201–210 of 704 posts
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Once you accept that the future is unknown, you'll see that every asset is a speculative asset, no? For the longest time, real estate was assumed to be 100% safe until 2008, etc.
The difference between investment and speculation is pretty established, isn't it? For example https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/difference-betwe...
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I think that's certainly a part of it, but it's not the whole story, and I suspect it's perhaps responsible for 1/3 of the story. A bigger motivation, and perhaps the most quixotic one, is financial security . No, I don't mean that cryptocurrencies haven't been highly unstable in value. But the more that the cabal chooses to truly enter the 21st century, the greater the danger of that technology being used as a means…
> Whether you agree with that perspective is another thing. Many crypto enthusiasts, whether they are explicit about it or not, like the idea of creating an economic system that everyone can participate in that doesn't involve countless middle-men. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the whole blockchain thing depend on an uncountable number of middlemen to verify transactions? They just don't have to trust them. No…
Read, as distinct from our current champion middle-men, chosen by favor, regulation, and access to capital.
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I’m unsure what you mean by “no chargebacks” - chargebacks are provide the consumer recourse in the event of a dispute.
It's beneficial for consumers because businesses can charge less for their products since they're don't have to account for as much shrinkage. I know at least one business that charges substantially less for crypto transactions because of this.
This is a microcosm of most of my issues with crypto discussions. In a (quite naive) vacuum, the arguments sound great. If you wanted to run Earth 2.0 with crypto, have at it. It doesn't fit in alongside the existing systems and, by the time it becomes "the main system", you can be certain that those in power have modified it to have the same issues as the original system we all hated.
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Only if you do your transaction on the blockchain. Most are done internally. It's like your bank is not sending someone with a suitcase full of money just because you pay your phone bill.
It's strange to me how the only two options are "pay obscene transaction fees" or "just keep your crypto in a centralized exchange and hope they don't go MtGox". Is it impossible to achieve the stated benefit of being able to make quick and easy transactions and being decentralized? I spent some time researching the best low transaction fee easily accessible crypto for making a sort of crypto Patreon, but the vast va…
Yes. A transaction is a network-scale operation. It needs to be broadcast and confirmed by at least half the network. Otherwise it wouldn't be decentralized.
As that network increases in size, the resources required for that operation increase proportionally.
"Decentralization" is a bad meme that seems to work at small scales but its adherents refuse to zoom out and accept how technically ridiculous it is at current scales (millions/billions of people).
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Then you would expect people in the EU to not be interested in crypto, yet it's the opposite. You can pull up search volume for "Bitcoin" across the world (using Google Trends), many European nations are at the top. As a matter of fact, their search volume is higher than US.
The difference is that those people can honestly see and use crypto as speculative assets, which is fine (if we ignore externalities for a second), not making up use cases.
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Yeah, this is what I don't understand from the naysayers. Anyone who says blockchain-driven assets don't have intrinsic value seems to ignore the value of trust - the ability to trust that the ledger is accurate seems extremely valuable. The author of the article skips over the question entirely, maybe he's addressed it elsewhere, but if the crypto skeptics continue to ignore one of its primary value propositions, I…
> the ability to trust that the ledger is accurate seems extremely valuable Maybe it "seems" valuable, but why exactly is it valuable? For what use case and which situation (besides crime)? I think the issue is that many don't see value in its "primary value proposition" because the features they want from banks are already there (stability, FDIC insurance). The only thing I personally see missing is no/low-fee insta…
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Can you point out what is low quality about it? Right now it seems that you are just making that claim because you disagree with the thesis of the article. e.g. https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definit...
Using the phrase "woo woo" along with various strawmen & many omissions of why crypto is being adopted was the extent of his criticism, hence low quality. He does not understand crypto & is trying to sell his competing product. If he were to talk about decentralization/distribution vs centralization along with who controls the fiat money supply & who benefits & who does not benefit from the fiat central bank policies…
Is that why crypto is being adopted? Are you serious?
I bet nearly no one who buys crypto even knows what fiat money is nor have they have a clue as to the ideas of the Austrian school of economists. We live in an age of memes and discords.
Crypto and NFTs are primarily being adopted because they are speculative vehicles that generally go up and to the right. It is quite simple.
I wonder how much of the Crypto hype is because the US banking system still lives in the 1980s or thereabouts. If everybody in the US had access to bank accounts with easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge, no chargebacks and so on, as people are used to in the EU, would people still be excited about Bitcoin?
The problem with bank accounts is the banks. The promise of crypto is that you don't need to trust any institution, such as a bank, to keep track of your money.
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You sound privileged enough to have access to a reliable and trustworthy bank. Many, many people aren't as lucky.
So this person lives in a place they can't trust banks... But they have access to computers, internet, enough money to pay the tx fees of cryptocurrencies... amazing