Cryptocurrency does not have anything close to widespread consumer adoption. If the Coinbase’s of the world don’t fix this, cryptocurrency will be massively devalued.
Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
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Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
#12That was very optimistic. And $200k Bitcoin? Might as well suggest $2m Bitcoin and the odds will be about the same. I've become very pessimistic around cryptocurrency after a year of chasing coins. Wake me up when Turtlecoin hits $10.
I remember people scoffing at the concept of 100 dollars per bitcoin like it couldn't possibly happen.
I remember people scoffing at the internet like there no legitimate use-cases for it. "Yeah, we have places for information, it's called Grolier's Encyclopedia on CD-ROM, and it's cheap!". "I already have yellow pages delivered for free by C&P Bell". While cryptocurrency may be quite a bit more narrow, blockchain is most likely a far more interesting technology.
Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
#13I’m pretty new to crypto in general, but it seems to me that the primary value of it in coming years would be anonymity/privacy.
As I understand it Bitcoin has some problems in this regard, but others have solved it.
I just can’t find it hard to believe we get to 2030 without a way to buy things anonymously online.
Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
#14I was thinking with some friends recently (new year's eve) : considering a bitcoin model with a fixed finite amount of currency, won't every coin be lost at some point due to storage failure/lost keys/etc ? Statistically ? And rather sooner than later, if my thinking is right ? Like the birthday problem ?
There is a maximum of 21x10^6 bitcoins, imagining a 0.01 chance of losing 1 bitcoin/day ?
Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
#15That was very optimistic. And $200k Bitcoin? Might as well suggest $2m Bitcoin and the odds will be about the same. I've become very pessimistic around cryptocurrency after a year of chasing coins. Wake me up when Turtlecoin hits $10.
Bitcoin's price seems to follow stock-to-flow pretty well, so if it holds, $200k is an underestimation.
Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
#16Consider the source, right? How many people without a large vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency consider further growth likely? My guess is that governments will more and more realize that the main utility of blockchains is money laundering and speculation. As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve any above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense than existin…
I honestly don't understand where the perception comes from that this technology is only useful for laundering and speculation. Certainly it is currently being used for those purposes. But to say there is no imaginable use outside of that seems unwarranted.
I've commented in the past here that the use of public blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and escrow services will be a huge cost reduction for many industries such as finance. The technology as of today is not ready to handle that use case, but with the developments currently in the pipeline for Ethereum v2, progress is being made in that direction.
If you look at what MakerDAO is doing with the Dai stablecoin, they've proven that it's possible to create a synthetic asset closely pegged to the dollar purely through financial incentives, and they did it all just using Ethereum v1. A holder of Dai can earn 4% APY through a Dai Savings Account, and a vote is currently in place to raise the rate to 6%.
I personally find it incredible that an asset exists on the blockchain that's equivalent in value to USD, with a higher APY than you can get from any US bank. And because everything is on the blockchain, there's a public ledger of exactly how much is being collected in interest from those who are collateralizing their Ether for a Dai loan, how much of that interest is being paid to savings account holders, and how much is being collected by the system as surplus. It's the closest thing we have right now to a decentralized bank.
Whether or not you buy into the technology, it's improving by the day and more and more use cases and applications are being tried out and built. If all you see in blockchain is money laundering and speculation, you haven't been paying attention.
Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
#17Consider the source, right? How many people without a large vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency consider further growth likely? My guess is that governments will more and more realize that the main utility of blockchains is money laundering and speculation. As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve any above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense than existin…
> As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve any above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense than existing technologies.
If you mean by that, it's possible to have a fiat currency with no dilution, that is true.
Crypto currencies are fundamentally a political innovation; it is much more politically expensive to force dilution onto a crypto-currency than a fiat one. Whether that's valuable enough, I suppose we'll see.
Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
#18I was thinking with some friends recently (new year's eve) : considering a bitcoin model with a fixed finite amount of currency, won't every coin be lost at some point due to storage failure/lost keys/etc ? Statistically ? And rather sooner than later, if my thinking is right ? Like the birthday problem ? There is a maximum of 21x10^6 bitcoins, imagining a 0.01 chance of losing 1 bitcoin/day ?
As the scarcity increase would they become more valuable or less valuable?
Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
#19That was very optimistic. And $200k Bitcoin? Might as well suggest $2m Bitcoin and the odds will be about the same. I've become very pessimistic around cryptocurrency after a year of chasing coins. Wake me up when Turtlecoin hits $10.
I remember people scoffing at the concept of 100 dollars per bitcoin like it couldn't possibly happen.
I remember people assuming bitcoin will just keep doubling in price forever. Oh wait, they are still right here.
Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s
#20Consider the source, right? How many people without a large vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency consider further growth likely? My guess is that governments will more and more realize that the main utility of blockchains is money laundering and speculation. As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve any above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense than existin…
I’d much rather see a practical and modern replacement for physical cash that doesn’t impose a multiple percentage point revenue hit on businesses than a $200k bitcoin.