421–430 of 448 posts
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What is crypto used for? Who uses/needs the crypto network for anything except speculation?
People use Bitcoin to trade and send money around the world with each other.
The sentiment "inside of crypto" seems to be "The MtGOX collapse was worse" Less money, but overall bigger negative impact.
Gox wasn't far off the entire market. We had BTC-E, stamp, gox. Probably some smaller players that I'm forgetting but whatever.
Oh, and there was basically only BTC and LTC. Other coins either didn't exist or were just traded for each other, very little value, etc.
When Gox went under there wasn't even really a proper market price for Bitcoin for a significant period. We had goxbucks and goxbtc.
Even if Coinbase went down now it'd be less of a big deal than Gox was back in the day.
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Are you concerned about the falling ratio of Bitcoin to USD? Or is the hope that this storm removes a lot of the scam artists/ponzi schemes and the ratio stabilizes in a way? Edit to add: it seems like the relative ratio doesn't matter much for the scenarios you describe because it is much better than the swings in local currency compared to USD.
Bitcoin has in fact lost more value than the Argentine peso (or any other fiat currency) over the last year, and this is its largest fall ever (it has fallen over 70% twice before, but I think this is the first time it's ever fallen 73%), and this is a big concern for its use as a savings vehicle, though only a minor inconvenience for its use for international remittances. Also, because the US$ has itself lost about…
Crypto has value. Not "value" in the sense of it's actually good for anything--I'd argue it has some of that, but not nearly enough to justify the hype and price. But I'd also argue that the destructive potential of it more than outweighs that value.
No, what I'm talking about here is the term "value" in the capitalist sense, i.e. if someone is willing to pay for something, it has value, even if it's snake oil. The number of people involved in crypto clearly hasn't maxed out yet. Talk to 10 random friends outside a silicon valley bubble, and most of them won't have ever had any involvement in crypto. But, a lot of those people will say they've been meaning to get involved, or are interested. People cite fear as a reason they haven't gotten involved, but as crypto gets easier to use and more accessible, those fears will go away, and those people are going to get involved.
That's probably a bad thing for those people. Ease of getting into crypto isn't equivalent to financial literacy, and there's a culture around crypto that's openly hostile to applying financial principles to cryptocurrency, which opens those users up to scams and losing money on things that aren't intended to be scams. I spent a bunch of time trying to educate people about OHM/TIME back when those were on the upswing--a rudimentary understanding of economics should have made their inevitable crash obvious. But for every person like me, there were 100 true believers who wouldn't be swayed, spouting nonsense. I'm not sure I actually helped anyone.
I don't have a systemic solution. Regulation can limit the scope of some of the biggest issues (i.e. prevent pension funds and mutual funds from investing in the most obvious crypto scams) but ultimately I don't think it will be possible to protect individuals who want to invest in crypto even though they don't know how to do it safely. You can provide education but a lot of people simply won't accept it.
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The point is that gold is useful, crypto-coins are not.
Another point is that the perceived value of gold has never been tied to its supposed usefulness.
The real point is that if the value that isn't tied to its usefulness ever goes away, it still has value. bitcoins do not.
Fundamental issues of cryptocurrency economy: 1. Biggest pushers are seemingly tech-bros from FANG companies. These companies are laying off staff in record numbers. The biggest cryptocoin believers therefore, will have less income than ever before (in ~3 months or so, after their severance is paid, they'll have to start drawing on savings if they didn't get a job yet... and getting a job in this economy is going to…
> 3. Inflation. Instead of being a hedge on inflation, cryptocoins collapsed in the face of it. I don't disagree with the other points but... That one remains to be seen. Bitcoin was precisely created as a gigantic middle finger to the central bank's endless money printing to bail out the financial system. That's the message in the genesis block ("Chancellor on the brink of second bank bail out": it's as political as…
If the Fed ran the dollar like Bitcoin the US economy would disappear and be replaced by speculators. If anything it proves that the concept of combining both the medium of exchange store of value function into one currency is a massive failure in either direction.
If people were rational then countries like Argentina could have abolished inflation and deflation by separating the medium of exchange and store of value functions.by now but since people love inflation and deflation so much they get what they deserve.
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One wonders if calling someone a troll could be considered flamebait.
Perhaps it could, and I was careful not to do that.
You jumped the gun and have caused more issues than you've avoided. Your warning was more about preparation to ban me than anything related to the actual conversation.
I get it. I understand. Just do it now if you're so inclined, it will save both our time.
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In fiction there's an idea known as 'plot armor'. In essence, it's the idea that causality and realism are suspended for some reasons related to the plot. Your scenario here is plot armor. Sure, if we pretend that gold stops having ANY use outside of being pretty, then when it stops being considered pretty it's value will go to 0. But the fact is, gold has a myriad of uses besides being pretty and those uses give it…
> Sure, if we pretend that gold stops having ANY use outside of being pretty I fail to see the purpose of this 'pilot amor'. There is no reason why gold would stop being useful beyond being pretty. This fiction you've come up with doesn't even make any sense and certainly has no relevance to the discussion. However, that doesn't mean there is always a user available. When we saw the price of oil go negative there wer…
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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.