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How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

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Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#101

Post by KVFinn »

seiji wrote: post #98
KVFinn wrote: post #58

I was in the early days of Dogecoin and it was fun BECAUSE it was worthless. Give out 10k on a lark for a funny picture, etc. Now that's it's being seen a real story of value, rather than a tool to send a bit of karma around... it's kinda losing the fun. Serious investor/speculator people are buying and selling, arbitrage between exchanges, absolutely massive GPU farms that out mine anything regular person could get.…

I was in the early days of Dogecoin It launched two weeks ago.

>>I was in the early days of Dogecoin >It launched two weeks ago

Yup.

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#102

Post by throwaway_yy2Di »

kordless wrote: post #87
minimax wrote: post #83

Here we have more evidence of the miraculous ability of crypto currencies to turn unassuming computer programmers into economics experts. Let's take a look at some choice quotes. There’s no inherent reason that a piece of paper has a certain amount of value. There is a subjective reason, though: namely, that a large enough number of people agree that USD is a worthwhile commodity. They believe that for a number of re…

I'd argue that cryptocurrencies have a fair amount of commodity worth to them. The security of the coin is enabled by work put into the system by miners. Hypothetically there is some value in linking a commodity compute operation to crypto coin value. BTW, I looked to see if there was a correlation between oil commodity and USD, and here's what I found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency Note the bit about oi…

"I'd argue that cryptocurrencies have a fair amount of commodity worth to them. The security of the coin is enabled by work put into the system by miners. Hypothetically there is some value in linking a commodity compute operation to crypto coin value."

You got causality backwards. Intrinsic value is what you can get out of a commodity, not what you spent putting into it. I can spend $100,000 cooking a hotdog over a Tesla Roadster bonfire; this does not inject $100,000 of intrinsic value into the hotdog.

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#103

Post by firebones »

gojomo wrote: post #92
hmsimha wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In-game currencies are already a thing, but I suspect the reason they never caught on as viable liquid currency is their centralized nature.

For in-game currencies so far, the centralization has meant two strikes: one, fear of the proprietor's control; two, the risk other entities (governments) could exert control via pressure on the proprietor. Emergent decentralized currencies address both – and might also improve centralized-proprietor currencies by competition and precedent. (Proprietors will accept more community input, and win greater tolerance from…

Exactly. In-game currencies showed the potential since they broke out to have value in the real world, but could never really catch on beyond those gaming subcultures due to the friction involved. Dogecoin's light attitude is a great marketing tool and will help further reduce the friction involved in using it.

The thing to watch for: when another online community embraces the dogecoin tipbot culture. That would be a strong indicator of long-term stickiness. The OP joked about having no /u/dogetipbot on HackerNews, but that's exactly the kind of feature that I suspect will start turning up in a number of communities.

With regard to games, Valve hired an economist some time ago. I'd love to see if they have anything planned with regard to innovating in this space. Could you have an in-game currency backed by a cryptocurrency?

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#104

Post by oafitupa »

minimax wrote: post #83

Here we have more evidence of the miraculous ability of crypto currencies to turn unassuming computer programmers into economics experts. Let's take a look at some choice quotes. There’s no inherent reason that a piece of paper has a certain amount of value. There is a subjective reason, though: namely, that a large enough number of people agree that USD is a worthwhile commodity. They believe that for a number of re…

"oil tends to be priced in dollars internationally"

And when that doesn't happen, suddenly they have the CIA overthrowing their leader, creating terrorists groups for false-flag operations, the US government spreading lies about WMDs, and then the entire army can go and fight the illegal (by international laws) war on terror.

There should be a war on ignorance, so that we don't have to read comments like yours anymore.

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#105

Post by greyman »

jff wrote: post #89

The funniest part about Dogecoin was how the initial point was to make fun of bitcoins, but it rapidly turned to people taking it pretty seriously but pretending they aren't. Dogecoin mining pools, dogecoins for sale on ebay... they've become what they hate.

I disagree, it was not making fun of bitcoins as a concept, but only satirized some aspects of the bitcoin community, and at the same time trying to make the cryptocurrencies to be more accessible to people. Moreover, part of the joke was that it very well could become real.

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#107

Post by ChuckMcM »

egypturnash wrote: post #90
minimax wrote: post #83

Here we have more evidence of the miraculous ability of crypto currencies to turn unassuming computer programmers into economics experts. Let's take a look at some choice quotes. There’s no inherent reason that a piece of paper has a certain amount of value. There is a subjective reason, though: namely, that a large enough number of people agree that USD is a worthwhile commodity. They believe that for a number of re…

The OP gets snarky about the reasons people think dollars are a viable medium if exchange; you get serious. But four of your six reasons why people use dollars kinda boil down to "people use dollars because lots of people use dollars". He's realized that "money" is just a very complicated game we play with each other. Possibly this is the lead-in to realizing that society is also a complicated game we play with each…

And the author figures out it is all about liquidity, which it is. The reason you might take a Euro for something is that you can give it to your bank and they can convert it into something you can use for more things (dollars, rupees what ever).

I'm really curious though about what happens when someone walks up to Coinbase (as an example) and says "I've got 150,000BTC, please convert that into dollars for me at the market rate. What? No worries I'll just wait here. You can wire the dollars to this account here ..."

Let's assume that BTC were trading at $600 each, that is $90M dollars. Where does Coinbase get the $90M to cover their side of the transaction? Since nobody "bought" the BTC from Coinbase (perhaps some was bought there, but perhaps someone had just stolen it from the FBI or something) the counter party to that transaction (the person who gave dollars for BTC or gave watt-hours for BTC) their contributed value isn't at Coinbase, it is spread across perhaps a half dozen exchanges.

How does that even work at scale?

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#108

Post by derleth »

thwest wrote: post #93
minimax wrote: post #83

Here we have more evidence of the miraculous ability of crypto currencies to turn unassuming computer programmers into economics experts. Let's take a look at some choice quotes. There’s no inherent reason that a piece of paper has a certain amount of value. There is a subjective reason, though: namely, that a large enough number of people agree that USD is a worthwhile commodity. They believe that for a number of re…

> That's a bunch of needlessly cynical and completely ignorant bullshit. [...] It isn't something that's done at the point of a gun. Alan Greenspan is of the opinion that our Iraq wars were 'largely about oil' and economic stability. The point is debatable, but certainly not completely ignorant bullshit.

If the 'point of a gun' element was the major determinant in how much currencies are worth, Zimbabwe, which had and has a military sufficient to kill its own citizens, would never have had hyperinflation.

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#109

Post by edwardio »

KVFinn wrote: post #64
Houshalter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we could always make a new worthless currency. And set it so it intentionally inflates infinitely so that this can't happen. Zimbabwe-coin maybe.

>Well we could always make a new worthless currency. And set it so it intentionally inflates infinitely so that this can't happen. Zimbabwe-coin maybe. Yeah that might work. If you could somehow decay the value of held currency to encourage spending directly that would be even better though I can't imagine it being feasible.

Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radioactive_isotopes_by..., californium-253 has a nice 17 day half-life. I propose we make this our new value of currency.

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#110

Post by X4 »

minimax wrote: post #83

Here we have more evidence of the miraculous ability of crypto currencies to turn unassuming computer programmers into economics experts. Let's take a look at some choice quotes. There’s no inherent reason that a piece of paper has a certain amount of value. There is a subjective reason, though: namely, that a large enough number of people agree that USD is a worthwhile commodity. They believe that for a number of re…

Just asking, but isn't there a flaw in the logic and that this is actually not a one-way, but a two-way system? Like folowing:

* TWTR → USD → BTC → DOGE → MYCOMPANY *

* MYCOMPANY → DOGE -> BTC → USD → TWTR

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