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U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

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Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#221

Post by blatchcorn »

mjburgess wrote: post #200

Despite other comments, I'm concerned there isnt enough anti-crypto here. Let's be clear: this is what a graph of the values of currencies looks like: https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=10Y . Micro-value adjustments up-and-down, and if you comapred to the price of bread, midly inflationary. This is what all (necessarily deflationary) crypto "currencies" look like: https://www.xe.com/currencychart…

I am probably not going to change your mind. But I think some stuff you should consider are:

Is the volatility an inherent problem built into the code and design of bitcoin et al? Or does the volatility stem from external factors like it being new, difficult to value, and much lower market cap then other currencies? I personally believe that bitcoin's volatility is not by design and will not last forever.

Secondly, you should rethink whether comparing bitcoin to fiat is correct (I would suggest gold) and rethink if bitcoin really is deflationary. Bitcoin has a lot of similarities to Gold. Check out this report: https://www.fidelitydigitalassets.com/bin-public/060_www_fid...

There is nothing in bitcoin's code that makes it deflationary. The reward for mining bitcoin does decrease over time, but never does the supply decrease - it only grows or eventually stops growing at 21 million

Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#222

Post by throwthere »

nrzd wrote: post #52

I’m blown away by how anti-crypto this discussion is. I hadn’t realized how negative the prevailing sentiment is on Hacker News. One argument seems to be that cryptocurrency is purely speculative, which is apparently a dirty word. What about the stock market? What about any kind of investment? If you truly believe that cryptocurrency is the basis for a superior economic system, isn’t it rational and wise to put some…

What's weird is I don't see any anti-crypto comments except in reply to your anti-anti thoughts. The arguments you're stating seem mostly straw-men to me.

Some people get very very excited about crypto and kind of overly sensitive to discourse. I think some of that is early-adopter fervor.

Some of it, too, could be the understanding that the more adoption it gets the better the party is. The higher coin-caps go, the more respect, legitimacy and outside resources they command.

Take stocks on the other hand. If you tell me the stocks I'm buying are worthless-- that's good for me! It means you're not buying and driving the prices up when I buy and better prices when the businesses repurchase shares. So maybe that's partly why I don't care when people disparage stock ownership.

Point is, sometimes I wish labels like "pro-" or "anti-" crypto fell out of use-- it's a complex topic and most thoughtful people have more nuanced views.

Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#223

Post by xadhominemx »

magicjosh wrote: post #195
nrzd wrote: post #52

I’m blown away by how anti-crypto this discussion is. I hadn’t realized how negative the prevailing sentiment is on Hacker News. One argument seems to be that cryptocurrency is purely speculative, which is apparently a dirty word. What about the stock market? What about any kind of investment? If you truly believe that cryptocurrency is the basis for a superior economic system, isn’t it rational and wise to put some…

Anti-crypto HN is real! I still have not found the HN-like community that gets cryptocurrencies. Maybe it's just being created today. People say Twitter but it's still pretty meme oriented. /r/ethfinance is ok but not enough content. Zero Knowledge podcast is solid but podcasts are one way communication. And the forums for cryotocurrency developers are beyond my level of tech knowledge. I wonder if at some point anth…

Oh, we “get” crypto. What we also “get”, and what crypto people don’t, are the systems crypto is trying to replace and why the aspects crypto people think are flaws (centralization, arbitration, ability to reverse transactions) are all features

Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#224

Post by JaimeThompson »

nrzd wrote: post #52

I’m blown away by how anti-crypto this discussion is. I hadn’t realized how negative the prevailing sentiment is on Hacker News. One argument seems to be that cryptocurrency is purely speculative, which is apparently a dirty word. What about the stock market? What about any kind of investment? If you truly believe that cryptocurrency is the basis for a superior economic system, isn’t it rational and wise to put some…

Crypto isn't about getting rid of middle men, it is about putting new ones in their place with much less consumer protections for those who are harmed by the actions of those middlemen.

Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#225

Post by JaimeThompson »

DerArzt wrote: post #133
aqme28 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically what's missing is the ability to even guess at the "true" value of cryptocurrency. There's no P/E ratios to consider because the only thing Crypto "produces" is Crypto transactions. It's also impossible to even guess at a floor or ceiling for the price of a cryptocurrency. The only thing that determines their price is human sentiment - a very fickle input. Interestingly, this isn't really true anymore. Mo…

As a layperson who doesn't know a whole lot about investing, this sounds like a ponzi scheme. The way that I am interpreting this is that if I were to invest in one of these (i.e. Maker) then the returns that I would see are there purely because other people are investing in it. That is close to what most stocks do, but at least with stocks in a company the value is not driven by the mechanism by which it is traded a…

>this sounds like a ponzi scheme.

If it was a ponzi scheme they would be spending millions on advertising and use fear of missing out to get more people to invest.

Wait....

Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#226

Post by eric-hu »

dogman144 wrote: post #164
AlexandrB wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One argument seems to be that cryptocurrency is purely speculative, which is apparently a dirty word. What about the stock market? What about any kind of investment? Most other assets represent ownership of... something. A company, a commodity, property. Cryptocurrency is closest to either a fiat currency without the government backing that typically tries to stabilize those. Or to more exotic and abstract financia…

For what it's worth, with an older financial background, the gold standard of P/E ratios were made up at one point as well. Financial statement analysis and GAAP are much softer indicators than gen pop tends to think. It comes out of a period before behavioral economics took hold, for instance. > guess at the "true" value of cryptocurrency How I do it is this: It's understood today that the Internet fundamentally cha…

Fascinating explanation (though I’m already bullish BTC). No counters but a question: What’s stopping BTC lightning from being the rails you pay a buddy for a beer on?

Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#227

Post by ARandumGuy »

survirtual wrote: post #169
AlexandrB wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One argument seems to be that cryptocurrency is purely speculative, which is apparently a dirty word. What about the stock market? What about any kind of investment? Most other assets represent ownership of... something. A company, a commodity, property. Cryptocurrency is closest to either a fiat currency without the government backing that typically tries to stabilize those. Or to more exotic and abstract financia…

For Bitcoin and other PoW coins, the value is built into the name for minting: Proof of WORK. Less abstractly, today we can think of this as proof of energy consumption / production. In other words, it is sort of crystallizing energy into abstract & transmissible value. By holding a coin, you hold that value / solidified energy. It takes a certain and increasing amount of energy to generate 1 coin, which binds the va…

> This is actually a very good thing, especially given it does not care where the energy comes from. If nuclear, solar, window, hydro, and thermal were our dominant energy sources, it would work in that just as well and without bias. Indeed, it actually has active market incentives to utilize clean and renewable energy sources — something the previous financial mechanisms grossly lack.

Bitcoin incentivizes mining using the cheapest source of electricity, not the greenest. Bitcoin miners are more then happy to move their mining rigs to places with cheap coal electricity.

The fact of the matter is, we need to not only move to producing more green power, we need to reduce the global power consumption. Green power still has negative environmental impacts, and there's practical limits to the amount of green power we can generate. Crypto mining is actively hindering efforts to reduce global power consumption, by consuming every spare bit of power it can.

Global warming is an existential threat to human civilization, and will likely negatively impact billions of people, if not everyone. Reducing power consumption is not optional. Bitcoin and POW cryptocurrency are making it harder to do that, and that should be enough to oppose them.

Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#228

Post by lupire »

sowbug wrote: post #156
AlexandrB wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One argument seems to be that cryptocurrency is purely speculative, which is apparently a dirty word. What about the stock market? What about any kind of investment? Most other assets represent ownership of... something. A company, a commodity, property. Cryptocurrency is closest to either a fiat currency without the government backing that typically tries to stabilize those. Or to more exotic and abstract financia…

> human sentiment - a very fickle input Ordinary accounting principles already have a concept for this: goodwill. If a business's valuation exceeds the net of its tangible assets minus liabilities, then that intangible asset is called goodwill. Goodwill is neither a strange concept nor inapplicable to virtual currencies/assets. Instagram's value as a business entity (yes, I know it's owned by Meta) clearly exceeds th…

Goodwill is an accounting euphism for "losses that haven't been declared yet".

Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#229

Post by lupire »

aqme28 wrote: post #141
DerArzt wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a layperson who doesn't know a whole lot about investing, this sounds like a ponzi scheme. The way that I am interpreting this is that if I were to invest in one of these (i.e. Maker) then the returns that I would see are there purely because other people are investing in it. That is close to what most stocks do, but at least with stocks in a company the value is not driven by the mechanism by which it is traded a…

> The way that I am interpreting this is that if I were to invest in one of these (i.e. Maker) then the returns that I would see are there purely because other people are investing in it. That's the opposite of what I'm saying. The returns are from other people using the platform, not from investors in it. For Maker, using the platform means borrowing. For Uniswap, the returns are from a small % fee on trades. It's e…

But what is the platform used for? Converting energy into human comfort, or just another layer of financial engineering?

Re: U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub

#230

Post by tastyfreeze »

jeremyjh wrote: post #17
danuker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argue that they strengthen the "state apparatus". Through competing with the national currency, cryptos force it to innovate and become faster, more resilient, more inclusive, and less prone to inflation. The fact that more and more capital is directed towards them is a symptom of the fact the national currencies have shortcomings.

> The fact that more and more capital is directed towards them is a symptom of the fact the national currencies have shortcomings. I literally laughed out loud. People buy crypto because they think it will rise in value, nor because it has any relevance as a currency (outside of certain illicit markets).

Counter example, I have part of my savings in crypto for no other reason that to protect it from the inflationary policies of the Fed. The ability to use crypto directly in trade is a bonus.
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