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Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

technollama.co.uk

121–130 of 167 posts

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#121
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He lives in Canada. Canadians don't live in the same country as Americans. Canadians don't have the same banks as Americans. Canadians can do money transfers instantly between any bank using e-transfer. He was talking about transferring money out of the Canadian network of banks to a foreign entity (guessing based on it being denominated in USD). As a European can you transfer money to, say, Vietnam without using clu…

I live in Canada. I can send a wire transfer internationally in 5 minutes from my couch on my laptop without breaking as sweat. The 40 year old technology works fine from a website.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take you up on that challenge. I can open open up my Wells Fargo app and initiate a wire transfer within 5 minutes. In fact, I sent $1000 to a home contractors bank account earlier this week for no fee. And yes, WF sent me email updates of the status. I will concede it took 1 business day though. How do I send USDC within 5 mins? I would have to 1) Open an account on a crypto exchange app 2) Go through the KYC p…

If you count the time for opening an exchange account and doing kyc, you should do the same when you talk about your bank. You only have to open the exchange account once just like you do for your bank. After that it's definitely cheaper and faster to send crypto. Whether or not it's as secure depends on what bank we are comparing to.

Crypto cheaper? Seriously? I pay $0 in fees for doing an EFT (or ACH) from my bank account to another bank account. Wire transfers via a currency trading platform I use don't charge a percentage either. If I tried to do that via crypto, I'd be paying a few points in exchange fees to go from fiat to crypto then back again in another country. It isn't cheaper if you're using the right banking platform.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#123
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…

International transfers might be different but for domestic transfers, most countries outside of the west have very robust systems already. India’s UPI puts any crypto alternative to shame with the speed, transaction volume, fees and ease of use. Sending someone USDC for international payments is admittedly much easier, but you’re likely going to run into expensive regulation on that front since it carries too much m…

Within Canada Interac e-Transfer is fast and easy (except when Rogers is down). Takes a few seconds to go from one bank via email, click on the link and have it in another bank.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#124
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 blo…

Let’s forget any bridges to physical assets for a minute; cryptocurrencies, or more broadly scarce digital assets, have an unfathomably large TAM. More and more of our lives are being spent online instead of dealing with real world assets, giving increasing value to the GDP of digital assets over time. First, the entire financial system can and will be made digital, making every dollar you deal with every day a digital asset that can falls under blockchain TAM. Then, you have all online goods: virtual game items, ad space, Twitter handles, memberships, subscriptions, metaverse property, virtual conference tickets, certificates, domain names, hell it turns out people even want to trade JPEGs as scarce digital assets. There are probably things that I can’t even imagine today that will one day be tokenized digital assets that can be traded on blockchains.

Sure, plenty of the mentioned items can run more efficiently on a centralized database but the question then becomes, “whose centralized database?” Blockchain is the only solution that provides credibly neutral and publicly interoperable accounting of digital assets, which could one day be 50% of the world economy.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#125
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there has always been a supply of victims (err investors*, but after the last two crashes , what if the well has ran dry?

Right. The real measure is not % of loss from top-value, rather it should be # of people that both don't understand the technology & have lost money speculating on it (i.e. how many people bought into hype and got burned) There's a finite amount of people to buy-in next cycle

Is this 2018? The comments are the same. Not a crypto head but nay sayers will be nay sayers. Kinda disappointing

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding (1), the real statement here is, "many of us were there at the start of the Web, it was evident that it was going to change the world, and it was usable from the start." And it's mostly about the the Web (but you may include things like The Well, which were promising from the start.) The point is really about immediately apparent use. And, if you're going to date the Web back to the humble beginnings of ARP…

> it was evident that it was going to change the world That's easy to say in hindsight, but the utility of the internet was debated as hotly back then as the utility of cryptocurrency is today. > By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-eff...

The difference is that many, many people who were not directly financially invested in the internet in, say, 1997 could easily see that it was revolutionary. Most of the people who pooh-poohed it were those who were not highly technical and did not understand the technology that well. (Krugman's an expert in his field, but his field is not technology.)

Today, effectively the only people still saying cryptocurrency is revolutionary are those who are directly financially invested in it—and there are many, many highly technical people who understand the technology very well who say it's nothing but a scam.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#127
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He lives in Canada. Canadians don't live in the same country as Americans. Canadians don't have the same banks as Americans. Canadians can do money transfers instantly between any bank using e-transfer. He was talking about transferring money out of the Canadian network of banks to a foreign entity (guessing based on it being denominated in USD). As a European can you transfer money to, say, Vietnam without using clu…

> Canadians can do money transfers instantly between any bank using e-transfer.

Interesting, for me e-transfers usually take around 20-30 minutes to go through (where the other party receives the notification with the ability to deposit it).

I prefer using cryptocurrency for near-instant transfers for exactly this reason. When I've gone to pay for items via e-transfer there's a lot of waiting around for the other party to receive it (and ATMs generally limit your daily withdrawal amount, so for me, withdrawing cash isn't a good solution for purchasing things over $1000)

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#128
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll take you up on that challenge. I can open open up my Wells Fargo app and initiate a wire transfer within 5 minutes. In fact, I sent $1000 to a home contractors bank account earlier this week for no fee. And yes, WF sent me email updates of the status. I will concede it took 1 business day though. How do I send USDC within 5 mins? I would have to 1) Open an account on a crypto exchange app 2) Go through the KYC p…

If you hold USDC on-chain, it's 30 seconds or less. If you hold some other token (ETH or MATIC for example) it might take a few seconds longer for you to make a swap.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He lives in Canada. Canadians don't live in the same country as Americans. Canadians don't have the same banks as Americans. Canadians can do money transfers instantly between any bank using e-transfer. He was talking about transferring money out of the Canadian network of banks to a foreign entity (guessing based on it being denominated in USD). As a European can you transfer money to, say, Vietnam without using clu…

International crypto transactions will likely be heavily regulated soon enough - the money laundering risk is too high. Not to mention that money send to a crypto wallet also needs to be cashed out locally, which takes both fees and time. And god forbid your crypto exchange goes bankrupt or decide to pause withdrawals

And the fact you are not moving insured money, but monopol money... Fiat really have quite many upsides when used with banks.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#130
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The settlement delay isn't there for technological reasons. People think they want instant! fast! until they lose their life savings because libertarian tech has no buffers.

I thought the settlement delay was so that the banks can squeeze out 72 more hours of interest.

No it is there for netting and clearing.
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