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The endless search for a crypto use case

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Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#251

Post by UncleMeat »

immigrantheart wrote: post #99
game-of-throws wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that the likelihood someone understands the use cases is inversely correlated to their trust in government. For example: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60912789 These articles all follow a common pattern. 1. The trigger – Inflation/distrust in government/bank withdrawal restrictions/paypal freezes your funds/country is at war/etc 2. The response – People gravitate towards a system that is resilient to…

This is the only right answer. Pack it up. For real, every time I try to answer my I do crypto, often people just don't understand. They just don't. They just don't understand why I don't trust entities. If you don't understand this, then you don't understand crypto. Period. There is no other debate necessary. Period. Full stop. We go on our own way. Full stop.

Yet Monero isn't winning. It is very clear that this is not the dominant use case for cryptocurrencies and blockchains since we've got a system that is maximally resistant to interference and it is dwindling away.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#252

Post by UncleMeat »

sudden_dystopia wrote: post #8

There is only one use case and that is the originally intended use, as a currency completely decoupled from any one country’s monetary meddling and thus liberating the populace from poor central planners and/or authoritarians. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.

And, if BTC wins, we replace it with a monetary structure set by one software engineer. The monetary policy encoded in the BTC blockchain is indeed immutable (assuming no future hard fork) but that doesn't make it good. The payout structure that grants a huge portion of all BTC ever to early adopters would, in my opinion, be the largest transfer of wealth from the many to the few in human history if BTC did indeed take over. I find that to be considerably worse than monetary policy where at least I have some tiny amount of control through the levers of democracy.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#253

Post by UncleMeat »

karlkeefer wrote: post #105
yaseer wrote: post #39

I'm reminded of the pictures of New York in 1900 and 1913. Within those 13 years, the car had changed the world. https://www.businessinsider.com/5th-ave-1900-vs-1913-2011-3?... The iPhone and smartphone revolution clearly did the same, last decade. We're now 14 years into Bitcoin. Is it ever likely to change the world the same way?

That's a pretty high bar Benz made the first car in 1886, which in your analogy means today is 1900. I will be curious to see how crypto holds up in recession or under monetary crisis. One of the reasons it was created hasn't really been tested, since the economy in the west hasn't faced a major crisis since its invention. It seems plausible (if unlikely) that external events could push crypto adoption into more "nor…

It is a very high bar. But I believe that the bar matches the claims made about the technology. Few advocates seem to be talking about cryptocurrencies as a useful tool for incremental progress (granted, this could be my bubble talking). Advocates seem to be saying that it will remake the world in extremely fundamental ways.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#254

Post by UncleMeat »

olalonde wrote: post #14

To me, the fact that Bitcoin is a money out of the hands of governments, or anyone really, is the use case. It's also cool that you can use your brain to effectively store your money. Of course, if you believe that governments are good stewards of money, you will probably not find a use case.

You don't have to believe that governments are good stewards of money. You have to believe that they are better stewards of money than Satoshi was when he decided on the mining curve.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#255

Post by staticassertion »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #249
staticassertion wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What opinion? You just demonstrated an example of subverting government authority, which is exactly what I said it can be useful for. I didn't make any judgment about doing so.

How is carrying money around subverting government authority? You can carry 500K in your wallet on your bank card but if you carry 10K in cash it's somehow different?

Because traveling with more than 10,000 dollars without declaring it is illegal.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#256

Post by EGreg »

xadhominemx wrote: post #208
EGreg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. It's called people accepting cryptocurrencies in exchange for goods and services. Here is the roadmap: https://intercoin.org/communities.pdf

Ok then you tie an identity to a Bitcoin address and you have the same exact problem

Who’s talking about Bitcoin ? ;-)

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#257

Post by lern_too_spel »

anonymoushn wrote: post #232
lern_too_spel wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second set of people must also be paid according to the laws of the country they are currently residing in. By paying them without informing the country, you are skirting its laws and doing so in a way that is easily tracked.

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I have discovered that it is in fact legal to pay contractors in these countries. The bad news is that I also recently paid a local moving company for a move and purchased some onigiri at a convenience store without personally verifying that these businesses and their employees pay their taxes. Feel free to report me to the kōban.

If you paid with real money that went into a real bank account, the government knows if they paid their taxes. If you paid them with crypto because they shadily asked you to, don't be surprised if you get caught up in an investigation. Your payments are easily tracked.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#258

Post by scythingshepard »

civilized wrote: post #179
scythingshepard wrote: post #4

The only use, which is enough, is to subvert those who claim authority over others. A specific example is committing crimes: buying or selling drugs, money laundering, tax evasion, etc.. but maybe its building a nest egg to help escape an abusive relationship or God knows what. Hiding money from some sort of extortion. Most "crypto" isn't hidden, it isn't crypto. It's gimmicky marketing. Not currency either. Fully fu…

Crypto is not a subversion of central banks and governments. It's just an amusing gimmick that exists at their pleasure, like the state lottery. > end users always want a way to get money out of crypto and back into fiat currency. And this desire hands governments all the tools they need to starve the crypto ecosystem at will, by cutting off access to inflows and outflows if participants don’t follow the rules. When…

Sure. And this is true of all anonymity software like Tor, I2P, etc

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#259

Post by scythingshepard »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #200
scythingshepard wrote: post #4

The only use, which is enough, is to subvert those who claim authority over others. A specific example is committing crimes: buying or selling drugs, money laundering, tax evasion, etc.. but maybe its building a nest egg to help escape an abusive relationship or God knows what. Hiding money from some sort of extortion. Most "crypto" isn't hidden, it isn't crypto. It's gimmicky marketing. Not currency either. Fully fu…

The article addresses this. Cryptocurrency cannot subvert that authority, as the law applies to it as well.

The point is breaking the laws though

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#260

Post by dogman144 »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #231
dogman144 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His example and your support is mixing up central authorities that matter for crypto. Crypto companies with legal exposure? Yes can be censored. Open source crypto protocols? As long as raspberry pi’s and digital comms exist, it’s akin to saying the govt can shut down Linux. This is the censorship resistance that matters. It’s not perfect (some ungodly amount of nodes are in AWS and the Trail of Bits report did a goo…

Open source crypto protocols are completely irrelevant without connections to crypto companies. There's this fantasy that crypto can replace money, and that you would therefore never need to trade it for real dollars. That's not going to happen, for reasons outlined in the article and because no medium of exchange that's deflationary can ever be a currency. If it goes up in value over time, it's an investment and peo…

> Open source crypto protocols are completely irrelevant without connections to crypto companies

Bitcoin, an open source crypto protocol, launched without the existence of crypto companies.

Mt Gox, instead of helping btc, almost set it back years due to the hack.

Bitcoin grew adoption and scale on tor/DNMs and localbitcoins, both of which had organic, non-exchange economic activity which kept accounting in pure crypto vs returning to fiat/needing an exchange.

The attack you’re describing is a 51% attack, and it had yet to happen due to protocol design on the main chains. If it does, I suppose you’d be right.

But I generally think you don’t understand how the tech works and what proof of concepts exist to disprove your opinions, or at least strongly counter your opinions. and without addressing why they’re wrong you have a weak argument.

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