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That would only work on a small scale. Large scale, truly massive adoption can't occur until the major financial institutions are on board. If businesses can't legally accept it, put it in a bank, make loan payments with it, all of the normal things you do with money-- or have off ramps to convert to currency to allow that-- then you won't get widespread adoption.
This is true for large business. But an independent contractor, a hair dresser, a carpenter, a plumber, or any number of other people can do business without involving the violent and coercive group known as the state
At best, even if a shadow economy built up to facilitate those transactions, tax agencies (IRS for those of us in the US) will knock on a lot of doors and say "you have lots of stuff. That means you're receiving value of some sort. You owe us a cut of that, pay up."
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Yes, XRP is a bad example of what makes cryptocurrencies useful/interesting for many reasons. I'm just speaking to them in general
Well, okay, what makes BTC inherently worth anything, then? Who cares that someone, somewhere, some time ago, solved some useless math problem? Why dedicate the equivalent of 7 nuclear power plants' worth of electricity[0] to it, when we could use that electricity to offset fossil fuel consumption? I have literally have yet to have anyone explain this adequately beyond the level of "there's a market for it, so, obvio…
As for why people currently /want/ bitcoin, I assume some people find it a good speculation instrument, some people hope that it will be a more stable store of value than fiat currencies, some people have political reasons for wanting to own some, some technical, etc
What’s to explain beyond what’s there at face value? People “want” bitcoin enough to buy it, other people are willing to sell it...
Now as we move further and further away from BTC (not including significantly different cryptocurrencies - ethereum has other advantages for example) into like dogecoin, which has held value for years, it’s clear that we are getting mostly into pure speculation territory. But from a market perspective, even that territory is fine, just don’t want to be the last one holding the bag...
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Could you expand on why you think that? I very much agree with the substantive arguments made by chemmail, and would like to hear yours.
Because it's just pure nonsense, untrue, and totally unsubstantiated (and thoroughly off-topic for the thread). Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it. Rather than any substantive argument, it merely lists a set of wild allegations. But since you asked nicely I'll break it down sentence by sentence. > Blockstream bought out most of the the btc devs who had commit ability Blockstream hired myself and Pi…
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>and correspondingly has not seen any real-world adoption. It is effectively dead. but https://blog.kraken.com/post/7225/a-need-for-speed-kraken-to... and https://coingate.com/lightning-network
> In 2021 So they are still putting money into the project and promising things in the future. Years ago, before venture capital took over BTC, I could buy games on Steam with Bitcoin. Can I buy video games with Lightning? https://blog.kraken.com/post/7225/a-need-for-speed-kraken-to... > https://coingate.com/lightning-network Ok. What can I actually buy with it? There's tons of venture capital going into this project…
I don't get it. A major cryptocurrency exchange says they're planning to adopt it, and that doesn't count as "real-world adoption"? I guess that's true if your original statement read as "not seen any real-world adoption ...[today]" but it certainly doesn't follow that it's dead.
>Ok. What can I actually buy with it?
One of the merchants I've made multiple purchases on uses coingate for payments so that's something for me, at least. That said I'll admit that I haven't used lightning yet because I'm quite happy with the status quo of waiting for a lull in transaction volume so I can pay pennies per transaction (my payments aren't usually urgent). Going through the hassle setting up a lightning node isn't worth saving a few pennies each month in my opinion.
>Years ago, before venture capital took over BTC, I could buy games on Steam with Bitcoin. Can I buy video games with Lightning?
To be fair, bitcoin was launched in 2009 and it took until 2016 for steam to accept it. How many years has lightning been around? Also, while looking up when steam first accepted bitcoin I also found https://twitter.com/udiWertheimer/status/952206482715660289, which answers your second question.
The most surprising thing is how little this announcement has moved the USD exchange rate (~$0.25). That rate is about where it was last month. https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/XRPUSD/?exchange=BITFINE... Yes, there was a big run-up, but that was largely drafting off the increase in the bitcoin exchange rate. The real test will be how much further XRP drops (or doesn't) from here.
The most surprising thing is how little this announcement has moved the USD exchange rate (~$0.25). That rate is about where it was last month. https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/XRPUSD/?exchange=BITFINE... Yes, there was a big run-up, but that was largely drafting off the increase in the bitcoin exchange rate. The real test will be how much further XRP drops (or doesn't) from here.
could we track circulating supply over time? they could just add more and keep the marketcap up as the price dips
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That's not what was implied at all.
“IMHO good move for the ecosystem overall” is what I was referring to. I assumed you meant the crypto ecosystem is that not the case?
A bit of a loose analogy might be regulators stopping the sale of "cheese", which is not actually cheese, next to cheese products. All the other actual-cheeses were cheapened by this "cheese product" being sold alongside it.
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lol, how do you propose to power your mining rig and connect to the internet without a government?
Assuming free people could not create internet and electricity infrastructure is like an East German assuming free markets could not provide a Trabant alternative