Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

blog.coinbase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 278 posts

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#21

Post by capableweb »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #7

Consider the source, right? How many people without a large vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency consider further growth likely? My guess is that governments will more and more realize that the main utility of blockchains is money laundering and speculation. As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve any above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense than existin…

> Consider the source, right? How many people without a large vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency consider further growth likely?

I agree with you in general, but also: The reason it's not that many is because the ones who see further growth, gets a interest into it, maybe even vested interest. So, not a good argument.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#22

Post by djsumdog »

4AoZqrH2fsk5UB wrote: post #13

I’m pretty new to crypto in general, but it seems to me that the primary value of it in coming years would be anonymity/privacy. As I understand it Bitcoin has some problems in this regard, but others have solved it. I just can’t find it hard to believe we get to 2030 without a way to buy things anonymously online.

> anonymity/privacy

Nope. Bitcoin and others don't solve this at all. They're a literal permanent ledger of every single transaction you've ever made. Other coins might be better at anonymity, but BTC and its derivatives are certainly not.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#23

Post by DennisP »

debt wrote: post #11

Cryptocurrency does not have anything close to widespread consumer adoption. If the Coinbase’s of the world don’t fix this, cryptocurrency will be massively devalued.

Cryptocurrency can't have widespread adoption right now, because it's not scalable enough. Various projects are working hard on fixing that.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#24

Post by carleverett »

The most important challenge cryptocurrencies face is capturing real world value. The ICO craze turned out to create basically 0 value on any crypto platform, and the more recent wave of tokenized securities will be very slow because there are lots and lots of regulations that need to be addressed by token issuers (for good reason).

The value of our public goods however is not being captured by any financial asset, and is a huge market that can be addressed by cryptocurrencies. This is something I'm quite passionate about and have put a lot of time into thinking through how they might work (see link below). As an example, AirCarbon (https://www.aircarbon.co) is a Singapore exchange being built on an Ethereum token and will tokenize CORSIA-certified carbon credits for the airline industry. This is a fantastic example of a huge market ($100+ billion) that is right now extremely inefficient, and will benefit greatly from moving onto a globally accessible and permissionless ledger. It'll provide everyone in the world the ability to invest in the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, and even better, since the tokens also work as stores of value, investors can sell their tokens in the future.

This type of financial asset has enormous potential.

"Tokenized Goods - A New Store of Value": https://medium.com/@tpgwhitepaper/tokenized-public-goods-a-n...

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#25

Post by vehementi »

nobleach wrote: post #12
drcross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember people scoffing at the concept of 100 dollars per bitcoin like it couldn't possibly happen.

I remember people scoffing at the internet like there no legitimate use-cases for it. "Yeah, we have places for information, it's called Grolier's Encyclopedia on CD-ROM, and it's cheap!". "I already have yellow pages delivered for free by C&P Bell". While cryptocurrency may be quite a bit more narrow, blockchain is most likely a far more interesting technology.

It is, but approximately 100% of startups (ICOs) formed around it have failed right?

That's not to say there are none, but a fuck ton of people have tried to come up with cool ideas and approximately zero worked out, like at all.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#26

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

v64 wrote: post #16
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #7

Consider the source, right? How many people without a large vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency consider further growth likely? My guess is that governments will more and more realize that the main utility of blockchains is money laundering and speculation. As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve any above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense than existin…

I honestly don't understand where the perception comes from that this technology is only useful for laundering and speculation. Certainly it is currently being used for those purposes. But to say there is no imaginable use outside of that seems unwarranted. I've commented in the past here that the use of public blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and escrow services will be a huge cost reduction f…

> If you look at what MakerDAO is doing with the Dai stablecoin, they've proven that it's possible to create a synthetic asset closely pegged to the dollar purely through financial incentives, and they did it all just using Ethereum v1. A holder of Dai can earn 4% APY through a Dai Savings Account, and a vote is currently in place to raise the rate to 6%. >I personally find it incredible that an asset exists on the blockchain that's equivalent in value to USD, with a higher APY than you can get from any US bank.

I also find this “incredible”, but in the old sense of the meaning as “not believable”.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#27

Post by wpietri »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #7

Consider the source, right? How many people without a large vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency consider further growth likely? My guess is that governments will more and more realize that the main utility of blockchains is money laundering and speculation. As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve any above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense than existin…

Exactly. It has been 10+ years since the Bitcoin paper. No cryptocurrency has significant consumer adoption. [1], [2] Except for light financial crime (ransomware, money laundering, gambling, theft, etc), it has no demonstrated advantage over alternative technologies. I don't think it will go away, any more than Ponzi and Make Money Fast schemes have gone away. But like you, I expect it will fade into the background as "that weird old thing" as governmental KYC and AML efforts make it ever harder to convert it into real money.

I also expect that the fashion for it in VC investment, already waning, will totally fade by the end of the 2020s. And that regulators like the SEC will have ended the various its-not-equity equity investments, cutting off the other major source of funds.

[1] E.g.: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/nyregion/new-york-today-l...

[2] For "significant" contrast it with M-PESA, which is also digital money and launched around the same time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#28

Post by ben174 »

djsumdog wrote: post #22
4AoZqrH2fsk5UB wrote: post #13

I’m pretty new to crypto in general, but it seems to me that the primary value of it in coming years would be anonymity/privacy. As I understand it Bitcoin has some problems in this regard, but others have solved it. I just can’t find it hard to believe we get to 2030 without a way to buy things anonymously online.

> anonymity/privacy Nope. Bitcoin and others don't solve this at all. They're a literal permanent ledger of every single transaction you've ever made. Other coins might be better at anonymity, but BTC and its derivatives are certainly not.

Quite easily solved. There are plenty of services that will put your coin through an anonymizer, much like a VPN, or Tor.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#29

Post by ianferrel »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #26
v64 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't understand where the perception comes from that this technology is only useful for laundering and speculation. Certainly it is currently being used for those purposes. But to say there is no imaginable use outside of that seems unwarranted. I've commented in the past here that the use of public blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and escrow services will be a huge cost reduction f…

> If you look at what MakerDAO is doing with the Dai stablecoin, they've proven that it's possible to create a synthetic asset closely pegged to the dollar purely through financial incentives, and they did it all just using Ethereum v1. A holder of Dai can earn 4% APY through a Dai Savings Account, and a vote is currently in place to raise the rate to 6%. >I personally find it incredible that an asset exists on the b…

Seriously.

The risk adjusted return on whatever that crazy contraption is is almost certainly negative, and probably incalculably so.

The idea that any sane financial instrument could increase its return by two points by the holders of it voting to do so is... I haven't the words.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#30

Post by dcow »

4AoZqrH2fsk5UB wrote: post #13

I’m pretty new to crypto in general, but it seems to me that the primary value of it in coming years would be anonymity/privacy. As I understand it Bitcoin has some problems in this regard, but others have solved it. I just can’t find it hard to believe we get to 2030 without a way to buy things anonymously online.

Anonymity is not a fundamental human right. Rather it’s a tool that should be available in extreme circumstances. Totally anonymous systems generally devolve over time. Nothing about crypto is inherently anonymous. Bitcoin was never meant to be anonymous. There’s a public ledger... Crypto a la Bitcoin is fundamentally about building distributed consensus. Secure distributed consensus requires strong identity. Whether it’s easy to tie a crypto identity to a social one is simply a matter of time and not a fundamental principle of these systems (except maybe Monero). Behavior can always be analyzed.
Post reply on HN