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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?

#71

Post by woopwoop »

WatchDog wrote: post #59
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.

Fungible + trades at greater than one usd also includes, for example, aapl shares. Still well short of the mark.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#74

Post by albertopv »

latchkey wrote: post #54
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you are a starter, how do you buy crypto without credit card, bank account or similar?

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#75

Post by Aunche »

> Filecoin - A commodity market for storage that's currently 0.0011% the cost of S3.

This actually proves that there isn't a real use case of Filecoin aside from speculation. Amazon isn't making 99.9989% profit margins on S3, nor is it possible for Filecoin to be a hundred thousand times more efficient than S3. This means that Filecoin's storage product is so uncompetitive that you need to subsidize it a hundred thousand times just to get people to use it.

> Toucan - Tradable Carbon Credits

All the other use cases listed look like parodies of crypto products with plenty of buzzwords, and no real substance. However, this one is especially nonsensical. From their website:

> Working with top DeFi protocols and the community we enable carbon credits to be used as collateral, yields and money, as well as a huge range of novel applications.

That's literally missing the point of buying carbon credits. The only use case for buying carbon credits to blackhole them immediately, so that you can feel like you're offsetting your emissions. There is no reason to resell them. Even if you did want to resell them because you overestimated your carbon footprint and have some left "unused", no buyer has any reason to believe you. If there is anything carbon credits need, it's more centralization and trust, not less.

Excellent relevant Wendover video about carbon credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW3gaelBypY

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#76

Post by stale2002 »

guerrilla wrote: post #37
mike741 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The proper question is what does cryptocurrency do better than alternatives? Bitcoin, as one example, does a better job limiting supply and preventing inflation than its fiat alternatives. Of course, this doesn't make the article any less of a strawman.

> Bitcoin, as one example, does a better job limiting supply and preventing inflation than its fiat alternatives. You assume that's a plus, but most of the world acts on the opposite assumption, i.e. NAIRU-like policies. I'm not picking a side, just pointing out that you disagree with almost every expert on the planet.

> I'm not picking a side, just pointing out that you disagree with almost every expert on the planet.

The beauty of crypto is that if you don't like this feature of crypto, you don't have to use it.

Everyone gets what they want! The "experts" who prefer inflationary currency can keep using that, and people who don't want their money inflated can choose otherwise.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#77

Post by lkrubner »

"Few technologies have a clear start point. Did the internet start in Tim Berners-Lee in 1990? Or in 1982 with TCP/IP? Or in the 1970's with CYCLADES? Or in 1969 with ARPANET? Or in 1965 with the invention of packet switching? Or in 1950's with time-sharing? Can you distinguish the internet from computers or information theory? Maybe it starts at radio or the telegraph."

Did you say 'over'? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! It ain't over now, 'cause when the goin' gets tough, the tough get goin'. Who's with me? Let's go! Come on!...

(returning): What the f--k happened to the crypto I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst. 'Ooh, we're afraid to go with you, crypto, we might get in trouble.' (shouting) Well, just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Coinbase, he's a dead man! Celsius, dead! Ethereum...

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#78

Post by 8note »

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.

isnt that blockchain sovereign identity? its not you that owns your identity, its the blockchain and a private key.

it be nice to prove identity via a public key, but the private key can't be trusted as the authority. They get compromised too often

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#79

Post by jrumbut »

aeternum wrote: post #63
jrumbut wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>But if the speculative use cases dwarf the normal ones, won't their interests come first? They will initially but just as we saw the the early internet, a crash can wipe out the speculation pretty efficiently and what remains might actually be useful.

I don't know about the very early days, but since 1990 Internet adoption (globally) has only gone up.

Some stocks crashed, some specific sites went away, but the people involved just reorganized and made even more successful businesses.

If 50%+ of Internet users decided to disconnect that could cause some real problems.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#80

Post by ytch »

mrweasel wrote: post #64

Firstly: I’m annoyed that crypto now seems to be synonymous with “blockchain”, rather than cryptography. Secondly: Most of the blockchain use-case feel a little like the argument for Bittorrent. It’s not that you can’t use it for sensibel purposes, but when you do you’re solving problem most people don’t have.

Me too, I thought: " We use RSA, AES, ECDSA everyday, why is it a question" at first glance.
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