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The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#211

Post by WanderPanda »

alcio wrote: post #139

> Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime. In a weird way, this quote is a good explanation of why cryptos exist: they give the possibility of creating systems evading state controls. Crime is a relative thing: moving money outside of certain countries is prohibited, in others it's owning property for certain category of people.

The definition of crime is not only a relative thing, but also a moving target which is quite unpredictable and has a lot of long tail events.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#212

Post by pjc50 »

rawtxapp wrote: post #83
JackFr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the US has an antiquated payments system vis-a-vis Europe, but crypto solves none of those problems. I don't see it. I see FOMO, groupthink and greed.

You fail to see people who lost trust in their governments and organizations? You don't see how people are unhappy with getting their savings diluted by unlimited money printing?

What is crypto if not money printing? While any one chain may be limited in issue, you can always just fork it or create a new currency or token. People are printing tokens at a phenomenal rate. And unbacked or badly backed "stablecoins" are money printing of real-looking but unstable currency.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#214

Post by tux1968 »

JuliusBranson wrote: post #200
paulgb wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside the dubious idea that the Federal Reserve can give their friends the ability to print money, stablecoins don't subvert any party's ability to print money if they are pegged to that money. If you can print USD, and I have a stablecoin pegged to $1 USD, you can just print $1 USD and buy my stablecoin on the open market.

>Leaving aside the dubious idea that the Federal Reserve can give their friends the ability to print money You didn't read my comment correctly.

What is the mechanism that ensures bitcoin inflates proportionally to the dollar?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#215

Post by dqpb »

gfodor wrote: post #147

For a crypto-skeptic, this is actually a stunning admission: "Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime." If you acknowledge this, then you acknowledge that crypto has a unique value proposition of being able to shield ones financial transactions. From there, you have to pull in a lot of assumptions that the only time this will be valuable is crime…

Crime can be as simple as the delta between the desires of those with power and the desire of those without power.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#216

Post by rvz »

bildung wrote: post #142
mandmandam wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Algorand, etc. I get that this is all 'new' and confusing, but the know-it-all condescension really rubs me the wrong way - do they clone these people or what? Where do they all come from?

All of Stellar, Hedera and Algorand have a big centralization problem, they have solved nothing. Stellar and Ripple aren't even proper cryptocurrencies unless you allow for a very lenient definition. > the know-it-all condescension really rubs me the wrong way - do they clone these people or what? Where do they all come from? In my experience the people being very optimistic about crypto real world use cases usually…

> All of Stellar, Hedera and Algorand have a big centralization problem, they have solved nothing.

Such claims must be further substantiated with strong and sufficient evidence. Elaborate your claim further with each cryptocurrency with valid sources, otherwise your claim is baseless.

> Stellar and Ripple aren't even proper cryptocurrencies unless you allow for a very lenient definition.

So what is a 'proper' / 'real' / 'true' cryptocurrency then? Are there any true Scotsmen here?

Did you just prove the point of the original comment in this thread? [0] Nano has been ignored once again.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29331057

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#217

Post by edgyquant »

ineptech wrote: post #176
rawtxapp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Propaganda? Does it matter where they learned it as long as it's true and factual?

Right, but it's not. The idea that inflation "dilutes" wealth and is therefore bad for rich people is not true.

It would be if rich people held all their money in cash like Smaug in his mountain, but anyone familiar with the current monetary system would know that people invest in assets to prevent losing out to inflation and this is what we’re going for with a steady inflation rate. Keeps the economy pumping and in times when we hit a recession (not depressions, since we don’t really have those anymore thanks to our modern monetary policy) those same rich people want to get their freed up assets into the economy as quickly as possible.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#218

Post by rzanella »

can16358p wrote: post #121

Not being pegged to a centralized, state-controlled currency is a dealbreaker for me. It's still in infancy and it's true that 99% of the projects are get-rich-quick schemes with no intrinsic value. Though, I think the author lives in a country with a trustworthy government because that's not the case for many people including me. In the last two days my country's currency has shaken much more than crypto and I don't…

Not being pegged to a state-controlled currency means your devalued currency competes with stronger ones, at least on the fictitious transitional period, you're sure you want that ?

Assuming a stateless money, when/if someone then steals your crypto coin, which gov't backed law/judicial system are you gonna turn to ?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#219

Post by rawtxapp »

pjc50 wrote: post #212
rawtxapp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fail to see people who lost trust in their governments and organizations? You don't see how people are unhappy with getting their savings diluted by unlimited money printing?

What is crypto if not money printing? While any one chain may be limited in issue, you can always just fork it or create a new currency or token. People are printing tokens at a phenomenal rate. And unbacked or badly backed "stablecoins" are money printing of real-looking but unstable currency.

What gives a chain value is the network effects which are notoriously hard to establish. So yes, you can fork it, but can you get people to actually use it? Really doubt it.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#220

Post by mitchdoogle »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #119
padobson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is what I don't understand from the naysayers. Anyone who says blockchain-driven assets don't have intrinsic value seems to ignore the value of trust - the ability to trust that the ledger is accurate seems extremely valuable. The author of the article skips over the question entirely, maybe he's addressed it elsewhere, but if the crypto skeptics continue to ignore one of its primary value propositions, I…

In some context I would agree, there is theoretical value to a decentralized trustless ledger[0]. What I can't agree with, however, is that entries in a decentralized trustless ledger are inherently valuable as cryptocurrency proponents would like us to believe. The entries in the ledger have no inherent meaning, they're just a number associated with another number and the only reason anyone equates that with a monet…

Money in your bank account is just a number in a database somewhere.
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