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To me, it's not "very much like [you'd] use US dollars" at all. You didn't actually buy anything, did you? You used it to trade more bitcoins. I mean, if people
by joekrill 9y ago
To me, it's not "very much like [you'd] use US dollars" at all. You didn't actually buy anything, did you? You used it to trade more bitcoins. I mean, if people were just pushing around dollars, exchanging them with each other, and not purchasing actual goods and services with them, then maybe it would be the same.
On the other hand, my knowledge of all this is pretty superficial. But the one thing that sticks with me that the naysayers keep bringing up is just that: no one (or very, very few) is actually using bitcoins in any useful way other than trading them with other bitcoins.
- tim333 9y agoI bought some Kucoin Shares (KCS) (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/kucoin-shares/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/kucoin-shares/) which actually pay a dividend (in other cryptos) which should be 15% of the Kucoin exchange's trade fees. It doesn't seem so different from buying shares in eTrade which will hopefully pay some dividends in USD paid out of the profits from their trading fees. KCS are a little unusual in paying dividends but the whole crypto markets I think are moving towards being more like traditional financial markets. At the moment it's just shares in a business trading crypto but in the future I could see maybe shares in a business doing more normal things.
- joekrill 9y agoMaybe I'm misunderstanding what Kucoin Shares are. Are they not just shares in other bitcoin markets? It looks to me like it's just a "currency exchange", really. Or are you actually buying shares in some underlying company that provides value? If it's the latter, then sure, it's like buying shares on eTrade. But if there's no underlying company or product you're investing in, then I don't seem them as being similar at all.
- patd 9y agoYou could see it as a share with no voting rights but that entitles you to dividends based on the fees they make on the trading platform.
- atwebb 9y agoHot take: It's an unregulated share of the company. Kucoin collects fees. Holders of Kucoin "shares" get 15% of the fees paid back in crypto (monthly?). I believe Cryptopia and other exchanges did something similar.
- joekrill 9y agoWait, so it's just buying shares in the company Kucoin itself? Which itself is just a bitcoin exchange? By trading on Kucoin you are investing in Kucoin? I don't see how this is anything like buying stocks in real company. It almost sounds like a multi-level marketing scheme.
- shawabawa3 9y ago> You didn't actually buy anything, did you? You used it to trade more bitcoins "bitcoin" is not a generic term for cryptocurrencies. He didn't trade his bitcoins for "more bitcoins", he traded it for a token that represents a share in a company While I do think the whole crypto market is insanely overvalued, there's definitely a lot of value in there too. In the future I could see stock exchanges replaced with token exchanges, and all stocks being crypto tokens
- joekrill 9y agoWell if that's the case - that he's actually buying shares in some underlying company - then I'm just misunderstanding. Again, my knowledge is very superficial here - at a glance it looks like Kucoin is just an exchange for other bitcoin markets. But if it's actually an exchange to buy shares in real companies, then that's a rather different situation.
- shawabawa3 9y ago> Kucoin is just an exchange for other bitcoin markets Again it sounds like you're confusing the words "bitcoin" and "cryptocurrency". They are a cryptocurrency exchange. You can trade Bitcoin for other cryptocurrencies (such as Ether, Litecoin, etc). They have issued their own cryptocurrency called "Kucoin Shares", which represent a share of the exchange. I'm not sure exactly how this works and if it has any legal weight, but they pay some percentage of their trading fees to holders of these shares