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You Can Forget About Crypto Now

theatlantic.com

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Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#131

Post by rafaelm »

prepend wrote: post #61
squidbeak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You managed to canvass Iranians, Venezuelans and Argentinians in 9 minutes flat?

It’s actually pretty easy if you’re in a cafe in Venezuela and do a quick sample of 20 random urban caracans to ask if anyone uses crypto. Obviously not a proper sample or authoritative, but pretty easy way to counter “these countries love crypto.”

As a caracan myself, it's actually "caraqueños" :)

Regarding the subject, it is indeed very popular. You can go to restaurants, car parts stores and clothing stores and find the Binance QR code prominently displayed.

And a LOT of freelancers working online have no way of receiving payments from abroad other than through Binance (verifying Paypal here because of currency controls). No one wants to receive the local currency.

I wouldn't say that you'll see grandmothers in the grocery store buying stuff with USDT, but it's definitely used.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#133

Post by meltyness »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #111
x86x87 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The narrative that crypto is usefull jusy for buying drugs or laundering money is ridiculous. A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes. Remember when OnlyFans was in trouble because of the payments processors wanting to pull the rug? You probably don't and you probably are not aware how many people would have been impacted. Do…

> A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes. Ignoring the week-long wire detail (which deserves an explanation because that doesn't resonate with my experience), depending on when you sent that transaction, your wire could've lost a decent amount of value due to the price instability of bitcoin. Losing 5% in a matter of minutes…

You shouldn't call it "losing 5%," BTC price is not an exchange rate, it's a measure of exchange volatility with an integral component tracking trust in ECC, network availability. It's silly to try and compare software to what is essentially a government-financial-corporate feedback loop and it's behaviors.

Every country could severely limit mining, and the supply would continue its steady velocity, whereas sometimes executive behavior spurs financial institutions to simply make the federal banks buy everything.

Fractional reserve banking is an inherently unstable system.

True federation is not.

Ethereum crossed a similar threshold at the merge reducing the calculus, but it's not clear to me if there are any more "difficulty bombs" built in where executive control can be expressed, say in the consensus layer where unilateral control can be expressed over supply.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#134

Post by hotpotamus »

LeeroyWasHere wrote: post #7
HebericNewt wrote: post #6

I can't imagine this ageing well. It doesn't feel different. The evangelists will hurt and the whole crypto industry is set back, the cynics gloat and revel in the schadenfreude and claim for the 748th time that crypto is dead... Until 12 months later when we do it all over again. It's not the biggest, it's not the first, it won't be the last, it's nowhere near the most catastrophic. At least let the dust settle befo…

He writes for Coindesk and Decrypt, journalist are hard to take seriously when they're paid by both sides.

What sides are represented here?

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#135

Post by mhluongo »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #123
x86x87 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The narrative that crypto is usefull jusy for buying drugs or laundering money is ridiculous. A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes. Remember when OnlyFans was in trouble because of the payments processors wanting to pull the rug? You probably don't and you probably are not aware how many people would have been impacted. Do…

You do understand that Wiring money is not slow because of the technology right? And it has everything to do with government regulations around anti-terrorism, anti-money laundering, anti-fraud, etc.? I think it’s hilarious that you think your wire was slow because of the geographical distance the message had to travel (“halfway across the world”) as opposed to the fact that it had to travel across jurisdictions with…

> I think it’s hilarious that you think your wire was slow because of the geographical distance the message had to travel (“halfway across the world”) as opposed to the fact that it had to travel across jurisdictions with different laws

Condescending straw man here.

Being able to use BTC to do this, routing around the various jurisdictional settlement layers, is a huge practical improvement.

Those 7 days don't make society better, they're a drag on the economy and the wallets of anyone who doesn't have access to quicker mechanisms.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#136

Post by Nursie »

x86x87 wrote: post #92
slaw wrote: post #3

> despite the ricketiness of the whole system, despite the constant feeling that everything might fall apart at any moment, there will come a time when crypto really arrives. For me crypto was always Ponzi scheme and nothing more, but it is because I don't laundry money or sell drugs, so I am not the target for crypto.

The narrative that crypto is usefull jusy for buying drugs or laundering money is ridiculous. A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes. Remember when OnlyFans was in trouble because of the payments processors wanting to pull the rug? You probably don't and you probably are not aware how many people would have been impacted. Do…

Funny, I’ve moved hundreds of thousands of dollars between the UK and Australia this year, and it’s never taken more than a few hours. And I got useful money out of the other end, not Bitcoin.

This idea that it’s both useful for large international transfers and a highly volatile investment also seems contradictory.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#137

Post by mhluongo »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #111
x86x87 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The narrative that crypto is usefull jusy for buying drugs or laundering money is ridiculous. A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes. Remember when OnlyFans was in trouble because of the payments processors wanting to pull the rug? You probably don't and you probably are not aware how many people would have been impacted. Do…

> A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes. Ignoring the week-long wire detail (which deserves an explanation because that doesn't resonate with my experience), depending on when you sent that transaction, your wire could've lost a decent amount of value due to the price instability of bitcoin. Losing 5% in a matter of minutes…

We have stable coins that can get you both.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#138

Post by FredPret »

scotty79 wrote: post #100
FredPret wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to note about Warren Buffett: He has a massive pile of money. That makes getting a great return hard - every investment opportunity has a saturation limit. You can invest a million dollars in a local McDonalds, but not a billion or a trillion. This makes finding a good job for every one of his many dollars impossible. A theoretical super-investor who can buy the entire market will eventually get average ret…

I think Warren Buffett success of last few decades is mostly thanks to the market following him, not the other way around. Once he dies his business will tank because there's no secret sauce. Just the name of the man himself.

I do regular value stock searches. Do you know what comes up frequently? BRK-A and BRK-B. Despite his decades-long track record; despite the monster profits regularly posted; despite book after book about him; his business is still undervalued.

Perhaps it is because he invests in unsexy things like chewing gum, insurance, furniture, and candy. (he has lately taken a stake in Apple, but that's the flashiest thing he's ever bought.)

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#139

Post by hedora »

automatic6131 wrote: post #112
sek wrote: post #62

If it is a medium of exchange, all the attention never made a lot of sense. The use cases are niche; that's the thing. Venezuelans who avoid inflation and ordering illegal drugs are not a trillion-dollar business. All the legal/regulated areas mean competing with existing financial infrastructure, which is low margin and incredibly competitive. So if you see the space as a whole, it never had the potential market to…

>It was, in retrospect, simply a bubble It was clearly this since 2016, imho

Since day one, honestly. Otherwise most people here would have stuck $100 in to BTC at $10.
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