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At $10k, car service mechanics were buying into random cryptocoins. Nobody understood them, everyone just wanted to get rich. A speculative asset, not a currenc

• jobigoud 8y ago
  But what could we have done about it? It's unfair to be liked by fools. The core idea is still interesting to experiment and explore but now it's tainted by greed.
  • usrusr 8y ago
    Many of the core ideas (well, all of them or almost none, depending on what you consider the core idea) could have been implemented with regulatory instruments in place that optimize for stable prices/controlled inflation instead of being effectively deflatory, similar to how regular currencies do it. Anything that does not will either fail in other ways or be loved to death as a value store/greater fool game. The two can never be torn apart.
    • otakucode 8y ago
      The problem is if they were implemented with regulatory instruments and whatnot, they would share their critical weakness. If tomorrow China says 'we know your banking computer systems are insecure and have no integrity. We do not trust that the numbers on them represent anything', the US economy is over. They can't prove that Walmarts net worth came from trade rather than from some malware or error or some other fraud. That would leave cryptocurrency being the only thing that can actually be proven to be real. Basing your currency on trust is great... until the trust is gone. And trust can disappear with a glance.