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Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

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Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#81

Post by stale2002 »

cjhopman wrote: post #79
stale2002 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to move the trust around is still valuable. IE, if the merchant is more trustworthy, then we want that trust to be with the merchant, and on with the customer. When the merchant is less trustworthy, well that's what credit cards are for.

> Being able to move the trust around is still valuable. Right. And the current system handles that just fine. It would be trivial to make a credit card system where charges were irreversible. There hasn't been enough demand for that (possibly because it's not actually useful in a non-ideal world).

No, it would not be trivial. You are still subject to the whims of the financial system.

The financial system can still censor and reverse your transactions if it wants to.

If the government comes knocking, then your transactions will be frozen, even if you have broken ZERO laws.

All they have to do is vaguely threaten a credit card company behind the scenes, and the credit card company will freeze your transactions, even if the vague threat was illegal, and what you are doing is legal. And you will have zero recourse.

Just go look at what happened to WikiLeaks back in 2010. WikiLeaks broke zero laws, and yet the financial system successfully censored donations to them, by blocking all credit card transactions.

The use case of crypto is to send difficult to reverse, censorship resistant, near instant (yes, 10 minutes is small when compared to credit card settlement, which takes days), electronic transactions.

And this worked great for WikiLeaks, as their crypto transactions were not censored, but their credit card transactions WERE.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#82

Post by Bombthecat »

segmondy wrote: post #62

I hate to be the one, but the reason I can't embrace crypto? The wealth distribution is even worse than fiat currency. It's horrible. it's no long about the 1% it's more about the .0001%. How many women have crypto? How many colored folks have crypto? How many people in all of Africa have crypto? I've had conversations where some don't believe this is a problem. I'm not convinced. You can come up with a new XYZ crypt…

EOS had a so long ico phase that they are one of the most distributed coins.

Nano was distributed via captcha and went long under the radar.

Hence also pretty nice distributed.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#83

Post by pretendscholar »

segmondy wrote: post #62

I hate to be the one, but the reason I can't embrace crypto? The wealth distribution is even worse than fiat currency. It's horrible. it's no long about the 1% it's more about the .0001%. How many women have crypto? How many colored folks have crypto? How many people in all of Africa have crypto? I've had conversations where some don't believe this is a problem. I'm not convinced. You can come up with a new XYZ crypt…

>How many colored folks have crypto?

I still can't believe the term colored people has made a comeback in both academic and colloquial circles. Are chinese people considered people of color? Seems like they are doing well at mining.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#84

Post by root_axis »

turblety wrote: post #67
segmondy wrote: post #62

I hate to be the one, but the reason I can't embrace crypto? The wealth distribution is even worse than fiat currency. It's horrible. it's no long about the 1% it's more about the .0001%. How many women have crypto? How many colored folks have crypto? How many people in all of Africa have crypto? I've had conversations where some don't believe this is a problem. I'm not convinced. You can come up with a new XYZ crypt…

But remember, with fiat, the government just prints money [1] whenever it likes and gives it directly to its banker friends. With bitcoin that’s impossible (well unless 51% of the minors agree) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

You're simply trading one government for another more nebulous and less accountable one; the schism over block-size is a perfect example of this and that's peanuts compared to the types of issues that are to come.

There is absolutely zero guarantee that the mining cartels won't print more bitcoin; the final decision on whether or not to do so rests with them and it is in their direct financial interest to do so even if it may not be in their political interest. Even then, it is very possible that the impact of high fees might make the idea of printing more bitcoins politically palatable.

Either way, the bottom line is that it is a political issue, just like the current system.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#85

Post by [deleted] »

stale2002 wrote: post #81
cjhopman wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to move the trust around is still valuable. Right. And the current system handles that just fine. It would be trivial to make a credit card system where charges were irreversible. There hasn't been enough demand for that (possibly because it's not actually useful in a non-ideal world).

No, it would not be trivial. You are still subject to the whims of the financial system. The financial system can still censor and reverse your transactions if it wants to. If the government comes knocking, then your transactions will be frozen, even if you have broken ZERO laws. All they have to do is vaguely threaten a credit card company behind the scenes, and the credit card company will freeze your transactions,…

[deleted]

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#86

Post by NathanCH »

stale2002 wrote: post #23
cliffy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's imagine a scenario where you're not able to withdraw from a bank due to insolvency. If you're in the US your deposits (principal + interest) are insured up to $250,000 by the federal government. [0] If the federal government is insolvent your cryptocurrency will be useless because you won't have reliable Internet access and thus you won't have access to the resources needed to make or verify transactions on you…

You are talking about societial collapse using the future tense, as if this is some hypothetical situation. It is not a hypothetical situation. It is happening right now in Venezuela. All you have to do is look how Venezuelans are using Bitcoin right NOW to understand it's value.

Venezuela is not using Bitcoin on any large scale. And if the people were, they would have lost 30% of their money in the last month.

I don't think this is a good argument.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#87

Post by chrisco255 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #35
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Portfolio optimization. Crypto currencies are probably not perfectly correlated to other assets. So it stabilizes the portfolio to add some crypto. Considering cryptocurrencies have only come to prominence during a bull market and unusual macroeconomic conditions I don't think you can conclude this. I would bet they're strongly correlated with the stock market. And because of lack of liquidity are likely to crash h…

I would not make that bet at all. Why would there be any correlation between crypto and the stock market? Also, crypto is arguably more liquid than stocks. They trade 24/7, there's decentralized exchanges, ATMs for BTC, etc...can't take my company stock to an ATM machine. And cashing out stock often takes weeks.

Hey downvoters: OP made an unsubstantiated claim about correlation of stock markets and crypto markets. There is no reason to believe this to be true. Statements about 24/7 access to crypto markets is a fact. Statements about stock exchanges being limited to business hours are facts. What gives?

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#88

Post by throwaway127831 »

segmondy wrote: post #62

I hate to be the one, but the reason I can't embrace crypto? The wealth distribution is even worse than fiat currency. It's horrible. it's no long about the 1% it's more about the .0001%. How many women have crypto? How many colored folks have crypto? How many people in all of Africa have crypto? I've had conversations where some don't believe this is a problem. I'm not convinced. You can come up with a new XYZ crypt…

Re: women in crypto, I’m not sure what the solution could be. Both men and women had the same opportunity to buy Bitcoin when it was incredibly cheap. Unlike the gender divide in STEM jobs, there’s no hiring managers / gatekeepers with bias against women turning down potential BTC buyers. Women just didn’t buy crypto early on.

I’ve seen folks go so far as to accuse Bitcoin of being sexist. I just don’t understand how that’s a fair thing to say given that anyone with an internet connection and an appetite for risk could have bought BTC anytime since 2009

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#89

Post by bitcoinisqueen »

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #33

This might not be particularly relevant to the article, but I'm still genuinely shocked that the HN crowd is so anti-cryptocurreny. Most of the arguments against it are akin to someone in 1995 saying the internet isn't viable because it's insecure, there's no real business use-case for it, no major corporations are investing in it, it's super slow, no one is ever going to use it for real-world business transactions,…

My theory is that HN people feel they "missed the bus" which causes cognitive dissonance because "we're techies and edgy startups af".

Combine the feeling of missing out on 10,000% financial gains and you have a case for thr worst kind of disgust and cognitive dissonance.

The truth is that most of the people in this space who "know crypto/blockchain" are clueless and missing the point.

If you refer to cryptocurrency or blockchain as a concept instead of just saying POW or bitcoin (cash), then you missed the point from the beginning and you are blind to what is coming next.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#90

Post by bitcoinisqueen »

phobosdeimos wrote: post #27
gfo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're joking, right? > Receiving, owning and spending money anonymously. Remember when extortionists had to be paid with a suitcase full of banknotes? As stated in other comments, Bitcoin is hardly anonymous anymore. There's a much greater ability to trace wallet addresses back to individuals or groups than there used to be. > Receiving money without being exposed to the danger of fraud. Receiving money via Credit C…

Bitcoin for us mere mortals who are not drugdealers seems unlikely. It simply doesn't solve a problem that people have. I can pay for my groceries waving a plastic card around and it costs me nothing. Traditional payment systems are safer, cheaper and more efficient than crypto.

Tell that to citizens of Greece when the banks took 20% of everyone's life savings a few years ago.

Tell that to the 3B people in the world who live on less than $2/day and banks will not deal with them.

You make claims that traditional payment systems are more efficient.... but did not include an energy calculation to maintain those banks, armoured cars, and infrastructure as compared to bitcoin energy consumption.

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