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> If it were to collapse, the disillusionment and blame that would come out of it may be enough to start a revolution. You mean, if it's not different this tim

> If it were to collapse, the disillusionment and blame that would come out of it may be enough to start a revolution. You mean, if it's not different this time? The average person doesn't understand the monetary system, and having cryptocoins won't change that. Most people buying these things just buy because the price is going up _fast_. But these ICOs don't have any inherent value -- they're tokens being created out of thin air by random people with mostly stupid ideas. > As more people start buying cryptos and start doing more research, they become increasingly sceptical about the existing financial system. The financial system has its flaws -- for sure. Blockchain tech is very interesting, but I don't believe crypto is a valid solution. That said, you can still make money in a bubble, so enjoy the party while it lasts?

jondubois 9y ago
A lot of them have inherent value. When you use Stripe to pay for something, you pay a transaction fee. When you use Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, you also pay a transaction fee (which is often much lower than what you would pay with a standard gateway; particularly with large transactions). That's profit; the profit gives intrinsic value to the network. The bitcoin network is quite slow and power hungry, so as a result the BTC transaction fee is now over $4 which is high; the BTC network is saturated due to high demand; so that's why we need altcoins to add capacity. There aren't enough altcoin networks to handle the demand for crypto-transactions. A blockchain does not scale unfortunately (each one has a hard physical throughput limit), so the best way to scale a block chain is to add more side chains (which is what alt-coins are; you can think of them as specialized shards of Bitcoin). It's like the Domain Name System - There is a hierarchy of machines and networks which together can handle a massive volume of domain name lookups. Any network which proves itself to be a trustworthy and reliable way to transfer money has intrinsic value which is determined by the present or future value of the network of services around it.

jondubois 9y ago

A lot of them have inherent value. When you use Stripe to pay for something, you pay a transaction fee. When you use Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, you also pay a transaction fee (which is often much lower than what you would pay with a standard gateway; particularly with large transactions). That's profit; the profit gives intrinsic value to the network. The bitcoin network is quite slow and power hungry, so as a result the BTC transaction fee is now over $4 which is high; the BTC network is saturated due to high demand; so that's why we need altcoins to add capacity. There aren't enough altcoin networks to handle the demand for crypto-transactions. A blockchain does not scale unfortunately (each one has a hard physical throughput limit), so the best way to scale a block chain is to add more side chains (which is what alt-coins are; you can think of them as specialized shards of Bitcoin). It's like the Domain Name System - There is a hierarchy of machines and networks which together can handle a massive volume of domain name lookups. Any network which proves itself to be a trustworthy and reliable way to transfer money has intrinsic value which is determined by the present or future value of the network of services around it.