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> If you've ever transferred Etherium to a friend to pay them back for the pizza they bought you, you'll feel that value in a small way. I think it's hard for

> If you've ever transferred Etherium to a friend to pay them back for the pizza they bought you, you'll feel that value in a small way. I think it's hard for people to appreciate this because this is already a pretty trivial task using tools like Venmo (or whatever your choice might be). > There was a massive housing bubble, but we still have houses and they are, mostly, recovered above the peak of that bubble ten years later. There's not really an alternative to houses (assuming you include e.g. apartments under that umbrella). You have to live somewhere, you don't have to use cryptocurrencies. I think a more apt analogy would be the dot-com bubble. If there truly is a use for cryptocurrencies (as there turned out to be for internet-based companies), they'll stick around and we'll see them again. That said, I also think it's a bit dangerous to rely on historical bubbles for predicting the future here. There are plenty of "bubbles" that never recovered at all, and we just moved on to the next thing entirely. We tend to forget about them.

icebraining 9y ago
I think it's hard for people to appreciate this because this is already a pretty trivial task using tools like Venmo (or whatever your choice might be). Venmo is great - for people in the US who only transact with others in the US. I had the same problem in Belgium - my local friends used Payconiq, which of course only works if you have a Belgian bank account.
- wgerard 9y ago
  Sure, and I think this problem of transferring small amounts of money internationally painlessly is probably the strongest case for cryptocurrencies. But: 1) I don't think that's what cryptocurrencies want to be relegated to (a forex market essentially) 2) This also seems like a way around currency controls and things like AML compliance. If that became a problem at some point, I have to imagine governments will start putting the screws on any major exchange that interacts with fiat (and to some extent they already have).

icebraining 9y ago

I think it's hard for people to appreciate this because this is already a pretty trivial task using tools like Venmo (or whatever your choice might be). Venmo is great - for people in the US who only transact with others in the US. I had the same problem in Belgium - my local friends used Payconiq, which of course only works if you have a Belgian bank account.

wgerard 9y ago
Sure, and I think this problem of transferring small amounts of money internationally painlessly is probably the strongest case for cryptocurrencies. But: 1) I don't think that's what cryptocurrencies want to be relegated to (a forex market essentially) 2) This also seems like a way around currency controls and things like AML compliance. If that became a problem at some point, I have to imagine governments will start putting the screws on any major exchange that interacts with fiat (and to some extent they already have).