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Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

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Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#131

Post by krupan »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #105
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #75

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…

> But it could be a stolen card Ah yes and bitcoin is better here because it doesn't even try to stop stolen money from being used.

Some people complain Bitcoin isn't anonymous enough, others complain that it doesn't have built-in protection that would absolutely require an invasion of privacy

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#132

Post by krupan »

lawn wrote: post #113
krupan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$4 per what? Do you even know? Have you heard of the lightning network that is a fast transaction layer built on top of Bitcoin?

Is it too hard to comprehend what I wrote? Average fee per transaction? I have heard about this mystery thing that supposedly solves all of Bitcoins problems. Except that it's been years and it's still not ready, you still have load it up via the expensive transactions and you have to use third party services to get a somewhat useable UX. Lightning is even more of a joke than Bitcoin is.

Yeah, you don't even have the right units on that metric, Bitcoin fees are not per transaction. They are not scaled by the amount of Bitcoin you are transacting either. It's a per byte fee. Different transactions take up more or less space on the blockchain depending on how many addresses are involved.

Here's a good explanation:

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/fees/

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#133

Post by jqpabc123 »

fastball wrote: post #20
jqpabc123 wrote: post #3

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…

Solving double-spend in a distributed / decentralized system sounds like a guarantee to me?

Cart before the horse. There is no guarantee that you can even "single spend" crypto.

Prove me wrong by paying next month's rent with it. Let me know how it goes.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#134

Post by krupan »

__loam wrote: post #129
krupan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think you can call something early adoption if it's been around for 15 years. The iPhone had been around for about the same amount of time and it's a mature platform. The "it's early" argument is really only peddled by people who seem to have an interest in bitcoin's value increasing.

The temptation for sarcasm here is so high...15 whole years huh? This isn't a JavaScript framework we are talking about here. A secure and reliable financial system has very different properties than a consumer product like an iPhone.

You do know the Internet got started in the 1960's, right? And didn't really take off until 30 years later?

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#135

Post by dukeyukey »

krupan wrote: post #56
notamy wrote: post #11

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.

> You do realize that people heavily speculate on the price of dollars, stocks, real estate, etc., don't you? ;-)

The supermarket doesn't let me use stocks or houses to buy milk and bread, and fortunately I live in a stable enough country that currency fluctuations are fairly minimal. Compared to Bitcoin it may as well not move at all!

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#136

Post by dukeyukey »

krupan wrote: post #35
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with bitcoin is it's fundamentally a terrible currency. With a transaction time of between 30 minutes and 16 hours, throughput of 7 transactions per second, and an energy consumption comparable to a medium sized country, it's an obviously awful currency for anything other than selling large quantities of drugs, ransom payments, or gambling.

You are talking about settlement times of Bitcoin transactions. Yes, those take 10 minutes at best, or roughly around an hour if you want to be very confident that the funds have settled. Settlement times on dollars is generally 3 days at best. The lightning network on top of Bitcoin gives you credit card speed transaction times, with settlement still happening on the Bitcoin layer in minutes not days.

> Settlement times on dollars is generally 3 days at best.

If I do a card payment the merchant knows they'll get the money inside a few seconds. Same if I use cash, or a bank transfer.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#137

Post by fastball »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #133
fastball wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solving double-spend in a distributed / decentralized system sounds like a guarantee to me?

Cart before the horse. There is no guarantee that you can even "single spend" crypto. Prove me wrong by paying next month's rent with it. Let me know how it goes.

I do pay my rent in crypto

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#138

Post by AnthonyMouse »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #105
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #75

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…

> But it could be a stolen card Ah yes and bitcoin is better here because it doesn't even try to stop stolen money from being used.

Credit cards don't stop stolen money from being used, all they do is make it a theft from the merchant instead of a theft from the cardholder.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#139

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jmye wrote: post #111
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that matter? If you're only holding $50 then your maximum exposure is $50. And if it turns into $100 then you're not exactly complaining about it.

Seriously? Because if it goes to five when I need to use it for groceries, I’m in a bit of a pickle. That does not happen with the USD/Euro/whatever.

> Because if it goes to five when I need to use it for groceries, I’m in a bit of a pickle.

Why? You're out $45. That sucks, but since you're not a Bitcoin speculator who holds all their assets in Bitcoin, you only have to open your phone and exchange something for another $50 worth of Bitcoin so you can use it to buy groceries.

Maybe you could use the $50 you made that time your $50 in Bitcoin turned into $100 and then you used half of it to invest in something else because you're not a Bitcoin speculator who needs more than $50 worth of Bitcoin at any given time.

> That does not happen with the USD/Euro/whatever.

When you're measuring dollars in bread rather than Bitcoin in dollars, the consequence is that a loaf of bread costs more dollars. People are complaining about this happening right now.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#140

Post by AnthonyMouse »

the_gastropod wrote: post #120
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MLM schemes are a scam because the premise is that you'll make money, but there is no creation of value and the increase in value just comes from the increase in users. Once you saturate the market, the last people to get in are left holding the bag. They lose their money so someone else could get it. Cryptocurrencies increase in value as more people use them, but they don't fall to zero as a result of becoming wides…

Avon, Amway, Vector, Mary Kay, etc have been fleecing suckers WAY longer than Bitcoin has existed. I don’t know where they your “MLM’s go to zero” idea is coming from. Sure, many MLMs go to zero. But so do many cryptocurrencies.

Avon et al are the people at the top of the pyramid. They don't go out of business, they keep running the scam until they get arrested or run out of suckers. And P.T. Barnum said something about the latter.

It's the suckers whose "investment" in one of these things goes to zero, which happens all the time.

There are cryptocurrencies that go to zero, but there are also government currencies that go to zero. They go to zero when people stop using them as a currency, not when they become so widespread that you've saturated the market for suckers.

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