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Crypto is an unproductive bubble

alexkolchinski.com

211–220 of 539 posts

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#211

How many times are we going to have this conversation? Yes crypto is an asset bubble, alongside equities, real estate, precious metals, you name it. Money printer go brrrr, more dollars are chasing the same amount of Apple sells iPhones. Crypto has no intrinsic value, it pays no dividend and doesn’t give you proxy rights, just like all the tech equities. Proof of work burns a lot of electricity, though this is compli…

Stop equating crypto with stocks please. Stocks represent ownership so just by that virtue, it has intrinsic value.

Stocks are equity over a corporation. Sats are equity over the wealth of the planet.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#212

One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. If someone steals my credit card, I have my credit card company to give me some level of protection. They can block transactions if…

Sorry, that is explicitly an anti feature. Protect your keys. Use a hardware wallet — this is significantly safer than a credit card. A credit card gives all the data to the remote peer!! The shop or anyone watching can charge your card. Cryptocurrency does not work this way. You are in control — you transfer the rights to spend coin to another, you do not have coin debited from your account.

There is no crypto 2.0

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#213
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks won’t protect you from wire fraud either. I’ve written this elsewhere when this topic routinely comes up and crypto is dismissed, but the capability of self-custody is the thing to pay attention to. Nothing else has this capability to the same extent. Today we store most of our wealth in assets (market index funds, stocks, real estate, etc.) and some (typically very little, and rarely outside of a bank account)…

I'm entirely unconvinced that self custody is an advantage for anyone except extremely sophisticated people (sophisticated in both the technical and financial sense). I've been doing blockchain on and off since 2008. Recently I lost a few thousand dollars by sending crypto to a L1 address when I was on a L2. I work on self-soverign identity in my day job. I've written smart contracts. I'm a careful person. Basically…

You mean you sent to an exchange address because you didn’t check the chain?

Sorry mate. Not high scores for that.

I’d your going to claim to be OG sign a message with the keys…

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They view it as a feature, but for all the reasons this poster pointed out, the rest of us view it as an anti-feature.

Then you are not the target audience. You want additional safety at the cost of giving up your autonomy. Good luck with that

If you're trying to build a functional currency, you can't really afford to say that the majority of people earning and spending money are "not the target audience."

That's not how currency works, people have to want your coins for you to spend them. At best, having this perspective relegates Bitcoin to be nothing more than a speculative asset/investment. But if you want it to be more than that and you're just scoffing at normal people who point out why they don't want to transact with you, well then... surprise, they won't want to accept your currency for transactions.

Popularity actually matters for a currency.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#215
post #163
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been doing blockchain on-and-off since before the genesis of Bitcoin? What were you doing?

Well, AI mostly. Let's just say I thought it was interesting but not worth pursuing. I just re-checked. It was actually 2009 sorry.

Prove it. There are other 2009 era bitcoiners here who can vouch if you were there. The community was known in 2009.

My x to doubt is because nobody claims to have “been in blockchain since 2008” it’s a give away that your talking trash. The Genesis block date was Jan 3rd 2009. You were talking to satoshi about Bitcoin pre launch?

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#216

How many times are we going to have this conversation? Yes crypto is an asset bubble, alongside equities, real estate, precious metals, you name it. Money printer go brrrr, more dollars are chasing the same amount of Apple sells iPhones. Crypto has no intrinsic value, it pays no dividend and doesn’t give you proxy rights, just like all the tech equities. Proof of work burns a lot of electricity, though this is compli…

Crypto is the evolution of money. It's early days now. The one thing I know is that people are greedy and it's that greed that will make crypto function as part of society. It reminds me of the early days of the personal computer. Early PC's were useless to most people. But they were the greatest tool/toy to some. They couldn't get enough of it. Now it's crypto. It's mainly useless to most but some people can' t get…

Greed is definitely driving it and not actual utility, and that’s much different than the rise of personal computers.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#217

Cryptocurrencies have a valid but very specific use-case: being able to transact in a hostile environment. It does so by making certain trade-offs such as an energy-intensive verification process. This is a very valid use-case when you need to transact against the will of a powerful adversary such as governments. It needs to be there and needs to be protected just like free speech needs to be protected. However, day-…

> transact against the will of a powerful adversary such as governments. I would not personally be quite so confident that a state actor (or a well-capitalized non-state adversary such as a criminal organization) would not have the ability to severely curtail, if not outright eliminate, some other party's ability to execute cryptocurrency transactions. Most of us have no idea what unexploited vulnerabilities these so…

> suitcase full of cash. From a security perspective, it has the interesting property that transactions involving one don't have to be publicly recorded and processed on a public, global, openly accessible peer-to-peer network in order to complete.

Indeed, but it also has drawbacks. You need to find someone with capability to use that much cash without suspicion.

Also, I think most of the money laundering is made across borders, from people willing to enjoy their wealth in a country different than the one they earned it. Think money earned to US to be used in Mexico, or nationals of a heavy currency export regulated country (rmb, ruble). Customs are very efficient at looking for cash moving through these borders.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#218
post #58
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this argument falls apart easily on the debate about use cases for crypto. I'd stay away from making statements like this without backing them up.

What’s your counterexample?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30730243

Or the fact that you trustlessly trade a virtual currency to any other virtual currency. The fact that thats possible is insane.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>social contract Thats a bad case of framing. Contract implies willing participants and free choice. You have a story which with you justify forcing people around.

> You have a story which with you justify forcing people around. I repeat: that’s the definition of the social contract. You are forced, by threat of violence, not to engage in harmful activities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract

You just repeated the wording of your story while ignoring my post entirely.

1) Contract implies consenting parties. Using the word in another capacity is a frame. It being a popular one doesnt change that.

2) Your actions entailing a lot more then just your declared intentions. As in your definition of harmful being quite broad.

Or differently put, you have a story which with you justify forcing people around.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#220
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're starting a fight you can't win here Your base assumption of knowing or finding them is not strong Crypto means you will always know who has your money and where it goes. We can build systems around repercussions for crypto too.

> You're starting a fight you can't win here I'm not starting a fight, I'm having a discussion, which I think is the point of HN. > Crypto means you will always know who has your money and where it goes. If a stranger in another country steals $500 from me I'm going to have a really hard time doing anything about it. And knowing their wallet doesn't mean I know who they actually are, as those aren't tied to an identi…

>If a stranger in another country steals $500 from me I'm going to have a really hard time doing anything about it. And knowing their wallet doesn't mean I know who they actually are, as those aren't tied to an identity.

So how is this different from Cash? Except you actually have an idea of where the money is going and can track it, e.g. if it goes to a CEX. This is way better than cash.

Which exit scam?

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