Typically, past performance is indicative of future behavior. This is why statistical modeling in social sciences works somewhat okay. But there are extrapolation regions or shorter memory missing prior events that cause behavior to deviate from status quo expectation.
Have you heard the tale of the inductivist turkey and thanksgiving? This turkey found that, on his first morning at the turkey farm, he was fed at 9 a.m. However, being a good inductivist, he did not jump to conclusions. He waited until he had collected a large number of observations of the fact that he was fed at 9 a.m., and he made these observations under a wide variety of circumstances, on Wednesdays and Thursday…
Have you heard of faster ways of conveying the insight that “turkeys seem safe until the day they get slaughtered” and less toxic ways of formatting quotes?
And was it a fully general argument against induction, or do you disagree with the conclusion you were promoting?
As I said, Tether (USDT) is an arguable exception. You seem to be arguing that exception. I don't disagree with you.
Tether is the largest stablecoin in existence. If you are intent on arguing that the biggest example of your mentioned category is an exception, how do you propose the average person goes about find out what's an exception and what's following the norm?
Picking any regulated, US-based stablecoin is a great start.
Tether is large because it got a head start on network effect before the proper regulatory frameworks were put into place, in the USA at least. There's a massive amount of momentum there even though their product is inferior.
I'd like to see someone like this really try to explain the global non-crypto currency system as it exists today in similar detail. This after all was one of the touted reasons for crypto - it would allow people around the world to hold wealth in a stable currency that wouldn't be subject to market crashes and currency devaluations. There are so many interesting questions that remain undiscussed - such as, to what ex…
You can’t store wealth stably in inanimate things. Wealth is always social in nature. Currencies are claims on the future production of people who want them. Their future desires and capacities defines the value.
I'd like to see someone like this really try to explain the global non-crypto currency system as it exists today in similar detail. This after all was one of the touted reasons for crypto - it would allow people around the world to hold wealth in a stable currency that wouldn't be subject to market crashes and currency devaluations. There are so many interesting questions that remain undiscussed - such as, to what ex…
Just because you don’t understand how the traditional market works it doesn’t mean it’s a scam. Sure, there are scams, and sometimes they are big and problematic, but there is also a global network of honest people working, producing, creating, and selling real, useful things, and all that is connected by the global market. It is not perfect, but human beings aren’t, so it will always be flawed, but the good things far outweigh the bad ones.
Investing in crypto is not a scam by nature, in theory; it is a scam in practice. It is just how people use it, because there simply is no other use. The only reason someone buys crypto is to wait for it to grow, for whatever reason, so they can get rich easy. There is no other reason (right now) to expect crypto coins to grow in value other than speculation and hope. And scammers feed on that hope, that’s just how it is. They are not that different, by nature, from the traditional market, but right the bad parts are exacerbated and there are no good ones to counterweight. Once cryptocurrencies are connected with enough real products, services, etc they will have a better reason to exist, and to become a better investment. After all a currency is just a way to trade things, it is not a value in itself.
Blockchain has two proven use cases: 1.) Speculative investment assets. 2.) Moving value outside of a financial system. Unregulated stable coins have proven to be as stable as the titanic was unsinkable. Number 1 is really a problem because of Number 2. Number 2 is a fancy way to describe a primary use case being money laundering. Of course though there are some instances where that’s helpful like backing a foreign g…
I disagree strongly that moving outside of the financial system is primarily used for money laundering. Bitcoin is great for censorship resistance, and for offering an alternative to oppressive monetary policies. Here's a good article touching on some of the use cases outside of the US: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-pri... In the long run, I hope Bitcoin's existence will also lead to better…
Currencies did a lot of centralizing on their own. One currency is much more useful to its owner than 500.
Ain't nobody want to spend time converting from the 500 down into one so they can buy an expensive widget that only accepts a specific currency
It was far rarer because it was much more difficult to collect payments.
It was rarer because we had less computers and less interconnectness. Major incidents are caused by supply chain compromise, or very targeted attacks, all of which gets worse as the population grows. Taking payments over the internet has been fairly easy for decades. If not, do you really think we would be where we are today. I get you like to blame cryptocurrency on crime, but it is but a component, of which other c…
Taking regulated payments subject to financial law as a Russian hacker group is quite difficult. Bitcoin is used in nearly all ransomware attacks precisely because it is unregulated. The idea that they’d just take PayPal without Bitcoin is laughable.
For technology, that assumption is more likely than not, in a general sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
Value of an asset doesn't really count as technology though. The technology of UST/Luna still "works" even though the value crashed.
UST was intended to be a dollar-pegged stablecoin. The failure of its dollar peg was certainly a failure of technology, because a "dollar-pegged" coin that is not actually pegged to the dollar is not a "working" system.
The whole "proof of work" concept regarding crypto is a sham. Normally, the expenditure of energy produces tangible products or services. In the case of crypto currency, massive amounts of heat is wasted to produce a number with questionable "value". I just can't wrap my head around this.
It produces objective immutability of the transaction history.
Isn't it subjective immutability?
Your transaction might disappear from the history if the view changes to have some other branch be the accepted one
I'd like to see someone like this really try to explain the global non-crypto currency system as it exists today in similar detail. This after all was one of the touted reasons for crypto - it would allow people around the world to hold wealth in a stable currency that wouldn't be subject to market crashes and currency devaluations. There are so many interesting questions that remain undiscussed - such as, to what ex…
> I'd like to see someone like this really try to explain the global non-crypto currency system as it exists today in similar detail.
There was a video and thread on 'How (inter)national money transfers works' a couple of months ago
You can’t store wealth stably in inanimate things. Wealth is always social in nature. Currencies are claims on the future production of people who want them. Their future desires and capacities defines the value.
Inanimate things like mutual fund shares?
Mutual fund units are a claim on future production. They connect to the the animate. A gold coin can never pay you a dividend.