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Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

technollama.co.uk

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Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#31

Post by xnorswap »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #20
xnorswap wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet didn't really take off until the web, but once the web was there it completely exploded from there on out. Comparing to the web makes bitcoin look pathetic scratching around for a problem for its solution over a decade later. If you're all about Second layer scaling, why not just use existing second layers like VISA? If you're transacting via a trusted second layer to provide scaling, you might as well h…

The web is the wrong analogy/comparison for Bitcoin. Bitcoin was never designed or intended to be anything like the web. It was designed to be a money and payments system, no more no less. If you must compare it to anything, compare it to dollars, euro, yen, gold coins, etc. You may be thinking of Ethereum and any other “crypto” claiming to be “Web 3”, where they want to store and run entire websites on their distrib…

I'm not the one making the comparison, it's people going around touting that you should invest because "it's like the early internet, it'll be everywhere soon and worth trillions".

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#32

Post by nightski »

acdha wrote: post #16
lucideer wrote: post #5

Bitcoin is absolute garbage and in theory any critique is good, but it bothers me that half of the points in this article aren't even internally logically consistent: > “Blockchain is just like the early internet”. No, it isn’t. Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper was published in October 2008 ... . Nothing about the original statement is predicated on the age of the tech. Even if it did, I don't see what modern tech corps have…

> Even if it did, I don't see what modern tech corps have to do with anything - they didn't build the internet. Also, on age, the early internet dates back to the 60s and was still considered "early" 30+ years later. I think the tech companies are relevant because they pivoted to find useful applications on top of that basic infrastructure, which the hundreds of blockchain companies have failed to do. AOL made millio…

The limit on Bitcoin that I saw early on was market cap, liquidity, and stability. As the first two rise, so should the third. It's been a long grind to the market cap today and it still has a ways to go.

But to build up that momentum and trust takes a lot of time.

I'm not necessarily saying Bitcoin should do this or that I desire it. Just stating one reason why it takes time.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#33

Post by unicornmama »

axg11 wrote: post #13

I live in Canada and recently invested a small amount in a startup via AngelList RUV. There were two funding options: (1) wire transfer, (2) transfer USDC via Ethereum network. One of these options is cheaper, faster, and more flexible than the other. Crypto has long been criticized for being gambling and lacking utility. I think utility is finally trickling in, although currently in limited settings. If you look at…

In Switzerland it costs me zero to transfer CHF.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#34

Post by p4bl0 »

deepu256 wrote: post #11
stephc_int13 wrote: post #7

This is all very simple in practice, the blockchain is barely useful, crypto coins and NFTs have very low utility. At some point value and utility always converge. A good heuristic to predict the value of something: would you get them if they were free of charge? The only difficult thing is to predict when the convergence occurs. The asymptotic value of Bitcoin is $0.

"This is all very simple in practice, the blockchain is barely useful, crypto coins and NFTs have very low utility" Yes. FOR NOW. But public decentralised blockchains have interesting properties (enabling ownership , Liquidity , composability) and lots of smart people are trying to use those properties to build interesting apps. These apps are not there yet. I am optimistic that some good apps will be launched in nex…

The only thing a blockchain can do is a cryptocurrency.

The cryptocurrency is the only application that works because transactions are performative writings on the blockchain: they define truth. Once it is written on a blockchain that Alice has transferred X tokens to Bob, it instantly becomes a fact by definition, so you can trust what is written on the blockchain.

In any other application, what's written on the blockchain concerns stuff that are external to it. And what's written can thus only be valid if an external (and necessarily trusted, whether you want it or not) third-party can enforce or make what's written on the blockchain to be true. This means that any other application cannot actually exists in the decentralized and fully adversarial setting that would require the use of a blockchain: there is always another, more simple, more elegant, more efficient solution that can be built on top of the trust that must exists somewhere to make things work.

Also, a blockchain needs its cryptocurrency to actually work because there has to be an incentive to participate in the consensus mechanism whether it is PoW ou PoS or other variants, and the incentive cannot be external to the blockchain otherwise you need to trust the third-party which controls it.

Blockchains and cryptocurrencies are basically the solution to their own problem, and to nothing else.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#35

Post by axg11 »

unicornmama wrote: post #33
axg11 wrote: post #13

I live in Canada and recently invested a small amount in a startup via AngelList RUV. There were two funding options: (1) wire transfer, (2) transfer USDC via Ethereum network. One of these options is cheaper, faster, and more flexible than the other. Crypto has long been criticized for being gambling and lacking utility. I think utility is finally trickling in, although currently in limited settings. If you look at…

In Switzerland it costs me zero to transfer CHF.

With one single integration, AngelList can receive USDC from anyone, anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter if you can transfer CHF very cheaply locally.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#37

Post by axg11 »

aNoob7000 wrote: post #23
axg11 wrote: post #13

I live in Canada and recently invested a small amount in a startup via AngelList RUV. There were two funding options: (1) wire transfer, (2) transfer USDC via Ethereum network. One of these options is cheaper, faster, and more flexible than the other. Crypto has long been criticized for being gambling and lacking utility. I think utility is finally trickling in, although currently in limited settings. If you look at…

It is easier for me to call my bank and initiate a wire transfer than it is to transfer money via USDC. I think the assumption a lot of people in crypto make is that everyone has a crypto account/wallet setup.

Do you live in North America? I would challenge anyone in Canada/US that claims it's easier to initiate a wire transfer (with zero ability to track progress) vs. send USDC to an ETH address.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#38

Post by dcolkitt »

nailer wrote: post #26
axg11 wrote: post #13

I live in Canada and recently invested a small amount in a startup via AngelList RUV. There were two funding options: (1) wire transfer, (2) transfer USDC via Ethereum network. One of these options is cheaper, faster, and more flexible than the other. Crypto has long been criticized for being gambling and lacking utility. I think utility is finally trickling in, although currently in limited settings. If you look at…

Ethereum’s famously expensive and slow though.

Just raised a funding round, and about half the investors used USDC and half used wire transfers.

On "famously expensive and slow" Ethereum, the USDC transfers took 15 seconds and cost under $2. Oh and even better, I was able to just use a simple human readable [X].eth address, instead of an incomprehensible string of routing number digits.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#39

Post by axg11 »

pavlov wrote: post #22
axg11 wrote: post #13

I live in Canada and recently invested a small amount in a startup via AngelList RUV. There were two funding options: (1) wire transfer, (2) transfer USDC via Ethereum network. One of these options is cheaper, faster, and more flexible than the other. Crypto has long been criticized for being gambling and lacking utility. I think utility is finally trickling in, although currently in limited settings. If you look at…

Wire transfers in North America are literally 40 years behind the evolution of bank transfers in EU and UK. Sending money in Europe is free and increasingly often instantaneous 24/7. It will be very difficult for crypto to reach the level of convenience available on unified infrastructure created through sensible regulation. Lacking that, maybe Americans will have to keep settling for all these clunky, incompatible i…

That's the point! Locally, there are great options almost everywhere. In Canada, I can e-transfer (Interac) anyone and the transfer is ~instant. Across borders the solutions are much worse. Crypto is the only payment rail that can realistically reach _everywhere_.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#40

Post by vagab0nd »

aNoob7000 wrote: post #23
axg11 wrote: post #13

I live in Canada and recently invested a small amount in a startup via AngelList RUV. There were two funding options: (1) wire transfer, (2) transfer USDC via Ethereum network. One of these options is cheaper, faster, and more flexible than the other. Crypto has long been criticized for being gambling and lacking utility. I think utility is finally trickling in, although currently in limited settings. If you look at…

It is easier for me to call my bank and initiate a wire transfer than it is to transfer money via USDC. I think the assumption a lot of people in crypto make is that everyone has a crypto account/wallet setup.

For me it's the opposite. I don't want to talk to someone in order to send money. Also, you never know how long/much it'll take to wire. Sometimes it's done free on the same day, other times it gets double charged and takes 2 days for the money to arrive.
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