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Is this the end of crypto?

economist.com

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Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#411

Post by imtringued »

cft wrote: post #109
P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When bitcoin first came onto the scene I personally knew a guy who was running a website to act as an exchange. It was small because bitcoin itself at that time was very small. Then bitcoin had its very first dip and it became unprofitable to mine bitcoins. When that happened he shuttered the website and kept everyone's bitcoins. I knew of bitcoin early on due to this guy, but even then I had no interest and consider…

Get ready for CBDC, surveillance of every transaction and economic unpersoning then.

I have seen a lot of resistance against GNU Taler so I think if any country adopts a CDBC it will be fully surveiled with no privacy for customers. After all that is what people want. They don't want privacy in their CDBCs.

Well, if that happens I hope they implement negative interest rates on them because that would end the need for surveillance and political corruption within a decade.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#412

Post by marton78 »

sys_64738 wrote: post #232

Did anybody on here make any $$$ from crypto? It was all a scam in my eyes so I just focused on VTI.

I did. I bought the token of a decentralised exchange (gainsnetwork.io if you're interested) after the LUNA crash, it went up a lot and is still holding strong, as the narrative shifts away from centralised to decentralised exchanges due to the FTX crash. It also pays nice dividends from users' trading fees.

But yes, with pretty much everything else I ever did in crypto I just lost money.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#413

Post by imtringued »

throwup wrote: post #189
danans wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You excluded the first part of that paragraph: > We show that the vast majority of Bitcoin transactions between real entities are for trading and speculative purposes. Starting from 2015, 75% of the real bitcoin volume has been linked to exchanges or exchange-like entities such as on-line wallets, OTC desks, and large institutional traders. So 75% of the transactions are just speculative trading, not transactions for…

Illegal transactions are also 11-12% of the USA's economy.[1] In 2019, forex volume was $6.6T per day [2], or $1716T per year. Meanwhile global GDP was only $87.5T [3]. In other words, almost 95% of global currency volume is speculation. Why would anyone use currencies that are mainly used for speculation? Both the traditional and crypto economies are reflections of human behavior, but because crypto is more transpar…

Not really, the speculation has nothing to do with human behaviour. The conventional money system and the thousands of cryptocurrencies that copy it are inherently speculative and reward people for being indecisive aka being liquid. Liquidity is the ability to instantly change your mind and that ability has very little to do with human nature and more to do with the nature of your money.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#414

Post by meehow »

AlexandrB wrote: post #338
meehow wrote: post #300

Fractional reserve is a scam, not crypto. Every institution which doesn't have money which they promised to keep safe, should collapse. Proof of reserves and audits are extremely easy in crypto and it doesn't require any regulations. Self custody of crypto is also pretty simple. Market is young, people greedy and as a result we got this domino of falling companies. Even after Mt. Gox collapse people didn't learn much…

> Market is young, people greedy and as a result we got this domino of falling companies. People are always going to be greedy. I'm not sure what you think will change in the future that will make large actors in the cryptocurrency space behave any more ethically. > Proof of reserves and audits are extremely easy in crypto and it doesn't require any regulations. A. So why is no one doing them regularly? B. Is "proof…

You don't need to trust when you can verify. Some exchanges do audits and proof-of-reserves regularly, but majority of them prefer to cheat on their customers.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#415

Post by tromp »

boring_twenties wrote: post #365
rafaelero wrote: post #275

Bitcoin won't die. Crypto will, and hopefully soon. The community here is so oblivious to the characteristics that make Bitcoin the best monetary system we could have invented that I can only believe people haven't really thought things through. That's why we see these comparisons with Bitcoin and other cryptos. I am actually glad all this mess is happening so we can finally move on with all those crypto scams that w…

Bitcoin has been obsolete since 2014 -- Monero is superior in every single way.

It's not superior; it just makes different tradeoffs [1].

[1] https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#416

Post by tromp »

rafaelero wrote: post #313
Balgair wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll bite. Give me the elevator pitch. I'm not in tech [0] so treat me as you would a grandmother. Average speaking speed is ~150 words/minute. Say the average elevator ride is ~30 seconds. So, in ~75 words, tell me what the nuance is as you would say to a grandmother? That fair? To be clear, I'm honestly not trying to be snarky. Sorry if it comes off that way. I can only multitask through this meeting so well. […

Let me try. If you were to create the best monetary system, how would it be? The answer to that is a system with a policy that simply doesn't change. That's the best system because predictability is the only quality that matters when you are storing value. The best governments in the world try their best to achieve that, but they always fail. How then can we achieve that? With decentralization. That's a very expensiv…

> which doesn't allow anyone to change its emission rate

Bitcoin changes its emission rate every 4 years. A fixed emission rate is far more desirable. Something like 1 coin per second forever looks more attractive and immutable than bitcoin's arbitrary capped emission, that doesn't guarantee security in the long term when block subsidy runs out.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#417

Post by phatfish »

aww_dang wrote: post #405
danaris wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't aware that something had to be "my business" before I was allowed to discuss it on HN. And "dedicated hardware wallet devices" are exactly the kind of thing that I'm talking about here. There is no way those are going to be appealing to mainstream users; thus, if cryptocurrency were ever to genuinely enter the mainstream, the vast, vast majority of users would be keeping their crypto on exchanges. Y'know, ex…

That's fine if you want to champion the cause of the normie. Just don't do it in a paternalistic way. If people were satisfied with the high transaction costs and regulatory overhead of traditional finance, they wouldn't be in crypto. There are a few more reasonable options here. 1) Create or advocate for a cryptocurrency with reversible transactions and all of the regulatory features you desire. Let the market decid…

You are looking for a Crypto utopia where everyone is as "enlightened" as you. When something goes mainstream that gets lost. However I suspect if Crypto hadn't gained the popularity (and paper value) it did it might not be as fun as you think.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#418

Post by aww_dang »

phatfish wrote: post #417
aww_dang wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine if you want to champion the cause of the normie. Just don't do it in a paternalistic way. If people were satisfied with the high transaction costs and regulatory overhead of traditional finance, they wouldn't be in crypto. There are a few more reasonable options here. 1) Create or advocate for a cryptocurrency with reversible transactions and all of the regulatory features you desire. Let the market decid…

You are looking for a Crypto utopia where everyone is as "enlightened" as you. When something goes mainstream that gets lost. However I suspect if Crypto hadn't gained the popularity (and paper value) it did it might not be as fun as you think.

>You are looking for a Crypto utopia where everyone is as "enlightened" as you.

I'm not sure how you read my comment as elitist or utopian. All I'm asking here is that paternalists don't ruin it with saviorism, regulatory capture and gatekeeping.

>When something goes mainstream that gets lost.

Isn't this an elitist sentiment?

Our community has fun with people who aren't deep into tech at all. I started it with faucet rewards integrated into an io game. Anyone can install a wallet when transactions are free. Couldn't be further from what you're projecting.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#419

Post by imtringued »

calculatte wrote: post #278
cooljacob204 wrote: post #11

When Crypto was young it was this cool new technology that mostly interesting because of the underlying tech. But even back then it was mostly valuable for buying drugs online and other illegal stuff. Now it's that and a way to scam people of their life savings. I do hope it dies out, it should have been heavily regulated from the get go. Way too many people saw these high production commercials with their favorite c…

Are you pretending that the government's ability to create fiat currency out of thin air doesn't endanger anyone? Printing trillions over the past few years is what is throwing us into a worldwide depression. You think the "spooky scary government" is harmless? The US government has used its funds to kill over 20 million people since WWII without officially being at war. 90% of those killed in US drone strikes are by…

If the fiat system is so bad why did Bitcoin copy it then? The only exception is RAI which does not copy the fiat system by allowing negative rates. Negative rates allow the system to reduce the money supply.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#420

Post by ahaseeb »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #282
compsciphd wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go a step further with the comparison to gold. If everyone would stop mining gold today, gold would retain value (or perhaps even go up in value). On the flipside, if we turned off all bitcoin miners today, bitcoin would go to zero instantly (as its worthless without continuous resources being pumped into it). This is why I'm sympathetic to those who say its ponzi scheme, it only has value because of new resource…

I've read elsewhere that below $13K it is not profitable to mine bitcoins. We're very close to this threshold now, given what is happening now and during the next few weeks I would not be surprised if BTC is going below that threshold. I think it's time to stash a few bottles of champagne.

It really depends from miners to miners. As effectively it's about how cheap your energy cost is. Since there's no transport cost, your cost is to acquire cheaper energy.
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