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> People now talk cryptocurrency, read more about the underlying technology and accept that it will positively affect the industry in the upcoming future. Do t

> 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.

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.