. The USD is backed by the courts of the USA, which in turned are backed by people with guns (law enforcement and the military). The YEN is backed by guns. The GPB is backed by guns. What is BTC backed by? If someone literally steals your BTC, what recourse do you have? There is no court to go to, n…

If someone literally steals your BTC, you have the same recourse as if someone stole your golf clubs. The mechanism of law enforcement and the justice system will try to get your BTC or golf clubs back, and this has happened numerous times already. If they take my golf clubs or BTC or USD through fraud then the rules are slightly different, but all of them will be treated the same way by the justice system.

Now it is backed in the sense that if I say that I will not accept USD in payment of a debt, then I am pretty much out of luck. If someone borrows my car and destroys it, and they offer to make restitution in fair value in USD, I cannot say no to that (except to complain about how fair the value is), or demand that they give me a new car in exchange if they are not willing.

There are more subtle differences; if someone takes my USD then they can return the same number of USD, any old bills will do; whereas for golf clubs or BTC the situation may or may not be different.

All of this is just the justice system, though. I fail to see how the military figures into it, except that if another country decides to start printing dollar bills, then our military will get involved, and the cost of maintaining that threat is part of the cost of maintaining the currency. Fortunately, that's a moot issue with cryptocurrency, which has much better anti-forgery systems that do not require the use of guns.

The whole notion of any currency being "backed" by anything dried up a long time ago -- the closest we have now is casino chips, which are backed by the relevant currency and the faith and credit of casinos.

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

#86

Post by sharemywin » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #53

josu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of now Dogecoin has a 24hour volume of 58M US dollars. This is not just one person, this is a market consensus on the value of each coin.

And what if 90% of that market consensus is really just 10 different high frequency traders battling for top market making position, with the occasional humdrum buying to "diversify"? The market depth says a lot more about a currency's value than the market price or even volume does. It's not something that can be summed up into a tidy single number, though. Which means people don't talk about it when when writing gl…

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-dogecoin-addresses...

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

#87

Post by reefoctopus » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

aardvark291 wrote: post #71

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.

> 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.

Pretend alice bought bitcoin for $10. Alice sells to bob when it reaches $1,000. The price is currently $13,500. Alice gained $990. Who lost $990?

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

#88

Post by cinquemb » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

stanleydrew wrote: post #70

cinquemb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well look at it from this perspective: If a tbtf bank algo went haywire when trading with the intent to maintain some position in cryptocurrencies because of some market spike/error/or w/e over an exchange and lost alot of money, yet others who were on the other side of the trade safely moved their gains to private wallets, the exchange wouldnt be able to negate those trades and claw back funds (like they did during…

Yes, I get that blockchain transactions are not reversible (excluding threat of force/imprisonment). But I think you may not have fully investigated your assumptions about what makes a bank TBTF and what it means to be "bailed out."

My assumptions about being bailed out are that it comes down to CB's inflating the currency supply to aquire assets that burden some privileged actors balance sheets.

And what it means to not be bailed out means to pay more on ones mortgage than market value of such asset.

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

#89

Post by trymas » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Bankruptcy;_stolen_bit...

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

#90

Post by Mtinie » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

tribune wrote: post #17

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 point of cryptocurrencies is to rediscover everything we already know about money, the hard way

On the surface that can be a beneficial exercise. 400+ years of financial dogma and cruft has accumulated in the world's financial system(s). If the sole eventuality of this period of cryptocurrency development is that some of the "sacred cows" stood up in the four centuries since are torn down, and outdated models are discovered and updated to better serve people of today, I consider it worthwhile progress.