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Crypto is an unproductive bubble

alexkolchinski.com

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Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#441

Post by Ekaros »

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.

Torrents, P2P file sharing in general. I really don't get the argument that technology doesn't get adopted fast.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#442

Post by hiq »

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…

> bitcoin survives

What does this mean? I would bet that there'll always be Bitcoin miners, so the network will never completely "die". If you're talking about BTC/USD rate, it's hard to meaningfully interpret given how unregulated (and possibly manipulated, see Tether) the market is.

As a technology, it's probably more interesting to look at, say, the number of people who did a cryptocurrency transaction in the past month or week.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#443

Post by hiq »

joering2 wrote: post #365
Retric wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> because more and more people will get into it

Why do you believe that? Are you talking about pure speculation?

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#444

Post by sschueller »

Nextgrid wrote: post #115
gonehome wrote: post #40

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)…

> you can memorize your wallet seed words and recreate your wallet on the other side of a border Governments can trivially prevent this if they wanted to. Bringing your wallet along will be of no use if nobody dares to transact with you because they themselves will then need to explain the source of their newfound wealth. The current ability of crypto to (sometimes) escape government oversight is temporary and only e…

The idea is that you don't need to convert to fiat. Everything you buy would be via crypt. Like cash. You don't know if the cash someone uses is stolen and no one cares.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#445

Post by derangedHorse »

TomSwirly wrote: post #436
gonehome wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A United world government could non-trivially prevent this (though enforcement would still be difficult at the individual level). We don’t have that though, and in practice today it’s useful in order to escape authoritarian dictatorships. The specific case I read about was someone escaping the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine this way: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why-b... It’s also more co…

> in practice today it’s useful in order to escape authoritarian dictatorships. Or in fact, any financial law by any government. And yet if you say a major application of crypto is crime everyone gets all hurt...

Crime is relative so to say a major application of crypto is "crime" isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've seen a Russian commentator in another thread claiming to commit the "crime" of donating Bitcoin to Ukraine (while still being in Russia). I'm sure those of us in the Western world wouldn't have any big moral objections to that.

That being said, most studies point to the conclusion that the major application of Bitcoin at least is not crime:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...

https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoi... (by Michael Morell, former Acting Director, Deputy Director and Director of Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA))

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#446

Post by xtracto »

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…

>One of the biggest drawbacks for CASH is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact, and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me.

Snark aside, my 70yo dad fell into a very stupid fraud where someone called him and convinced him to send money from his bank account to some other (this is using Mexican Gov digital money transfer network SPEI). After he did and realized it was a scam, he called his bank and they basically told him that they couldn't reverse it, nor do anything.

So, bank transactions are not as revocable as they want you to think, for the lay person at least.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#447

Post by xtracto »

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…

Bitcoin is a thousand year bubble.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#448

Post by danaris »

dist1ll wrote: post #439
mvkel wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralized systems, like the internet? It was pretty damn big after it was 13 years old.

There was 16 years between the launch of ARPANET and the specification of the DNS. It took more than 20 years for a website to exist on the internet.

The Internet is a poor comparison, as it required a significant investment in hardware out in the world at large for it to be a practical consideration.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#449

Post by amon22 »

jakupovic wrote: post #427
FridgeSeal wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because vehicles bring value (transport people, food, resources, etc) and have energy optimisations (mass transit, electric, etc) because the energy use as a gatekeeper is not an inherent part of its functionality. I’d be shocked if video games as an industry outranked crypto for energy use. Even if we assume all gamers run their GPU’s at 100% the entire time they play games, miners will quickly dwarf the energy usag…

Alm you're doing here is measuring what you think the benefits to the society are from cars vs bitcoin. Just because it is useless in your opinion does not make it so, and you should qualify your statements with, "in my opinion", rather than saying this with absolute conviction.

Crypto in it's current form is indeed useless.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#450

Post by danaris »

oceanplexian wrote: post #384
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really your selling point that crypto is good because Russians can wage war while circumventing sanctions? The whole point of sanctions is to pressure bad actors to change. You've invented a technology that allows them to continue doing evil? Hurrah?

> The whole point of sanctions is to pressure bad actors to change. This argument seems completely non-sensical to me. Western governments have been arguing for 3+ decades that we do business with countries like China because integrating them into the global economic system will encourage them to change. But now we're making the same argument that we need to expel Russia from the global economic system because it wil…

They're the same argument.

The sanctions mean nothing if you haven't already integrated the countries into the global economic system, because they won't be losing anything.

I'll grant the implementation leaves a lot to be desired, but the principle is quite sound.

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