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Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#71

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

induetimesir wrote: post #57
v64 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't understand where the perception comes from that this technology is only useful for laundering and speculation. Certainly it is currently being used for those purposes. But to say there is no imaginable use outside of that seems unwarranted. I've commented in the past here that the use of public blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and escrow services will be a huge cost reduction f…

Well said. pegged decentralized synthetic digital bearer assets. That's a mouthful. Each word has a purpose and together they describe a hugely innovative and valuable technology. It is my belief that there are very, very few people who have an understanding of how important this innovation is. And too few people understand the importance of the more simple digital bearer asset, of which bitcoin is the prime example.…

This is exactly what I'm talking about, though. Bearer bonds have been illegal to issue in the US for the last forty years precisely because their principle advantage over registered bonds is that they make it easier to break the law. I'm not saying I can't see the utility of Bitcoin or blockchains in general for criminals. That much is plain. Speculators as well. The question is whether there is any utility for anyone else.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#72

Post by aazaa »

The trouble with this article is that the author doesn't seem to know what Bitcoin is for.

Notice the vague treatment of actual cryptocurrency applications. There are lots of predictions about startup activity, "flippenings" and venture capital, but little about the goods and services customers will actually be buying, or what specifically startups will be building.

It's this kind of thinking that leads people into the dark thicket that is "tokens": digital instruments bought and sold largely for speculative purposes. It's understandable. The ability to print money is a fantasy of many people from a young age.

The last two years have seem a solid refutation of this notion. Almost every token has lost value against Bitcoin. It seems reasonable to conclude that the carnage will continue.

So the money printing press ship has sailed. It's going to come as a shock for many people (some with economics degrees), but bootstrapping censorship-resistant money is a one-time deal. Any attempt to profit from the undertaking harms the credibility of the founders. Only the genuine scammers are left to continue the exercise.

Here's a vision for the future of Bitcoin. Bitcoin will extend its role as a refuge from the growing foreign and domestic militarization of money. It will become an indispensable weapon against civil asset forfeiture, international sanctions, deplatforming, and mass surveillance.

That's your application for Bitcoin in the '20s. And it's a doozy. It places Bitcoin on the side of personal freedom and on a collision course with some of the world's biggest governments, including the US. There will be many attempts to "ban" Bitcoin.

Startups will play a marginal role at best because their ultimate aim of monopolization flies in the face of what Bitcoin was designed to do.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#73

Post by Geee »

jrimbault wrote: post #69
Geee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but every bitcoin is divided into 100000000 satoshis, and it's possible to add even smaller units in the future.

Who and/or what decides by what mechanisms and when satoshis would be divided into smaller units ? Doesn't that make it virtually valueless by definition ?

No, it doesn't change the value. It's just more decimals. A hard fork would be needed to make the change in the protocol.

Similarly a bank can use whatever amount of decimals they wish to store their dollar amounts, it doesn't create new money. You can also divide gold into infinitesimal amounts.

You can already send millisatoshis on the Lightning network, which is rounded to a nearest satoshi when it's settled on the blockchain.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#74

Post by biolurker1 »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #7

Consider the source, right? How many people without a large vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency consider further growth likely? My guess is that governments will more and more realize that the main utility of blockchains is money laundering and speculation. As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve any above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense than existin…

How many people without vested interest? How about the Imf, China, Facebook and basically every big player in the world?

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#75

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

thenewnewguy wrote: post #45
wpietri wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It has been 10+ years since the Bitcoin paper. No cryptocurrency has significant consumer adoption. [1], [2] Except for light financial crime (ransomware, money laundering, gambling, theft, etc), it has no demonstrated advantage over alternative technologies. I don't think it will go away, any more than Ponzi and Make Money Fast schemes have gone away. But like you, I expect it will fade into the background…

> Except for light financial crime (ransomware, money laundering, gambling, theft, etc), it has no demonstrated advantage over alternative technologies. Slight nitpick: Cryptocurrencies have demonstrable advantages over existing solutions (pseudo-anonymity, decentralization, inflation-proof, etc) but consumers don't care about these advantages enough to make the switch.

> but consumers don't care about these advantages enough to make the switch.

And, more importantly, governments see those attributes as a downside, and would no doubt clamp down hard on crypto on-ramps in the event that they ever started getting significant uptake.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#77

Post by Geee »

iamaelephant wrote: post #64
nobleach wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember people scoffing at the internet like there no legitimate use-cases for it. "Yeah, we have places for information, it's called Grolier's Encyclopedia on CD-ROM, and it's cheap!". "I already have yellow pages delivered for free by C&P Bell". While cryptocurrency may be quite a bit more narrow, blockchain is most likely a far more interesting technology.

> blockchain is most likely a far more interesting technology. Why? Really, I would like to know why you think this. Append-only data structures have existed almost since the dawn of computing. Making it distributed and trustless doesn't seem to solve any real problems, which is why over a decade since they entered the public consciousness they are used for almost nothing interesting, and nothing that couldn't be don…

> doesn't seem to solve any real problems

If you don't see the current monetary systems as a problem, then I guess you don't really have a way to understand Bitcoin.

I think it's one of the most important innovations of our civilization; a 'next step', if you will.

Personally, it solves my problem of storing value of my work indefinitely.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#79

Post by 99052882514569 »

v64 wrote: post #49
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the use of public blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and escrow services will be a huge cost reduction for many industries such as finance. But we don't want financial transactions to be fully automated and immutable. We want escrow services to be subject to laws, we want a judicial undo and modify button. So if you remove the whole "no one can change history" bit because it's an anti-feature, i…

There are definitely cases where transactions need to be reversed, and this functionality can be built into a clearinghouse system. Immutability is a plus here because you have an unalterable audit log showing the original transaction and then the subsequent transaction that reverses the first. The cost savings comes from the fact that instead of having to hire independent auditors to verify the paper trail, the bloc…

>The cost savings comes from the fact that instead of having to hire independent auditors to verify the paper trail, the blockchain serves as an immutable audit log and can be verified programmatically.

I don't know enough about the financial industry to know if a real actual problem is being solved here. I do assume that any bank in this industry is already required by law to keep a record of all transactions, and that it's all digitally processed and stored. You'd have to hire an auditor to verify the blockchain software too, and even on the ongoing basis, to audit the infrastructure to make sure it hasn't been improperly modified.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#80

Post by TylerE »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #26
v64 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't understand where the perception comes from that this technology is only useful for laundering and speculation. Certainly it is currently being used for those purposes. But to say there is no imaginable use outside of that seems unwarranted. I've commented in the past here that the use of public blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and escrow services will be a huge cost reduction f…

> If you look at what MakerDAO is doing with the Dai stablecoin, they've proven that it's possible to create a synthetic asset closely pegged to the dollar purely through financial incentives, and they did it all just using Ethereum v1. A holder of Dai can earn 4% APY through a Dai Savings Account, and a vote is currently in place to raise the rate to 6%. >I personally find it incredible that an asset exists on the b…

Paying 6%, or even 4%, on a savings account is a MASSIVE red flag to anyone with a bit of financial sense.
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