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The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

mollywhite.net

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Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#311

Post by wbsss4412 »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #155
acdha wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is a failed currency - see the original paper. After around a decade of failing to find demand the big holders started to market it as a commodity but since there’s no inherent value to it unless it’s actively traded it doesn’t really fit the usual meaning of that term.

Oh please do explain why it is failed? The only thing that has evolved over time, that is peoples time preference. There will always be demand for BTC. The software works as it was designed, and grows stronger every year. Gresham’s law might be the key to understanding this.

Parent never claimed it failed to make money, only that it failed as a _currency_.

If you think failure is only synonymous with making money then certainly Bitcoin hasn’t failed, but at the same time it has hardly had much affect on the world outside of being a speculative asset for people to get rich off of.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#312

Post by wbsss4412 »

jonathan-adly wrote: post #86
ludamad wrote: post #4

Quoting a 2017 book about how thinly traded bitcoin is? I appreciate the concept but it doesn't always feel like it rounds out the takes. (FTR, I appreciate it's thin enough to make market cap misleading, but up-to-date liquidity figures would be helpful if we're trying to criticize market cap)

Bitcoin liquidity is about the same as the typical FAANG stock - which is pretty good. This a commentary by skeptics for skeptics - It is as factual as a reddit post on r/bitcoin. If people actually want facts, then that's the wrong place to look.

I certainly wouldn’t want my currency to have the liquidity of a FAANG stock. That is really not a very great benchmark.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#313

Post by Hjfrf »

jron wrote: post #196
acdha wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original goal was to be a currency but over a decade later, statistically nobody uses it for normal transactions. If it shut down tomorrow, the few businesses which accept it would remove that option from the others they accept and that'd be it. Nobody other than speculators would care because it's never given them a reason to use it. I realize you need to say there will be demand for it but your desire to sell y…

A little more than a decade to bootstrap an idea worth nothing to almost a trillion USD... Did you expect it to be valued at two-trillion USD instead? I can reach out to you when it gets there if you like.

If the price goes higher, it only gets worse as a transactional currency. Those are in direct opposition.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#314

Post by acdha »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #311
randomhodler84 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please do explain why it is failed? The only thing that has evolved over time, that is peoples time preference. There will always be demand for BTC. The software works as it was designed, and grows stronger every year. Gresham’s law might be the key to understanding this.

Parent never claimed it failed to make money, only that it failed as a _currency_. If you think failure is only synonymous with making money then certainly Bitcoin hasn’t failed, but at the same time it has hardly had much affect on the world outside of being a speculative asset for people to get rich off of.

Exactly: when it first launched, places like HN were full of optimism that it’d kill off things like PayPal, force credit card companies to offer better transaction pricing, etc. That sounds great to me but it definitely didn’t happen, and the design in combination with volatility makes that even less likely since it’s more like trading stock shares to buy a toaster.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#315

Post by tekknik »

sneak wrote: post #236
sgift wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It obviously isn't cash, it isn't even money - that's the reason the amount received is stated in something else, namely dollars, which this has to be exchanged into to be useful. What happened here is a wire transfer, not different from me sending money from my bank account to someone else bank account. Just with two additional transformation steps (make money into whatever crypto, make whatever crypto back into mon…

It is very different than you sending money via an intermediary bank. I dare you to describe a method of wire transfer to Kyiv that works in that quantity and timescale and is practically usable by the recipient that quickly and cannot be blocked by your local government's policies. There simply isn't anything close to that. People that think that this is the same as a wire via a regulated bank are ignorant of the sp…

The absolute only thing a wire transfer doesn’t do from your list there, is it can be blocked. One phone call is all it takes to send cash instantly.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#316

Post by bawolff »

chockchocschoir wrote: post #275
bawolff wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud services regularly make deals with customers. In fact it would be considered unusual for a non trivial customer to pay list price. The people who pay full cost are the customers who are so small that its not worth the cloud vendors time to care about.

Ok, if you don't realize the difference between subscribing to a service (S3) and making deals (Filecoin), then that's up to you. No one can say I didn't try. In the end, it doesn't even matter, people use whatever fits their use case, including you and me. I'll stick with subscribing to services, and you can continue striking deals, or whatever.

I think you've never used cloud providers at scale.

You don't just subscribe. You negotiate and haggle. Contracts exchange hands. Humans are involved on both sids. Its not like there is a fixed price you just pay.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#317

Post by Jimmc414 »

Animats wrote: post #210
Jimmc414 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using NFTs for generating concert tickets or supply chain logistics & tracking seems like it could be economically viable. I'd bet the biggest use case for NFTs at present is money laundering. It's hard to imagine someone having the talent to acquire $800,000 yet still being gullible enough to spend it all on a hyperlink of a hand drawn monkey with the expectation that they bought an appreciable asset.

Doesn't make much sense for concert tickets, unless you want to enable scalping. The lifetime of a ticket is short.

I know several who found out at the ticket gate of the college fb national championship that they had purchased counterfeit tickets @ $800 a pop, NFTs might be able to offer increased protection against that sort of thing.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#320

Post by arbol »

bawolff wrote: post #217
flaque wrote: post #120

The issue with crypto is that reasonable use cases are early, and don’t attract attention except for niche communities. There’s a few big ones, for example, filecoin right now has created a commodity market for storage that is currently 10,000 cheaper than S3 in some instances. (See file.app for stats) But realistically, the interesting projects are very small and hard to find. However, scams and ponzi schemes, by th…

People always say the same thing when someone is critical of crypto. Its too early! I mean after all, we are only 13 years in. Or: there is a lot of bullshit but the interesting things are outside of your echo chamber. But then never link to such counter examples. At best people talk about filecoin, which does pass the bar of not being a literal scam, but still makes no sense from a product-market fit (storage has 3…

Considering how long it can take a SAAS company to build one product, 13 years and counting is not that long for re-platformimg the global economy.
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