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Aren't you guys tired of this whole blockchain thing? I'm a bitcoin proponent and love the technology, however it's becoming a truly "fake news" type of environ

Aren't you guys tired of this whole blockchain thing? I'm a bitcoin proponent and love the technology, however it's becoming a truly "fake news" type of environment where new cryptocoins are so complicated to understand that only the creators know how they work. I'm mind blown by the fact that none of these new-cryptocoins are getting hacked - there's an enormous bounty out there for who's able to figure out how to double-spend these things! How's it possible that they all work well, but are based on different principles? My conclusion is that there are hackers that are currently double-spending to their advantage: without telling anybody and without making it clear that it's happening. Also, the whole idea of "scarcity" (which was my main attraction to this field) doesn't exist anymore because of forks: if a group of people decides to fork the software, your coins are duplicated and aren't scarce anymore, so it's not even like gold anymore. Sometimes I wonder if we'd be better off without a blockchain, and instead with a system where we trust lots of big entities to record the ledger in a way that still allows us to get some level of freedom-of-use, anonymity, censorship-resistance and anybody-can-enter kind of system.

askafriend 9y ago
I think you're underestimating how truly small and how early the space is still. Normal people still can't easily buy a majority of the tokens/coins/cryptocurrencies out there. Every major exchange is having trouble scaling and many have closed user registrations. Coinbase has more active users than Schwab at this point by a couple million. Binance is the fastest growing private company to hit $2Bn in valuation ever in history (it only took them 6 months)... It's a very very small amount of people involved in Crypto globally - certainly not big enough to collapse any economy anywhere. The whole space is still in the process of being erected, the foundation is being built as we speak which is why money is going in rapidly and valuations are growing rapidly. The amount of noise Crypto makes in the media is disproportional to the amount of people actually involved and invested in the space. It won't be like this forever and there will be corrections, but for this small window of opportunity where everything seems crazy - it won't seem so crazy when you zoom out a year or two from now. As a result of that, there will be scams and people trying to get in on the unregulated gold-rush but at the same time there are still legitimate projects being started right now that could become very valuable in the next couple of years.
- rublev 9y ago
  >but at the same time there are still legitimate projects being started right now that could become very valuable in the next couple of years. Care to name a few?
  - askafriend 9y ago
    Everyone knows Bitcoin, ETH, and LTC which are all easily purchasable via Coinbase. But the general public is still lacking exposure to projects such as EOS, XLM (YC backed), REQ (YC backed), VEN, and many others. Not only are they lacking exposure but it's a complicated, risky, error-prone process to actually buy in to these projects/tokens even for those who are technically apt. That's how early these projects are. Plus you'd need to register for an account on an exchange that actually carries these tokens and many are not accepting new users because they can't handle the load. It's a giant pain in the ass but there is a lot of money to be made (I'm up 3-5x already on much of my initial investments). There is an artificial lack of access built into the market because of what I described above. Institutional capital and dumb money is still only really tuned into BTC/ETH.
    - jhwang5 9y ago
      1)None of the "legitimate" projects you cited have actually delivered any products or revenue. 2)The whole market is up 5x in December 2017 alone, so I wouldn't say 5x return makes you a genius - it's like saying you are performing at that asset class's benchmark. Note, this is also just one sample. 3)If we unpack your reasoning closely, you seem to assume that further upside is inevitable if altcoins get easier to buy. I guess it's unthinkable that these coins accrue through revenue, right?
      - askafriend 9y ago
        The value is in the network of people invested in it and that continue to invest in it. To look at these projects the same way you'd look at a private company or a public company would be to completely miss the point. The point is not to deliver revenue or GAAP numbers. The point is to deliver and continue to support a robust network through a governance model that people believe in and where the incentives are correctly aligned between the token holders and the supporting foundation. I think that's the reason why so many people have trouble understanding the space. Fundamentally networks are what make humans so powerful. The USA is nothing more than a network of people that agree on a set of shared principles. The growth of a network's value isn't linear. A network that goes from 1 person to 2 people isn't twice as valuable, it's exponentially valuable and we're still in the really early stages of figuring out how to value these new, global networks that are forming rapidly. So the real answer is that we just don't know, but it seems clear that the old world rules don't quite apply. I never claimed I was a genius for generating 5x. I think you're putting words in my mouth. I'm not a genius. I just see an opportunity that I think a lot of people are missing. I think it's still very early in the space, and I'm making moves to take advantage of it. I'm willing to be wrong and lose 100% of my investment. I'm diversified into my holdings, I follow the projects and teams closely and in case of regulatory risk I have an exit strategy. I do think further upside is inevitable just based on the sheer demand hammering the exchanges which carry these altcoins. If anything, the influx of capital waiting to flow in will stabilize the prices further even though it may not strictly generate more upside. It'll at the very least set some more solid floors in place for existing asset prices.
ThomPete 9y ago
Scarcity still exists because the fork creates another coin than the original but a fork. Keep in mind that scarcity is due to trackability (history).
- nerdponx 9y ago
  Is anyone actually auditing all these blockchains?
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    You wouldn't have to that's the whole point of the blockchain that the validation is done by the network itself. All you need is to know which coin/token you are on and you know whether you have the original or not.
    - syntaticSugar 9y ago
      I think what he/she meant was the code base
      - ThomPete 9y ago
        Yes and thats missing the point.
    - nerdponx 9y ago
      Perhaps. How do you know who controls the hashrate?
  - sova 9y ago
    An integrity verification service for [the codebase of] ICOs and other coins would be a welcome innovation
- sktrdie 9y ago
  With the Bitcoin Cash fork I can spend my coins on both histories. That is the opposite of being scarce.
philipodonnell 9y ago
I am going to guess that you did not study economics (not an insult, just observation). Many of the things you point out (lack of understanding in non-practitioners, the role of scarcity in pricing, the effect of forks on market cap) all have ready parallels within our existing financial systems and all are legatimite problems that are explicitly what blockchains are trying to address. Dismissing it because it is still struggling with the same issues seems premature.
mtgx 9y ago
1. Wonders how come blockchain technologies are so secure 2. Thinks that maybe we should get rid of them, and replace them with one of those big companies that exposes hundreds of millions of user accounts every year Do you really not see what you're arguing about here? These technologies use blockchain because of its security. All of those trillions and trillions of hashes ensure that it's not easy or cheap for anyone to hack the network. Also the last part, how could you have anonymity and censorship with a big few entities? That's like the antithesis of anonymity and censorship-resistance. Haven't people here been arguing for years that having apps centralized in an app store like Apple's will lead to more censorship (and it has) vs installing any app you want from the "decentralized web"?
- jhwang5 9y ago
  Are you treating all blockchains as equal; there are different degrees of decentralization. You can have blockchains that are run by oligarchies of miners. Look no further than the mining pools behind Bitcoin.
dsnuh 9y ago
This is only tangentially related (btw I agree with you, it's out of control) but I always think back to the novels _Daemon_ and _Freedom_ by Daniel Suarez when it comes to the future of decentralized autonomous technologies. If you haven't read them, they are a fast and enjoyable read imho.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
surrey-fringe 9y ago
No, I'm not.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mirekrusin 9y ago
Please keep in mind that money on the blockchain is just a part of what's being worked on; there are many systems being built that don't involve money (directly) at all. Arguably money, as in - keeping an integer for an address - is one of the least interesting areas of systems you can build.

askafriend 9y ago

I think you're underestimating how truly small and how early the space is still. Normal people still can't easily buy a majority of the tokens/coins/cryptocurrencies out there. Every major exchange is having trouble scaling and many have closed user registrations. Coinbase has more active users than Schwab at this point by a couple million. Binance is the fastest growing private company to hit $2Bn in valuation ever in history (it only took them 6 months)... It's a very very small amount of people involved in Crypto globally - certainly not big enough to collapse any economy anywhere. The whole space is still in the process of being erected, the foundation is being built as we speak which is why money is going in rapidly and valuations are growing rapidly. The amount of noise Crypto makes in the media is disproportional to the amount of people actually involved and invested in the space. It won't be like this forever and there will be corrections, but for this small window of opportunity where everything seems crazy - it won't seem so crazy when you zoom out a year or two from now. As a result of that, there will be scams and people trying to get in on the unregulated gold-rush but at the same time there are still legitimate projects being started right now that could become very valuable in the next couple of years.

rublev 9y ago
>but at the same time there are still legitimate projects being started right now that could become very valuable in the next couple of years. Care to name a few?
- askafriend 9y ago
  Everyone knows Bitcoin, ETH, and LTC which are all easily purchasable via Coinbase. But the general public is still lacking exposure to projects such as EOS, XLM (YC backed), REQ (YC backed), VEN, and many others. Not only are they lacking exposure but it's a complicated, risky, error-prone process to actually buy in to these projects/tokens even for those who are technically apt. That's how early these projects are. Plus you'd need to register for an account on an exchange that actually carries these tokens and many are not accepting new users because they can't handle the load. It's a giant pain in the ass but there is a lot of money to be made (I'm up 3-5x already on much of my initial investments). There is an artificial lack of access built into the market because of what I described above. Institutional capital and dumb money is still only really tuned into BTC/ETH.
  - jhwang5 9y ago
    1)None of the "legitimate" projects you cited have actually delivered any products or revenue. 2)The whole market is up 5x in December 2017 alone, so I wouldn't say 5x return makes you a genius - it's like saying you are performing at that asset class's benchmark. Note, this is also just one sample. 3)If we unpack your reasoning closely, you seem to assume that further upside is inevitable if altcoins get easier to buy. I guess it's unthinkable that these coins accrue through revenue, right?
    - askafriend 9y ago
      The value is in the network of people invested in it and that continue to invest in it. To look at these projects the same way you'd look at a private company or a public company would be to completely miss the point. The point is not to deliver revenue or GAAP numbers. The point is to deliver and continue to support a robust network through a governance model that people believe in and where the incentives are correctly aligned between the token holders and the supporting foundation. I think that's the reason why so many people have trouble understanding the space. Fundamentally networks are what make humans so powerful. The USA is nothing more than a network of people that agree on a set of shared principles. The growth of a network's value isn't linear. A network that goes from 1 person to 2 people isn't twice as valuable, it's exponentially valuable and we're still in the really early stages of figuring out how to value these new, global networks that are forming rapidly. So the real answer is that we just don't know, but it seems clear that the old world rules don't quite apply. I never claimed I was a genius for generating 5x. I think you're putting words in my mouth. I'm not a genius. I just see an opportunity that I think a lot of people are missing. I think it's still very early in the space, and I'm making moves to take advantage of it. I'm willing to be wrong and lose 100% of my investment. I'm diversified into my holdings, I follow the projects and teams closely and in case of regulatory risk I have an exit strategy. I do think further upside is inevitable just based on the sheer demand hammering the exchanges which carry these altcoins. If anything, the influx of capital waiting to flow in will stabilize the prices further even though it may not strictly generate more upside. It'll at the very least set some more solid floors in place for existing asset prices.

ThomPete 9y ago

Scarcity still exists because the fork creates another coin than the original but a fork. Keep in mind that scarcity is due to trackability (history).

nerdponx 9y ago
Is anyone actually auditing all these blockchains?
- ThomPete 9y ago
  You wouldn't have to that's the whole point of the blockchain that the validation is done by the network itself. All you need is to know which coin/token you are on and you know whether you have the original or not.
  - syntaticSugar 9y ago
    I think what he/she meant was the code base
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      Yes and thats missing the point.
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    Perhaps. How do you know who controls the hashrate?
- sova 9y ago
  An integrity verification service for [the codebase of] ICOs and other coins would be a welcome innovation
sktrdie 9y ago
With the Bitcoin Cash fork I can spend my coins on both histories. That is the opposite of being scarce.

philipodonnell 9y ago

I am going to guess that you did not study economics (not an insult, just observation). Many of the things you point out (lack of understanding in non-practitioners, the role of scarcity in pricing, the effect of forks on market cap) all have ready parallels within our existing financial systems and all are legatimite problems that are explicitly what blockchains are trying to address. Dismissing it because it is still struggling with the same issues seems premature.

mtgx 9y ago

1. Wonders how come blockchain technologies are so secure 2. Thinks that maybe we should get rid of them, and replace them with one of those big companies that exposes hundreds of millions of user accounts every year Do you really not see what you're arguing about here? These technologies use blockchain because of its security. All of those trillions and trillions of hashes ensure that it's not easy or cheap for anyone to hack the network. Also the last part, how could you have anonymity and censorship with a big few entities? That's like the antithesis of anonymity and censorship-resistance. Haven't people here been arguing for years that having apps centralized in an app store like Apple's will lead to more censorship (and it has) vs installing any app you want from the "decentralized web"?

jhwang5 9y ago
Are you treating all blockchains as equal; there are different degrees of decentralization. You can have blockchains that are run by oligarchies of miners. Look no further than the mining pools behind Bitcoin.

dsnuh 9y ago

This is only tangentially related (btw I agree with you, it's out of control) but I always think back to the novels _Daemon_ and _Freedom_ by Daniel Suarez when it comes to the future of decentralized autonomous technologies. If you haven't read them, they are a fast and enjoyable read imho.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

surrey-fringe 9y ago

No, I'm not.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mirekrusin 9y ago

Please keep in mind that money on the blockchain is just a part of what's being worked on; there are many systems being built that don't involve money (directly) at all. Arguably money, as in - keeping an integer for an address - is one of the least interesting areas of systems you can build.