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The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

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Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#431

Post by timdaub »

Imnimo wrote: post #407
sjtindell wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN’s attitude is very surprising to me. I would think that they could get very excited about flash loans, decentralized exchanges (automated market makers), daos, and other concrete innovations coming out of crypto asset projects. I think it’s mostly jealousy and a feeling that they missed the boat, so they want to see it sink. I think that because I’ve had the feeling many times. They may not realize these are early…

>go read the UniswapV2 contract. If you don’t think that’s a cool innovation, please come back and let me know, I’m interested. I feel like the coolness of Uniswap requires putting the cart before the horse. If I'm not convinced of the real utility of these tokens, why would I be impressed with the ability to move them around in various clever ways? I need to see a valuable external use case before I can see the valu…

The automated market maker design of Uniswap is useful even for non-blockchain based scripts to e.g. trade stocks digitally.

It's just a simple way of creating an orderbook and liquidity. So you don't need to be convinced of the real utilities of tokens to appreciate the brilliance of the design.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#432

Post by thewarrior »

ineptech wrote: post #342
llimos wrote: post #301

Most people on HN are rational people who look at the world in a rational way. Bitcoin and friends are not operating in a rational market, therefore we don't understand them, and most of us would probably be pretty lousy investors since we would try to make decisions rationally instead of memeing and YOLOing. But, and this is a key point, that doesn't make us right and them wrong . It's just a different kind of marke…

The anti-crypto case is not that it's "worse" than some other speculative investment asset (gold, comic books, etc), it's that crypto is a speculative asset, as opposed to the things it's sometimes claimed to be (e.g. currency, a new way to do finance, etc).

This is something I’m stumped myself about. HN etc says crypto has no value and I wonder about other things in conventional finance that are of speculative value :

Gold - Sure it’s a good store of value as a metal but so is bitcoin. If Gold can be valuable because lots of people value it as a store of value so can Bitcoin. In fact bitcoin is arguably better than Gold.

The total wealth of the world is 1000 trillion. Bitcoin is easily worth 0.1 - 0.5 % of that because of its permissionless advantage. Bitcoin has a non zero floor price. I think anyone would agree with this.

This is unlike say NFTs which are not likely worth anything with a potential floor of 0.

Loss making stocks like Snapchat - A company that said in its IPO filing that we may never be profitable and is still struggling with profitability is worth 100B.

If conventional finance is 50 % a Casino based on social factors why can’t there be one more ? Are the purveyors of the current system afraid that they’ll lose their cut ?

What is the right mental model here ?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#433

Post by nice_byte »

hirako2000 wrote: post #166
horsawlarway wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not your keys not your coins. Unless you trust some central authority to take care of you, which you should by now understand that doesn't always work, and when it doesn't work, it's usually a spectacular failure. So to answer your questions. Although possible, no reconcile is the pure spirit of a trustless network. Now? you make sure to avoid custodian services and keep your keys safe. or stay away from crypto until…

> Not your keys not your coins.

so the same thing as "code is law", which is a fundamentally bad idea.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#434

Post by cyphertruck »

The irony is that this article is correct for “crypto” but not Bitcoin. Every “crypto” could be better done with a database.

But Bitcoin allows journalists like Wikileaks to be paid without it being censored.

You can call that “crime”, but your definition of crime doesn’t comport with natural law.

And censorship resistant money breaks the stranglehold of theft via inflation from the central banks.

It eliminates the primary cause if generational poverty.

I know this site is inhabited by government worshipping authoritarians, but bitcoin will fix that too, eventually.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#435

Post by koonsolo »

aunty_helen wrote: post #299
kmmlng wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge This is certainly not the case everywhere in the EU. In Germany for example it usually takes days. Not sure about other countries.

In Germany there's SOFORT, it takes litterally the time to click through the interface to transfer money. I can get money from Germany to Colombia in under a minute via n26 and transferwise. Maybe we're not talking about the same country.

Also amounts > 20000 in a weekend? How much fees do you pay on that?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#436

Post by rawtxapp »

AlexandrB wrote: post #412
rawtxapp wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was 2013, I would agree with you, because the risk of it being worth nothing was much larger, but today the Bitcoin blockchain moves thousands of bitcoin per day (worth billions of dollars in value) and it's network effects are stronger than ever before and you can see usage go high through on-chain metrics (like # wallets, transfers) and increase in lightning network usage (1ml.com). So I would say, investin…

I think this is actually an argument for investing in crypto.com, other exchange companies, or some of the huge bitcoin mining operations. These are the entities creating value by keeping the bitcoin network running and moving $millions worth of bitcoin around between wallets. Owning bitcoin itself does not grant you any equity in these profit-making entities that actually make bitcoin work.

That's one way of looking at it, but most stocks don't pay dividends, so that "equity" is also not that tangible either, unless you're like a majority shareholder that you can change company direction. When you buy a stock, that money doesn't go to the company, it goes to previous investor, unless the company issues more stock (usually the opposite happens).

Also, Bitcoin's success doesn't mean those companies will succeed because it's decentralized and there's thousands of companies across the world and competition is very stiff. But those companies can't succeed without Bitcoin.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#437

Post by cyphertruck »

Animats wrote: post #430

What's so striking about all this is the sheer scale. There have been bubbles before, but not trillion dollar ones based on nothing. It's not just Bitcoin and friends. Rivian, which is just starting out as an electric light truck manufacturer, has a market cap of US$98 billion. First vehicles will ship no sooner than January 2022. This is more market cap than Ford Motor, the #1 seller of light trucks for the last 44…

Bitcoin isn’t in a bubble on any time scale longer than 4 years. Bubbles don’t re-inflate.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#438

Post by remote-dev »

JuliusBranson wrote: post #162
andrewla wrote: post #103

If anything, I think stablecoins are way more dangerous than the author indicates. People talk about things like Bitcoin as a threat to sovereign currencies, and they are, as competitors, of sorts. But stablecoins are another matter entirely. One huge aspect of the value of sovereign currencies is that they are instruments of law -- courts will settle in them as a lowest common denominator, and it is safe to use them…

Stablecoins are dangerous because they have the potential to change the current selection effects on the elite. For one thing, stablecoins subvert the ability of the Federal Reserve to print money and give it to their friends at Goldman Sachs et al --- normally this is supposed to result in their friends have a larger fraction of money than they previously had. You start with 1 dollar, David at Goldman Sachs starts w…

> stablecoins subvert the ability of the Federal Reserve to print money and give it to their friends at Goldman Sachs et al

... and now the owners of the stablecoin can print money and give it to friends of the stablecoin.

I don't see how stablecoins are any better than the Federal Reserve. If anything they are strictly worse. The owners of the stablecoin are semi-anonymous and have no governing body. I get that "no governing body" might be a good thing in some people's minds, and I think the OP highlights exactly who those people are.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#439

Post by sseagull »

coralreef wrote: post #347
bildung wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USD has lost 90% of its purchasing power since the 1950's That's a meaningless number without context: The median income gain was 2000% (i.e. double the purchasing power loss) during the same period (median yearly family income was $3300 in 1950 https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1952/demo/p60-00... )

Yes, money creation pushed wages up as it did costs. And gains from technology resulted in real wealth increases for society in general. However, holding the asset itself resulted in loss of buying power over time. There is a distinction between cash the asset (the thing you hold and trade with), and income. Holding shares in a corporation over 50 years may be a good idea (depending on the company). Holding land/hous…

The flip side is deflation, though. Which isn’t exactly pretty.

If the value of my fiat money is increasing, then I will hold on to it, which is good for me. If everyone does that, then the economy grinds to a halt.

The stock/bond market is, although not always efficient, at least somewhat enabling of economic activity, whereas just holding your currency (including bitcoin) is not.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#440

Post by Imnimo »

sjtindell wrote: post #425
Imnimo wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>go read the UniswapV2 contract. If you don’t think that’s a cool innovation, please come back and let me know, I’m interested. I feel like the coolness of Uniswap requires putting the cart before the horse. If I'm not convinced of the real utility of these tokens, why would I be impressed with the ability to move them around in various clever ways? I need to see a valuable external use case before I can see the valu…

I guess to me it’s more about progression. From Bitcoin, to Ethereum, to Uniswap, there is a strong development of the early ideas and technology. This doesn’t seem like it will just stop to me. It indicates a very bright future in my opinion. Also, although I get disillusioned, I personally have come to appreciate more that the value being produced is financial. There is clearly massive pent up demand for financial…

I mean, if someone showed by some great new innovation to let HFT shops move faster, I'd also be a bit nonplussed. If the answer is just "well, this is no more useless other frivolous* money games", then I'm not really convinced.

*frivolous in the sense of real utility. Obviously they make boatloads of money.

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