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Where are all the crypto use cases?

evanjconrad.com

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Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#41

Post by guerrilla »

jspaetzel wrote: post #17

Crypto is more akin to a fundraising strategy then a specific technology. It's like calling a company "tech" and hoping that gets you more dollar signs. A use case like Helium sounds useful, but using a Blockchain doesn't necessarily add obvious value. The fundamentals don't make sense, you pay for power in dollars but you're paid back in monopoly money. It makes it harder for users to understand the underlying costs…

> It's like calling a company "tech" and hoping that gets you more dollar signs.

Yeah but... that does actually work... so... hmm.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#42

Post by pfraze »

tptacek wrote: post #38
nl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think self sovereign identity (ie, what Keybase did but standardized and anchored on a public blockchain rather than a private database) is an interesting consumer-facing technology that is crypto based and isn't a scam. Identity plays are tricky commercially but there do seem to be some interesting shoots of growth around it.

I'm a broken record on why I believe this is a distinctively bad use case for public blockchains, for whatever it's worth. But it doesn't matter that I think this use case is doomed; what matters is: it's not a serious mainstream thing right now. If it becomes one, you won't have to argue; it'll be self-evidently an important use case.

Sorry to make you repeat yourself, but we’re looking at DIDs and I’d like to know your arguments against them. Do you mind linking to a comment or summarizing?

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#43

Post by woopwoop »

> Crypto is successful at being money. If you don't believe me, then I'm happy to sell you the laptop I'm writing this on for 1,000 ETH instead of 1,000 USD.

Ford F-150s are successful at being money. If you don't believe me, then I'm happy to sell you the laptop I'm writing this on for 1,000 Ford F-150s instead of 1,000 USD.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#44

Post by seibelj »

bruce511 wrote: post #13

He misses the two main use cases, and the two things that crypto are used for that dwarfs everything else. A) it's a great speculative asset. Huge volatility in value means fortunes can be made (and lost) in days not lifetimes. All those crypto ads on the radio talk about "investing" in Bitcoin - marketing it as an asset, not about using it as currency. It appears to be a zero sum game. I'll make no judgement about i…

I paid a contractor in Vietnam to do a side project for me once in a stablecoin. Because it avoided the central bank, they could avoid the stealing of their hard currency via the standard international payment system.

One beneficial use case from the US perspective is further global dominance of USD (if you are into that sort of thing). This limits the ability of corrupt governments from inflating their fiat, which is generally a worse currency than USD fiat.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#45

Post by gonehome »

nl wrote: post #34
tptacek wrote: post #8

If these are powerful use cases, you probably won't need to inform us about them; we'll all be using Filecoin instead of S3, or Radicle instead of Gitlab. Instead of "here are some popular use cases", you'll say "you rely on crypto every day, in order to access this structured knowledge graph thing everyone uses". If replacing S3 and Github are the strongest cases you can make, I'm dubious: I don't doubt there are pe…

I think self sovereign identity (ie, what Keybase did but standardized and anchored on a public blockchain rather than a private database) is an interesting consumer-facing technology that is crypto based and isn't a scam. Identity plays are tricky commercially but there do seem to be some interesting shoots of growth around it.

This is how urbit ids work for what it’s worth, I think it’s a good model.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#46

Post by jpgvm »

ogogmad wrote: post #27
AlexandrB wrote: post #2

This article seems like it's reaching. I don't think "money" accurately describes what cryptocurrency is because most people who use USD don't trade on the FOREX markets, but most cryptocurrency users are primarily focused on the exchange rate of BTC to USD, not it's functionality as a currency. It's better described as a security, and while it can be used as a medium of exchange its volatility can make that expensiv…

> Right now, you can take out a loan without involving a bank from one of the many crypto lending protocols. You put up some collateral and can take out a loan for extremely cheap, because there isn't a bank in the middle to take a cut. "Loan" is a very misleading description of what this is. This is margin trading. A loan is when you post a non-liquid asset in the real world -- like a house -- as collateral. Margin…

> who spout incoherent word salad

I affectionally call it crypto-babble.

> critics describe what it does better than its advocates

Seems to be true of pretty much all crypto. Most of the advocates have a very poor understanding of how it works, what the benefits/tradeoffs are and worst of all a complete ignorance of the systems they are seeking to "replace".

As a result we see all the crypto stuff simply repeat mistakes/failures/weaknesses that have been known in financial systems for around a century or more in most cases.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#47

Post by charcircuit »

ogogmad wrote: post #27
AlexandrB wrote: post #2

This article seems like it's reaching. I don't think "money" accurately describes what cryptocurrency is because most people who use USD don't trade on the FOREX markets, but most cryptocurrency users are primarily focused on the exchange rate of BTC to USD, not it's functionality as a currency. It's better described as a security, and while it can be used as a medium of exchange its volatility can make that expensiv…

> Right now, you can take out a loan without involving a bank from one of the many crypto lending protocols. You put up some collateral and can take out a loan for extremely cheap, because there isn't a bank in the middle to take a cut. "Loan" is a very misleading description of what this is. This is margin trading. A loan is when you post a non-liquid asset in the real world -- like a house -- as collateral. Margin…

>You can't use these "DeFi loans" to buy a house in the real world.

Sure you can. Take out a loan, convert it to USD at an exchange, withdraw into your bank account, buy a house.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#48

Post by Nursie »

syntheweave wrote: post #30
flaque wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “can you come up with something that will see mainstream use that eclipses the toxic speculation that's perceived to characterize every crypto application“ This is a far better question to put to crypto. The article isn’t attempting to address that question though. My bet is “yes”, at maybe 80% confidence. I would say it’s fairly difficult to see though, because speculative projects grow very quickly and dwarf “nor…

Another way to put it is that crypto, being specified as a protocol, is likely not to be the product(which is how it's promoted speculatively) but a feature of a product. Like, HTTP isn't a product; but a web browser uses HTTP as a feature, and so do web servers. But they aren't the whole product either. And the categorical error is that traditional finance sees its protocols as products, but they're actually on the…

> Another way to put it is that crypto, being specified as a protocol, is likely not to be the product

I used to say to proponents of blockchain as an enabling tech, "show me a product that relies on blockchain tech but sells itself on its amazing problem-solving features, not on the word blockchain and not on the alleged value of its attached tokens"

I don't know that I've really seen such a thing yet. I stopped asking a couple of years ago I think. The few times I got a response I'd follow a link and go to a page singing the praises of a token and using the word blockchain liberally.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#49

Post by msworddebugger »

ogogmad wrote: post #27
AlexandrB wrote: post #2

This article seems like it's reaching. I don't think "money" accurately describes what cryptocurrency is because most people who use USD don't trade on the FOREX markets, but most cryptocurrency users are primarily focused on the exchange rate of BTC to USD, not it's functionality as a currency. It's better described as a security, and while it can be used as a medium of exchange its volatility can make that expensiv…

> Right now, you can take out a loan without involving a bank from one of the many crypto lending protocols. You put up some collateral and can take out a loan for extremely cheap, because there isn't a bank in the middle to take a cut. "Loan" is a very misleading description of what this is. This is margin trading. A loan is when you post a non-liquid asset in the real world -- like a house -- as collateral. Margin…

I know of people who have used lending protocols to borrow stablecoins, used a centralized exchange to convert those stables to fiat, and used that fiat to purchase things like cars and houses. As I understand it the reason they did this is they assumed it would avoid a taxable event?

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#50

Post by Anon1096 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #29
latchkey wrote: post #5

Excellent article for once. Another one is decentralized compute. AWS pioneered taking unused compute and commoditizing it. Well, there is a lot of unused compute in the world and building ways to take advantage of it is part of what I see 'web3' as being about. PoW mining, however "wasteful", is still a great example of allowing anyone to effectively participate in the validation of transactions and getting rewarded…

Crypto isn't required for this. It doesn't even help.

Smart contracts is what makes it possible.
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