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PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

financemagnates.com

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Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#121

Post by sneak »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #28
maayank wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work for a competitor. Multi-party computation (MPC) enables you to participate in public key cryptography with shares ("parts") of a private key divided between multiple participants from the get-go, i.e. without ever having the private key in memory at any point in time. So for example, if you divide the shares between mobile devices and servers then all of them would need to communicate with one anot…

What’s the advantage over a „multi sig“ wallet?

Multisig needs to be on-chain, and involves multiple disparate signatures. MPC creates a single signature offchain without any one party having a complete private key.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#122

Post by mattfrommars »

With Coinbase going public and another crypto start up to be acquired. Anyone else here believes that "dumb people buy crypto, smart people make marketplace"?

To me, it seems that is the main money maker and not 'day trading bitcoin/eth/ and alt-coins'? Unless you the founder of a brand new coin and make truck load of money from ICO only - which has been the case so far.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#123

Post by [deleted] »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #37
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency isn’t going away, but it’s dishonest to pretend that it’s not without major problems such as the energy consumption issues. The popular narrative has also become almost indistinguishable from a pump scheme, where we’re all supposed to buy and home (never sell) until we’re all rich. If cryptocurrency becomes commonplace, it likely won’t look anything like our current crypto infrastructure. The problem i…

Lots of things have environmental problems. I don’t understand why Bitcoin mining gets singled out for it. If the benefits of using it outweigh the downsides, then I don’t see the issue.

[deleted]

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#124

Post by G3rn0ti »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #105
G3rn0ti wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> major problems such as the energy consumption issues You don’t seem to know much about crypto currencies to name energy usage as a real problem of crypto. While Bitcoin will keep it’s “proof of work” approach to mining in the foreseeable future, there are now quite a few alternative crypto currencies in circulation employing “proof of stake” that do not suffer from large computer power usage e.g. Cardano, Solana or…

I don't see anything above like a statement that Bitcoin will "destroy the planet". But the claim that its comparatively large energy footprint contributes to that destruction seems perfectly reasonable - the common comparison is that Bitcoin currently "uses more electricity than Argentina"[1]. Not surprisingly lots of mining is colocated with hydropower or geothermal power generation, but mainly because that's cheap…

> Not surprisingly lots of mining is colocated with hydropower

And, hence, miners’ energy use does not correlate to their carbon footprint directly. That’s often overlooked.

Furthermore, there is a strong economic incentive for Bitcoin miners to save energy to stay more competitive. Bitcoin mining is done on specialized hardware (ASICs), nowadays, and these devices will get more efficient since the market is still in its infancy.

BTW: What do you think is the carbon footprint of Netflix, YouTube or Pornhub? And what’s their economic utility? If we start critizing IT projects for their energy usage, I don’t think Bitcoin & Co are the biggest culprits.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#125

Post by grey-area »

xur17 wrote: post #56
ahelwer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so it isn't 3 tx/sec. It's a bit more than that. Not an order of magnitude more, or two orders of magnitude, or the five orders of magnitude more to have the throughput required for everyone on earth to be able to transact once per day, say to buy lunch. You talk about BTC as a settlement layer. A settlement layer for what? The lightning network? Laughable. BTC might have a future as a store of value like gold,…

> Okay, so it isn't 3 tx/sec. It's a bit more than that. Not an order of magnitude more, or two orders of magnitude, or the five orders of magnitude more to have the throughput required for everyone on earth to be able to transact once per day, say to buy lunch. > You talk about BTC as a settlement layer. A settlement layer for what? The lightning network? Laughable. Personal opinion: I think the part you are missing…

It should be expensive for a transaction like that to occur

It should not. Current systems manage it fine, because they don't use an insane model which tries to distribute every transaction to everyone, a model you're saying Bitcoin should move away from, at which point, why does Bitcoin exist?

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have second and third layer networks that sit on top of Bitcoin acting as transaction networks, while the main BTC chain is used for larger transactions or to settle large batches of transactions from other layers.

Instead of think of what we can do for Bitcoin, why don't we think about what it can do for us?

I don't really need a globally distributed ledger and all the problems that brings.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#126

Post by G3rn0ti »

akudha wrote: post #103
G3rn0ti wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> major problems such as the energy consumption issues You don’t seem to know much about crypto currencies to name energy usage as a real problem of crypto. While Bitcoin will keep it’s “proof of work” approach to mining in the foreseeable future, there are now quite a few alternative crypto currencies in circulation employing “proof of stake” that do not suffer from large computer power usage e.g. Cardano, Solana or…

More than energy issues, what is sad is that Bitcoin is kinda becoming what it was started against - huge amounts of bitcoin is in the hands of whales. Most ordinary people have zero interest in practical usage of btc, their only interest is greed ("when moon?"). Companies are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into BTC, hoping to make huge profits. Just like an ordinary person can't afford to buy shares/houses,…

> In other words, concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny group of people.

Well, Bitcoin and Defi already serve the poor in countries where they are being denied access to financial services.

You also need to distinguish between the concentration of wealth and income. The reason for why the wealthy seemingly getting wealthier and the poor getting poorer is in fact the low interest rates payed to savings account holders. Rich people invest in equity or housing. Poor people have no safe means left in Europe and the US to save money and grow their wealth. Apart from the inflation tax the reason for this situation are indeed economic policies of our central banks that have lowered interest rates to almost zero for decades.

Using DeFi services like “Compound.finance” today you can earn significant interest on your Dollars (yes, Dollars not Bitcoin) and that’s exactly because these services are detached from the financial System governed by the Federal reserve or European Central Bank.

I would go so far and argue DeFi and Bitcoin are liberating the poor from economic suppression even in the wealthiest of nations.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#127

Post by berenza »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #105
G3rn0ti wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> major problems such as the energy consumption issues You don’t seem to know much about crypto currencies to name energy usage as a real problem of crypto. While Bitcoin will keep it’s “proof of work” approach to mining in the foreseeable future, there are now quite a few alternative crypto currencies in circulation employing “proof of stake” that do not suffer from large computer power usage e.g. Cardano, Solana or…

I don't see anything above like a statement that Bitcoin will "destroy the planet". But the claim that its comparatively large energy footprint contributes to that destruction seems perfectly reasonable - the common comparison is that Bitcoin currently "uses more electricity than Argentina"[1]. Not surprisingly lots of mining is colocated with hydropower or geothermal power generation, but mainly because that's cheap…

bitcoin mining does not need grid power, just internet connection. you can set up a mine in the middle of the desert, or in antarctica, and it works just fine. if grid energy gets expensive enough, a lot of things will become unfeasible but bitcoin won't be one of them.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#128

Post by rawtxapp »

tomlagier wrote: post #118
rawtxapp wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people believe it to be the future global reserve currency. Whether you agree with that or not, there's a non-zero probability of that becoming true. And the scarcity means that a central entity can't dilute your holdings as they please, so you can actually save it. Emeralds are not digital, they are not that fungible, you can't easily divide them, no guarantees on supply, etc, etc. Also if you look at it histor…

> Many people believe it to be the future global reserve currency. Whether you agree with that or not, there's a non-zero probability of that becoming true. Mayyyybe. I don't think that's why most people are buying it, though. I think it's your last point. > Also if you look at it historically, it has been the best performing asset in 10 years out of it's 12 year existence which kind of reinforces people's beliefs. Y…

> The idea that an asset needs _no_ intrinsic value in order to be valuable, or that the intrinsic value may have been defined a long time ago and is now irrelevant to its current value just doesn't compute to me.

If you want to, you could argue that the energy spent in mining the coin is the intrinsic value.

Intrinsic value isn't as important in my opinion, what matters is what other people think and agree on.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#129

Post by jjnoakes »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #104
zucker42 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that proof of stake will take over, do you think that Bitcoin will crash? When will Bitcoin stop having the insane environmental impact it has now? If proof of stake is the future, why is the market cap of BTC so high compared to other cryptocurrencies?

Well, Bitcoin was the first of its kind, it’s time and battle tested and technically it might still be the most reliable of all cryptos. Part of the reason for that is “Bitcoin script” not being Turing complete unlike Ethereum’s virtual machine and less prone to software bugs. People, especially newbies trust it much more than other blockchains. That’s why everybody buys Bitcoin, currently. I believe Bitcoin’s going…

> People, especially newbies trust it much more than other blockchains. That’s why everybody buys Bitcoin, currently

How do you know this is the reason? Couldn't another reason (like bitcoin getting the most press/hype) be true instead?

(I do not know the real reason, I'm just wondering why you think the one you stated is the real reason - care to elaborate?)

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#130

Post by chillacy »

zucker42 wrote: post #61
mirekrusin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people have problem with assesing concepts that can only improve with time. For some reason people seem to think that all things behave like a runner "he can run fast now but he'll have to slow down and stop" kind of thinking. As if those concepts have possibility of reverting to become worse than what they are. You could hear similar voices around wikipedia, saying it'll never compete with professionally edi…

Sometimes inventions improve continuously over time, but sometimes they stop improving and stagnate. You can't just assume away criticism of technology with the assertion that things will improve in the future. I think what a lot of cryptocurrency bears see is that blockchain-based currencies, especially BTC, have fundamental problems. Blockchains are fundamentally not scalable; since the more throughput a blockchain…

I feel like I always read reasonable criticism like this and find myself convinced, and then 5 or 10 years later realize that I've missed out on Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Bitcoin, etc. Granted I've probably also saved myself from investing in stuff that hasn't panned out, but in the past 20 years, it would appear that overall market returns are driven by outliers.
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