Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 910 posts

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#771

Post by hanniabu »

nexthash wrote: post #591
tboyd47 wrote: post #547

It's important for people to read the actual press release: https://mstr.cd/3tLaPZM There's good info here which will be new info to many. Why did they do this? It turns out that about a third of Nigerians report using or holding cryptocurrency (!). https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoptio... Second place are Vietnam and the Phillipines. For all, the #1 reason was for remittances. Haven't we all h…

Set this chart to "all" and tell me that this price movement is not a bubble. There is no earthly reason for why a "BitCoin" is worth $47,459.66 as of this post. https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin Cryptocurrency adoption in 3rd world countries like Nigeria, Vietnam, and the Philippines is not a good thing. It's actually really sad, because it means they cannot rely on or trust their country's currency. Therefore,…

> Set this chart to "all" and tell me that this price movement is not a bubble

It's a new asset class, of course it's going to see huge gains as it picks up adoption and of course if you zoom all the way out it'll look like a bubble. The bubble goes bust every few years and comes back stronger. That's a healthy market.

> It's actually really sad, because it means they cannot rely on or trust their country's currency.

That's a huge benefit and reason why bitcoin will become popular. It's a portable store of value outside the control of any government. It doesn't have the same issues as the US dollar for example where other countries need to be concerned about how not only their country is performing, but also the US since their reserves are in USD.

This is also why it's gaining popularity around the world. Trust in governments is rapidly decreasing and the world as a whole is destabilizing due to polarization, poverty/wealth gaps, and rising environmental concerns.

> there is no trust

That's the point. It's trustless. You don't need to worry about it.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#772

Post by hanniabu »

heidar wrote: post #628
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin was all over the news a decade ago. The reason it's not popular is that the early narrative wasn't "too the moon!" The narrative was that Bitcoin was the currency of the future and that we'd all be using Bitcoin for transactions. Anyone who actually used Bitcoin at the time could see how there was no chance of it taking off as a payment mechanism. That's still true today, especially with $8+ transaction fees.…

Given what you're commenting all over this post, it's pretty clear you don't follow developments in the cryptocurrency space much. Bitcoin is stale, there's no development or innovation happening. It has become a store of value only. The only possible solution that could change that is the Lightning network or other Layer 2 protocols. There are plenty of other coins however that are doing super exciting innovation. B…

> There are plenty of other coins however that are doing super exciting innovation. Bitcoin Cash and Nano are some examples.

You really had me where you mentioned exciting innovation. I thought you were going to go into Ethereum, the EVM, smart contracts, DeFi, etc. But then you mention BCH and Nano lol. While I guess you can say there's advancements there over Bitcoin, in the grand scheme of the ecosystem Ethereum is where all the actual innovation is happening.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#773

Post by hanniabu »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #744
heidar wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what you're commenting all over this post, it's pretty clear you don't follow developments in the cryptocurrency space much. Bitcoin is stale, there's no development or innovation happening. It has become a store of value only. The only possible solution that could change that is the Lightning network or other Layer 2 protocols. There are plenty of other coins however that are doing super exciting innovation. B…

Can we please dispense with the ad-hominem attacks? I've been following cryptocurrency since 2009/2010, and I've worked adjacent to the space at one point. There are plenty of us who were enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies before the narrative moved away from distributed systems and turned into a pure financial play for everyone involved. > There are plenty of other coins however that are doing super exciting innova…

> Why must they be coins? Why can't they simply develop blockchain technology that doesn't revolve around inventing an all-new currency?

To make it trustless, provide a proper incentive model, and for security.

> just skip straight to distributed systems for managing our existing cash

That doesn't work. Fiat is tied to nation states and are under direct influence by them. One example is how after Trump's term a lot of countries have been divesting away from having so much of their reserves tied to USD.

The other thing is removal of middlemen and having transparent and predictable inflation. You can't do that with fiat. There's central banks that will always be there. Even if you distribute the processing to remove Visa and the like, you will always have the central banks there.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#774

Post by hanniabu »

gverrilla wrote: post #722
heidar wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what you're commenting all over this post, it's pretty clear you don't follow developments in the cryptocurrency space much. Bitcoin is stale, there's no development or innovation happening. It has become a store of value only. The only possible solution that could change that is the Lightning network or other Layer 2 protocols. There are plenty of other coins however that are doing super exciting innovation. B…

Can I ask you something: where do you get proper info about what's happening on crypto? Is there some honest party reporting it? Because all I've seen is "this is no financial advice" financial advice disguised as news or blogging, and the bitcoin forum. I'm saying that because I really feel only a few people are really on the loop. Thanks for any input

It's tough. It's the same issue as how to get stay informed with the news. You just kind of have to dive in and you figure out what's what. I'd lend you some resources but there's a lot going on in the space so without knowing your interest it'd be hard to send you in any direction.

Overall though I think the best thing to do is follow the people that are actually getting things done or directly involved. For example Andreas Antonopoulos has been in the scene for a long time and speaks well at various depth from the tech to more abstracted views (https://aantonop.com/). However he's mostly involved in Bitcoin. On the Ethereum side there's a few different resources from Vitalik's blog (main cofounder) to the developer roundup notes, to straight up reading their forum and proposals.

If you're wondering more about the trading side then my personal favorites that don't waste your time or try to sell you stuff are Willy Woo (@woonomic), Plan B (@100trillionUSD), and Benjamin Cowen (Youtube). Will does chain analysis for bitcoin, Plan B develops macro price prediction models, and Cowen covers a handful of assets from a mathematical and risk-adjusted return perspective.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#775

Post by gbear605 »

boogies wrote: post #667
gbear605 wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A market doesn’t work in countries without a strong government, since for a market to work, there needs to be faith that the other party isn’t going to break the rules of the market. If you’re trying to sell your goods and someone comes in with a gun, then you have to hope that either you have a gun or can call police. If you have to resort to using a gun, then that leads to huge costs and lots of dead people.

> If you have to resort to using a gun, then that leads to huge costs and lots of dead people. Is that more true for you using a gun than it is for police using a gun?

If it’s you using a gun, you get Somalia. If it’s the police using a gun, you get the US. (If it’s the police using a baton, you get the UK). It works because the threat isn’t just physical harm but also social consequences. Even going back through history, there would be governmental consequences for not abiding by fair trade, whether that was the local lord throwing you in the stockades or the rest of your tribe ostracizing you.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#776

Post by fredsir »

rustybelt wrote: post #570
vbezhenar wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your view must be skewed by privilege of having stable currency. Currency of my country lost 250% of its value over last 7 years. It's not bitcoin-level volatile, but close to it. Thankfully I have an option to use USD to hoard money, but that option is not something that's given, in many countries you just can't exchange for fair price. I agree that for someone living in US or EU there's no much point using BTC.

Am I dumb? How does something lose over 100% of it's value?

Isn't it 250% loss in buying value? So because of inflation everything now cost 2,5x what it did. Usually your paycheck can afford 100 apples but after inflation your paycheck can only afford 40.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#777

Post by hanniabu »

whitepaint wrote: post #493
lifty wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, vulnerabilities and bugs can happen. They get fixed and people move on. Something much better coming out is not an existential risk for the cryptocurrency/blockchain space, quite the opposite, it's very positive.

Is it positive for Bitcoin if Ethereum proves that POS is way way superior? And if people actually start using Ether as a currency in shops, start using it with many dapps etc.? What if something much better than that comes up? Are you absolutely sure Bitcoin survives in the long-term?

I do believe one day Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin, but I think we may be a few years away from that (possibly next cycle). Reason being is that everyone's first exposure to crypto is Bitcoin. It's hard enough for them to understand that. After that they have a better foundation to start understanding Ethereum. Once you understand Ethereum and see the network effects it has and that all innovation is happening there it's pretty easy to see how it has more growth potential. The ability to stake is what I think will really steal from Bitcoin's "store of value" narrative though as it offers people interest and will also lock up circulation which will help with price stability.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#778

Post by intenex »

vishnugupta wrote: post #449
halukakin wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say everyone in an unstable economy were paid in usd. If that country has foreign deficit, if that country has high government debt. What happens? How can the government keep paying its own employees? How does it pay retiree checks? How does it subsidize farming when needed? As long as a country cannot print usd itself, this is a fast shortcut to unemployment, hunger, etc... Strong currencies are not the solution to…

> As long as a country cannot print usd itself, this is a fast shortcut to unemployment, hunger, etc... We don’t even need to make up hypothetical examples. We have a live one in Greece. The Greek citizens went through this exact ordeal for the exact reason you stated. They couldn’t print EUR and the ECB wouldn’t extent monetary support to Greek government.

Wait - so why are other countries like Germany in the EU fine despite also not being able to arbitrarily issue their own national fiat currency?

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#779

Post by rantwasp »

nexthash wrote: post #765
rantwasp wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s okay to not see the potential. blockchain is more than a distributed database. in a distributed database someone is still in charge and can make decisions unilaterally about how the data is altered. in blockchain you have a bunch of entities that can transact with each other with zero trust and without the need of a central authority. that is the truly innovative aspect of the blockchain and what sets it apart.

No, no, no ! That's the whole reason behind why it sucks... you can't trust it! You have to verify every record on that chain by yourself, and if you make a mistake in a transaction or other operation there is no court or process that can give you restitution. Its also very inefficient (massively slow) compared to a distributed database, while functionally doing the same thing. There are barely any use cases where yo…

not sure if you’re a troll, but that’s the reason why you trust it. you can actually verify every transaction that happened on the chain.

the way this is done is not unlike any system that uses event sourcing (including the distributed databases that you worship).

here is a killer use case for blockchain: supply chain management with a lot of entities and lack of trust. smart contracts are a thing.

also, there are blockchain implementation that are really performant (don’t get stuck on bitcoin)

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#780

Post by mamborambo »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #168
function_seven wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I buy a BTC for $30,000, then later decide to sell it for $47,000, Paypal will lose $17,000 if they didn't actually have a BTC somewhere in their vault. This is the same idea as bucket shop operations that "trade" stocks with their clients without actually processing trades on any exchange. When prices are rising, with new buyers available, then a bucket shop can do just fine for themselves. As soon as they have m…

If no one can transfer bitcoin out of the PayPal system then the only way for you to sell it for $47,000 is to find someone else on PayPal willing to buy it for that amount (or actually a bit more because of the spread). So PayPal don't lose anything. Admittedly this doesn't sound right to me, but it's what the parent commenters seem to be saying.

In most financial systems, there has to be a "banker" to make the market, i.e. they have to close the deals when the aggregate buy/sell deals end in surplus or deficits. So Paypal has to close the ending position -- at least that is my understanding.
Post reply on HN