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Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

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Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#61

Post by DennisP »

boh wrote: post #37
DennisP wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since this wasn't a failure of "crypto" or anything decentralized actually built on it. It was a failure by a Wall Street trader who set up a centralized exchange in the Bahamas, and engaged in the sort of shenanigans that we've seen other Wall Street people do. Apparently everybody's forgotten that legacy finance had Madoff, all sorts of shady nonsense that collapsed in 2008, etc. The point of crypto is t…

The point of crypto is speculation and has been for some time. If you're buying it with fiat and then selling it for fiat you're always going to be subject to unregulated exchanges. No one is using this stuff as currency. There's no "legacy finance" if 100% of your transactions are on it. You're not living in the future, you've been in the present this whole time

The point of a lot of legacy finance is speculation. We could argue about whether that's a good thing, but it's not unique to crypto.

But Ethereum and probably other smart contract blockchains have decentralized exchanges, where you can trade tokens around without trusting anyone to hold them for you. That stuff is working just fine.

Obviously we do need legacy systems to trade with fiat. But we don't need to trust those system to hold crypto for any longer than it takes to make that trade. "Not your keys, not your coins" has been a rallying cry of the crypto community ever since Mt. Gox failed eight years ago, but the big brains running hedge funds don't think that way.

Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#62

Post by aradaelli »

rvz wrote: post #12

Exactly. They sure 'nailed it' alright. [0] /s [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/19/buffett-backed-digital-bank-...

Nubank, which went public late last year, counts famed investor Warren Buffett among its roster of backers. Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway took a $500 million stake in Nubank in June 2021. The company is valued by the stock market at $20.4 billion, roughly half what it was worth in its December 2021 debut.

The title is an exaggeration. Buffet owns less than 3% of the bank. He has no control on their initiatives...

Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#63

Post by jqpabc123 »

axlee wrote: post #43
jqpabc123 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FedNow aims to provide *instant* and secure transfers between existing fiat bank accounts 24/7/365 at a projected cost of 5 cents per transaction. In trials now, scheduled to launch in mid-2023. The most valuable use-case for crypto was prodding the Fed to develop and implement this. If all goes as planned, consider crypto's work done. https://explore.fednow.org

Sweden have had Swish for ten years now, long before crypto was relevant. It is ubiquitous, I believe 90% of the population uses it. It was implemented by a consortium of the largest banks in the country. And it's not only Sweden: other countries have similar systems. I believe the use case and the need of instant bank transfers was long known, and that crypto was never a catalyst for the need to be aknowledged. That…

That the US is generally slow to roll out this kind of national standard is mostly due to politics and general aversion to government work, not because the US waited for crypto to make the problem "known".

By design, the Federal Reserve is semi-independent from the political process in the US and is not government funded. The problem was "known" for years but the threat of crypto played a significant role in finally spurring them into quick action.

Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#64

Post by ekianjo »

azaras wrote: post #6
adriand wrote: post #5

Regardless of how you feel about crypto - and I admit to seeing some valuable use-cases, while being highly skeptical of the speculation - you gotta admit that these comments are prescient and also very funny. I sincerely hope I have that presence of mind at that age.

But the valuable use-cases could be solved using other methods efficiently.

so why were they not already solved efficiently before crypto?

Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#65

Post by supportlocal4h »

kelthuzad wrote: post #11

I personally don't own any Bitcoin, but would you have bought it in 2018 you'd still be up approx. ~370% at the current dip, while you would have been profitable a whopping ~1700% at ATH. I find their contrarian takes rather regressive and self-serving.

My house is up 370%. My neighbor's house is down.

Meanwhile, we both stayed warm and dry last night.

Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#66

Post by bouncycastle »

It is wrong to assume that crypto is broken if it doesn't have a high value in some arbitrary currency like the USD. Crypto works just as well even if the price 0. It will still process transactions, still create new blocks, and it will still have a use for someone somewhere, even non-financial.

Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#67

Post by ETH_start »

tokai wrote: post #40
Frost1x wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general concept of having a medium and marketplace of exchange that isn't regulated/controlled has some value. It may have more costs than benefits in the grand scheme of things, though. I tend to support regulation in general, but I also see the value of something that has limited opportunity for opportunists to dig their fingers into and extract from without contributing real value themselves. To be very clear,…

But regulation/control has nothing todo with crypto. Its not a technical issue, but social/political. So tax fraud and remittances are left. Both seems like they will make regulation come eventually.

It's much harder to regulate and control when there's no centralized gatekeeper that regulators can target.

Distributed consensus reduces the power that all centralized entities - whether government or corporate - exert.

Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#68

Post by ekianjo »

HermanMartinus wrote: post #33
madsbuch wrote: post #9

> There is nothing being produced of value from the assets. A guy like Warren Buffet can clearly appreciate value in the sense of institutions, after all he made his fortune largely in the insurance sector. We are still in the early stages of Crypto, only now we see serious DAO structures start to emerge. There is also a good chance that he will see his entire industry disrupted in some years as more efficient ways t…

Turns out we govern small scale institutions pretty well without blockchain. Eg: companies, collectives, organisations, associations, etc.

"Pretty well" is your description of this total mess of a financial system that crashes like a clock every ten years? You forgot the /s at the end of your comment

Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#69

Post by hef19898 »

jgilias wrote: post #46
tokai wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I admit to seeing some valuable use-cases Could you write them here? Genuinely curious.

Two real life datapoints. 1. A friend of mine has a small software consultancy. He usually works within EUR area. All fine and dandy there. Then there was a client in the US, they agreed on a USD rate for his work. He went to his bank to open a USD account, they did additional AML and KYC procedures and just refused to open a USD account. Didn’t even explain why, he’s not doing anything shady. So, the first USD payme…

1. Use paypal or a credit card, your local EURO based bank (or any other EU currency denominated one) will happily exchange the transferred USD into local currencies based on latest exchange rates.

2. Use Western Union.

Re: Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger on crypto in 2018

#70

Post by AlexandrB »

bouncycastle wrote: post #66

It is wrong to assume that crypto is broken if it doesn't have a high value in some arbitrary currency like the USD. Crypto works just as well even if the price 0. It will still process transactions, still create new blocks, and it will still have a use for someone somewhere, even non-financial.

There's little incentive to mine if the price is zero. It would be much easier for a single entity to undermine the integrity of the chain with a 51% attack if the only miners are true believers not motivated by money.
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