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PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

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

#151

Post by G3rn0ti »

zucker42 wrote: post #149
G3rn0ti wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So it seems like to me you are saying that PoW has energy issues but that's not a problem because of PoS, but at the same time PoW (BTC) will continue to exist and consume at least the same amount of energy as it currently does. It's concerning to me that there's not even a "light at the end of the tunnel" as far as BTC's energy usage goes.

> but at the same time PoW (BTC) will continue to exist and consume at least the same amount of energy as it currently

No, I said that BTC is _currently_ more popular for the reasons I describe and _predicted_ it to become a niche crypto asset in the future. I might be proven wrong but this scenario I described should you make you sleep well at night, again. ;-)

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

#152

Post by freeone3000 »

rawtxapp wrote: post #91
freeone3000 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram. C3.ai. Uber. Heck, Tesla. Curv has the advantage of actually being profitable.

These all had and continue to have enormous amount of users. I'm not sure how you can argue that these all got their valuations based on hype alone.

Users are hype by another name. They lacked revenue.

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

#153

Post by basch »

piplikoc wrote: post #133
ahelwer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an interesting example of people being too close to something, technically, to really see its totality. I'm a distributed systems person so I basically blew off Bitcoin two bubble-cycles ago because of the 3 tx/sec issue and the obvious deficiencies of the proposed lightning network workaround. I also took an in-depth look at a cryptocurrency with a supposed better protocol (Nano) and was very unimpresse…

What do you think about Cardano/ADA? I am not an expert in the space, but to me it seems that they have a lot of research behind their blockchain and they solved the energy consumption problem with a proof of stake system, and their fees are pretty cheap compared to Bitcoin or Ethereum.

HN might be sleeping on a fundamental world changing piece of software here. Interestingly enough, despite not having released the last pieces yet, a surprising amount of future value is already priced in.

The blanket dismissal of all cryptocompute/cryptocontracts, because people only see it as a currency, is going to leave a lot of people behind. This is more like the emergence of virtualization or time sharing or c++. Cardano is multiple different development platforms and languages and an entire ecosystem. It's a backbone, the kind of underlying infrastructure that will go unseen by the masses, but be underneath a many things.

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

#154

Post by mastermojo »

ahelwer wrote: post #41
ceilingcorner wrote: post #25

I have no interest in cryptocurrencies and I don’t own a single cent in any of them. But the continual barrage of hostile comments in every single HN article looks mostly like groupthink to me. Clearly cryptocurrency will continue to play a growing role in the future. Denying this seems simply delusional.

I think it's an interesting example of people being too close to something, technically, to really see its totality. I'm a distributed systems person so I basically blew off Bitcoin two bubble-cycles ago because of the 3 tx/sec issue and the obvious deficiencies of the proposed lightning network workaround. I also took an in-depth look at a cryptocurrency with a supposed better protocol (Nano) and was very unimpresse…

Interesting. I found out about Bitcoin in 2012, took a distributed systems seminar in 2013 covering byzantine fault tolerance, paxos etc and at that point Bitcoin metaphorically blew my mind. I feel like anyone who understood how seminal Paxos was could easily draw parallels to Bitcoin.

Despite all of Bitcoin's shortcomings, I'm a strong believer in the technology and the protocol. If we compare it to the internet and TCP/IP it is pretty designed. In real life its not necessarily the perfect protocol that wins. Sometimes a "crappy" one gets a head start, but it's good enough, and people will patch it along the way. The network participants will also end up using the network in novel ways that were not designed for originally.

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

#155

Post by mastermojo »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #33
ceilingcorner wrote: post #25

I have no interest in cryptocurrencies and I don’t own a single cent in any of them. But the continual barrage of hostile comments in every single HN article looks mostly like groupthink to me. Clearly cryptocurrency will continue to play a growing role in the future. Denying this seems simply delusional.

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…

I think I would agree that cryptocurrency is probably a less worthy allocation of energy than keeping homeless people warm or something. However, money/energy are finite resources allocated based on free market mechanics. People use energy/money how they want.

It's not a very constructive use of time to criticize how the free market allocates resources. People are going to buy and run basketball teams, Ferraris, bitcoin mining rigs whether you yell at them or not.

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

#156

Post by grey-area »

xur17 wrote: post #147
grey-area wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me you have failed to answer why such a distributed blockchain settlement layer at the bottom is necessary at all? What payoff does it bring except to justify Bitcoin’s existence? To solve ‘this’, i.e. global payments throw bitcoin away and start again. Focus on the problems real people have with payments, identity, trust, fees, speed, reliability, reversibility, somewhere reliable to store their money. B…

Cash on the internet. I want to be able to send money to someone else on the internet without trusting a third party, and I want it to settle quickly / in a way that is "cash-like" (no reversibility). It isn't going to solve all problems, but as far as I know there is no other global payment system that solves for what I described.

Sure, that's a good use-case though rather niche, as most people definitely don't want irreversible transactions. It's certainly well suited to that use and I agree better than normal payment networks for it.

I'm not convinced that niche in any way justifies the current valuation or hype, in particular from corps like Payal.

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

#157

Post by loceng »

rawtxapp wrote: post #58
loceng wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hostile comments in which direction? It's an interesting perspective too when you realize: - people who have counter-narrative to the Bitcoin propaganda aren't financially incentivized to be negative about it, and obviously their commentary will be negative - people who own Bitcoin are financially incentivized to speak positively about it, while also suppressing those with a counter-narrative That Bitcoin has a futur…

> people who have counter-narrative to the Bitcoin propaganda aren't financially incentivized to be negative about it They are incentivized to be negative about it, because whether you like it or not, not buying into it has real opportunity costs. If it ends up becoming the global currency, then you'd be left behind.

That's quite the mental gymnastics: no - they won't be left behind, unless regulatory capture forces people to use Bitcoin vs. say USD - which is exactly why they won't be left behind, and exactly why most people aren't going to buy Bitcoin because why the hell would they want to decrease their wealth by paying into a system that transfers wealth from later adopters to earlier adopters? It's a Ponzi-Pyramid scheme because of the MLM structure + the rest of society doesn't want to be the ones "left holding the bag" as it's said in Ponzi schemes.

People aren't stupid, though there are greedy and gullible people who like to gamble and speculate - and their hope that Bitcoin will have some competitive advantage over any numerous other structures that aren't incentivized via financial gain - but are actually good for society - and not leading to "consensus" via financial gain but through actual democratic processes where, if it makes sense to, a blockchain not structured like a Ponzi-Pyramid scheme can be voted into use by its citizens.

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

#158

Post by loceng »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #90
loceng wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all artificial value. If the actual money people paid was destroyed/transferred into Bitcoin instead of just transferred to whomever you bought it from, then the value would be real - but it's not.

> it’s all artificial value The distinction between artificial and natural i.e. intrinsic value is completely arbitrary if you think it through. Where do you think comes the value of dollar bills from? Of course, why things have value originates in their utility. But everybody has a different idea of utility. You don’t think Bitcoin is useful but others have a different value. That’s why they are investing despite th…

"Since Bitcoin’s market cap is nearing the $1T mark quite a lot of people seem to agree in its utility..."

Speculation/gambling as primarily utility, sure. But there are better models that can compete on price and without the unavoidable pitfalls of Bitcoin that are too dangerous to society to have - and I'm not even going to bother to list a main example which gets ignored/unresponded to 100% of the time I ask.

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

#159

Post by jki275 »

berenza wrote: post #127
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You still have to have a ton of power. You won't generate all that outside of a power grid unless you own your own hydro dams or something.
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