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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?

#51

Post by redox99 »

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.

Yes you can, the same way you can with stocks. But yes as you said, you need to have more crypto than the house is worth.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#52

Post by scott_w »

The entire thesis of this article is nonsense. He sets up a strawman to knock down.

When people say “there are no use cases for crypto,” they’re actually saying “there are no use cases that aren’t solved better elsewhere.” This is the question he needs to answer and he doesn’t do so.

Looking at the money example, he says he’ll sell his laptop for Etherium. That’s fine but if nobody is willing to buy it with Etherium, he can’t sell his laptop and Etherium is de facto not being used for money.

Because he always skips this crucial last part, he never proves his argument.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#53

Post by wmf »

msworddebugger wrote: post #49
ogogmad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It also allows them to stay long crypto.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#54

Post by latchkey »

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.

That's your personal opinion, but you're not helping the discourse by answering 'why' it isn't required or even help.

Let's step outside of the box for a moment. If I'm in some other country and I don't have easy access to a credit card and I want to build out the next cool idea, how do I get access to scalable compute?

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#55

Post by redox99 »

msworddebugger wrote: post #49
ogogmad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I don't know exactly the tax situation, but with stocks it's very common that founders or wealthy people in general take loans against their stocks instead of selling, so there's probably good reasons.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#56

Post by latchkey »

RexM wrote: post #21
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…

I had not heard of Akash before. So I pay real dollars to setup and run a K8S cluster and people pay me in funny money to host their app on it? Looking at the calculator[0] the price fluctuates quite a bit. The 30 day average is 1 AKT/$0.35 while the current price is $0.215. [0]: https://akash.praetorapp.com/calculator

Correct on both counts. The profit model just isn't sadly there yet. But it also wasn't there for Bitcoin in 2009 or ETH later on and people still bought hardware to mine.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#57

Post by CaptainZapp »

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…

Case A can also be achieved with straight forward gambling.

I agree that the second case, illegal transactions in any form, is the only real killer app for crypto.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#58

Post by jrumbut »

flaque wrote: post #23
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…

> “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…

But if the speculative use cases dwarf the normal ones, won't their interests come first?

Why would I want to hitch my wagon to that star? What will happen if the speculation dies down and the ledger isn't so widely distributed anymore?

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#59

Post by WatchDog »

woopwoop wrote: post #43

> 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.

The counter argument might be that Ford F-150s aren't particularly fungible.

A slightly stronger example might be gold, but people don't use gold as money anymore either.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#60

Post by ogogmad »

charcircuit wrote: post #47
ogogmad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is typical of DeFi people. "Technically correct is the best kind of correct."

Your collateral would be other crypto. So it would:

- Be worth more than the house.

- Be completely virtual, so you can't use it to do anything in the real world.

- Be fairly liquid, as if it were already money.

- Be as difficult to obtain in the first place as the cash needed to buy a house without a loan. [EDIT: More difficult because of over-collateralisation!]

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