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Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

theguardian.com

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Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#31

Post by joshaidan »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #12

If it was easier to buy and sell them they might. I know people who are interested but due to the difficulty and complexity of buying/storing/selling they havnt yet.

To me, obtaining bitcoin (or whatever crypto-currency) has been one of the most challenging aspects of using the currency. It's too hard to obtain. Mining these days isn't that feasible, but even if I could mine bitcoin, I probably wouldn't be able to do it at a rate to fund whatever venture I wanted to pursue. The only alternative is to purchase a crypto-currency with another real world currency, which to me seems to defeat the purpose of not having to depend on central banks or real world currency.

If there was a way for crypto-currencies to handle credit, I think that would greatly increase it's likelihood of replacing real world currencies and central banks--going mainstream. The money we use nowadays is transferable credit and central banks can produce enough to meet the demands of the economy. Crypto-currencies on the other hand are more like gold: there's a limited supply that doesn't meet the needs or demands of the economy.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#32

Post by bhaak »

shp0ngle wrote: post #29

The bitcoin community is now arguing to the point of death threats whether it's better to scale by adding data outside of the blocks and then making slightly larger blocks, or by adding data outside of the blocks and then adding more data outside of the blocks. And both sides are accusing the other side of being authoritarian, for centralization, and basically being even a worst enemy than The State, which is like th…

If you only look at Bitcoin now then you are missing out on a lot of what is going on with cryptocurrencies.

But I agree, Bitcoin had a standstill for 3 years because of nitpicking over a simple factor two scaling solution. This could end badly for Bitcoin if they don't get their act together.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#33

Post by NicoJuicy »

CM30 wrote: post #10

Not until they can really explain to the average Joe why cryptocurrencies are such a good thing. Because at the end of the day, privacy is nowhere near as important to many people are it arguably should be, and trying to market cryptocurrencies as 'independent from government control' is likely a losing proposition. Same with most of the reasons involved I've seen invoked for why to use Bitcoin or the likes online. T…

triple entry accounting, so i heard ;)

Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#34

Post by lghh »

polotics wrote: post #30
atemerev wrote: post #3

If The Guardian is writing about it — no. The hype is over.

The Guardian is a very small corner of the internet, the hype is over when it's all over Facebook walls.

Isn't the point of 'about to go mainstream' that they are passed hype and all over Facebook? Mainstream = normalized in this instance.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#35

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

CM30 wrote: post #10

Not until they can really explain to the average Joe why cryptocurrencies are such a good thing. Because at the end of the day, privacy is nowhere near as important to many people are it arguably should be, and trying to market cryptocurrencies as 'independent from government control' is likely a losing proposition. Same with most of the reasons involved I've seen invoked for why to use Bitcoin or the likes online. T…

They don't really need to explain it in any real sense. A bank creates Wells-coin, then a bunch of their sales people go out and start talking to clients about how this is the new thing, show a nice returns chart for ETH and BTC, talk about "decentralization" and "blockchain" and how this is the future, do you wanna hop on? Traditional investments already fly over the heads of most people and yet they still have 401ks and IRAs. My problem is that these cryptocoins are so incredibly volatile that there's no way laymen should be invested in them.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#36

Post by smokeyj »

CM30 wrote: post #10

Not until they can really explain to the average Joe why cryptocurrencies are such a good thing. Because at the end of the day, privacy is nowhere near as important to many people are it arguably should be, and trying to market cryptocurrencies as 'independent from government control' is likely a losing proposition. Same with most of the reasons involved I've seen invoked for why to use Bitcoin or the likes online. T…

> and trying to market cryptocurrencies as 'independent from government control' is likely a losing proposition

Seems to be winning in China. I'm sure other countries with strict capital controls will experience similar things.

Joe will probably be the last one to join the crypto takeover - but he'll still have exposure via pension funds and ETFs.

I think governments portraying crypto as being for "criminals" is the equivalent of marketing a truck as "military strength".

Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#37

Post by tveita »

CM30 wrote: post #10

Not until they can really explain to the average Joe why cryptocurrencies are such a good thing. Because at the end of the day, privacy is nowhere near as important to many people are it arguably should be, and trying to market cryptocurrencies as 'independent from government control' is likely a losing proposition. Same with most of the reasons involved I've seen invoked for why to use Bitcoin or the likes online. T…

> Not until they can really explain to the average Joe why cryptocurrencies are such a good thing.

"Look at all these people getting rich without any work, you can too! Just buy this convenient financial product I happen to be selling!"

I'd have hoped the mania would die out once the supply of people with technical skills was exhausted, but it looks like people are hard at work extending the bottom of the pyramid to cover the usual victims.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#38

Post by fooker »

bradleyjg wrote: post #23
daxorid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little aside, I've been using Linux as primary workstation for seven years now. It works great, so I've never understood this "year of the desktop" meme. Now, OpenBSD is another matter entirely...

On the slashdot back in the late 90s there were breathless articles all the time about how this was going to be the year that the Linux Desktop was going to sweep across the world and surely M$ was doomed. Two decades later Microsoft is doing quite well and Linux still accounts for a small percent of personal computers.

>small percent of personal computers.

I certainly consider my phone to be a personal computer nowadays.

It has a few orders or magnitude more powerful hardware and can do things my first few PCs could not do.

Linux is certainly doing very well there. ;) GNU/Linux might not be, but that's a different story.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#39

Post by notahacker »

fooker wrote: post #38
bradleyjg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the slashdot back in the late 90s there were breathless articles all the time about how this was going to be the year that the Linux Desktop was going to sweep across the world and surely M$ was doomed. Two decades later Microsoft is doing quite well and Linux still accounts for a small percent of personal computers.

>small percent of personal computers. I certainly consider my phone to be a personal computer nowadays. It has a few orders or magnitude more powerful hardware and can do things my first few PCs could not do. Linux is certainly doing very well there. ;) GNU/Linux might not be, but that's a different story.

A phone OS marketed by Google that happens to be derived from Linux code is to "GNU/Linux is going to kill Microsoft and big corporations flexing their power in the software industry" what a hypothetical cardless payment technology run by Paypal that uses a blockchain somewhere on the backend is to "Bitcoin is going to kill fiat currency and the banking oligarchy"

Re: Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream?

#40

Post by jdormit »

remotehack wrote: post #22
andy_ppp wrote: post #16

This is the exact article that starts appearing about 6 to 12 months before a huge bust within a particular market. I’d be hugely surprised if there isn’t a huge rise over the next 4 months followed by a collapse. You should be looking for where you think the bottom of the market is because it’s too useful not to go up again (it’ll be around $800, I’m a time traveller). The top could be as high at $6000 though before…

> I’d be hugely surprised if there isn’t a huge rise over the next 4 months followed by a collapse. It's because bitcoin is a pyramid scheme.

> Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme

Why do you say this? I am certainly not a cryptocurrency expert, but it seems to me that BTC provides real value, in that it is an accepted currency and also in that it distributes the means of control over a far greater area than traditional government-backed currency.

Pyramid scheme reward members for recruiting new members without providing any value. Like all commodities and currencies, BTC increases in value the more people think it is valuable, but if that is how you define a pyramid scheme then gold futures, stocks, and the US dollar are pyramid scheme as well.

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