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Crypto is an unproductive bubble

alexkolchinski.com

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Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#361

Post by randomhodler84 »

nl wrote: post #349
randomhodler84 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I can't of course. If I still had that wallet.. I'm not really a "true crypto believer" though. I do have this from 2014: Project Proposal: Data Rental using the Ethereum Blockchain, Spetember 2014 https://imgur.com/a/XLo2P3Z If you know the history of Ethereum you'll know that is pretty early. I was on the old "decentralization" Yahoo mailing list and the p2p mailing list back in the early 2000's too. If you can fin…

What I object to is any doubt that today it is unsafe for anyone to self custody given the appropriate operational security. A hardware wallet is probably sufficient for nearly all cases of even non technical user. Where people go wrong these days is a) phished [education, instruct never never type those words into the computer…] b) tricked approvals [just don’t mess with eth until you know what you are doing. You will probably get scammed cos eth had a lot of scams.]

Self custody is a critical part of this ecosystem. It’s been the biggest mantra of the ecosystem, so I really don’t understand how you can think this is for a small segment. A vast majority of BTC and ETH is not on exchanges. It’s the entire point. What you are admitting to is saying “I was there at the start but I still don’t really get why…”

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#362

Post by vel0city »

grog454 wrote: post #358
vel0city wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far in my life I haven't come close to breaking even on my car liability insurance. I haven't filed a single claim on my home insurance. I guess it's a wise decision to cancel these. Instead I should just try harder to not have my house destroyed in a storm or have an auto accident.

You absolutely should try harder to not have an at-fault auto accident for your and other people's sake. I'd also recommend having massive dying trees cut down near your house. I've used a 2% cash back credit card for the last 5+ years. If the CC Company offered to make it 3% in exchange for reduced or inhibited fraud insurance I would seriously consider it. I've also foregone health and home insurance in some instan…

> I'm also foregone health and home insurance in some instances.

Why do you bother with either? Just try harder to not get sick and try harder to not have your house burn down. Are you not actively trying as hard as you can to prevent your house from getting destroyed? Are you not trying to stay healthy?

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#363

Post by nikanj »

paulpauper wrote: post #229

If it's a bubble, it's a pretty lousy one in terms of returns. Some energy stocks were up 100-1000% a week ago due to surging oil prices. And then some SPACs were up 500%. Some guy on reddit's wallstreetbets recently turned $17k into $600k with amazon call options. I never seen anyone make those kind of returns with crypto...just guys with tiny Binance or Coinbase accounts who are happy to make 20% from a $1000 initi…

A lot of crypto ads play along the lines of ”$100 invested in 2012 would be worth $lots today. Invest now!”

The implied promise is that it’s still the early days, and you too can become a millionaire

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#364

Post by nikanj »

newacc9 wrote: post #265
tootie wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero what? Zero purchasing power? No, it is not.

Talk to any 70 year old, they'll say $100 was a lot of money in those days. At 7 pct inflation your pp will get cut in half in 10 years, but im being pedantic since this is obvious to everyone.

With BTC your purchasing power can get cut in half overnight

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#365

Post by joering2 »

Retric wrote: post #354
tippytippytango wrote: post #319

Nothing in here that hasn't been said in the last 10 year. It's tempting to dismiss it as a bubble. But; most bubbles don't get 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th... etc. chances. Every time bitcoin crashes people say "this one is different, this time it's dead for real", then it bounces back. It's proving to be far more cockroach like than anyone anticipated. In the more distant future, if bitcoin survives, its utility will just be…

Bubbles only look like pure movement in one direction when zoomed out, the 90’s stock market had plenty of setbacks on what we recall as a seemingly endless rise. For example 1997-10-27 the DOW had a single day drop of −7.18%, a direct quote from the time period: "I came in to look at my stock prices and I said, 'Oh my God, it's a crash!’” But nope just a minor correction. https://money.cnn.com/1997/10/27/markets/mar…

Great summary. My POV is that stock exchange runs along the economy. Long-term you cannot lose because economy continues to grow (exception are wars and of course scam stocks [Enron]). I approach Crypto in a similar way - long-term it will continue to grow despite being spooked here and there and losing 30% or so - because more and more people will get into it. And unless internet stops existing there will be people buying, and for now half of my family doesn't even know what crypto is (yet)

As of 99% dropping, at this point so many minds has been set to see growth or "know" the "minimum" value of main cryptocoins, that masses would not allow for it to drop 99%. There will be enough people along the line to be picking it up at all sort of discounts and Fibonacci supports and arcs to hold the support lines and change trends. I am also very glad to see crypto finally got "locked" on the stock exchange.. and moves with it up or down (logical, since lots of Wall St. guys finally joined the party). I think long-term this will help stabilize BTC, ETC etc, since they will be mimicking serious market (U.S. stock market) moves.

just my 2c (investing in stocks since 1992, and crypto early adopter 2009)

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#366

Post by tzumby »

The author brings up a very good point about controlling the monetary policy which made me think about the impossible trinity. I have a very basic macro Econ 101 understanding of this, but it seems to me like the dials the central bank used to tweak things like inflation and unemployment are delayed and not precise at all. I think innovations in public ledgers along with things like automatic market makers can tighten the feedback loops so that hopefully one day we have such a high degree of integration that interest rates and inflation balancing can be tweaked in real time

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#367

Post by mvlpn »

fhe wrote: post #338
wraptile wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Decentralized systems by nature suffer for slow adoption (just look at decentralized networks like Mastodon which are objectively better than alternatives yet lag behind in adoption). Finally, bitcoin is a financial product, I really don't know any other financial systems that we're adopted quickly other than maybe payment processors. We still struggle to adopt centralized systems…

"Decentralized systems by nature suffer for slow adoption" I don't see why that's self-evident. Decentralized applications get fast and wide adoption all the time, e.g. Napster.

Indeed. Another example I have in mind is MIRC but both filled a void. I think there is little room for crypto to fill. Most of the world doesn’t have a need for it.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#369

Post by 8organicbits »

chasil wrote: post #255
nrr wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony in this is that the Citizens United ruling, at least in the US, affirmed that spending money is speech. It's actually one of the reasons why I'm an ardent supporter of postal banking. Since the USPS is an arm of the federal government, it must work within the confines of the First Amendment[0]. As it stands, I remain pretty unconvinced that cryptocurrencies writ large solve this kind of (at least, what I ca…

I want you to pay attention to this very carefully: https://www.openssh.com/releasenotes.html * ssh(1), sshd(8): add the sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.com hybrid ECDH/x25519 + Streamlined NTRU Prime post-quantum KEX to the default KEXAlgorithms list (after the ECDH methods but before the prime-group DH ones). The next release of OpenSSH is likely to make this key exchange the default method. There is a non-zero prob…

I think this is a question of algorithm agility. Bitcoin has a mechanism to change its implementation[1], so it's possible to upgrade.

On the mining side, miners would pick a new algorithm, vote, and then cut over when approved. Although, if a post-quantum technique allowed faster mining, a change to the mining algorithm may not be needed. Bitcoin would notice the faster hashrate and increase the difficulty, miners would rush to buy quantum hardware. As long as quantum hardware is generally available for purchase, we'd still have decentralized mining.

On the wallet side, we'd need miners to vote for and approve quantum safe wallet operations. Users would need to update their software and their wallets. I'd expect some stuck wallets (like the initial blocks, lost keys) could get spent. This is sort of like someone recovering gold from a sunken ship.

I agree this seems like an existential threat, but there is an update path. Unless there's a sudden onset where no-one has time to react, I suspect the miners would reach consensus. Some users may be slow to update their wallets, and may suffer losses.

I think we'd eventually see recovery of the coins from the mining of the initial blocks, which are generally believed to lost/stuck. This would sort of be like recovery of gold from a sunken ship. I've heard that recovery of those coins would destabilize Bitcoin value, due to the large value. However, unless they are all unexpectedly recovered at once, I'd expect the market to "price that in" gradually as recovery begins.

I'd expect many cryptocurrencies not to survive the transition, although I'm a crypto skeptic and I don't expect hype/scam coins to survive anyway.

[1] https://blog.coinbase.com/bitcoin-s-elegant-upgrade-mechanis...

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#370

Post by [deleted] »

gonehome wrote: post #40
jmcgough wrote: post #19

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…

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)…

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