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

The endless search for a crypto use case

networked.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 272 posts

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#261

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

dogman144 wrote: post #260
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 crypt…

What good is Bitcoin without the ability to trade it then?

Your assertions are the ones that are extraordinary, so yours is the side that requires proof. You're effectively claiming that a distributed peer database with a somewhat secure history has some kind of intrinsic value. I'm calling that BS.

Where is the money? Where is the _value_?

The fact that a few people were trading Bitcoins doesn't mean it can ever go mainstream. Something that's a niche hobby isn't going to change the world. If you want to use Bitcoin as a hobby barter medium, then have fun, but that doesn't imply value outside of a tiny community.

Prove me wrong. A "proof of concept" is in the technology domain. For crypto to work outside of a community of crypto-libertarians, it needs to be usable by regular people. Libertarians are famous for not actually being able to design social systems that work in the real world; last time they tried they were chased away by bears. [1]

And as the article pointed out (did you read it?), most apps that support crypto rely on a centralized server since the chain can't be downloaded to mobile devices. How useful is a medium of exchange that requires you to bring a laptop with you everywhere?

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#262

Post by hansvm »

Crypto is useful today as a currency if you're worried about censorship from Visa/PayPal/Stripe/... and not from governments. The article's primary point about how decentralization doesn't matter when the government is powerful enough to demand blocklists and whatnot may or may not have merit, but if you wanted to legally transact in any of the following online, which payment provider would you use without fear of being spontaneously shut down (not arguing that the items are beneficial per se, just that many governments are fine with most of them and most payment providers are not)?

(1) Marijuana paraphernalia

(2) Cigarettes

(3) Politically charged symbols like confederate flags and swastikas

(4) Knives

(5) MLM pamphlets

(6) Digital goods (MMORPG gold/items)

(7) "Adult" photos/videos/toys/...

...

Crypto provides an satisfactory solution _today_ for all of those things. It's a little inconvenient to have a currency exchange and fees tacked on just to avoid having bank accounts or whatever frozen, but it works, and governments don't bother to step in and block those transactions even where it might be feasible for them to interfere.

Moreover, the alternatives I'm aware of are all measurably worse in one or more factors including fraud potential, cost, and risk of frozen assets.

IMO it'd be better just to legislate that banks and payment providers are dumb infrastructure like an ISP should be so that it isn't a concern in the first place, but in a world where I don't see that happening crypto is a good enough workaround.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#263

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

trixie_ wrote: post #6

The practical use case is pretty simple - being able to hold large sums of money yourself securely while being able to move it to who/where ever you want in less than an hour, 24/7, no questions asked. Before Bitcoin it was practically impossible to do this without a bank as an intermediary and even then would require large fees, talking with people, lots of hang ups, just to manage your own money.

Why do people keep calling it "money". It's not.

You can send it back and forth between wallets all day, doesn't make it into money.

To actually use it as money, you need to some kind of centralised service to cash out.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#264

Post by uoaei »

olalonde wrote: post #243
uoaei wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as it becomes big enough, the US govt has the power and ability to effectively 51% the entire network. They haven't yet only because it doesn't threaten the dollar.

So what? It would cost like 50+ billion dollars to censor the network for a few hours until the mining algorithm is changed.

You are aware of how fiat currency works, right? The government can create that money with as much friction as is present in their keyboards.

And anyway, they don't actually need to run any new nodes, just compromise communication between them until all the blockchain records on the individual nodes are bunk.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#265

Post by anonymoushn »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #257
anonymoushn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I paid cash :(

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#266

Post by majewsky »

peyton wrote: post #209
majewsky wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEPA Instant Credit Transfer [1] has a soft limit of 10 seconds and hard limit of 20 seconds for money transfers between accounts of different banks. What's the use case for "faster than 10 seconds"? [1] https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

You can pay people in Bolivia that way?

Moving the goalposts. GP's statement was that TradFi isn't close, so I showed an example where TradFi is close.

Also, the number of people who accept Euro is definitely larger than those who accept any cryptocurrency combined.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#267

Post by asah »

majewsky wrote: post #266
peyton wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay people in Bolivia that way?

Moving the goalposts. GP's statement was that TradFi isn't close, so I showed an example where TradFi is close. Also, the number of people who accept Euro is definitely larger than those who accept any cryptocurrency combined.

sorry, you're correct of course and I was being a bit sloppy. apologies.

still, the fact that I haven't heard of the counterexample, suggests that indeed TradFi isn't close in the US

sorry to move goalposts again ;-)

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#268

Post by fortuna86 »

olalonde wrote: post #241
fortuna86 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thousand year old industries get disrupted all the time. They really don't. The fundamentals of banking as an industry haven't changed in hundreds if not thousands of years. Real estate, etc.

Up until few years ago, banking required trust. That's a pretty big fundamental.

Still does. Disintermediation is a myth, you always need a middle man.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#269

Post by karlkeefer »

yaseer wrote: post #196
karlkeefer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For the record, I don't think crypto is useless, I just don't think it's hitting that bar for a transformative technology. It's proponents certainly do describe it as potentially transformative or revolutionary. Yes, I'm aware the dates of invention don't quite align, and the time window is cherry-picked for dramatic effect. But it's food for thought. Nobody was debating the utility of cars and phones 14 years later.…

Yeah.. the hype I think makes it harder to appreciate the main use case, which essentially was already covered by the first cryptocoin, and is still where it sees the most real-world use: resistance to state control. Folks use it to evade capital controls, use darkweb markets, launder money, find radical activism, etc.

That's still a big deal, but it's far short of the impact-for-everyone promised by some folks in the industry.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#270

Post by dogman144 »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #261
dogman144 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 crypt…

What good is Bitcoin without the ability to trade it then? Your assertions are the ones that are extraordinary, so yours is the side that requires proof. You're effectively claiming that a distributed peer database with a somewhat secure history has some kind of intrinsic value. I'm calling that BS. Where is the money? Where is the _value_? The fact that a few people were trading Bitcoins doesn't mean it can ever go…

> Your assertions are the ones that are extraordinary, so yours is the side that requires proof.

Ah, or your assertions are akin in a technical sense to saying “the internet is a complex series of tubes, prove me otherwise!” Your criticism is based on a pretty clearly patchy technical understanding.

Post reply on HN