Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crypto is an unproductive bubble

alexkolchinski.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 539 posts

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#231

Post by exdsq »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #137
exdsq wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

bitcoin.org site went live in 2008. white paper also published in 2008. > Nakamoto stated that work on the writing of the code for bitcoin began in 2007. On 18 August 2008, he or a colleague registered the domain name bitcoin.org, and created a web site at that address. On 31 October, Nakamoto published a white paper on the cryptography mailing list at metzdowd.com describing a digital cryptocurrency, titled "Bitcoin…

A white paper was sent to a small group of people in 2008, yes. But the group that acted on that is a subset of those people, that consists of maybe Hal Finney, Craig White, whoever Satoshi is, and a couple others. It's an extraordinarily small group of people.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#232

Post by randomhodler84 »

tootie wrote: post #47
newacc9 wrote: post #9

Bitcoin only has to be better than your local fiat currency, which isn't a very high bar. https://twitter.com/MichaelAArouet/status/147212863307459788...

Bitcoin is vastly worse than fiat. Like orders of magnitude. Bitcoin at this point isn't even currency. If it were, it would be in a cataclysmic deflationary spiral. Instead it's an investment vehicle. One backed by absolutely nothing. The Bitcoin market is 100% rents and 0% utility. Arguably negative utility because of the massive climate costs involved in mining. On the flip side, central banks managed to dig us ou…

I feel like you live in an imaginary world where the data doesn’t fit reality:

https://usdsat.com/

Fiat is going to ZERO. All fiat currencies. I’d you fail to see the utility now at year 13, I hope you will not let another 13y pass.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#233

Post by stale2002 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #121
gonehome wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know the content of the bill, but it’s a matter of degree. It’s harder to control your transactions when you have self-custody. It requires a higher level of coordination.

You just need to control the onramps and offramps. Bitcoin is of no use if you can't exchange it for anything tangible.

> You just need to control the onramps and offramps.

Thats a nice theory, but in reality it is false/implausible to be able to control every single on and off ramp in the world.

Evidence: Nobody is currently controlling all the on an off ramps, despite the fact that I have heard the same exact argument that you are making right now, for literally over a decade.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#234

Post by taberiand »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #167
benreesman wrote: post #43

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…

Crypto is not the evolution of money, it's the evolution of the pyramid scheme.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#235

Post by cellis »

anon2020dot00 wrote: post #210
benreesman wrote: post #43

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 "represent ownership", is such fiction I don't even know where to start. If you really believe this, I'd like to sell you 49% ownership in my next venture! I of course have 10x voting rights and can issue more shares whenever I'd like ('oh but why would you do that? Won't that depress the value of your stock too?' 1. Not really because of crazy structures of the banks that underwrite these issuances, and 2. Because fuck you, that's why! I want more money and I can use any number of excuses to dilute you, like: "the capital constraints of our business necessitated these extreme measures" ), I can flex on my employees by giving them all kinds of triggers and contractual ways to screw them. Sigh. No. Stocks today (as in those that are traded on NYSE, etc ) don't "represent ownership" to the average person. They represent an idea, a way of saying, "This company will be worth more in the future than today".

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#236

Post by danShumway »

cf141q5325 wrote: post #221
danShumway wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 scoffi…

Currencies dont really work at the "may the best one win" level, especially with so much political power behind it. You have a dominant one which stays dominant till it implodes. Then people fall back to the next best thing. You dont need to be attractive, it just has to work.

If your strategy is "we will be the only currency remaining after every other fiat is gone, and then people will use our currency even though they hate it because they have no other option", then I have bad news for you about the future of Bitcoin.

If your perspective is that Bitcoin isn't going to be a ubiquitous alternative to the USD for general purchases until after the government collapses and no longer has the political power to prop up the dollar, then I have bad news for you about your currency's usefulness as an anti-authoritarian weapon/tool.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#237

Post by abetusk »

The article starts out with this quote:

"""

“The four most expensive words in investing are: ‘This time it’s different.'”

"""

And then proceeds to talk about cryptocurrency as a bubble.

The same rhetoric was used for email, webcams, web browsers, and internet companies (dot-com bubbles, VCs etc).

This time is much the same. There's a lot of hype and a lot of hate. Behind the hype is real technology that is in the process of being deployed.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#238

Post by tootie »

newacc9 wrote: post #77
tootie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is vastly worse than fiat. Like orders of magnitude. Bitcoin at this point isn't even currency. If it were, it would be in a cataclysmic deflationary spiral. Instead it's an investment vehicle. One backed by absolutely nothing. The Bitcoin market is 100% rents and 0% utility. Arguably negative utility because of the massive climate costs involved in mining. On the flip side, central banks managed to dig us ou…

No one keeps money in fiat. It goes into stocks, real estate, etc. Because fiat is going to zero.

Fiat inflates by design. It is very specifically intended to never be an investment. It is meant to be spent or invested in equity and interest-bearing securities. Deflating currency is never spent. Hence, Bitcoin is not currency and comparisons to fiat are not meaningful.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#239

Post by mumblemumble »

zozbot234 wrote: post #199
Nextgrid wrote: post #145

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-…

The government need not even be especially hostile per se, just unwilling or unable to adjudicate that particular transaction. With crypto, the basic operation of the transaction is enforced via a mechanism shared by all users of that cryptocurrency, and a mutually-trusted third-party arbitrator (or even a more complex decision mechanism , defined by a smart contract) can be chosen to address any potential concerns i…

I generally would not trust smart contracts to deal with those issues. They run afoul of the classic problem with ensuring that the blockchain and meatspace are in sync with each other.

To wit: it may be very difficult for me to ensure that the smart contract does not contain a malicious payload. Even if we pinky swear to there being no malicious payloads. Perhaps even if I read the code in an effort to personally confirm that there's no funny business going on.

This very problem is a big part of why smart contracts are becoming a popular tool for confidence artists. There seem to be a lot of people who are very (one might even say unreasonably) confident that the fact that smart contracts can't be altered after the fact makes them inherently trustworthy.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#240

Post by stale2002 »

danShumway wrote: post #214
cf141q5325 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 scoffi…

> That's not how currency works, people have to want your coins for you to spend them.

The year is 2011. Visa and Mastercard have denied everyone the ability to donate money to wikileaks, despite the fact that they were not charged with any crimes.

And yet, back then, I could still send them bitcoin.

So yes, actually, even though only a small subset of people actually used bitcoin (especially back then!), it provided a very real and immediate usecase, for people who wanted to achieve that usecase of sending money to a charity that broke no laws, that the credit card companies were block payments so.

Everything that you are saying, is immediately counteracted and proven wrong by actual real world examples of people using crypto currencies.

Post reply on HN