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> But are you seriously betting against crypto-currency long term? Yes. >Go back and check a computer from 1950. I'm sure plenty of people back then were laug

> But are you seriously betting against crypto-currency long term? Yes. >Go back and check a computer from 1950. I'm sure plenty of people back then were laughing at how ridiculous the concept was of owning a PC. Computers in 1950 were being used for useful work that could not have been done before them. They had a track record of successes which has continued uninterrupted until today. Cryptocurrency has yet to show a legal success story of any kind. The story on what cryptocurrency is "for" has swung wildly over the years as each attempted use case proves either inferior to existing solutions or impossible to achieve. Bitcoin is digital cash. Bitcoin isn't digital cash, but it is for micropayments. Bitcoin isn't for micropayments, it's a settlement system. Bitcoin isn't a settlement system, it's borderless transactions for the unbanked. Bitcoin isn't for the unbanked, it's a settlement system again for different layers. Segregated witness will fix everything. Segregated witness wasn't meant to fix anything, it's the lightning network that will fix everything. The lightning network isn't meant to fix everything, it's designed to lock in vast amounts of currency and work only for those use cases that makes sense. It's just endless. Cryptocurrency has no success stories, just a constant stream of "hope" that never goes anywhere in order to keep people hooked on a system that transfers a lot of money to a handful of centralised large-scale mining corporations and increasingly shady exchanges.

bitreality 8y ago
Bitcoin can be used however people want. People are certainly using it. Over 162,000 transactions have been sent today, basically all of them with a fee (meaning people actually were willing to pay to use the service). Even on a slow day, hundreds of millions in USD are transacted through Bitcoin alone. And plenty more through Ethereum. There are tons of use cases for crypto-currency as a transfer of value. Eventually, there will be more stable coins, there will be instant (or virtually instant) transactions, and the cost to send a transaction will be virtually 0. That's the future of crypto-currency, and you'd be insane to think that once these basic milestones are achieved, that it won't serve any purpose. It's a work in progress, but there are definitely people using the service as is right now for considerable amounts of money.
- annabellish 8y ago
  To what ends? There's no indication that those transactions are being used to fulfill any kind of purpose, and plenty of hints that many of them are spam and intentional churn. If nobody is buying anything, nobody is transferring money cross-borders, and no previously-unbanked people are being banked, then what are these transactions for? Nobody seems to _know_.
  - bitreality 8y ago
    I can't tell you what every person uses it for. But I can say for certain that it is already being used to transfer money cross-border. And I can say for sure that people use it in nations like Venezuela, where the banking system has failed. How do I know this? I run a business which buys and sells digital items for online games. Every single seller from Venezuela is looking for BTC. Most sellers from Kosovo as well. And tons of people are asking for BTC in general. The majority of $500+ transactions in the industry (often B2B) are done in crypto.
- henrikschroder 8y ago
  > Bitcoin can be used however people want. I can't pay my rent with it, I can't pay for groceries with it, I can't pay my taxes with it. Those are things I want.
chrisco255 8y ago
Haha no successes? The biggest success is that it works at creating digital scarcity. That's a pretty big accomplishment. Various cryptos trade to the tune of billions of dollars a day. Ethereum has layered an open source, open computation, virtual machine on top of a monetary layer. It has inspired and spun off dozens of other blockchains each with their own takes on smart contracts. Meanwhile there are projects already implementing prediction markets, gold-backed ERC20 tokens, video games using ERC721 tokens, provably fair online casinos, decentralized exchanges (0x), automated crypto backed loans (DAI), crypto backed computation and digital storage (Sia), social networking with integrated micropayments for curation (Steemit), you've got Brave browser and it's BAT token with a novel approach to paying content creators...can go on and on. Just need to take your blinders off and do some research.
- annabellish 8y ago
  I've done plenty of research, and I know about every one of those examples. Those aren't "success stories" - none of them have succeeded.
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    I don't know what your definition of success is? They certainly haven't failed.
    - annabellish 8y ago
      Significant usage of any kind, achieving some goal which couldn't have been achieved before without a list of massive caveats longer than my arm, or anything of that ilk. What we have right now is one neat innovation with a tonne of caveats being plugged into a bunch of stuff it doesn't work for, called "success stories", and then moved on from before people realise they aren't going anywhere. Can you name one thing that's come out of crypto that has seen any significant usage in the market it's trying to break into which isn't just using "we have a blockchain!" as a marketing tool?
      - 8y ago

bitreality 8y ago

Bitcoin can be used however people want. People are certainly using it. Over 162,000 transactions have been sent today, basically all of them with a fee (meaning people actually were willing to pay to use the service). Even on a slow day, hundreds of millions in USD are transacted through Bitcoin alone. And plenty more through Ethereum. There are tons of use cases for crypto-currency as a transfer of value. Eventually, there will be more stable coins, there will be instant (or virtually instant) transactions, and the cost to send a transaction will be virtually 0. That's the future of crypto-currency, and you'd be insane to think that once these basic milestones are achieved, that it won't serve any purpose. It's a work in progress, but there are definitely people using the service as is right now for considerable amounts of money.

annabellish 8y ago
To what ends? There's no indication that those transactions are being used to fulfill any kind of purpose, and plenty of hints that many of them are spam and intentional churn. If nobody is buying anything, nobody is transferring money cross-borders, and no previously-unbanked people are being banked, then what are these transactions for? Nobody seems to _know_.
- bitreality 8y ago
  I can't tell you what every person uses it for. But I can say for certain that it is already being used to transfer money cross-border. And I can say for sure that people use it in nations like Venezuela, where the banking system has failed. How do I know this? I run a business which buys and sells digital items for online games. Every single seller from Venezuela is looking for BTC. Most sellers from Kosovo as well. And tons of people are asking for BTC in general. The majority of $500+ transactions in the industry (often B2B) are done in crypto.
henrikschroder 8y ago
> Bitcoin can be used however people want. I can't pay my rent with it, I can't pay for groceries with it, I can't pay my taxes with it. Those are things I want.

chrisco255 8y ago

Haha no successes? The biggest success is that it works at creating digital scarcity. That's a pretty big accomplishment. Various cryptos trade to the tune of billions of dollars a day. Ethereum has layered an open source, open computation, virtual machine on top of a monetary layer. It has inspired and spun off dozens of other blockchains each with their own takes on smart contracts. Meanwhile there are projects already implementing prediction markets, gold-backed ERC20 tokens, video games using ERC721 tokens, provably fair online casinos, decentralized exchanges (0x), automated crypto backed loans (DAI), crypto backed computation and digital storage (Sia), social networking with integrated micropayments for curation (Steemit), you've got Brave browser and it's BAT token with a novel approach to paying content creators...can go on and on. Just need to take your blinders off and do some research.

annabellish 8y ago
I've done plenty of research, and I know about every one of those examples. Those aren't "success stories" - none of them have succeeded.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  I don't know what your definition of success is? They certainly haven't failed.
  - annabellish 8y ago
    Significant usage of any kind, achieving some goal which couldn't have been achieved before without a list of massive caveats longer than my arm, or anything of that ilk. What we have right now is one neat innovation with a tonne of caveats being plugged into a bunch of stuff it doesn't work for, called "success stories", and then moved on from before people realise they aren't going anywhere. Can you name one thing that's come out of crypto that has seen any significant usage in the market it's trying to break into which isn't just using "we have a blockchain!" as a marketing tool?
    - 8y ago