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Crypto == Cryptography over here. Just FYI
Huh? Not in the original article, or in OPs reply, unless I'm seriously misunderstanding him. He's talking about the pros/cons of cryptocurrency.
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I'm the author of the thread. For what it's worth, I grew up as a refugee whose mother had to find incredibly inventive ways to send USD to family back home, where it was illegal to possess. What I don't understand about the crypto remittances argument is how the people sending and receiving them are supposed to convert them into spendable currency. My hunch is that a lot of the value of cryptocurrency in those count…
>> What I don't understand about the crypto remittances argument is how the people sending and receiving them are supposed to convert them into spendable currency. For all the harsh words you posted without evidence, thankfully you've at least admitted you don't understand much. Your premise is that cryptocurrency is not "spendable currency" which is simply false. I pay people in hyperinflationary environments in cry…
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They never transact with people in countries that have strict financial controls, so the problem does not exist for them. I pay people in Venezuela in cryptocurrency because nothing else is a viable option.
There's an assumption that people should think evading currency controls and taxes is somehow heroic. I'm happy that crypto allows people to violate US sanctions, but that's because I'm specifically against US sanctions, not the rule of law.
Paper USD is a lot easier to hide than a Bitcoin transaction on a public ledger
I read a Blockchain book from O'Reilly in 2015, when it came out and it left me with the distinct impression that this "technology" is vaporous. It could do anything, yet, almost no examples to try out, let alone real-world successes. Over time I witnessed many "new" things, and the ones which stick typically have a specific aura to them, like a 10x simplification, or speedup or reduction in "noise". These things are…
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I can send unlimited amounts of money, anywhere on earth, for (at most) dollars in a few seconds. I don't need to rely on any government for any reason, and no government can stop me.
The Internet provided solutions to technical problems, regardless of any societal/political considerations. They may have resulted, but as a secondary effect. When theorizing about societal/political benefits, take into account the societal/political problems cryptocurrencies created by inventing a machine that allows converting resources directly into money of miners' digital wallets without regulation. Your sending…
That being said, I still see proof of stake and proof of coverage as interesting way to maintain said ledger integrity in the like… 3 actually existing use case where a blockchain is superior to a SQLite instance with good security.
Oddly enough I’m the diametric opposite: skeptical of crypto’s long term value up until recently (but before the last big run up) - I now see it is a a fundamental hedge against totalitarianism among other things. Westerners can fail to grasp the potential benefits due to the privilege of the time and place they were born. At least for now.
I see more and more tweets and articles like this posted here on hackernews that echo the sentiments of the world economic forum on how they feel about cryptocurrency. Remember they are the very people that say you should:"Own nothing and be happy". If you think cryptocurrency is a scam then you havnt looked into the technology behind it and the economies that have been built using these technologies.
Cryptocurrency makes it easy to enhance ones own confirmation bias because the industry has had such a bumpy ride towards progress. If you want to take an overly harsh perspective about the technology then by all means just Google 'a list of hacks and scams.' You'll be entertained for days with what you find, and at the end of your research you will have more than enough material to make yourself look smart on twitter.
That's also another point. If you can talk about basic flaws in a technology by playing 'Dr Doom' then you can score free points from the audience without having to know much about the subject. It's an easy way to look credible because most people are followers on social media and won't have the time or interest to look more deeply.
So lets look at the claim that cryptocurrency 'has no use and only causes problems.' To disprove this we only need to find a few examples of use-cases that are very hard if not impossible to do under traditional finance.
1. Trusts -- escrow -- jointly controlled accounts with arbitrary leverage over assets. You can't do this under the traditional financial system because the legal system can be used to dispute ownership which commonly happens when a will is attested.
2. Confidential transactions. Anonymous money and accounts. Traditional finance views this as a disadvantage, whereas FinTech views privacy as a right.
3. Flash loans. Flash loans are a way to finance a smart contract that borrows money and repays it atomically in a single transaction. Flash loans have radically changed capital markets but their power is still being understood. Potentially this is a new form of funding for automated companies.
4. Price stability. It's possible to design cryptocurrencies in such a way that their price trends towards some function. This property is highly desirable when people are going to be storing their wealth long-term. If we can build more stable currencies we can protect against flash crashes and even economic depression.
5. Smart contracts. Programmable agreements for wealth exchange make it possible to provide unique financial instruments that are engineered to be less risky than anything traditional markets can accomplish. This is due to increased transparency, collateral requirements, and protocols that help enforce fairness.
There are too many examples to list in how cryptocurrencies are shaking up not just finance but many other industries. To claim that it all amounts to fraud, gambling, and ponzi schemes just tells me the author has no understanding of the transformations taking place right in front of them. They'll probably be left crying 'its a scam' long after society has silently replaced most aging FinTech with platforms that provide enforceable safe-guards... because in the end it is more transparent, flexible, and when done right -- safer than alternatives.
I do see value in being able to instantly exchange tokens which are generally liquid and convertible to local currency, with low fees, internationally, and in denominations that make sense to, e.g., tip a blogger for a post you like. The US could regulate the heck out of it, and the Venezuelan or Tanzanian farmer could use it more laissez faire.
But none of that comes from the crypto aspect and PoW and untrusted decentralization. It could just be a non-profit with a DB and a public API.
Are there any coins out there trying this?