121–130 of 175 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cryptocurrencies are scams in much the same way MLM schemes are scams. Everyone knows what they’re buying into. But their expectations of outcomes are greatly skewed by the vested interests of existing participants.
No one with a brain or in a position of power has ever made a legitimate claim that Monero or Bitcoin Cash is a scam. Just empty attacks and idiots.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cat is out of the bag on this one. Can't be 100% stopped or shutdown. Many have tried stopping it for 15 years and unfortunately they are still wasting their time trying to do so.
Crypto doesn't have to be explicitly stopped or shut down to be consigned to niche cases. In fifteen years Linux went from a hobbyist project in 1991 to a major infrastructure project underpinning the Internet; Golang started in 2009 and now is ubiquitous in the tech world. Plenty of analogous technologies exist that were created and flourished in fifteen years, and they did so by providing meaningful value without r…
There are more blockchains (not tokens) that exist beyond Bitcoin and are much faster and their use-case is worldwide, instant and extremely low-fee same-day payments.
> What manifests as people trying to stop blockchains is typically regulatory bodies trying to stop money laundering or the sale of unregistered investments. This isn't some shadowy cabal trying to crush Bitcoin but institutions watching Celsius Network and FTX detonate and trying to catch up to keep people from getting burned.
They already know they can't stop or ban it and these other blockchains, but they will go after the unregulated, non-conforming exchanges and have already introduced rules and regulations on the existing ones.
But I'm afraid it isn't going away like it or not.
> So yes, the blockchain cat is out of the bag, but nobody cares.
Except, you seem to care enough to complain about it here and until the next time it gets talked about again, which is why you replied in the first place.
> We are squarely in "put up or shut up" territory because enough time has passed for the tech to develop; if blockchains never catch on then it's because the tech just wasn't that useful to begin with.
Of course it is no wonder why companies like PayPal, VISA, Moneygram, TransferGo, Stripe, Checkout.com, etc still continue to use it in their products.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no intrinsic value > electrons > entry in a database The most fascinating phenomenon of crypto arguments is that they never change. Fifteen years ago you could find these same unintentionally ironic statements, where the most cutting criticisms of cryptocurrency are equally true of dollars and euros. The only thing missing from this thread (so far) is mysticism about the money supply and confident assertions that d…
dollars are somehow "backed" by the military or tax payments. They are backed by law --- they are "legal tender". As such, I'm fairly confident I can pay next month's rent with them. Crypto is backed by --- absolutely nothing. Pretending you can't see the difference here is lying to yourself.
And bitcoin is not backed by nothing. It's backed by a vast army of bitcoin promoters which you may not like but they are not nothing.
Crypto and NFTs are the ultimate scam. It's wooden nickels, the Brooklyn Bridge and Bernie Madoff all taken to their ultimate logical conclusion --- something with no intrinsic value whatsoever (electrons) is being exchanged for real functioning currency. But what really sets the crypto scam apart is the fact that no is really lying about the fundamental nature of the transaction. No one is hiding the fact that by bu…
The cat is out of the bag on this one. Can't be 100% stopped or shutdown. Many have tried stopping it for 15 years and unfortunately they are still wasting their time trying to do so.
I'm not sure I buy the thesis of Patrick's article "Crypto Fooled Us Once" on the basis FTX collapsed when SBF stole the clients money. Crypto goes on fine, Kraken, Coinbase and a hundred other exchanges still do business. One crooked exchange less has not put crypto and fooling into the past.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
dollars are somehow "backed" by the military or tax payments. They are backed by law --- they are "legal tender". As such, I'm fairly confident I can pay next month's rent with them. Crypto is backed by --- absolutely nothing. Pretending you can't see the difference here is lying to yourself.
Comprare the value of say bitcoin and Venezuelan bolivars. The fact that the latter is "legal tender" has not helped it retain value much. And bitcoin is not backed by nothing. It's backed by a vast army of bitcoin promoters which you may not like but they are not nothing.
I'm not Venezuelan, are you? The fact that an unstable "legal tender" exists somewhere doesn't make all others the same and it doesn't make crypto a better or more stable alternative. The fact that some people are promoting it for person gain doesn't either.
Crypto does have utility, but there's only room for one: bitcoin. Everything else is just a me-too derivative that can add nothing except the possibility of central control (like the "digital dollar"). The ability to instantly transmit the hardest asset known to man (harder than gold, in the sense of inflation resistance) does have utility, regardless of what critics say. It has downsides too: the ability to be lost…
Are we saying bitcoin is this? Because it's stupid volatile and seems pretty correlated to inflation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People on HN are smarter than me, and they all seem to hate bitcoin with passion, but I haven't yet understood why. I think it might be harder to recognize its value when it's part of your implicit cultural background: the dollar is money. Because if BTC is going to be my money for transactions, I actively do not want any of the speculation on its price. It’s not useful for normal transactions if the price can swin…
You do realize that people heavily speculate on the price of dollars, stocks, real estate, etc., don't you? ;-) In all seriousness, we do understand what you are saying, bitcoin's price relative to the things you want to buy does fluctuate pretty heavily right now because it is still very much in the early adoption phase. But eventually that will even out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Traditional ACH transactions take days because they're not even transmitted to the other bank until the end of the day. Then you have to wait for their response. Credit cards are even worse. All you get instantly is whether the card info is valid and has that much credit. But it could be a stolen card or a customer who issues a fraudulent chargeback, and you may not find out about that for a month or more. Meanwhile…
When I pay something via credit card in an online store, my bank's app gives me a transaction notification within 3-5 seconds. I don't know whether that means that the transaction has been fully settled, but at least it appears to be moving through the system rather quickly. > Traditional ACH transactions take days because they're not even transmitted to the other bank until the end of the day. From what I hear in th…
The real test of transaction settlement time is how quickly you can withdraw physical dollars from the bank