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How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

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Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#91

Post by steveklabnik »

egypturnash wrote: post #90
minimax wrote: post #83

Here we have more evidence of the miraculous ability of crypto currencies to turn unassuming computer programmers into economics experts. Let's take a look at some choice quotes. There’s no inherent reason that a piece of paper has a certain amount of value. There is a subjective reason, though: namely, that a large enough number of people agree that USD is a worthwhile commodity. They believe that for a number of re…

The OP gets snarky about the reasons people think dollars are a viable medium if exchange; you get serious. But four of your six reasons why people use dollars kinda boil down to "people use dollars because lots of people use dollars". He's realized that "money" is just a very complicated game we play with each other. Possibly this is the lead-in to realizing that society is also a complicated game we play with each…

> Either way, dude just had his mind blown because a silly joke currency made him start to think about What Money Is for the first time in his life.

For the record, _I_ know this, it's that I think that _other_ people will start to think of this.

> Don't be putting anything you can't afford to lose in DOGE, or BTC for that matter.

Plus a zillion here.

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#92

Post by gojomo »

hmsimha wrote: post #77
firebones wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. There's not really much overhead to creating a new cryptocurrency, so worries about deflationary pressures should be removed since new currencies can emerge. The currencies will emerge out of specific cultures, in this case the meme culture, but as we've seen in the past, through various gaming cultures and as someone else suggested "Bieber-coin". (Exercise for the reader: is this much different than dot-com b…

In-game currencies are already a thing, but I suspect the reason they never caught on as viable liquid currency is their centralized nature.

For in-game currencies so far, the centralization has meant two strikes: one, fear of the proprietor's control; two, the risk other entities (governments) could exert control via pressure on the proprietor.

Emergent decentralized currencies address both – and might also improve centralized-proprietor currencies by competition and precedent. (Proprietors will accept more community input, and win greater tolerance from governments, because of pressure from alternatives.)

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#93

Post by thwest »

minimax wrote: post #83

Here we have more evidence of the miraculous ability of crypto currencies to turn unassuming computer programmers into economics experts. Let's take a look at some choice quotes. There’s no inherent reason that a piece of paper has a certain amount of value. There is a subjective reason, though: namely, that a large enough number of people agree that USD is a worthwhile commodity. They believe that for a number of re…

> That's a bunch of needlessly cynical and completely ignorant bullshit. [...] It isn't something that's done at the point of a gun.

Alan Greenspan is of the opinion that our Iraq wars were 'largely about oil' and economic stability. The point is debatable, but certainly not completely ignorant bullshit.

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#94

Post by moron4hire »

natural219 wrote: post #27

There is one other aspect here I find very interesting, and it has to do with the efficient market hypothesis. The fact that people are buying Dogecoin simply because it is a fun internet meme kind of flies in the face of people who still view the price of financial assets as mostly rational, value-based prices, that can be deconstructed along the lines of asset-based valuation, financial ratios, available informatio…

I look at buying a dogecoin like buying one of those "joke-a-day" calendars. It's probably going to sit in a drawer in your desk, not actually used for its original purpose as a calendar, but you take it out every few months and rip off the old pages, reading the jokes. It's just a shitty joke book, made to look like a calendar, thereby encouraging you to destroy it and buy another one next year.

If someone were to ask me if they should invest in joke-a-day calendars, then the obvious answer is, unless you are interested in getting in the business of printing joke-a-day calendars, or selling them, then no, joke-a-day calendars are not an "investment".

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#95

Post by vacri »

shurcooL wrote: post #50
steveklabnik wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Megacoin , Your Global Currency. Your Modern Wallet. Global, Anonymous, Secure. Sounds pretty serious business to me.

Are there any crypto-currencies that are not anonymous? I like secure, modern, low cost transactions, but I don't like the anonymity. I want a currency where everyone knows how much I spent, what I bought, and it applies to everyone. Does that exist?

I think that such a currency would have a particularly low buy-in from people, making it quite difficult to get off the ground. Simple privacy like "I don't want my friend who I'm dieting with to know I sneaked off to get a burger" is just the start of the issues...

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#96

Post by atduskgreg »

shurcooL wrote: post #50
steveklabnik wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Megacoin , Your Global Currency. Your Modern Wallet. Global, Anonymous, Secure. Sounds pretty serious business to me.

Are there any crypto-currencies that are not anonymous? I like secure, modern, low cost transactions, but I don't like the anonymity. I want a currency where everyone knows how much I spent, what I bought, and it applies to everyone. Does that exist?

Bitcoin is not especially anonymous. Researchers have demonstrated techniques for de-anonymizing users through transactions: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/596.pdf

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#97

Post by vacri »

Houshalter wrote: post #61
KVFinn wrote: post #58

I was in the early days of Dogecoin and it was fun BECAUSE it was worthless. Give out 10k on a lark for a funny picture, etc. Now that's it's being seen a real story of value, rather than a tool to send a bit of karma around... it's kinda losing the fun. Serious investor/speculator people are buying and selling, arbitrage between exchanges, absolutely massive GPU farms that out mine anything regular person could get.…

Well we could always make a new worthless currency. And set it so it intentionally inflates infinitely so that this can't happen. Zimbabwe-coin maybe.

Interesting idea - can we make a cryptocurrency whose tokens have an expiry date, like the Zimbabwe dollars?

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#98

Post by seiji »

KVFinn wrote: post #58

I was in the early days of Dogecoin and it was fun BECAUSE it was worthless. Give out 10k on a lark for a funny picture, etc. Now that's it's being seen a real story of value, rather than a tool to send a bit of karma around... it's kinda losing the fun. Serious investor/speculator people are buying and selling, arbitrage between exchanges, absolutely massive GPU farms that out mine anything regular person could get.…

I was in the early days of Dogecoin

It launched two weeks ago.

Re: How Dogecoin changed my perspective on cryptocurrency

#100

Post by vacri »

BTCenthusiast wrote: post #20

The DOGE phenomenon is pretty interesting. Aside from lightening things up a bit, it does point to the ridiculousness of fiat currencies in general. Essentially we're fighting and clawing over numbers, abstractions if you will. At the least dogecoin brings a bit of levity to the idea of currency. Currency is simply information and in the void of a better solution, a necessary instrument. If dogecoin is some sort of a…

It will date pretty fast, just like every internet meme before it. Imagine an AllYourBaseCoin, or a StuffOnMyCatCoin. Or even a KonyCoin. It will run it's course and people will forget it - I'll be coloured surprised if doge[coin] is anything but a footnote in a year.
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