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The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

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Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#121

Post by oelmekki »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #26

Is there even any reason the world needs more than 1 cryptocurrency? I know there are dozens (hundreds?), but they all effectively do the same thing, right? Allow decentralized currency that can be used for legal and illegal transactions.

Just as programming languages are all (well mostly) doing the same thing.

Cryptocurrencies are tech products, various projects try various ideas. You'll have the initial blockchain idea from bitcoin, the privacy blockchain from monero, the programming contracts from ethereum, the decentralized exchange from stellar, etc.

I'm perfectly fine with that, I prefer to see people create new projects to test new ideas rather than to hear them complain bitcoin is not doing what they want.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#122

Post by lottin »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #102
fullshark wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So illegal transactions and money laundering it is.

The long-term value of crypto will likely come from use cases made possible by auditable smart contracts that are administered on decentralized databases and run at perfect fidelity, facilitating the efficient flow of information through multiple types of systems (logistics, finance, etc) at a refresh rate / granularity that will be orders of magnitude faster / more detailed than the current status quo. In the meanti…

These smart contracts people keep talking about, maybe one day they'll amount to something, but so far I don't know anyone who uses smart contracts, or who wants to use them, or who even knows what they are or what they do.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#123

Post by blang »

jayalpha wrote: post #108
kjullien wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether isn't what cryptocurrencies was/is supposed to be. It's as if you took Herbalife as a valuable/honest/model player in the dietary supplement market...

" It's as if you took Herbalife as a valuable/honest/model player in the dietary supplement market..." Are they not? Shakes can be a decent way to lose weight. Seems to be that people are willing to pay a premium for the "community". But IMHO saying their stuff is overpriced is like saying beer in a bar is overpriced because you can buy a beer for one dollar in the supermarket. Yes, it is correct. In some way.

Not the parent, but I imagine what they are talking about is the Herbalife depends more on recruiting new members than they are from selling product. I would link but just googling "bill ackman herbalife" will lead you down infinite rabbit holes.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#124

Post by jessriedel »

I'm uninformed and bearish on bitcoins, but I find it helpful to look at the historic bitcoin price on a log scale.

https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25...

Bitcoin has had relative declines this big and lasting this long (late 2013 to mid 2015) only to bounce back later.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#125

Post by sincerely »

spectec wrote: post #52
fastball wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> always inflating > fixed number of Bitcoins Don't think he needs to.

Google defines inflation as: “a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money“. Let’s take a step back and remember how Bitcoin’s purchasing power has lost nearly $15,000 since its all-time high. So yes, he does need to.

Bitcoin is also worth almost exactly as much as it was worth a year ago.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#126

Post by megaman8 »

mindfulplay wrote: post #13

Getting my popcorn ready... This is the silliest human endeavor that somehow seems to attract a few smart people too.

Do you also think it's silly that credit card companies can charge merchant fees from 2.5% to 5% for everything you purchase. Whether or not you use a credit card, you still end up paying the fee because it still gets passed on to you. the future may not be Bitcoin. But, Alot of smart people saw this opportunity: I wouldn't write it off just yet.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#127

Post by epicide »

starbugs wrote: post #116
epicide wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just buying computing power like you would do with USD.

My point is: it boils down to someone putting power into something which then conserves that power (and can be exchanged for something else). Another example of this is gold. To extract it out of the ground, you need to invest energy. That energy is then "stored" in the gold. You can release it by selling it for USD, then purchasing service from someone and so on. I think it's hard to argue that the energy you put in…

I never said the energy is lost. I'm saying I, the owner, cannot extract it back out. This is also true for gold-backed currency, but USD, among others, hasn't been backed by gold for some time now.

My understanding is that a currency needs to be backed by something intrinsically (seen as) valuable as it goes through the bootstrapping process. Once it is generally accepted, it can stand on its own (at least for a while).

No matter how big Bitcoin is, it can never get off of its "gold standard" -- i.e. the computing power required to mine it.

On its own, this would be fine, but the parallels break down very quickly when we are talking about new *coins coming out at a MUCH higher velocity than traditional currencies.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#128

Post by root_axis »

pvaldes wrote: post #118
root_axis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will this horrible argument stop being thrown around? Tetris and minesweeper use a minuscule amount of power and typically provide many hours of entertainment. As technology has advanced, the power efficiency of these games increased exponentially. On the other hand, blockchain mining responds to more efficient hardware by increasing difficulty in order to compensate for the impact of improved hardware on the ha…

minuscule amount of power x huge amount of users x lots of time played rotating small blocks in a screen. Maybe the cumulative effect on energy spent for playing tetris, or minesweep (not to mention much modern videogames) is not so small after all.

> minuscule amount of power x huge amount of users x lots of time played rotating small...

... Equals huge amount of entertainment hours. What you don't seem to be grasping is that the power consumption only increases the minimum amount necessary to meet demand for entertainment hours, i.e. the more power consumed the more entertainment hours produced. With PoW, power consumption continually increases but the amount of transactions processed remains the same. PoW is clearly and inarguably inefficient by comparison.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#129

Post by root_axis »

ttul wrote: post #95
root_axis wrote: post #48

I doubt it. There is nothing to implode. Most of the activity in the "industry" is shuffling around tokens between the various blockchains as their respective cheerleaders hype their chosen coin and spread FUD about competing ones. All of the "real" economic activity surrounding cryptocurrencies (e.g. darknet commerce) will continue regardless of the price since darknet prices are pegged against the value of governme…

... and that economic value is tiny when compared with the speculative value. The untethering of tether portends a crash, IMHO.

Well, it depends on your definition of crash. We know that large price fluctuations are not uncommon in cryptotoken land so it's important to be clear about exactly what we mean. Personally, I'd consider a definitive crash to be a sub 1k BTC/USD price. I don't see that happening any time soon because the "speculative value" is very cheap to maintain with lots of enthusiasts broadcasting hype across every popular tech platform and the various exchanges generating superficial traffic and trading activity with very little cost.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#130

Post by codehalo »

castlecrasher2 wrote: post #112
leroy_masochist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long-term value of crypto will likely come from use cases made possible by auditable smart contracts that are administered on decentralized databases and run at perfect fidelity, facilitating the efficient flow of information through multiple types of systems (logistics, finance, etc) at a refresh rate / granularity that will be orders of magnitude faster / more detailed than the current status quo. In the meanti…

>but the tech does have some pretty exciting potential And some terrifying consequences for bugs. Or administrative errors with contracts, or non-binding contracts that you'll need a traditional court to sort out anyway.

> And some terrifying consequences for bugs

As all important software (aircraft, medical, financial) do.

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