11–20 of 273 posts
The proper question is what does cryptocurrency do better than alternatives? On the whole... I think bypassing financial controls to enable ransomware is not an improvement on the previous system.
This is packed full of odd arguments - > Crypto is successful at being money. If you don't believe me, then I'm happy to sell you the laptop I'm writing this on for 1,000 ETH instead of 1,000 USD. How about 1000 kilos of gold? Or 1000 1 Carat Diamonds? Does that make diamonds good money? > Right now, you can take out a loan without involving a bank from one of the many crypto lending protocols. Yes, but you over-coll…
> How about 1000 kilos of gold? Or 1000 1 Carat Diamonds? Does that make diamonds good money?
This is a good argument, but I think a better one would be that there is no way the seller is willing to sell any laptop for 1,000 ETH, given that the value of 1000 ETH as of writing is over 1.5m AUD.
If they gave me a quote for the actual value of the laptop in AUD (perhaps 1-2 ETH?) I would still say no, because the inherent volatility in even the most "stable" coins is too high. 2 ETH might be worth 3k AUD today, who knows what it will be when it arrives, let alone when I want to spend it.
A) it's a great speculative asset. Huge volatility in value means fortunes can be made (and lost) in days not lifetimes. All those crypto ads on the radio talk about "investing" in Bitcoin - marketing it as an asset, not about using it as currency. It appears to be a zero sum game. I'll make no judgement about its actual value as an asset.
B) it makes illegal transactions safer by removing the need to be physically present to receive cash. This simplifies things like drug deals, and of course with digital goods makes things like ransomware possible.
Crypto already has two killer apps, it's just not the killer apps they wanted it to be.
> Few technologies have a clear start point. Did the internet start in Tim Berners-Lee in 1990? Or in 1982 with TCP/IP? Or in the 1970's with CYCLADES? Or in 1969 with ARPANET? Or in 1965 with the invention of packet switching? Or in 1950's with time-sharing?
No, the web started in 1989 with Berners-Lee’s original proposal. The internet started in 1983 with TCP/IP (the Internet Protocol) being used for ARPANET. These are common, widely cited timeframes.
> Can you distinguish the internet from computers or information theory?
Yes, the internet is a network of networks made up of computers. A computer is not the internet. Information theory is the theoretical study of information and entropy started by Claude Shannon.
> If you don't believe me, then I'm happy to sell you the laptop I'm writing this on for 1,000 ETH instead of 1,000 USD.
Great, I’ll help you move house for a pizza, but that doesn’t make pizza money. The fact of the matter is, I can’t buy hardly anything with cryptocurrency except other cryptocurrencies. This is made more difficult even for companies that want to offer goods for crypto by the fact there is no stable exchange rate to USD.
> Right now, you can take out a loan without involving a bank from one of the many crypto lending protocols.
Lol, was this written before or after the collapse of Luna, Three Arrow Capital, and Celsius? Not to mention the numerous bridge hacks. I guess technically, sure, this is a valid (ie possible) use case of crypto, but not a strong one.
> You may point to hacks
I would argue a malfunctioning lending protocol is as good as no lending protocol, but again, this is a matter of opinion.
> Filecoin
Interesting use case for sure, but unfortunately it seems difficult to participate (and I initially had interest in doing so). IPFS is much further along development-wise. You may say “oh well this is still a use case of crypto” but… not really. I mean sure I can get paid in $FIL but if $FIL is useless in the real world (basically my earlier critique that it is not money) then why would I want to get paid in it?
Overall, I want to agree and perhaps it’s just a couple years too early, but as of now, this is too strong of a claim to make, or at least too weak of an argument to support it.
This article seems like it's reaching. I don't think "money" accurately describes what cryptocurrency is because most people who use USD don't trade on the FOREX markets, but most cryptocurrency users are primarily focused on the exchange rate of BTC to USD, not it's functionality as a currency. It's better described as a security, and while it can be used as a medium of exchange its volatility can make that expensiv…
You’re talking apples and oranges.
I think, given recent blowups, it could be related to limits on rehypothecation. But hard to know for sure.
A use case like Helium sounds useful, but using a Blockchain doesn't necessarily add obvious value. The fundamentals don't make sense, you pay for power in dollars but you're paid back in monopoly money. It makes it harder for users to understand the underlying costs... But then again, maybe ambiguity is the value proposition.
This article seems like it's reaching. I don't think "money" accurately describes what cryptocurrency is because most people who use USD don't trade on the FOREX markets, but most cryptocurrency users are primarily focused on the exchange rate of BTC to USD, not it's functionality as a currency. It's better described as a security, and while it can be used as a medium of exchange its volatility can make that expensiv…
Either I can't actually buy things with "crypto" in the world where grown ups reside or I don't want to part with it because I see it as a speculative investment/gambling.
Utterly absurd and yet even still seems to make the exact opposite point. 1000 ETH can be sold for over USD1m, if ETH were successful money surely you would be indifferent to receiving $1000 and $1000 worth of ETH. Not to mention this seems to imply everything is ‘money’, I’d swap my phone for an RTX3090 so I guess it’s money too. In some sense maybe but this is so broad that the word ‘money’ ceases to have much use discussing.
This piece is ridiculous. It accuses people who believe there are no use cases of making a bad faith statement while interpreting it in the most literal way possible. They aren’t saying you can’t do anything at all with crypto. Many crypto projects are interesting from a purely technical perspective, but mass market adoption isn’t driven by admiration of a technical implementation.
It presents several technologies most of which have been developed as a crypto version of an existing technology for which a use case exists. In this circumstance the ‘use-case’ sceptics refer to is a feature that dominates the existing products for a price users are willing to pay. For the novel ones it's still unknown, but scepticism here is obviously warranted.
I’m not even wedded to my scepticism of crypto. I have an interest in distributed systems and seeing ways people try to design byzantine fault tolerant systems. But I’m yet to see a project that I would use at all and I semi-regularly look.
Even the final claim to cut out middlemen is false. To the end user transaction fees paid to miners don't feel any different to a fee charged by a bank on a transfer except maybe in magnitude.
edited: said USD instead of ETH