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Crypto is an unproductive bubble

alexkolchinski.com

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Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#521

Post by gonehome »

lottin wrote: post #519
gonehome wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m assuming good faith, but I feel like you’re intentionally ignoring and redirecting away to prove some existing conclusion. We’re talking about advantages and capabilities - specifically granted by crypto of which self-custody is a prerequisite (yes technically true of stock, but not indexes and not as comparable). Within that context it has advantages over other options and more capabilities. I’m not pretending i…

A "limited slice of time" comprising of the last 200 years. It provides pretty damning evidence against gold (and by extension against virtual commodities that are purported to be gold-like).

200yrs is nothing (and fiat was backed by gold as recently as 50yrs ago).

Focusing on this despite the rest of what I wrote is still kind of missing my point.

There’s not really much point in further discussion, there’s not much more to say. We just don’t agree.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#522

Post by ThomPete »

krapp wrote: post #146
ThomPete wrote: post #120

Everything is a bubble. Crypto is no different, but its not more a bubble than web2, web1, telnet and we could go on. Its interesting why people are so interested in trying to argue against crypto. Its here, its adding value, get over it.

>Everything is a bubble. Crypto is no different, but its not more a bubble than web2, web1, telnet and we could go on. Tell me you don't know what a bubble is without telling me you don't know what a bubble is.

tell me you have a very simplistic idea of a bubble without telling meyou have a simplistic view.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#523

Post by lottin »

gonehome wrote: post #521
lottin wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "limited slice of time" comprising of the last 200 years. It provides pretty damning evidence against gold (and by extension against virtual commodities that are purported to be gold-like).

200yrs is nothing (and fiat was backed by gold as recently as 50yrs ago). Focusing on this despite the rest of what I wrote is still kind of missing my point. There’s not really much point in further discussion, there’s not much more to say. We just don’t agree.

200 years is a lot. To put it in perspective, the Industrial Revolution started 250 years ago in England.

But feel free to disagree, of course. The evidence doesn't care if you don't agree with it. It's still there, for everyone to see.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#524

Post by FridgeSeal »

benoketamad wrote: post #512
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…

Well, fiat money has no backing whatsoever. A while ago the USD was backed by gold, nowadays it is backed by faith, just like any other fiat currency. Let this sink in: crypto is money that is backed by energy. Finally a money that is backed by some tangible thing. The systems providing it might be suboptimal, but the basic premise, that this is finally backed by a universally accepted thing, energy, is absolutely pe…

Unfortunately I think I'd still prefer to have the energy, rather than the imaginary internet tokens, because once again, at least the energy is...useful.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#525

Post by Valakas_ »

hiq wrote: post #438
koonsolo wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the EU, doing a lot of bank transfers. I would love to see 24/7 instant bank transfers. The theory is nice, the practice however is very poor. With nano, I do actually have instant, 0 fee, 24/7 money transfers. Sorry, but your claim is just not true in practice.

> 0 fee Every time I look at a no fee platform in the cryptocurrency world, it turns out that it's subsidized somehow. If you want to make a fair comparison with e.g. SEPA transfers, you have to assess where this comes from. For a lot of these networks, it's just a way to gain adoption and it doesn't reflect whether it's sustainable for them in the longer-term. The compromise I have to make as a user is to use their…

Just FYI, Algorand and StellarLumens are very low fee and super-fast blockhain alternatives.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#526

Post by Valakas_ »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #65
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)…

As Warren's bill shows, Bitcoin won't protect the truckers from sanctions either. If whatever you have custody of can be demonetized, does the custody even matter?

Monero would would like to have words.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#527

Post by 30367286 »

ThinBold wrote: post #321
30367286 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the average consumer is back to trusting a central authority (PayPal)? Then what’s the point, for the end user, of the blockchain in the first place?

You get to choose between out-sourcing the liability or naked-running. You can even linearly-interpolate between the two extremes. In case of banking, you already payed the hidden fee (banks get bailout using government money, aka your money)

The number of consumers trying to buy a coffee who will “linearly interpolate between the two extremes” will be limited to a vanishingly small group of consumers who enjoy that kind of thing.

The two responses to my very simple question prove to me that crypto is a fad that will fade into the background. Maybe a few big players will use it as their protocol, but the average consumer is never going to think about it.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#528

Post by alexyim »

pavlov wrote: post #302

Crypto people love to say “it’s the early days.” But it’s not. Bitcoin is 13 years old. At that age, Windows was on >90% of the world’s computers. Java at age 13 had taken over enterprise software and was about to conquer mobile via Android. Cryptos are used by maybe 0.1% of computer users (if we’re very generous about what exactly constitutes usage). Considering the amount of investment they are an expensive failure…

It feels weird that supporting crypto almost feels like a contrarian view judging from the comments here.

It sounds like the author is describing crypto as a ponzi (rather than a bubble) and I'd agree too if crypto never ends up on delivering real value. But it already has in terms in efficiencies (e.g. money transfer and cutting out middlemen is a 10x improvement) and I definitely think we're starting to see more.

I think that crypto hasn't quite integrated with society yet (yet is the key word). Once it does, crypto will be operating less within its own sandbox and will have more impact on society. It needs to marry into our legal system and deal more with oracles bridging the real world into the crypto world.

When you say Bitcoin is 13 years old you're only looking at it from a technology standpoint. It's made a few strides in this time period, but I think we could also consider Bitcoin as a monetary good. From that lens, as something to think about, how long did it take for gold to be accepted as currency?

The rest of crypto is much less than 13 years old and I think we'll start seeing more of their impact in the next 5 years.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#529

Post by gonehome »

lottin wrote: post #523
gonehome wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200yrs is nothing (and fiat was backed by gold as recently as 50yrs ago). Focusing on this despite the rest of what I wrote is still kind of missing my point. There’s not really much point in further discussion, there’s not much more to say. We just don’t agree.

200 years is a lot . To put it in perspective, the Industrial Revolution started 250 years ago in England. But feel free to disagree, of course. The evidence doesn't care if you don't agree with it. It's still there, for everyone to see.

Took me a bit to realize you are the same account from the last thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630271)

You have a clear motivated reasoning bias (crypto = bad and useless) paired without understanding the basics of how crypto works.

You don’t have conversations with people, you just ignore details that disagree with your pre-existing conclusion and focus on digressions you think prove your point (typically against a strawman argument I’m not making).

Your submissions betray this bias too. Crypto (and conversation) is more interesting when considering the nuanced bits even if it may disagree with “your side”.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb...

You’re right about one thing though, the evidence is there for people to see.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#530

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #524
benoketamad wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, fiat money has no backing whatsoever. A while ago the USD was backed by gold, nowadays it is backed by faith, just like any other fiat currency. Let this sink in: crypto is money that is backed by energy. Finally a money that is backed by some tangible thing. The systems providing it might be suboptimal, but the basic premise, that this is finally backed by a universally accepted thing, energy, is absolutely pe…

Unfortunately I think I'd still prefer to have the energy, rather than the imaginary internet tokens, because once again, at least the energy is...useful.

Its comforting to know the loudest critics refuse to face facts. That is actually how I predicted the run up to the last bull market - when the critics resorted to old or ignorant arguments. Have you heard of Chesterton's Fence?
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