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I've tend to chat with drivers when I take Lyft, and frequently mention that I'm a programmer. Several of the drivers have then asked me about cryptocurrency, m
by lambda 9y ago
I've tend to chat with drivers when I take Lyft, and frequently mention that I'm a programmer. Several of the drivers have then asked me about cryptocurrency, mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum. I try to discuss how technically interesting they are, but how financially shaky; that there is likely a bubble and that they are probably not good long term investment options but could be worth buying a little bit for fun.
We are definitely in a very hype driven cryptocurrency bubble right now, and there are a lot of naive folks who are probably going to lose money to it.
And yet somehow, we haven't really managed to make any cryptocurrencies an actual, widely accepted, payment alternative, for anyone other than a few people with special circumstances (government restrictions on currency exchange, criminals demanding ransoms, funding organizations that governments are trying to shut down) or people who are fairly technically competent.
There's a chance the lightning network could be the last piece of the puzzle to make cryptocurrencies actually usable for payment, though even still, I have a hard time seeing most places wanting to accept payment in an asset as volatile as Bitcoin.
Or maybe we'll see a coin backed by fiat currency and real, regulated banks on Stellar, where you don't have nearly the same scalability issues nor gigawatts of power wasted just to try to solve Sybil attacks. If you have a coin backed by fiat currency, and low transaction costs, businesses are a lot more likely to accept it as payment as most of their expenses, taxes, debts, and so on are in the local fiat currency rather than than in any cryptocurrency.
- zerostar07 9y ago> I have a hard time seeing most places wanting to accept payment in an asset as volatile as Bitcoin. I have an even harder time seeing any of those people who invest in bitoin using their coins for purchases.
- lambda 9y agoThat too. The deflationary nature of Bitcoin makes it really unsuitable for use as an actual currency, and of course the amount of speculation going on.
- fancyfacebook 9y agoEveryone I know who got into crypto has the same story: for some silly reason they all bought like 5-10 different coins and it would be inordinately complicated and expensive to sell them all. I'm pretty sure whatever "newbie guides" exist out there purposely lead people to this awful state.
- lambda 9y ago"Crypto" is short for "cryptography" (or related words like "cryptographic"). Using "crypto" to abbreviate "cryptocurrency" causes a lot of confusion, as the "crypto" in "cryptocurrency" was already an abbreviation; "cryptocurrency" is short for "cryptographic currency." People who know nothing about cryptography or even that cryptocurrency uses cryptography get confused if they are looking for information about cryptocurrencies and instead find more general purpose resources on cryptography (like https://crypto.stackexchange.com/ https://crypto.stackexchange.com/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/ https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/). I know that this is a losing battle, like getting people to stop using "wiki" as an abbreviation for Wikipedia (which is just one out of many wikis), but I figure that as long as we're talking about people not knowing much but investing in it anyhow, I really encourage everyone to stop using "crypto" as an abbreviation for "cryptocurrency."
- walshemj 9y agoIts actually Ancient Greek for secret
- zerostar07 9y agoLeonidas would be proud of you
- pharrington 9y agoOK, so the new abbreviation is "₡oin".
- Erlich_Bachman 9y ago> "Crypto" is short for "cryptography" (or related words like "cryptographic"). You know who decided that? The population that was using these terms. Now a similar population at large has decided the new usage rules. It's normal, it's just evolution of the English language. By this point, "crypto" is indeed widely used as a short term for Cryptocurrencies also. People who know nothing about things are going to get confused either way. The society can't form every single rule just so every person who doesn't know anything will have a clear mind. If they want to learn something, they will. And learning that "crypto" can mean two things, in a language where it's already commonplace for terms to mean different things in different areas - is not a huge thing.