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Where are all the crypto use cases?

evanjconrad.com

251–260 of 273 posts

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... there are reasons nobody does that. You do realize deflationary "currency" disincentivizes spending, right?

> Or... there are reasons nobody does that. Like I said, the great part about crypto is that if you have personal reasons to prefer inflationary currencies you can feel free to use those instead. And those who don't want their money inflated away, are free to choose otherwise. Everyone wins! You can prefer inflation for your own money as much as you want. And those who don't want inflation for their own money, can ch…

> personal reasons

You seem confused. Societal collapsing vs. non-societal collapsing currencies are not "personal." You're confounding preference and outcome. Deflationary "money" isn't money, which is exactly what we see in all of your experiments, exactly as predicted.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#252
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the discussion about HN is not about technicalities of smart contracts or block times or ledgers. The skeptics are interested in repeating the same lines but have a very poor understanding of how it works.

That is much less of a problem than the reverse scenario. Being sceptical of something doesn't necessitate a strong understanding, being an advocate does, or at least should. Remember the existing systems work and thus far crypto isn't offering anything new, just alternatives with different trade-offs. That places an awfully high burden of proof on any crypto advocate and such a bar is far from being reached.

> Remember the existing systems work and thus far crypto isn't offering anything new, just alternatives with different trade-offs. That places an awfully high burden of proof on any crypto advocate and such a bar is far from being reached.

No it doesn't. Crypto doesn't need to do anything better to succeed. It only needs to capture the imagination of the public. That's what terrifies the anti-crypto folks here and why they furiously post against crypto. You are powerless against this trend just like many were powerless when Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok started their domination of everyone's attention.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#253
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter argument might be that Ford F-150s aren't particularly fungible. A slightly stronger example might be gold, but people don't use gold as money anymore either.

Anything perceived to have a stable value, is fungible, and is easy to move can be used as money. Just look at prisons. Gold stopped be used as money because people weren't really using it, they were using tokens pegged to it under a promise. That promise went away. Gold isn't exactly fungible (purity, fake gold etc), and it isn't easy to move in significant quantities. Gold makes for absolutely shit money in the 21s…

It’s not used for day-to-day transactions, but gold is still treated as a currency on the international level by nations that hold large strategic reserves.

The only reason they hold so much is that it still retains value as a currency.

The way things currently stand, if the fiat system falls apart, we’ll revert to gold. It’s the only viable alternative. Crypto might take over that role someday, in some form, but it has a long way to go.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct on both counts. The profit model just isn't sadly there yet. But it also wasn't there for Bitcoin in 2009 or ETH later on and people still bought hardware to mine.

That's because it's not a compelling service. It's been possible since the internet started and never took off. One of the most compelling services in the history of computing is the opposite - a centrally controlled service offering computing resources in return for standard, government issued currency. Throughout all computing, centrally controlled shared resources has been a compelling value prop.

> That's because it's not a compelling service.

In your opinion.

There are a lot of indications that say otherwise, you just need to look around a bit.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And paying you 0.001 in ETH or BTC will cost many orders of magnitude more than that in payment fees alone, and take massive amounts of time to vetify. Meanwhile the actual solution to this problem is micropayments, which can (and allegedly are) better implemented using traditional texhnologies

Why are you proposing solutions that work badly or might work in the future? I gave you a solution that works today . Like I said: sub-second, 0 fee transactions (using Nano). Would love to see any of your traditional systems do better. Can you name one?

So I actually didn't know that nano was a specific currency. The problem is I now need to get nano which is yet another currency. I might as well pay you in yen, it's not something I have available by default. Why nano, and not Ethereum, or BTC, or USDC or litecoin? How many of these do I need?

> Can you name one? A SQL database of a random custom currency like any video game made in the last decade, or Faster Payments, both of which offer more for both the seller and buyer.

You're not paying tx fees for money transfers, you pay them for fraud, kyc, convenice of global networks. Those are features that are either hidden or not Present in cryptocurrencies

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it's not a compelling service. It's been possible since the internet started and never took off. One of the most compelling services in the history of computing is the opposite - a centrally controlled service offering computing resources in return for standard, government issued currency. Throughout all computing, centrally controlled shared resources has been a compelling value prop.

> That's because it's not a compelling service. In your opinion. There are a lot of indications that say otherwise, you just need to look around a bit.

It appears to be the opinion of the market.

Where are the indications? There are dozens of services using something like this, none of them have gone mainstream in the 50 (maybe 25 from a practical perspective?) years it's been possible.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#259

Helium as an incentive for the LoRaWAN network is the killer app for crypto. People are building a world wide LoT network. It's all decentralized. It's all being created by people who earn helium as a reward. I think the same model can be duplicated for other needs. If we give it time we'll see more solutions being created using the same model.

I'm old enough to remember WiFi mesh networks, OLPC and how they would change the world in the future. I've lived in that future for a while now, and seldom see an actual mesh network. One of the advantages of LoRa is that is free. Any monetization scheme on top of this is actually prejudicial to the tech. Also - from my limited knowledge - LoRa is actually quite prone to abuse or traffic prioritization; this is ofte…

I think that longevity is something that no other solution can bring. In theory, this network can live forever and improve as tech improves. Look at the Bitcoin network. At this point you have to have a top level miner to be worth mining at all. If we can apply the same to a communications network then we would know that the network is running at the very best levels since there is an incentive for that to happen. In current networks the incentive is to use the same tech as long as possible since it's too expensive for all of it to be replaced by new tech. I don't have the answers but Crypto brings something to the network that other tech can't.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#260
post #22

Helium as an incentive for the LoRaWAN network is the killer app for crypto. People are building a world wide LoT network. It's all decentralized. It's all being created by people who earn helium as a reward. I think the same model can be duplicated for other needs. If we give it time we'll see more solutions being created using the same model.

Does Helium have any usage yet? I heard they're charging higher prices than cellular carriers.

Well you need Helium to use the network so at the very least there is that. Maybe you can get Helium by setting up your own node(?), if you need to use the network. It make sense for you as a user to add to the network so you can get some Helium. I don't know the accounting but I think there is a possibility for it to be less expensive. I really don't know a lot but I do know that it's a self improving network so in time the economic parts will work themselves out.

I also believe that the current model of setting up networks can't keep up with a self improving network. Imagine a network that's always a top of the line network. That grows or shrinks as needed. Who will have the resources to compete with it?

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