5 ms·

This was a necessary phase. Mass adoption couldn't have been achieved without the exponential price rise of various cryptocurrency tokens. There would not have

This was a necessary phase. Mass adoption couldn't have been achieved without the exponential price rise of various cryptocurrency tokens. There would not have been media coverage of this proportion, had it not been for the gains. People now talk cryptocurrency, read more about the underlying technology and accept that it will positively affect the industry in the upcoming future. I hope the market stabilizes and some of the tokens actually become useful.

gizmo385 9y ago
> People now talk cryptocurrency, read more about the underlying technology and accept that it will positively affect the industry in the upcoming future. Do they really though? I don't hear anyone outside of people who have actively bought into the cryptocurrency hype saying that it is going to have a positive affect on the industry. I hear a lot of people saying things like "it's a bubble" or that "the rules these currencies are designed to circumvent are there for a reason", etc.
- notahacker 9y ago
  To be fair, there are people at financial services companies and blue chip multinationals running blockchain projects. But then there are also people in financial services companies and blue chip multinationals running projects as vaguely defined as "cloud" or "big data" and as specifically niche as "graph databases" and "deep learning-based object classification" without get-rich-quick schemes and libertarian antieconomics attached to their hype.
- vec 9y ago
  Right, this. I think cryptocurrencies are here to stay. I'm not convinced that's actually going to "positively affect the industry in the upcoming future". I don't think cryptocurrencies are going to remove the need for some big middleman like Visa to sit between individual consumers and their partners. Things like reversible transactions and on-demand small loans are too attractive to the median consumer, so someone's going to be layering them on top of the underlying currency, whatever it may be. I don't think they're going to have a big impact on the financial sector. They can trade and leverage and loan with cryptos just as easily as they can with fiats, just with a lot of the safety rails like bankruptcy pulled off. I don't think they're going to impact most governments' ability to levy taxes and to borrow. There are dozens of governments that don't mint their own currencies, and by and large they still maintain taxing authority about as easily as they maintain the rest of their infrastructure and bureaucracy. I do think it's going to prevent central banks from doing their thing, but I'm not convinced that's a good thing. Central banks have their issues, to be sure, but I'm pretty sure they're better than the huge boom & bust cycles they replaced. Cryptocurrencies will certainly make the world different in meaningful ways. Different doesn't necessarily mean better.
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    >Central banks have their issues, to be sure, but I'm pretty sure they're better than the huge boom & bust cycles they replaced. Are you implying central banks are not cyclically prone to "booms and busts"?
    - notahacker 9y ago
      Not in the "all the depositors discover all of their money is worthless because it actually can't be redeemed for gold like the bank note said" sense, no.
    - vec 9y ago
      No, I'm implying that central banks are less prone to booms and busts than not having central banks. Just because they're an imperfect solution doesn't mean they're not addressing a real problem.
richardknop 9y ago
I’m not sure I agree. It’s true that lot of people now talk about cryptocurrency but all the people I have overheard or listened to talking about it are only talking about price and trading on exchanges and how they don’t have to work anymore and can just live off crypto. I don’t think I have heard people talking about it genuinely believing in it’s usefulness. All the time some of these newcomers talk about it they are just shilling and often they are not even technical people and don’t understand what blockchain is and are using bunch of buzz words from internet to try to spread the word and get more people to invest in it.
acdha 9y ago
> Mass adoption couldn't have been achieved without the exponential price rise of various cryptocurrency tokens. Has mass adoption really happened? Yes, speculation is in the news but compare that to the frequency with which you hear anyone talk about using Bitcoin instead of cash or a credit card: the bubble inflating has actually reduced those already low numbers since it's driven transaction costs through the roof (which has been a reason for major sellers to stop accepting it) and the deflationary design strongly incentivizes hoarding if you can avoid making a purchase. This matters a lot because most normal people are learning about it at the top of a bubble. Those speculative dreams won't end well and based on past performance there's a very high likelihood that some of them are going to lose even more money because the exchange they're using won't let them cash out quickly enough on a downturn. That seems more likely to sour them on the entire concept since, unlike earlier cycles like the .com bubble, there's no fundamental draw for most people beyond the chance to get rich quick.
- lazerpants 9y ago
  If we do see something coming out of this, I think it will be based on the interests of programmers who are just learning to code, who are excited about blockchain and see new uses for it. For some young kids out there, discovering cryptocurrency is probably like discovering Gopher or MP3 piracy for the first time. I guess we'll see in a few years when younger people have moved into the programming space as professionals.
thisisit 9y ago
> read more about the underlying technology And how do they do that really? Just to remind you, I see even some of the brightest mind in technology get confused with the explanations on cryptocurrency side. Specially when it comes with a healthy dose of made-up jargon - side chain, off chain, colored coins to name a few.
- gaius 9y ago
  EdX has a course on hyperledger https://www.edx.org/course/blockchain-business-introduction-linuxfoundationx-lfs171x https://www.edx.org/course/blockchain-business-introduction-...
  - thisisit 9y ago
    And how does it relate to cryptocurrency tokens? If I take the course would I understand most of the tokens being sold?
    - vthallam 9y ago
      I have heard some good things about Stanford video lectures on Cryptocurrency https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/ https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/
usrusr 9y ago
It's only adoption when at least one of these is true: a) people regularly trade it for goods or services b) people stop caring about the conversion rate to their local plain old fiat money currency a could greatly help b but it's not happening
- gaius 9y ago
  c) the government accepts taxes in it
  - rhino369 9y ago
    I don't think that is necessary. I could imagine a world where bitcoins are used for large portions of the economy, but the government still wants to use dollars. But there is no indication anything but online drug sales are actually being conducted in bitcoin. And even online drug dealers are looking for a replacement because bitcoin is an awful currency.
jhwang5 9y ago
I think relational databases and airplanes were massively adopted without pumping tokens.

gizmo385 9y ago

> People now talk cryptocurrency, read more about the underlying technology and accept that it will positively affect the industry in the upcoming future. Do they really though? I don't hear anyone outside of people who have actively bought into the cryptocurrency hype saying that it is going to have a positive affect on the industry. I hear a lot of people saying things like "it's a bubble" or that "the rules these currencies are designed to circumvent are there for a reason", etc.

notahacker 9y ago
To be fair, there are people at financial services companies and blue chip multinationals running blockchain projects. But then there are also people in financial services companies and blue chip multinationals running projects as vaguely defined as "cloud" or "big data" and as specifically niche as "graph databases" and "deep learning-based object classification" without get-rich-quick schemes and libertarian antieconomics attached to their hype.
vec 9y ago
Right, this. I think cryptocurrencies are here to stay. I'm not convinced that's actually going to "positively affect the industry in the upcoming future". I don't think cryptocurrencies are going to remove the need for some big middleman like Visa to sit between individual consumers and their partners. Things like reversible transactions and on-demand small loans are too attractive to the median consumer, so someone's going to be layering them on top of the underlying currency, whatever it may be. I don't think they're going to have a big impact on the financial sector. They can trade and leverage and loan with cryptos just as easily as they can with fiats, just with a lot of the safety rails like bankruptcy pulled off. I don't think they're going to impact most governments' ability to levy taxes and to borrow. There are dozens of governments that don't mint their own currencies, and by and large they still maintain taxing authority about as easily as they maintain the rest of their infrastructure and bureaucracy. I do think it's going to prevent central banks from doing their thing, but I'm not convinced that's a good thing. Central banks have their issues, to be sure, but I'm pretty sure they're better than the huge boom & bust cycles they replaced. Cryptocurrencies will certainly make the world different in meaningful ways. Different doesn't necessarily mean better.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >Central banks have their issues, to be sure, but I'm pretty sure they're better than the huge boom & bust cycles they replaced. Are you implying central banks are not cyclically prone to "booms and busts"?
  - notahacker 9y ago
    Not in the "all the depositors discover all of their money is worthless because it actually can't be redeemed for gold like the bank note said" sense, no.
  - vec 9y ago
    No, I'm implying that central banks are less prone to booms and busts than not having central banks. Just because they're an imperfect solution doesn't mean they're not addressing a real problem.

richardknop 9y ago

I’m not sure I agree. It’s true that lot of people now talk about cryptocurrency but all the people I have overheard or listened to talking about it are only talking about price and trading on exchanges and how they don’t have to work anymore and can just live off crypto. I don’t think I have heard people talking about it genuinely believing in it’s usefulness. All the time some of these newcomers talk about it they are just shilling and often they are not even technical people and don’t understand what blockchain is and are using bunch of buzz words from internet to try to spread the word and get more people to invest in it.

acdha 9y ago

> Mass adoption couldn't have been achieved without the exponential price rise of various cryptocurrency tokens. Has mass adoption really happened? Yes, speculation is in the news but compare that to the frequency with which you hear anyone talk about using Bitcoin instead of cash or a credit card: the bubble inflating has actually reduced those already low numbers since it's driven transaction costs through the roof (which has been a reason for major sellers to stop accepting it) and the deflationary design strongly incentivizes hoarding if you can avoid making a purchase. This matters a lot because most normal people are learning about it at the top of a bubble. Those speculative dreams won't end well and based on past performance there's a very high likelihood that some of them are going to lose even more money because the exchange they're using won't let them cash out quickly enough on a downturn. That seems more likely to sour them on the entire concept since, unlike earlier cycles like the .com bubble, there's no fundamental draw for most people beyond the chance to get rich quick.

lazerpants 9y ago
If we do see something coming out of this, I think it will be based on the interests of programmers who are just learning to code, who are excited about blockchain and see new uses for it. For some young kids out there, discovering cryptocurrency is probably like discovering Gopher or MP3 piracy for the first time. I guess we'll see in a few years when younger people have moved into the programming space as professionals.

thisisit 9y ago

> read more about the underlying technology And how do they do that really? Just to remind you, I see even some of the brightest mind in technology get confused with the explanations on cryptocurrency side. Specially when it comes with a healthy dose of made-up jargon - side chain, off chain, colored coins to name a few.

gaius 9y ago
EdX has a course on hyperledger https://www.edx.org/course/blockchain-business-introduction-linuxfoundationx-lfs171x https://www.edx.org/course/blockchain-business-introduction-...
- thisisit 9y ago
  And how does it relate to cryptocurrency tokens? If I take the course would I understand most of the tokens being sold?
  - vthallam 9y ago
    I have heard some good things about Stanford video lectures on Cryptocurrency https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/ https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/

usrusr 9y ago

It's only adoption when at least one of these is true: a) people regularly trade it for goods or services b) people stop caring about the conversion rate to their local plain old fiat money currency a could greatly help b but it's not happening

gaius 9y ago
c) the government accepts taxes in it
- rhino369 9y ago
  I don't think that is necessary. I could imagine a world where bitcoins are used for large portions of the economy, but the government still wants to use dollars. But there is no indication anything but online drug sales are actually being conducted in bitcoin. And even online drug dealers are looking for a replacement because bitcoin is an awful currency.

jhwang5 9y ago

I think relational databases and airplanes were massively adopted without pumping tokens.