The endless search for a crypto use case • Hacker News Board

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#81

Post by EGreg » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

Endless search? FileCoin is used to pay for IPFS. BTT is used to pay for faster downloads speeds.

There are lots of others. My own company has spent 3 years building way more applications that you can see here https://intercoin.org/applications

They're open source, and fully documented, try to use them! We're currently building interfaces to power them:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySi-wOB28y0

We also have an Intercoin Show every week where I interview some well-known people in the space. Some examples:

Ian Clarke, founder of Freenet, about decentralized systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWrRqUkJpMQ

Sara Hanks, author of Regulation S, about regulations: https://community.intercoin.org/t/interview-with-sara-hanks-...

Thomas Greco, community currency economics: https://community.intercoin.org/t/interview-with-thomas-h-gr...

This is what we are working to accomplish: https://intercoin.org/proposal.pdf

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#82

Post by T0Bi » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #65

ragnot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea would be that in a scenario where crypto becomes a currency, there wouldn't need to be an off-ramp (at least immediately, think war/revolution). You would trade the crypto like "real" money.

This requires price stability, which is at odds with the use of crypto as a speculative investment vehicle. People use fiat to transact because it is stable. It’s stable because a central bank is using tools available to bring about stability.

There are decentralized stable coins such as Dai that survived massive crashes/volatility in the past and still remained on peg. Crypto ≠ Bitcoin.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#83

Post by ragnot » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #65

ragnot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea would be that in a scenario where crypto becomes a currency, there wouldn't need to be an off-ramp (at least immediately, think war/revolution). You would trade the crypto like "real" money.

This requires price stability, which is at odds with the use of crypto as a speculative investment vehicle. People use fiat to transact because it is stable. It’s stable because a central bank is using tools available to bring about stability.

It's a hedge. Like anything other hedge it's not bulletproof. I'm blessed to live in a country that has sound monetary policy (you do too probably). But there are millions (if not billions) of people who don't. Crypto offers a way to avoid capital controls when governments fail. It's not the crypto itself, its just the most convenient way. See: https://restofworld.org/2021/the-cryptocurrency-dons-of-beir...

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#84

Post by TremendousJudge » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #50

sudden_dystopia wrote: post #8

There is only one use case and that is the originally intended use, as a currency completely decoupled from any one country’s monetary meddling and thus liberating the populace from poor central planners and/or authoritarians. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.

I suppose the citizens of Turkey should be grateful, but that's about the only national currency that's performed worse than crypto.

Argentina is currently experiencing a booming inflation and local distrust for its currency is at an all time high (and that's saying a lot). Many Argentinians (of a certain technical inclination) are very much into crypto, as a "second best" alternative after US dollars. I know that many Argentinians lost their savings in the LUNA crash.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#85

Post by rpmw » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

m348e912 wrote: post #55

rpmw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this strikes me as odd too. My bank will instantly deposit transfers while the (free) ACH process takes time to clear. I can transfer up to something like $99,999 a day which is fine for my needs. At worst case a $15 fee to wire funds which I could probably get waived if I asked customer support nicely. There is also plenty of recourse in the unlikely event something goes wrong.

With crypto you don't have to ask nicely, you just send. Being your own bank has it's advantages (and risks).

Sure, but I'd say for just about every person the risks far outweigh the rewards. And IMO adding intermediaries to account for that risk seems an unnecessary abstraction given the current system.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#86

Post by 8note » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #21

snapcaster wrote: post #3

I mean it has good use cases they're not just the ones that scheme promoters want to be true. I know TFA pokes some holes in the censorship resistance attribute of bitcoin but i think everyone can agree it does provide value transfer solution that is much harder to block than Visa/Stripe/etc. 1). Silk Road or dark net markets in general. Can't be done with Visa or other existing solutions at any kind of scale 2). Fun…

Agreed, there are use cases, even obvious use cases. Blockchain provides guarantees that other databases do not. They're just guarantees that assume that some portion of people connecting to it are bad actors. Most people don't really care about solving that problem because they just don't give those people access, but that implies a single authority for access ie: centralization. So blockchain only makes sense when:…

a) isn't quite specific enough

You use blockchain if you have one very specific type of bad actor, and know for sure that they won't try bad things

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#87

Post by dybber » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

silentsea90 wrote: post #61

snapcaster wrote: post #3

I mean it has good use cases they're not just the ones that scheme promoters want to be true. I know TFA pokes some holes in the censorship resistance attribute of bitcoin but i think everyone can agree it does provide value transfer solution that is much harder to block than Visa/Stripe/etc. 1). Silk Road or dark net markets in general. Can't be done with Visa or other existing solutions at any kind of scale 2). Fun…

The biggest use case for Bitcoin is of it being an escape from arbitrary printing of money by central banks. The richer your home country, the further you are from intuitively grasping how catastrophic printing is in the long run.

Why is it catastrophic then? Isn’t it exactly this property that allows us to have a more or less stable currency?

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#88

Post by tremarley » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

whitepaint wrote: post #69

Ens domains, PoolTogether, Aave and more: https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ Have these people writing these kind of articles ever downloaded a browser wallet and played around with Defi? The amount of ignorance here is staggering. How is it on HN? HN is supposed to be a place for people who are tech savvy and are able to think about the future and imagine it different from yesterday.

The same thing confuses me. This is meant to be a feed for tech savvy people.

It seems as though, the majority of HN users haven't invested any time into understanding it. So they just label it bad.

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#89

Post by sampa » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #23

bnchrch wrote: post #11

I mean I see two clear use cases. 1. Transferring funds I can transfer crypto faster and a lot cheaper than any money transfer. Hell I can receive and withdraw same day. 2. Earning interest By parking my money in a stable coin and dropping it into an AMM like uniswap I can earn 10x-50x more interest than just parking it in my bank account. No volatility. Only risk is hacker risk.

Re: 1), I can transfer money within the Eurozone at no cost, 24/7, practically instantaneous. It's really hard for any crypto solution to beat that. For non-Euro transfers, I regularly send USD wires and they clear the same day. The fees are a fixed $25 (so 0.25% for a $10k transfer), which IMO is reasonable. Re: 2), uhh, yeah. I think that's what Celsius users believed too.

re 1) try to make 5 transfers of 3-7k euros to other people, get your account blocked, go to bank to find somebody to tell you why they did and what they want, wait indefinitely after you provide them explanations and paperwork

Re: The endless search for a crypto use case

#90

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

ragnot wrote: post #83

toomuchtodo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This requires price stability, which is at odds with the use of crypto as a speculative investment vehicle. People use fiat to transact because it is stable. It’s stable because a central bank is using tools available to bring about stability.

It's a hedge. Like anything other hedge it's not bulletproof. I'm blessed to live in a country that has sound monetary policy (you do too probably). But there are millions (if not billions) of people who don't. Crypto offers a way to avoid capital controls when governments fail. It's not the crypto itself, its just the most convenient way. See: https://restofworld.org/2021/the-cryptocurrency-dons-of-beir...

Sort of agree. Find ways to issue them digital wallets with fiat currency support. Venezuelans using Zelle to transact in dollars comes to mind. It’s a financial inclusion and digital identity story, high level. But if you’re violating nation state laws (AML/KYC/money laundering/capital controls), you’re not likely to avoid repercussions for that, state monopoly on force and all that jazz.

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/06/16/venezuela-is-a-t...