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Which one of these properties of cryptocurrency is imaginary? Coins cant be faked or duplicated No one can create them at will They can be transmitted qu

by pixie_ 9y ago

Which one of these properties of cryptocurrency is imaginary? Coins cant be faked or duplicated No one can create them at will They can be transmitted quickly/globally with low fees (excluding bitcoin of course) You can store them yourself, no bank needed Sending huge sums of money is no problem Relatively simple design, 8 page white paper Has worked as designed for almost a decade Seems like crypto has a lot unique intrinsic value that surpasses traditional currencies to date. The only thing imaginary is your imagination. Crypto is very real. Even people on an island would eventually find a common denominator in which to store value which has many of the same properties above.

tromp 9y ago
> No one can create them at will Didn't Ripple Labs create 100 bilion ripple at will?
- stock_toaster 9y ago
  Someone is going to owe a lot of taxes?
- shams93 9y ago
  Yeah ripple is a token not a currency they can generate new ripple at will but since the founder has a large stake he has an incentive to not flood the market. But ripple is not the future it's a stopgap running on centralized servers it's not revolutionary like etherium
  - rainboiboi 9y ago
    *ethereum
  - xorcist 9y ago
    Because the Ethereum people only created 80 million tokens out of thin air?
codegladiator 9y ago
> Has worked as designed for almost a decade "worked as designed" can be said for every thing. Everything works as designed. Yet gets hacked/stolen/cracked/misused. Banks are working as designed. And so is the government. Just that the majority will dislike the design because they have no say in it. > You can store them yourself, no bank needed And then you can loose it yourself too. Remove all the safeguards which was built thru decades of learning and allow everyone to shoot themselves and everyone else in the foot.
- tromp 9y ago
  > And then you can loose it yourself too. Admittedly, hardware wallets do a good job of keeping your private keys secure, allowing you to safely transact even on a malware infested PC.
  - codegladiator 9y ago
    Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having soft currency ? Hardware wallets sure can be stolen physically right ? Leaving that chuck of currency useless (if not transferred fraudulently)
    - Anderkent 9y ago
      Think of a hardware wallet as of a credit card. You will have some mechanism protecting it from being used when you're not next to it (password/pin); you will have some cold recovery option if you lose it (like a long passphrase stored in a safe deposit box). But, like a credit card, the send/receive operations are performed on a secure, limited scope system (rather than an easily-compromised PC)
    - xorcist 9y ago
      That point bears repeating: if you hold a wallet, you are responsible for having backups. It's very valuable data. Either use two or more hardware wallets or keep a paper wallet (a printout of the private keys) in a secure place.
- pixie_ 9y ago
simonbarker87 9y ago
You’ve missed the point a bit which is why you are getting down voted. Much of our non physical world (money, value etc) are abstractions for something else and therefore the abstraction only has value in humanity’s collective imagination. If you try to give a goat farmer in the desert a bit coin he won’t take it as to him it literally has no value as he likely can’t access the internet or work out how to turn it in to something else. If we ALL collectively decided tomorrow that bit coins have no value (or the US dollar even) then it would loose its value. Much of our non physical world only stands up because we all agree it does, enough people change their minds and it all falls down.
- pixie_ 9y ago
  You make it sound like 'anything' could be a currency. When in reality finding a common medium of exchange is extremely difficult, and must meet a lot of the properties I listed above. In terms of 'currency technology' crypto is a huge advance over our current standard currencies.
  - simonbarker87 9y ago
    Anything can be a currency so long as enough people agree there is value. Bristol (a smallish city in the UK) has it's own currency that can be used locally that is accepted by shop keepers etc. You can't pay your mortgage with it but you can buy you apples with it. We could use shiny stones as currency if enough people agreed it had value. I think you are thinking about currency within the confines of the current system (eg government, laws etc). What I am saying is that government and laws are only valid in our collective imaginations and therefore everything is imaginary and made up (the USD is just as imaginary as bitcoin, it's just that more people believe in the USD so it is mainstream) and we can collectively apply value to anything want to and remove value from anything we want to.
    - pixie_ 9y ago
      'if people agreed it had value' - That is a big if, don't trivialize it. The value of a currency is dependent on a ton of the properties I listed above.
beebmam 9y ago
There are also downsides of course too. But I think the reality is that the future will have both crypto currencies and fiat currencies. Both have advantages.
- richmarr 9y ago
  Nitpick... crypto currencies are fiat currencies (if they're currencies at all, rather than commododites) Edit: Fiat just means its value is driven by supply/demand rather than being backed by something like gold.
  - pixie_ 9y ago
    Mineable crypto is not fiat because it cannot be created or destroyed at will. That is what gives it value over a fiat currency. You don't have to worry about a central government devaluing it or inflating it artificially.
    - imtringued 9y ago
      You now only have to worry about your "currency" crashing by more than 40% overnight.
      - pixie_ 9y ago
        Keep in mind relatively we're still in the early days of crypto. Though it's not like fiat currencies are immune to crashes. Look at history.
    - richmarr 9y ago
      I see your point, you're tying "fiat" to the act of spontaneous creation at will rather than the lack of a backing commodity, but I don't agree that definition, and even if I did I'm not sure it's as cast-iron a distinction as you're implying. You absolutely do have to worry about price manipulation... the only difference is that it's not specifically governments it's just the disproportionately wealthy. I don't see that as a worthwhile distinction. https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/14/how-bots-are-manipulating-cryptocurrency-prices/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/14/how-bots-are-manipulating... https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-06/mysterious-trader-nearly-unlimited-bankroll-said-be-manipulating-bitcoin-price https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-06/mysterious-trader-... https://cointelegraph.com/news/single-trader-with-enormous-bankroll-is-manipulating-bitcoin-price-but-to-what-end https://cointelegraph.com/news/single-trader-with-enormous-b... Similarly you can destroy cryptocurrency (some at least), and it can be created. The fact that the creation rate is constrained by the prudence of an algorithm designer rather than constrained by the prudence of a central banker seems like another arbitrary distinction. To me it feels like crypto proponents want a fancy economics term for othering conventional currencies, so the definition is being bent to fit.
nucatus 9y ago
I said it before and say it again. These things you call cryptocurrencies can be anything you want but currencies. Who ever claims the contrary has no clue about how a currency works. If you claim this is a highly speculative asset, then yeah, you are right. But if you really want to call this a currency, you have to convince a government to use it as an official currency. No central bank in this world will accept to use a currency that is out of its control, that can't depreciate or appreciate at will.
- Anderkent 9y ago
  > But if you really want to call this a currency, you have to convince a government to use it as an official currency Since when does a currency have to come from a government? People used representative money in forms of IOUs before those were formally issued by governments. Sure, we've moved to government-issued fiat since, because it solved a coordination problem (how do you ensure the value of money doesn't unpredictably change), but that's just one possible solution now.
- pixie_ 9y ago
  Crypto is already being used as a currency. And governments have no ability to depreciate it. I don't know what will happen next, but that is the reality today. What I do know is a lot of people find value in a currency that cannot be depreciated at will.
randomerr 9y ago
I respect fully disagree wit many of your statements. From my experience I've seen these kind of schemes comes and go: * Coins can't be faked or duplicated - YET - If you get a bot net arguing other the same coin either someone is going to get the coin or the coin is going to get lost. It kinda like the Captain Midnight and HBO. If you haven't heard about HBO and some other TV networks has launched a communication satellite and professed no one could take it over. Some guy said they were wrong but no one listen to him. Then HBO started raising fees. So the guy overrode their satellite with narrow, focused a pirate signal. Today that would be less then $1,000 of equipment he had for his business. * No one can create them at will - Except the bank. Someone is issuing those coins to begin with. What is stopping them from 'printing more money?' After all coins are going to get lost over over time. You'll need to replace them. People are going to exchange their currency from X currency to Y currency. Then what happens when someone finds a huge missing wallet? Both cases are going cause an inflation / deflation cycle. During the inflation cycle this will drive the value up to where no one but the richest people can afford to use it because transaction fees cost too much. The deflation cycle are ruin entire fortunes. * They can be transmitted quickly/globally with low fees (excluding bitcoin of course) - Won't Ripple and other cryptocurrencies eventually succumb to the same issue over time? You can make shard server but then you're centralizing the network and you get back to where you started. * You can store them yourself, no bank needed - True enough. Just don't lose that digital wallet. * Sending huge sums of money is no problem - That getting harder in certain countries as regulations are cracking down. Plus you need access to a terminal. In some areas that's just not practical. * Relatively simple design, 8 page white paper - but how many other white papers do you need to understand to understand those 8 pages. * Has worked as designed for almost a decade - And the current banking systems have been working for thousand of years. Does that invalidate this statement? You said that 'crypto has a lot unique intrinsic value that surpasses traditional currencies to date.' I see crypto more as tulips then anything else. In Holland this bulbs of those beautiful spring flowers. Anyone could grow and make more. They had a definite expiration period. Then someone said 'wait those are just flowers.' And Holland's economy fell apart almost overnight. My issues with 'crypto' are: * No real physical assets to back it up - Its just numbers and algorithms. * Algorithms are broken over time - Just look at the history of SSL / TLS * The issuing source can issue more 'units' at anytime - The single issuing source of hashes IS the central bank. This causes deflation and devalue the overall market. * Inflationary / Deflationary Cycle - The currency will inflate until it gets so big that processing fees can't be paid. * The rich get richer and the poor get poorer - You either buy the farming equipment right away or get the scraps from other people that joined the bandwagon. * Corruption - Just look at the Coinbase 'alleged' insider trading
austincheney 9y ago
> Seems like crypto has a lot unique intrinsic value that surpasses traditional currencies to date. Only if they are used as currency in the marketplace. If cryptocurrencies are only an investment point they are a bubble with little or no practical value. The only value is to other investors. Personally, I find cryptocurrencies volatile and as such would not use them to purchase anything.
- pixie_ 9y ago
  I pay my friends for drinks in crypto, they pay me (usually ltc, ether, or doge). It's quick and easy with a wallet on your phone like Jaxx. No venmo, no paypal, no bank account necessary. I use crypto to store and exchange value today. It will only get more popular as it becomes easier. I encourage everyone to try it. Send $100 of crypto to a wallet on your phone and use it to pay people you owe for small stuff. It's fun and easy. It also gets your friends bootstrapped with crypto without needing to use coinbase or gemini or whatever. Also wallets like Jaxx are deterministic, meaning you can use 12 unique words to recover your wallet anywhere - even if you lose your phone.
  - shafyy 9y ago
    Yes, but people also use beer as a currency. Probably much more than they use cryptos as a currency. In this context, when talking about currency, we mean at the same scale as fiat currency. Else, the currency discussion is senseless.

by pixie_ 9y ago

tromp 9y ago

> No one can create them at will Didn't Ripple Labs create 100 bilion ripple at will?

stock_toaster 9y ago
Someone is going to owe a lot of taxes?
shams93 9y ago
Yeah ripple is a token not a currency they can generate new ripple at will but since the founder has a large stake he has an incentive to not flood the market. But ripple is not the future it's a stopgap running on centralized servers it's not revolutionary like etherium
- rainboiboi 9y ago
  *ethereum
- xorcist 9y ago
  Because the Ethereum people only created 80 million tokens out of thin air?

codegladiator 9y ago

> Has worked as designed for almost a decade "worked as designed" can be said for every thing. Everything works as designed. Yet gets hacked/stolen/cracked/misused. Banks are working as designed. And so is the government. Just that the majority will dislike the design because they have no say in it. > You can store them yourself, no bank needed And then you can loose it yourself too. Remove all the safeguards which was built thru decades of learning and allow everyone to shoot themselves and everyone else in the foot.

tromp 9y ago
> And then you can loose it yourself too. Admittedly, hardware wallets do a good job of keeping your private keys secure, allowing you to safely transact even on a malware infested PC.
- codegladiator 9y ago
  Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having soft currency ? Hardware wallets sure can be stolen physically right ? Leaving that chuck of currency useless (if not transferred fraudulently)
  - Anderkent 9y ago
    Think of a hardware wallet as of a credit card. You will have some mechanism protecting it from being used when you're not next to it (password/pin); you will have some cold recovery option if you lose it (like a long passphrase stored in a safe deposit box). But, like a credit card, the send/receive operations are performed on a secure, limited scope system (rather than an easily-compromised PC)
  - xorcist 9y ago
    That point bears repeating: if you hold a wallet, you are responsible for having backups. It's very valuable data. Either use two or more hardware wallets or keep a paper wallet (a printout of the private keys) in a secure place.
pixie_ 9y ago

simonbarker87 9y ago

You’ve missed the point a bit which is why you are getting down voted. Much of our non physical world (money, value etc) are abstractions for something else and therefore the abstraction only has value in humanity’s collective imagination. If you try to give a goat farmer in the desert a bit coin he won’t take it as to him it literally has no value as he likely can’t access the internet or work out how to turn it in to something else. If we ALL collectively decided tomorrow that bit coins have no value (or the US dollar even) then it would loose its value. Much of our non physical world only stands up because we all agree it does, enough people change their minds and it all falls down.

pixie_ 9y ago
You make it sound like 'anything' could be a currency. When in reality finding a common medium of exchange is extremely difficult, and must meet a lot of the properties I listed above. In terms of 'currency technology' crypto is a huge advance over our current standard currencies.
- simonbarker87 9y ago
  Anything can be a currency so long as enough people agree there is value. Bristol (a smallish city in the UK) has it's own currency that can be used locally that is accepted by shop keepers etc. You can't pay your mortgage with it but you can buy you apples with it. We could use shiny stones as currency if enough people agreed it had value. I think you are thinking about currency within the confines of the current system (eg government, laws etc). What I am saying is that government and laws are only valid in our collective imaginations and therefore everything is imaginary and made up (the USD is just as imaginary as bitcoin, it's just that more people believe in the USD so it is mainstream) and we can collectively apply value to anything want to and remove value from anything we want to.
  - pixie_ 9y ago
    'if people agreed it had value' - That is a big if, don't trivialize it. The value of a currency is dependent on a ton of the properties I listed above.

beebmam 9y ago

There are also downsides of course too. But I think the reality is that the future will have both crypto currencies and fiat currencies. Both have advantages.

richmarr 9y ago
Nitpick... crypto currencies are fiat currencies (if they're currencies at all, rather than commododites) Edit: Fiat just means its value is driven by supply/demand rather than being backed by something like gold.
- pixie_ 9y ago
  Mineable crypto is not fiat because it cannot be created or destroyed at will. That is what gives it value over a fiat currency. You don't have to worry about a central government devaluing it or inflating it artificially.
  - imtringued 9y ago
    You now only have to worry about your "currency" crashing by more than 40% overnight.
    - pixie_ 9y ago
      Keep in mind relatively we're still in the early days of crypto. Though it's not like fiat currencies are immune to crashes. Look at history.
  - richmarr 9y ago
    I see your point, you're tying "fiat" to the act of spontaneous creation at will rather than the lack of a backing commodity, but I don't agree that definition, and even if I did I'm not sure it's as cast-iron a distinction as you're implying. You absolutely do have to worry about price manipulation... the only difference is that it's not specifically governments it's just the disproportionately wealthy. I don't see that as a worthwhile distinction. https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/14/how-bots-are-manipulating-cryptocurrency-prices/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/14/how-bots-are-manipulating... https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-06/mysterious-trader-nearly-unlimited-bankroll-said-be-manipulating-bitcoin-price https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-06/mysterious-trader-... https://cointelegraph.com/news/single-trader-with-enormous-bankroll-is-manipulating-bitcoin-price-but-to-what-end https://cointelegraph.com/news/single-trader-with-enormous-b... Similarly you can destroy cryptocurrency (some at least), and it can be created. The fact that the creation rate is constrained by the prudence of an algorithm designer rather than constrained by the prudence of a central banker seems like another arbitrary distinction. To me it feels like crypto proponents want a fancy economics term for othering conventional currencies, so the definition is being bent to fit.

nucatus 9y ago

I said it before and say it again. These things you call cryptocurrencies can be anything you want but currencies. Who ever claims the contrary has no clue about how a currency works. If you claim this is a highly speculative asset, then yeah, you are right. But if you really want to call this a currency, you have to convince a government to use it as an official currency. No central bank in this world will accept to use a currency that is out of its control, that can't depreciate or appreciate at will.

Anderkent 9y ago
> But if you really want to call this a currency, you have to convince a government to use it as an official currency Since when does a currency have to come from a government? People used representative money in forms of IOUs before those were formally issued by governments. Sure, we've moved to government-issued fiat since, because it solved a coordination problem (how do you ensure the value of money doesn't unpredictably change), but that's just one possible solution now.
pixie_ 9y ago
Crypto is already being used as a currency. And governments have no ability to depreciate it. I don't know what will happen next, but that is the reality today. What I do know is a lot of people find value in a currency that cannot be depreciated at will.

randomerr 9y ago

I respect fully disagree wit many of your statements. From my experience I've seen these kind of schemes comes and go: * Coins can't be faked or duplicated - YET - If you get a bot net arguing other the same coin either someone is going to get the coin or the coin is going to get lost. It kinda like the Captain Midnight and HBO. If you haven't heard about HBO and some other TV networks has launched a communication satellite and professed no one could take it over. Some guy said they were wrong but no one listen to him. Then HBO started raising fees. So the guy overrode their satellite with narrow, focused a pirate signal. Today that would be less then $1,000 of equipment he had for his business. * No one can create them at will - Except the bank. Someone is issuing those coins to begin with. What is stopping them from 'printing more money?' After all coins are going to get lost over over time. You'll need to replace them. People are going to exchange their currency from X currency to Y currency. Then what happens when someone finds a huge missing wallet? Both cases are going cause an inflation / deflation cycle. During the inflation cycle this will drive the value up to where no one but the richest people can afford to use it because transaction fees cost too much. The deflation cycle are ruin entire fortunes. * They can be transmitted quickly/globally with low fees (excluding bitcoin of course) - Won't Ripple and other cryptocurrencies eventually succumb to the same issue over time? You can make shard server but then you're centralizing the network and you get back to where you started. * You can store them yourself, no bank needed - True enough. Just don't lose that digital wallet. * Sending huge sums of money is no problem - That getting harder in certain countries as regulations are cracking down. Plus you need access to a terminal. In some areas that's just not practical. * Relatively simple design, 8 page white paper - but how many other white papers do you need to understand to understand those 8 pages. * Has worked as designed for almost a decade - And the current banking systems have been working for thousand of years. Does that invalidate this statement? You said that 'crypto has a lot unique intrinsic value that surpasses traditional currencies to date.' I see crypto more as tulips then anything else. In Holland this bulbs of those beautiful spring flowers. Anyone could grow and make more. They had a definite expiration period. Then someone said 'wait those are just flowers.' And Holland's economy fell apart almost overnight. My issues with 'crypto' are: * No real physical assets to back it up - Its just numbers and algorithms. * Algorithms are broken over time - Just look at the history of SSL / TLS * The issuing source can issue more 'units' at anytime - The single issuing source of hashes IS the central bank. This causes deflation and devalue the overall market. * Inflationary / Deflationary Cycle - The currency will inflate until it gets so big that processing fees can't be paid. * The rich get richer and the poor get poorer - You either buy the farming equipment right away or get the scraps from other people that joined the bandwagon. * Corruption - Just look at the Coinbase 'alleged' insider trading

austincheney 9y ago

> Seems like crypto has a lot unique intrinsic value that surpasses traditional currencies to date. Only if they are used as currency in the marketplace. If cryptocurrencies are only an investment point they are a bubble with little or no practical value. The only value is to other investors. Personally, I find cryptocurrencies volatile and as such would not use them to purchase anything.

pixie_ 9y ago
I pay my friends for drinks in crypto, they pay me (usually ltc, ether, or doge). It's quick and easy with a wallet on your phone like Jaxx. No venmo, no paypal, no bank account necessary. I use crypto to store and exchange value today. It will only get more popular as it becomes easier. I encourage everyone to try it. Send $100 of crypto to a wallet on your phone and use it to pay people you owe for small stuff. It's fun and easy. It also gets your friends bootstrapped with crypto without needing to use coinbase or gemini or whatever. Also wallets like Jaxx are deterministic, meaning you can use 12 unique words to recover your wallet anywhere - even if you lose your phone.
- shafyy 9y ago
  Yes, but people also use beer as a currency. Probably much more than they use cryptos as a currency. In this context, when talking about currency, we mean at the same scale as fiat currency. Else, the currency discussion is senseless.