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Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

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Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#51
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not protecting from uncertainty with a currency whose value fluctuates against the dollar by 10% daily on a regular basis.

Do you think volatility will be the same 10 years from now? 20 years? If so, why? I think volatility will down as volume and scale increase.

i think there's a high chance it will be worse ie. some competitor tech crushing bitcoin's value entirely in 10 years

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#53
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all cryptocurrencies have finite volumes by design. Ethereum, for example, currently doesn't have one. It also uses a proof-of-stake instead of proof-of-work for consensus, so even early owners of hardware don't maintain an advantage.

Has ethereum actually switched to PoS? It was still in the pipeline last I heard.

afaik still PoW

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#54
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cryptocurrency has a finite volume of transferrable currency This is true of Bitcoin. Others, such as Ethereum, have a known inflation schedule, which would help alleviate the issue you mentioned as being a currency of the future. Furthermore, it is looking like the "currency of the future" may (at least in the short term), look more like a cryptocurrency that is worth $1 and is 1:1 backed by a dollar in a bank acc…

Couldn’t a government just destroy a stable coin by seizing the currency backing it? Isn’t the point of a cryptocurrency supposed to be that it’s not controlled by any government?

A stable coin doesn’t necessarily have to be backed by fiat, DAI is backed by crypto assets and those assets can fluctuate and sometimes need to be increased during volatility.

I think the point of fiat backed stable coins are more for getting around regulations (eg Tether) and a fiat on-ramp for getting into the ecosystem. Certainly if the government seized a large portion of Tethers assets then that could affect other assets, but this actually has already happened with (a small portion, not large) Tether and nothing catastrophic happened.

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#55
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiat currencies will probably always exist. Digital crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum will exist alongside them. Bitcoin can be an asset like gold, of which users keep a portion of their networth to protect from economic uncertainty. Its deflationary policy may make it less usable as a currency, but at least crypto gives people choice.

> Digital crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum will exist alongside them. Bitcoin can be an asset like gold, of which users keep a portion of their networth to protect from economic uncertainty. Seems improbable, as it is far less stable than Gold. From what I see, it is almost never used as a currency, and almost always as a speculative asset. The main indicator for me is that Bitcoin is always measured in Dollars…

How much gold only exists on paper? Once people realize there is more in paper than in vaults that stability may evaporate. The Germans move their physical gold out of the US for a reason

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#56
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't even make sense. For a start governments don't earn money. Secondly, a managed currency controlled by a central bank under the control of a democratic government is a good thing.

> For a start governments don't earn money. Build infrastructure = provide a service. Get paid taxes for usage of said infrastructure = earn money for properly providing a service. > Secondly, a managed currency controlled by a central bank under the control of a democratic government is a good thing. That is a tautology, you merely rephrased the claim without providing any argument.

Currency supply to the economy and the amount of services a government supplies are orthoganal issues.

I didn't provide a reason, but it's not a tautology. I would accept "bland assertion".

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#57

Great, let’s all accelerate climate change even faster.

I hear this argument a lot and have a genuine question. How does Bitcoin electricity usage compare to something that achieves a similar goal? A good example is gold—many people compare Bitcoin to gold. What are the relative electricity costs of the two, and does that justify the cost of either asset? This would take into account the electricity costs of mining, labor, supply chain, storage, etc.

the difference is gold has an actual physical usecase so it's hard to compare these assets

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#58
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cryptocurrency has a finite volume of transferrable currency This is true of Bitcoin. Others, such as Ethereum, have a known inflation schedule, which would help alleviate the issue you mentioned as being a currency of the future. Furthermore, it is looking like the "currency of the future" may (at least in the short term), look more like a cryptocurrency that is worth $1 and is 1:1 backed by a dollar in a bank acc…

Couldn’t a government just destroy a stable coin by seizing the currency backing it? Isn’t the point of a cryptocurrency supposed to be that it’s not controlled by any government?

[deleted]

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#59

Cryptocurrency continues to gain more ground but I still have my reservations about it being the currency of the future. If by design, cryptocurrency has a finite volume of transferrable currency, do early adopters have an unfair advantage that could potentially make the currency unusable? I don’t see how it could possibly be fair when earlier mining yielded currency more quickly.

Not necessarily. Dogecoin has no fixed cap on the amount of Đ in existence. Rather, it expands at a rate of Đ5billion/yr, much to the chagrin of several currency pumpers.

https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/issues/1674

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiat currencies will probably always exist. Digital crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum will exist alongside them. Bitcoin can be an asset like gold, of which users keep a portion of their networth to protect from economic uncertainty. Its deflationary policy may make it less usable as a currency, but at least crypto gives people choice.

I was having this discussion with a friend recently, arguing over what the actual use cases are for crypto, and I came to a similar conclusion. In terms of facilitating payments , cryptocurrencies are worse in almost every way I can think of compared to existing systems. They are (currently) slow, have high transaction fees, but most importantly the non-refundability of crypto transactions is a bug, not the feature c…

>They are (currently) slow, have high transaction fees

This is only true for bitcoin and ethereum.

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