41–50 of 256 posts
Key take-away: > Once the cryptocurrency price bubble pops and takes all the hype with it, will the community be able to recover the energy it needs to build real, innovative technology once again?
I wonder how many young, talented, technology-minded people will be set back if this "bubble" does pop.
To show the absurdity, consider the people who buy used cooking oil from restaurants to turn into biodiesel for their modified 1975 mercedes 300D. They might pay $2/gallon for that used cooking oil. Would it be reasonable to assume that the market size of used cooking oil is now $2 * (Gallons of used cooking oil produced yearly)? No, that's absurd. Someone paid a high price for it, that doesn't mean everybody did or will.
>"To deliver a peer-to-peer alternative to cash that, through decentralization, did away with the need for trust in financial institutions, which the 2008 crisis showed to be unscrupulous, and often corrupt." The sort of activity which led to the financial crisis would not be mitigated by the establishment of a decentralized currency. Decentralization would not do away with the need for financial institutions (or the…
I can't speak for every ideological bitcoin supporter, but you and I may differ on what constituted the "crisis". I agree that it would not deal with the activity which led to the financial crisis. But to many, the crisis was not that the banks all failed, but that they were not allowed to fail, and were bailed out instead. The genesis block doesn't say anything about addressing irresponsible behavior on the part of the banks. It says "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"
People can do stupid and irresponsible things, and they can do stupid things with other people's money, but they have to bear the consequences.
The problem is the use of market cap as a valuation metric. It is absurd to think that your joke cryptocurrency is actually worth $2B just because one person was willing to trade at a price that implies $2B. To show the absurdity, consider the people who buy used cooking oil from restaurants to turn into biodiesel for their modified 1975 mercedes 300D. They might pay $2/gallon for that used cooking oil. Would it be r…
The problem is the use of market cap as a valuation metric. It is absurd to think that your joke cryptocurrency is actually worth $2B just because one person was willing to trade at a price that implies $2B. To show the absurdity, consider the people who buy used cooking oil from restaurants to turn into biodiesel for their modified 1975 mercedes 300D. They might pay $2/gallon for that used cooking oil. Would it be r…
The currency analog to market cap is money supply [1]. It's a specialized term with less general utility than market cap for equities.
Market cap is a useful statistic because when it comes to shares, the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. If you buy every share of Apple stock outstanding, you own a business throwing off $60 billion a year [2]. If you buy every Bitcoin in existence, you have nothing of value.
That said, the quoting of crypto market caps is a symptom. Nobody knows what these things are useful for. Dimensionalising the price is better than simply quoting a number. But you can't measure what you haven't defined.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply
[2] https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAAPL&fstype=ii...
>"To deliver a peer-to-peer alternative to cash that, through decentralization, did away with the need for trust in financial institutions, which the 2008 crisis showed to be unscrupulous, and often corrupt." The sort of activity which led to the financial crisis would not be mitigated by the establishment of a decentralized currency. Decentralization would not do away with the need for financial institutions (or the…
> The sort of activity which led to the financial crisis would not be mitigated by the establishment of a decentralized currency. I can't speak for every ideological bitcoin supporter, but you and I may differ on what constituted the "crisis". I agree that it would not deal with the activity which led to the financial crisis. But to many, the crisis was not that the banks all failed, but that they were not allowed to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The sort of activity which led to the financial crisis would not be mitigated by the establishment of a decentralized currency. I can't speak for every ideological bitcoin supporter, but you and I may differ on what constituted the "crisis". I agree that it would not deal with the activity which led to the financial crisis. But to many, the crisis was not that the banks all failed, but that they were not allowed to…
I'm not sure what your point is. If all banks switched from dollars to Bitcoin, they could still be bailed out.
DOGE is a pretty good currency to use for moving money between exchanges. That is why its used. If BTC had low/no transaction fees and was fast, people would have less incentive to use DOGE. Overvalued? Its possible but I think the entire crypto market is actually insanely undervalued. I was talking to my financial advisor the other day and he said pretty much 100% of people now are asking him about crypto and are co…
The USD is backed by the courts of the USA, which in turned are backed by people with guns (law enforcement and the military). The YEN is backed by guns. The GPB is backed by guns.
What is BTC backed by? If someone literally steals your BTC, what recourse do you have? There is no court to go to, no one to back it up.
Even the most hard core Libertarians acknowledge the need of a court system and force to back up contract law.
So I will never invest in cryptocurrency because of that. Maybe I'll be wrong and miss out, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
Distributed ledger is a good thing, but it isn't a store of value in and of itself.
>"To deliver a peer-to-peer alternative to cash that, through decentralization, did away with the need for trust in financial institutions, which the 2008 crisis showed to be unscrupulous, and often corrupt." The sort of activity which led to the financial crisis would not be mitigated by the establishment of a decentralized currency. Decentralization would not do away with the need for financial institutions (or the…