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My Opinion on Blockchain

vladcalin.ro

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Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#61

Post by ballofrubber »

ballofrubber wrote: post #41

This post is so fundamentally flawed it's baffling someone upvotes it. > Every advocate promotes holding, which is not what a currency is for: currencies are meant to be a medium of exchange and to change hands. You cannot dictate what currencies are used for. I like my currencies to keep a purchasing power. FIAT is not salabe over time. Its value decreases every day. > We need inflation to keep the economy going. No…

You don't create a non-volatile currency over night. People need to want it first. A currency needs to be a store of value to become a means of exchange. Why would I want to exchange my bitcoin when its price is not even figured out yet (hint: it's not $42k)

Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#62

Post by mindvirus »

Jasper_ wrote: post #38
mindvirus wrote: post #7

I'm definitely skeptical about crypto, but to counter some of the points: - Presumably more people will be online, and more ways to use crypto will be released. - One big benefit of crypto is that it crosses borders and is relatively anonymous. The USA might have stable money and relative safe banks, but that isn't true everywhere. - Non reversibility is a rough one, but I think we'll see software managing keys to ma…

> - Presumably more people will be online, and more ways to use crypto will be released. Bitcoin launched in 2007. Facebook opened to the public in 2006. One of those has 3 billion users, the other can't get out of the basement. Why haven't we seen more of those ways yet? > It's still very early days for crypto Facebook is one year older, and it's now basically a nation state in power and scale. When will it stop bei…

I don't think that's a fair comparison. Before Facebook was Myspace, and before that forums and BBSes. The concepts Facebook was built on are much older than it.

When does it stop being the early days? I don't know - it'll take decades I would guess for it to be widely used and the general population to be comfortable with it.

Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#63

Post by rsynnott »

oleganza wrote: post #60
rsynnott wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money that encourages people to spend it has already been thought of: http://www.larryniven.net/stories/roentgen.shtml

You know what also encourages spending? Appreciating currency that lets you save money over N days to buy N*$ expensive stuff all by yourself (e.g. start your business) without getting into debt and serving your creditors instead of yourself and your customers.

This feels a bit like "common sense/stands to reason" thinking. In reality, of course, periods of deflation are typically very bad for businesses, particularly small businesses.

Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#64

Post by rajma »

whoisjuan wrote: post #53

The problem with crypto in general is that there's no valuable mainstream execution yet. I do believe in the intellectual merits of crypto currencies but when you buy a particular currency is a speculative guess on whether or not that particular coin will achieve mainstream status. It's as simple as that. Bitcoin itself is a foundational coin so it only will cross the non-speculative line / fad bubble until at least…

The biggest hypocrisy about the Crypto space to me is the fact that no one is asking Coinbase to issue ICO instead of listing on Nasdaq. Why?

All Coinbase does is Crypto trading and all CB investors/users are crypto bulls. Just list it as an ICO and be done with it. Lead by example!

Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#65

Post by mindvirus »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #30
mindvirus wrote: post #7

I'm definitely skeptical about crypto, but to counter some of the points: - Presumably more people will be online, and more ways to use crypto will be released. - One big benefit of crypto is that it crosses borders and is relatively anonymous. The USA might have stable money and relative safe banks, but that isn't true everywhere. - Non reversibility is a rough one, but I think we'll see software managing keys to ma…

> - One big benefit of crypto is that it crosses borders and is relatively anonymous I could be wrong but this feels temporarily true, but illegal in the long term. Is the US government working on adding regulations to cryptocurrency to make it "just another form of currency"? aka, have it regulated to the point where cross-border and anonymous would become synonymous with the likes of "tax evasion"?

I don't think regulations will make it illegal. Tax evasion obviously is. I'm thinking more on the high corruption country side, it'll make it easier to get, store and use money.

Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#66

Post by dsnr »

bondarchuk wrote: post #31

Same tired old talking points, nothing new here. It would be nice to get an explanation of why people care so much, if it's so stupid. You don't see that many articles titled "my opinion on Tupperware", or "why I'm not a scientologist", or "why I won't buy Kanye West's new sneakers". At this point I find it hard to believe it's just hype-backlash that's triggering so many people.

> why people care so much

For the same reasons real-estate speculators care so much about real-estate.

Bitcoin might be interesting from a tech perspective, but it makes zero sense as a financial instrument. My main problem with it is the arbitrarily limited supply which doesn’t scale to adjust for a growing economy or wider adoption. Also, I don’t care for having to work with values like 0.00001 BTC.

Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#67

Post by ballofrubber »

kabocha_ wrote: post #8

For the financial arguments: Treat BTC as if it was in the "precious metal" asset class, but digital. Volatility is still an issue, but it's still a pretty new technology. As a technology, I agree that it's not that impressive. Stop making so many dang vaporware altcoins.

For sure a technology that

- has 100% uptime

- 0 network-level hacks

- allows global large value transfer in less than an hour

- allows global micropayments in less than a second

- is a new asset class with unimaginable global impact

is not impressive. Hint: the technology is not blockchain, it's Bitcoin.

Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#68

Post by Jimmc414 »

vvpan wrote: post #50

Here are some things that people miss when having arguments like these. * Blockchain is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the first (and quiet primitive) PoC implementation of the technology. * Blockchain is not "cryptocurrency". Blockchain is just numbers and an ability to trustlessly and safely flip those numbers. What those numbers mean to people is secondary. * To build on the previous point. Blockchain is being used to re…

Exactly. What people don't seem to realize is that blockchain isn't even about cryptocurrency, its primary use case and probably why it is so maligned, is that it will eliminate the middlemen who act as the fiduciary for financial transactions and replace them with algorithms. One reason the SEC has not come after Bitcoin or Ethereum is because they are NOT investments and are not sold as such.

Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#69

Post by programmarchy »

Jasper_ wrote: post #38
mindvirus wrote: post #7

I'm definitely skeptical about crypto, but to counter some of the points: - Presumably more people will be online, and more ways to use crypto will be released. - One big benefit of crypto is that it crosses borders and is relatively anonymous. The USA might have stable money and relative safe banks, but that isn't true everywhere. - Non reversibility is a rough one, but I think we'll see software managing keys to ma…

> - Presumably more people will be online, and more ways to use crypto will be released. Bitcoin launched in 2007. Facebook opened to the public in 2006. One of those has 3 billion users, the other can't get out of the basement. Why haven't we seen more of those ways yet? > It's still very early days for crypto Facebook is one year older, and it's now basically a nation state in power and scale. When will it stop bei…

Crypto total market cap is over $1 trillion, and Bitcoin represents 60% of that. It’s much more valuable than Facebook.

Re: My Opinion on Blockchain

#70

Post by Jasper_ »

mindvirus wrote: post #62
Jasper_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Presumably more people will be online, and more ways to use crypto will be released. Bitcoin launched in 2007. Facebook opened to the public in 2006. One of those has 3 billion users, the other can't get out of the basement. Why haven't we seen more of those ways yet? > It's still very early days for crypto Facebook is one year older, and it's now basically a nation state in power and scale. When will it stop bei…

I don't think that's a fair comparison. Before Facebook was Myspace, and before that forums and BBSes. The concepts Facebook was built on are much older than it. When does it stop being the early days? I don't know - it'll take decades I would guess for it to be widely used and the general population to be comfortable with it.

And Bitcoin was based on Hashcash and countless other distributed ledger systems before it.

> I don't know - it'll take decades I would guess for it to be widely used

Well we're already down one and a half decades. What if it never sees widespread use. Defining "very early days" as "there's no users yet" means you can always claim it's "very early days".

There's another issue here, which is that people point out hard problems and say "don't worry, smart people are working on solutions". This has been happening as far back as 2013, when I was poking my head into the Bitcoin-sphere. But it never accounts for: what if there is no solution that meets all requirements? That's politically appropriate, safe, secure, and efficient?

Maybe we can't claim magic future solutions will solve us when they still haven't been solved yet -- 1.5 decades in.

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