4 ms·

One hope I have for the Bitcoin mining bubble is that it will indirectly subsidize improved information systems infrastructure in many remote places as well as

by api 8y ago

One hope I have for the Bitcoin mining bubble is that it will indirectly subsidize improved information systems infrastructure in many remote places as well as improved on-demand chip fabrication services. Once the bubble is gone those things will go to more productive use.

rublev 8y ago
The bubble will be gone when the money dries up and that will never happen because there will always be suckers. Also nice username.
ixtli 8y ago
I've spoken to people who've been in the community for a long time and they seem to view the blockchain hype as something generated to get banks to underwrite the updating of systems that have barely been maintained since the 80s. (Despite it not being really necessary for like 95% of problems, of course.)
- api 8y ago
  I doubt it was deliberately engineered as such but it does seem to be having that effect. It's also disrupting international wire transfers and venture capital, two antiquated industries ripe for it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - chx 8y ago
    You must be delusional to think Bitcoin disrupts SWIFT. https://economics.stackexchange.com/a/9184/18775 https://economics.stackexchange.com/a/9184/18775 > SWIFT handles about $5 trillion per day, > SWIFT payment message volumes are usually around 11.5 million per day Now, daily Bitcoin-USD traffic is below a billion https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/trade-volume https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/trade-volume and even at its heyday it was five billion give or take. That's 0.1% of SWIFT. And Bitcoin couldn't handle more than 600k transactions a day even if it tried and these days it's 150-200K https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/n-transactions https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/n-transactions which almost reaches 2% of SWIFT... Also, it's unusable for legit business transfers since you absolutely have no idea how much money the other ennd receives. SEPA has higher volumes but lower values https://www.ebaclearing.eu/services/step2-sct/statistics/ https://www.ebaclearing.eu/services/step2-sct/statistics/ but even that lower value is a magnitude above Bitcoin -- worldwide. With SCT Inst it even beats the transfer speed of Bitcoin.
    - jchrisa 8y ago
      Agree -- the major players already know their customers, so they are more interested in distributed ledger than blockchain. A distributed database with ACID transactions is a more flexible way to implement this stuff: https://blog.fauna.com/distributed-ledger-without-the-blockchain https://blog.fauna.com/distributed-ledger-without-the-blockc...
      - DeathArrow 8y ago
        Blockchain is a form of distributed ledgers.
    - heptathorp 8y ago
      > Also, it's unusable for legit business transfers since you absolutely have no idea how much money the other ennd receives. Can you expand on this? What do you mean you don't know how much the other end receives?
      - chx 8y ago
        > What do you mean you don't know how much the other end receives? I am sending you 1 BTC, how much money do you have? Calling a Nakamoto scheme a "cyber"currency is just part of the scam. Money is like USD. So, how much money do you have?
        CamelCaseName 8y ago
        I strongly agree with your GGP comment, but the point of BTC is not money is a bad one. How much money do you have if you receive 1 BTC? Check the spot price after several confirmations (or one to none, depending on your facilities) How much money do you have if you receive $1MM USD? Check DXY in ~3 business days when your deposit clears. Now yes, of course BTC fluctuates in value substantially more than USD, but this is not a problem in BTC, but rather in the existing market conditions. Your comment is akin to saying that USD was not money in the 1930s. Apart from that contention, I completely agree that BTC has not (and in my opinion, will not) disrupted SWIFT.
- dwild 8y ago
  You are from which countries? It's still pretty hard, long and costly to transfer cash from a bank to another one. In fact at mine, still until recently it took 24 hours just to add someone to send him fund from the same bank. Interac, which is the provider of debit in Canada, recently made a way to transfer cash that many banks decided to add for a cost of 1$ per transaction. It's now widely used and banks use that as an incentive now (2 free transactions a month, amazing!). This is all due to old antiquated technologies used by the banks. They clearly don't want to evolve. Bitcoin at least is universal, simple and works.
  - ixtli 8y ago
    Dunno if you'll see this but I'm from the US. I also haven't had much experience with inter-bank transfers. Most people I know use my bank and its great for international travel.
acchow 8y ago
I believe this too. And also improve electricity access in more remote areas (where real estate is cheaper) - especially pushing distributed solar power.

by api 8y ago

rublev 8y ago

The bubble will be gone when the money dries up and that will never happen because there will always be suckers. Also nice username.

ixtli 8y ago

I've spoken to people who've been in the community for a long time and they seem to view the blockchain hype as something generated to get banks to underwrite the updating of systems that have barely been maintained since the 80s. (Despite it not being really necessary for like 95% of problems, of course.)

api 8y ago
I doubt it was deliberately engineered as such but it does seem to be having that effect. It's also disrupting international wire transfers and venture capital, two antiquated industries ripe for it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- chx 8y ago
  You must be delusional to think Bitcoin disrupts SWIFT. https://economics.stackexchange.com/a/9184/18775 https://economics.stackexchange.com/a/9184/18775 > SWIFT handles about $5 trillion per day, > SWIFT payment message volumes are usually around 11.5 million per day Now, daily Bitcoin-USD traffic is below a billion https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/trade-volume https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/trade-volume and even at its heyday it was five billion give or take. That's 0.1% of SWIFT. And Bitcoin couldn't handle more than 600k transactions a day even if it tried and these days it's 150-200K https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/n-transactions https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/n-transactions which almost reaches 2% of SWIFT... Also, it's unusable for legit business transfers since you absolutely have no idea how much money the other ennd receives. SEPA has higher volumes but lower values https://www.ebaclearing.eu/services/step2-sct/statistics/ https://www.ebaclearing.eu/services/step2-sct/statistics/ but even that lower value is a magnitude above Bitcoin -- worldwide. With SCT Inst it even beats the transfer speed of Bitcoin.
  - jchrisa 8y ago
    Agree -- the major players already know their customers, so they are more interested in distributed ledger than blockchain. A distributed database with ACID transactions is a more flexible way to implement this stuff: https://blog.fauna.com/distributed-ledger-without-the-blockchain https://blog.fauna.com/distributed-ledger-without-the-blockc...
    - DeathArrow 8y ago
      Blockchain is a form of distributed ledgers.
  - heptathorp 8y ago
    > Also, it's unusable for legit business transfers since you absolutely have no idea how much money the other ennd receives. Can you expand on this? What do you mean you don't know how much the other end receives?
    - chx 8y ago
      > What do you mean you don't know how much the other end receives? I am sending you 1 BTC, how much money do you have? Calling a Nakamoto scheme a "cyber"currency is just part of the scam. Money is like USD. So, how much money do you have?
      - CamelCaseName 8y ago
        I strongly agree with your GGP comment, but the point of BTC is not money is a bad one. How much money do you have if you receive 1 BTC? Check the spot price after several confirmations (or one to none, depending on your facilities) How much money do you have if you receive $1MM USD? Check DXY in ~3 business days when your deposit clears. Now yes, of course BTC fluctuates in value substantially more than USD, but this is not a problem in BTC, but rather in the existing market conditions. Your comment is akin to saying that USD was not money in the 1930s. Apart from that contention, I completely agree that BTC has not (and in my opinion, will not) disrupted SWIFT.
dwild 8y ago
You are from which countries? It's still pretty hard, long and costly to transfer cash from a bank to another one. In fact at mine, still until recently it took 24 hours just to add someone to send him fund from the same bank. Interac, which is the provider of debit in Canada, recently made a way to transfer cash that many banks decided to add for a cost of 1$ per transaction. It's now widely used and banks use that as an incentive now (2 free transactions a month, amazing!). This is all due to old antiquated technologies used by the banks. They clearly don't want to evolve. Bitcoin at least is universal, simple and works.
- ixtli 8y ago
  Dunno if you'll see this but I'm from the US. I also haven't had much experience with inter-bank transfers. Most people I know use my bank and its great for international travel.

acchow 8y ago

I believe this too. And also improve electricity access in more remote areas (where real estate is cheaper) - especially pushing distributed solar power.