Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has no use case. Zero
Check out Monero. Untraceable, decentralised transactions have no use case?
Sure would be great for, uh, paying ransoms I guess.
The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
241–250 of 704 posts
Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
#242> Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime. After all as we all know: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. And look at how inefficient all these permissionless, trustless protocols are! What a waste! Let's just all trust a central authority and think of the savings and the children.
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Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You must have missed a significant portion of my post if you do not see why I do not believe those are equivalent.
I'll reiterate: the number in the database represents an amount of tokens guaranteed to be accepted by the government of the country I live in. Cryptocurrency 'coins' carry no such guarantee, only the possibility of greater fools.
Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
#244I wonder how much of the Crypto hype is because the US banking system still lives in the 1980s or thereabouts. If everybody in the US had access to bank accounts with easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge, no chargebacks and so on, as people are used to in the EU, would people still be excited about Bitcoin?
I doubt it, that's what Venmo, PayPal, Cash app, and a thousand other services solve. Crypto isn't nearly as convenient as any of those.
Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
#245Not 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 ?
if you aren’t wealthy you are effectively priced out of the US law/judicial system anyway.
If I took $5,000, maybe even $10,000 from you right now there would be almost nothing you could do because the legal efforts to pursue me for that amount would likely equal or surpass that.
Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
#246Earlier 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…
But that ledger isn't accurate. It's just distributed and difficult to change. I technically am the owner of (quite a few) bitcoin that were being processed by MtGox when they imploded. The wallet they were in at the time was emptied and no longer exists. I still receive the relevant court documents as the case continues still. As far as the ledger is concerned - they are no longer mine. --- So question to you: How d…
I see your perspective. There's another perspective from which you could look at the details of your situation.
You deferred to a trusted party to secure your wealth and because that third party was untrustworthy, you have to defer to an intermediary.
Had you deferred to yourself to secure your wealth you wouldn't be in this situation. The ledger would be the canonical one of ownership and possession, and you wouldn't have to defer to anyone.
Basically, you kept your bitcoin in a traditional, legally enforceable arrangement instead of the bottom layer, algorithmically enforced environment and now have to defer to the traditional system to restore possession.
Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
#247I wonder how much of the Crypto hype is because the US banking system still lives in the 1980s or thereabouts. If everybody in the US had access to bank accounts with easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge, no chargebacks and so on, as people are used to in the EU, would people still be excited about Bitcoin?
Crypto is used as a commodity and for scams, very rarely as a currency. Given that transferring crypto is hard, slower, more expensive, riskier, public, and more wasteful than real banking, I don’t see why these would be related.
Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
You sound privileged enough to have access to a reliable and trustworthy bank. Many, many people aren't as lucky.
So this person lives in a place they can't trust banks... But they have access to computers, internet, enough money to pay the tx fees of cryptocurrencies... amazing
Don't forget enough tech expertise to be able to use any of this crap in any "decentralized" way (if they all just use coinbase, where is that decentralization?)
Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
#249This particular source is extremely low quality and is motivated by the author's undisclosed competing product. I would like to see higher quality sources on the front page of hacker news one day.
I agree. Just the fact that he lumps Doge and Bitcoin together into "meme coins" tells me he has no idea what he's talking about or that he has an ulterior motive.
Whatever you think about those two coins, they are not really similar, especially given that some nations have made Bitcoin legal tender at this point.
Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto
#250When it comes to crypto I am completely uninformed. In my uninformed opinion, I think there is probably something of value in crypto and the blockchain but I can't see it under the intense amount of bullshit the crypto community comes up with and I am not willing to dig through that mountain.
As someone who is interested in this space, you have a proper way of looking at it. Most tokens are just scams outright, or if not scams, have communities which are totally unwilling to solve the technological problems inherent of their coins (see Bitcoin's high fees, limited block size, lack of privacy). One example of a decent currency which runs counter to this trend is privacy-focused Monero, though the developers/community don't bother to market it in the same manner as many other coins, to a point that on of the main criticisms of it is its comparable lack of volatility, amusingly enough.
tl;dr There are quite a few innovations that have been made by various actors in the cryptographic currency space, most of which are entirely drowned out by a torrent of mind-numbing get-rich-quick scams and stubborn, close-minded speculators.