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I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question: ‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, and
by malloreon 8y ago
I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question:
‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, and all value is stored/transacted through a cryptocurrency, but it was a coin that you do not possess now, nor could you transfer any of you current currencies into it?’
Say tomorrow someone releases the one true coin, but no one notices. All other cryptocurrencies drop to zero value, then a crypto miracle occurs - the one true coin is uncovered and almost overnight becomes the defacto monetary standard. Would crypto fans be satisfied?
This is a long way of asking: do you want cryptocurrency to succeed if you knew that you could not profit from it doing so?
- emilfihlman 8y agoExactly. Cryptocurrencies are a pipe dream unless they can be effectively and fairly distributed first.
- kakarot 8y agoCare to link those two unrelated concepts together a bit better? Money isn't effectively and fairly distributed and it's obviously not a pipe dream.
- ForHackernews 8y agoMoney is more fairly distributed than cryptocurrencies. Credit Suisse found that 97% of bitcoin is held by 4% of addresses (though some may belong to exchanges): http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-97-are-held-by-4-of-addresses-2018-1?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-97-are-held-by-4-of-a...
- dnautics 8y agoIf you compared apples to apples, then, instead of people "all legal entities", aka corporations and sovereigns, would your analysis hold up?
- kakarot 8y agoAnd the top 1% of the American population controls around 40% of the wealth. In accordance with the power law, the top 20% of the population owned 86% of the country's wealth. Still doesn't seem like a pipe dream.
- lostjohnny 8y agoWealth, not money. Money is heavily regulated. Crypto are not.
- sowbug 8y agoAddresses do not necessarily correspond to people or institutions. Those 4% of addresses could represent any number of holders. The other 96% of addresses could be someone's buggy script gone wild.
- lostjohnny 8y agomoney have replaced values already owned by people it didn't pop-up from nothing crypto currencies need to be acquired using either real currencies or through some form of mining, that requires real currencies to acquire the resources needed to bootstrap it the crypto space is already a place where rich got richer, less rich got sometimes more rich, most of the times nothing changed for them, really poor individuals from really poor countries couldn't even get started
- kakarot 8y agoCouldn't get started on what? The point of cryptocurrencies wasn't to make people rich. Anyone can buy in at market value and start using coins for their stored value. That is the point. Your anger in the fact that crypto didn't magically create money where there was none before is misplaced. Really poor individuals from poor, economically wrecked countries had quite a lot to gain from the accessibility of cryptocurrency. Look at Venezela's attitude towards Bitcoin.
- lostjohnny 8y ago> Couldn't get started on what? On owning them. > Anyone can buy in at market value and start using coins for their stored value Not everybody can, that's the point. Almost nobody can, expanding the first point. It's not really a democratic and open process. It involves a lot of prerequisites that are usually not met by the general population. > Look at Venezela's attitude towards Bitcoin. You mean Maduro's? AFAIK Maduro made bitcoin mining illegal in Venezuela and arrested more than a few miners. Or do you mean the Petro Coin (a total scam currency) that Maduro tried to force down Venezuelan's throats?
- kakarot 8y ago> Almost nobody can, expanding the first point. Now expand on this point. What about crypto is preventing people from owning some that isn't also preventing them from owning regular money? > You mean Maduro's? It's pedantic to differentiate between a State and its actors when discussing policy like this. I mean Venezuela. I'm talking the Petro Coin, the raids, everything. The whole policy was a response to fears of increased economic freedom for Venezuela's poorest citizens at a time when the government was trying to offload the pain of its bad economic decisions onto them.
- mirekrusin 8y agoWhat is fairly distributed in this world?
- nwhatt 8y agoGreat point, not to mention the fact that big banks and investment corporations have dabbled in existing crypto. Those big organizations are even less likely to support the one true coin you speak of.
- kakarot 8y agoAnyone who answers no isn't a fan of cryptocurrency; you're asking the wrong people. Those people are just fans of getting rich on the latest fad. Those of us who have been here since the beginning just want cryptocurrency to succeed and flourish and fulfill its roles, and we already know Bitcoin won't be the answer so we're all waiting on The One True Coin.
- williamdclt 8y agoLooks like a True Scotsman to me (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman)
- kakarot 8y agoNo, there is a real distinction here. Someone who is a fan of cryptocurrency itself is a fan of the ideas behind it and what it can bring to the table. People who are only satisfied in the outcome if they become rich are clearly not interested in the real benefits of cryptocurrency. So asking fans of cryptocurrency this question is a waste of time because the answer should be the same. The point of my comment was to highlight to OP that they have a categorization problem. Just because a division exists doesn't mean you get to call No True Scotsman.
- 4bpp 8y agoI mean, if your thesis is something like "the embarrassing truth is that the vast majority of Scotsmen is actually people born and raised in Kazakhstan", then yes, you will get the response that Kazakhs are not true Scotsmen and there is nothing particularly fallacious about it.
- AtHeartEngineer 8y agoYes, and I'm heavily vested, mainly in ethereum. I would be bummed, don't get me wrong, but it would give me hope for us all to get along more internationally.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deweller 8y agoI am a cryptocurrency fan and developer who wants to build services on top of cryptocurrency networks. I want a cheap, fast, decentralized solution for token ownership with a great user experience. I want to build back-end solutions for crypto-tokens representing digital collectables, in-game items, etc. I need a critical mass of users before these services start to become viable as a business model. Thus I need a cryptocurrency for tokens to succeed in a meaningful way. And I want this regardless of whether I own the native token of this network.
- dijit 8y agoI think that's a fair question; A good litmus test is people who had bitcoins prior to 2012 (arbitrary date), I had friends who mined bitcoins because they thought it was "cool" and because they liked the idea, not because it was an investment. Personally the computational overhead makes me weep a fair amount; we're simultaneously trying to save the planet while making our payment methods several orders of magnitude more expensive in terms of power. But if there was a "coin" that was comparative in terms of energy expenditure with what currently exists then I'd be more than happy to "lose" my wealth in other coins. That is a very low price to pay for such a system.
- derefr 8y agoThere’s definitely a net loss from mining (at least while PoW coins are still en vogue), but I think it might not be as large as you’d think, since there’s a rather large energy reduction in the form of criminals and others who move money around without governments’ consent, no longer requiring secret boats and planes and air-conditioned vaults to transport physical cash in.
- DennisP 8y agoProof of stake is likely to make that energy expenditure obsolete over the next several years.
- Synaesthesia 8y agoI want a cryptocurrency which is egalitarian - evenly distributed among people in the world, rather than one in which a few people own the majority and profit hugely.
- sowbug 8y agoWhat happens on Day Two?
- ric2b 8y agoThe people with businesses get a lot of the new currency from the people that need to work for a living and we're back on track to be right where we started. A currency is just a measurement device, it's not a replacement for resources, I don't know why people forget that so often.
- williamdclt 8y agoThe discussion is not about cryptocurrency anymore at this point
- smokeyj 8y agoActually Dogecoin was a major hit.
- manifestsilence 8y agoYes! And I think there is one aspect of Bitcoin that is precisely backwards in relation to both this and the energy crisis: proof of work is a substitute for proof of identity so it can be anonymous. Imagine a currency that everyone is born with a certain amount of, with the only price of admission your ability to prove your identity. Suddenly, we have solved the problem of proof of work for allowing this to be a distributed ledger since the trust can be based on reputation. Also, we can impose limits such as perhaps a logarithmic scale of wealth interpretation, where ten million dollars isn't all that much more than one million, if it's all in the hands of one person. The digital age could be an age of fairness, if we choose to use these tools to design a fair game instead of an unfair one. Note that I mean "fair" not in the sense of two people starting out exactly equal, but where the winner can use their advantage to win more over time until the "match" is over, but one that tends towards a fairness equilibrium, where the advantages gained by one person or group over others are minimized over time or at extreme scales. This is how I write when I have gotten less than 4 hours of sleep, but hey, I can dream. :)
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoThe counter is that if that crypto really became that used, you'd begin being paid in it. There was a brief moment where companies began paying employees in crypto.
- sh4rk 8y agoGood question. Definitely yes. Why would I pay middlemen (banks) when there is no need to? Also why would I trust them, when there is no need to?
- umanwizard 8y agoCryptocurrencies are not a replacement for banks; they are a replacement for gold. If cryptocurrencies ever become mainstream, banking services will be built on top of them, just as they were originally built on top of gold. The only thing I can think of that cryptos let you do cheaper than banks is rapid, relatively frictionless funds transfer, so I’ll admit their utility there. But other than that, what banking services do cryptos give you?
- Semaphor 8y agoLoans, money transfer, storing your money are all things that can be replaced. Seems like a decent chunk.
- jayd16 8y agoLoans no, not at all. Money transfer for coin is extremely inefficient. Volatility makes crypto a terrible place to keep money. Besides, you're paying for the legal and institutional protection anyway. If crypto made money transfer more efficient, they'd use it and still have the value add of a large institution backing transactions.
- omarchowdhury 8y ago> Loans no, not at all. https://makerdao.com/dai/ https://makerdao.com/dai/ $80M DAI issued so far...
- Isomatik 8y agoThat's only useful as a hedge for ETH. A mortgage where you have to put down 373% of the value of the house in liquid currency as collateral is not competitive in the slightest. https://mkr.tools/ https://mkr.tools/
- entity345 8y agoA problem, imo is that these cryptocurrencies are pieces of software developped by anybody. This means a new one popping up every month... Which in turn means that they are useless as currency.
- dnautics 8y agoYes. I think there's value in reducing the politically privileged's means to dominate their power over the general populace. It is my personal belief that people are in poverty because they are politically disposessed, as opposed to the opposite causality arrow (ok obviously it goes both ways but my belief is that it's mostly the other direction).
- root_axis 8y ago> I think there's value in reducing the politically privileged's means to dominate their power over the general populaced Cryptocurrency doesn't do this.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoCryptocurrency hasn’t done this yet but it certainly has the potential to do exactly this.
- ses1984 8y agoThe anarchist in me wants to believe that cryptocurrency will diminish the power of the state but I don't actually have enough faith in humanity that we will come up with something better than crypto-oligarchy.
- usrusr 8y agoWhen new technology or some other fundamental change makes enforcement of the rule of law harder, We The People will grant enforcers more privileges to make sure that they are still able to do their job. It's a job We want done. The road to police state is paved with anarchist intentions.
- trophycase 8y agoSort of. Baudrillard seems to argue from a anti-fragility standpoint and asserts that acts of terrorism have the opposite effect as intended and only seeks to strengthen the hold of the incumbent system even more (see PATRIOT act, new TSA screenings). I agree that technology generally amplifies the power of those that already have power, but I wouldn't go as far as you. I think that banking on any one thing is not the way to go, you need to abandon anything that becomes coopted and always seek destabilization in whatever form it appears.
- skohan 8y agoThe story of cryptocurrency over the past couple years has been a really interesting case-study in the application of Libertarian principals. It's interesting how something which was built on the idea of decentralization by design has given way to a clear power structure, where those who have the sway to control the fate of the technology have largely used it to pursue their own personal enrichment over the health and success of the system as a whole. To me it's evidence that some form of governance is required to build something which can actually serve the greater good. I also would like to see a stateless currency work out, but there are clearly still quite a few problems to be solved before that will even seem like a possibility.
- pepesza 8y ago
- ckastner 8y ago> This is a long way of asking: do you want cryptocurrency to succeed if you knew that you could not profit from it doing so? That is a brilliant question! Instead of all the endless bickering between crypto-fans and -haters reaching from technology to fiscal policy to society, it reduces the conflict to one simple test, as a sort of precondition. Anecdata, but just going through my set of acquaintances, personal profit was always a factor. And I never even thought to question it. In hindsight, however, it seems (1) such an obvious thing to do, and (2) makes it clear to me that my acquaintances probably wouldn't give a damn about crypto if there wasn't a chance to profit from it. I mean, the only reason Bitcoin went mainstream in the first place is not because of the technology (which existed for a decade), but because there was a extreme bubble (again) and mainstream people wanted to get rich quick.
- sanbor 8y agoI always have been excited about Bitcoin because allows me as a developer to do things with money in the internet. I could create a service like PayPal without the need of having deals with hundreds of banks all over the world. A homeless can have a btc wallet but probably not a bank account. I could automate transfers and payments. In countries like Argentina there are a few banks and they're really bad quality, both in terms of services and tech, so there are not things like stripe, etc. I'm talking just about the positive potential of Bitcoin as a technology. There are many downsides and the current landscape of cryptocurrencies is not so great. My vision is that crypto is going to be used like credit/debit cards, as a way to use money digitally, but it will backed against fiat.
- wolfgke 8y ago> I always have been excited about Bitcoin because allows me as a developer to do things with money in the internet. I could create a service like PayPal without the need of having deals with hundreds of banks all over the world. A homeless can have a btc wallet but probably not a bank account. I could automate transfers and payments. In countries like Argentina there are a few banks and they're really bad quality, both in terms of services and tech, so there are not things like stripe, etc. But the problem is not the technology (it is there and exists for decades), but the laws. Better concentrate on that problem.
- emiliobumachar 8y agoGeneralizing to be applicable to any utopias: ‘Would you be happy if the utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, but you lose some or most of your savings?’
- haolez 8y agoYes, if it means that my government cannot create inflation anymore.
- umanwizard 8y agoWhy do you think moderate inflation is bad?
- buboard 8y agoyou can create a crypto with some pre-set amount of inflation to make up for e.g. lost coins. or create inflating derivative securities. though, having inflation in a single globalized market doesn't make much sense, as there are no competing economies.
- glass_of_water 8y agoI don't think the issue is controlled inflation. I think the fear is of rapid inflation caused by governments struggling to make interest payments, which could cause the value of any cash or bond positions you have to effectively go to 0. Similar reason people find gold appealing I suppose.
- PeterisP 8y agoIntentional debasement is one way of getting out of very serious national financial problems. It is unpleasant, but it's chosen (or, more likely, can't be prevented) because the alternatives are worse. If you make this option impossible for your government, you're setting up your country for some very bad consequences the next time in some economic disaster it would have needed to have that rapid inflation, but can't have it. Hyperinflation is a symptom of economic problems, not the origin of it. If you find a way to prevent nominal inflation by crypto, it doesn't prevent the related problems. There's a good reason why we got rid of the gold standard, which had all the same problems as a crypto-based economy would have, and was unsustainable because of that. Since you mention bond positions, if they'd were denominated in non-inflationary crypto, in any such scenario they'd drop anyway - if it wouldn't be possible by inflation, then it'd happen by defaults. Which would also mean a default of all credit institutions. Which would then mean the disruption of most businesses who rely on these institution. Which would then mean nonpayment of salaries. Which would then cause a lack of demand, causing even more economic problems. Compared to that, a semi-orderly inflation (up to the extent that is required) is preferable to a cascade of defaults. The vast majority of the money in economy is anyway in the "I owe you" form, and crypto doesn't change that; even if all the economy would move to a cryptocurrency, only something like 2-5% of it could be in the form of "hard coin that I control" and the rest of it is in debt relationships between various businesses. It sucks to get paid in some paper that's now nearly worthless - however, the alternative isn't to get paid in hard crypto, in such a scenario the possibility to get paid in full doesn't exist. So if we don't have the possibility to get paid in a devaluated currency, then people either don't get paid at all, or have to suddenly invent a new worthless paper currency and build an infrastructure for it, at a time when they don't really have the time and resources to do it. This isn't a hypothetical example - such "currencies" have developed in e.g. various long-term conflict zones.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoYes, a million times yes.
- ericol 8y agoI'm into cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, actually) because it solves a very specific problem that might apply only to my country. So, anecdote: I live in Argentina, work for an UK based company. been doing that for the last 10 years. Before I could trade bitcoin in an almost frictionless way (I.e., before I discovered Localbitcoin.com) my routine was to go to the ATM after the payment got into my european bank account, do a few extracts per day, rinse and repeat until I got all the money I needed. Rate per extraction was around a few euros if I didn't hit minimum, to a certain % (That at times could be 5%, but can't quite recall as last time was 6 or so years ago). Minimum depended on the current economic situation of my country at the time (I suppose I don't need to explain that). So, why not wire the money to your local bank account, you might ask? Well, last time I checked (I moved a year ago to Buenos Aires and haven't checked how it goes here because I don't need to) the process for wiring money to my local bank account was as follows: (Argentina is not inserted into the international SWIFT system !!!) I had to wire the money to a specific bank account in the US, that belonges normally to the bank I was checking, but couldn't really say. I had to wire the money there from my european bank account with certain conditions, so it could be recognizable that the money belonged to me. Then, after some time (Could be as short as 2 weeks, but no bank would assure it would work like that every time, and wait times of 1 month or more were totally possible, considering how the Argetinian banks operate, i.e., mob-like) I would get my money _in the local currency_ with the corresponding loss due to exchange rates. AND (that's kind a really big AND, I need bigger caps) the "charge" for the operation was around 100 bucks. PER OPERATION. "Thats too much" I said. "Yeah, people tend to group operations in half years so transfer is justified" was the answer I got. I tested this at 3 different banks, got the same reply in all 3. Seriously. So, now I trade bitcoin. I buy them in the UK, transfer them to my wallet, and use a broker to get the money in my account. The broker takes 2% on all operations, plus their rate is around 2% below of the current BTC price, but I don't mind. At least I'm getting ripped by somebody I want to get ripped by. And then we have the speed issue: Since Segwit, it can take as little as half an hour to do the whole operation. 2 months ago I woke up with the money in my EU bank account (I'm not an early raiser, may I say), and by noon I had completed all operations and was just waiting for the broker to deposit the money in my local bank account. BTW, the reason for me using a broker, is that minimum operation volume in LocalBTC is 0.2 BTC, and with the price hike at the middle of 2017 that became a problem; that, plus mostly everybody in Argentina that deals in BTC are fucking histerical trying to do a quick buck, so they start getting nervous if they don't close the operation in under 30 minutes. And just in case you want to know how the banks operate here, another anecdote: The dollar fucking doubled it's rate between May and September last year. The measure the gobernment used to stop the rate rise was to take the credit rate to above 70% (Yes, that's a seven followed by a zero). Then, a lot of people here manage their finances both with credit and debit cards, because it's a lot easier (Unless you want to be carrying a lot of bills in your pockets). So, what do banks do? They fuck merchants over, by delaying as much as they can transferring the money, because they put that in the financial market (We're speaking in the weeks here, above 3 of them). Even with the fines and shit, they are making shitloads of money. So, that mean that merchants get fucked over twice: they don't get the money in time, and when they get it prices might have changed a lot, so in a lot of cases they end up losing money. Regarding the questions re:cryptocurrency I'm here for a long time, not a fun time. I mean, I have no problem if I have some fun with it, but it's not the end goal. And it's going to be fun if crypto takes off, as countries / governments are going to have to deal with the implied loss of power.
- opan 8y agoI would be fine with that, but I am not hugely into crypto. I have a bit of BTC somewhere. I considered the money gone as soon as I got it. Had gotten a chunk of money and wanted some of it to go somewhere where it could theoretically make me money. I did increase it at one point by going from BTC to Tether after prices went up, then back again on a dip. I don't even check its worth anymore, it's $100 or less I think. Just a little fun thing. Crypto as a concept still seems interesting to me even if it's not a major interest of mine. Similarly I think ipfs and freenet and such are cool, but have yet to get involved with them.
- sametmax 8y agoHow do you think bitcoin started ? You'd had to be crazy to believe in it 9 years ago, and spend time and energy in the community, nlt to lention monney, to foster the project. My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. Btc was banana money at first, and only people believing it would be a great thing as a concept made it work. We didn't expect to make banks, it was a happy side effect of a mad naive bet. All great things start like that. Comics are now the thing, but 20 years ago were still for pationate nerds.
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago> My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. ... All great things start like that. "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- Carl Sagan https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_sagan_163043 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_sagan_163043
- paulgb 8y ago“First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, then you change the world.” - Elizabeth Holmes
- mandeepj 8y agoI don't think she is the original author of this quote. Going to share another quote, which I think is relative here - “Those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world usually do.” - Steve Jobs
- WilliamEdward 8y agoI feel like the "usually" is pretty important here.
- 8y ago
- DickingAround 8y agoYes. I'd be quite happy with that. I can generate value; the hard part is keeping that value safe. That is what crypto offers.
- miloignis 8y agoThis articulates pretty well something that I've tried to express about how I feel about cryptocurrency before. I don't own any, even though I've worked on a distributed application based on Ethereum and love the concepts because I was worried that by owning any coins I would be less trustworthy as a true believer. On the other hand, without any, I'm worried that I may seem as if I don't really believe in it, as I haven't put my money where my mouth is. Anyway, I would love cryptocurrency to succeed, and in an efficient manner (say we get all the problems worked out of proof of stake).
- arisAlexis 8y agoyou are describing an impossible scenario where nobody notices but overnight it becomes a global standard. if you actually make a scenario that is possible you will see most people would have time to switch to the other and the original will slowly fade. no problem with that. dollar will sometime fade too for something else as all other currencies have done in the past (google some charts online)
- jandrese 8y agoWhen Bitcoin first appeared I thought it was some fly by night scam. Their talk of it being anonymous seemed to be at odds with the technology that put every transaction on the public record forever. Like you could buy drugs with the money, but as soon as you tried to convert it to real money you'd be busted. Or if you ran it through one of those money laundering services, then you'd still be busted as soon as you withdrew the laundered money. For that matter, I expected at least one of the laundering services to be run by the feds so they could get a wealth of data about the people who need to launder money and where it is coming from and going to. I guess I put too much faith in law enforcement.
- hippich 8y agoOutside of what others replied to you with, there is another aspect I find about it, that truly resonates and excites me, despite not being a holder. To me, Bitcoin is also a large experiment where laws and rules are written as open source code, which any1 code fork and run their own version of it, or any1 can submit a proposal for. This is what traditionally legal system with the power of violence used to deal with before. Now we see it implemented as a code. This part is more exciting to me than trying to sidestep whatever misguided government (not just US) rules and actions are. EDIT: Perhaps proof of work based on burning energy, which is expensive and tends to bring centralized parties, is not the best way to ensure rules are enforced, but the fact the whole thing is open source is great in my opinion.
- gregknicholson 8y agoI don't accept this assessment of how Bitcoin's consensus fundamentally works. Yes, anyone can fork the code, but consensus comes only when the miners choose a fork. As far as I can see, there's no significant incentive to mine other than money, so miners want money, so you can persuade them with money. The "consensus" is fundamentally an auction.
- seth__ 8y agoUnless people really use bitcoin to pay for stuff. Then, whatever token can be exchanged for something of value is the one everyone wants, doesn't matter if the miners fork
- RugnirViking 8y agoUnfortunately bitcoin becomes steadily less useful for actually using and paying for stuff as time goes on. Back in the day, it could be used on amazon, buy a coffee etc. Now its just a bizzare experiment in markets without consumers.
- buboard 8y agoyep and therein lies some power. There have been a few wars within bitcoin already. In the real world, people would have died. In the coin world, people just voluntarily chose different pastures.
- sowbug 8y ago[Using U.S. law as a convenient set of terms of art, not to be geocentric.] The internet is a technical embodiment of the First Amendment (freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, right of peaceable assembly, right to complain about the government). Bitcoin is a technical embodiment of some of the Fifth Amendment (due process -- protection against deprivation of property, and even life/liberty if you accept the unremarkable proposition that it's hard to live freely if you can't buy anything). Having these technical protections in place are important regardless of their impact on or benefit to any one person.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago> Bitcoin is a technical embodiment of some of the Fifth Amendment (due process -- protection against deprivation of property, ...) How is it in any way different than having money in your bank account? If the government wants to, they can decide to take all your money from all your account, but they can also decide to throw you in jail until you hand over the keys to your Bitcoins. In the end there is no difference.
- sowbug 8y agoIn the second case, the money didn't move, and the government didn't get it. Meanwhile, the Technological Singularity people are working on the other half of the problem you describe.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoOk, so how is it any different than having your money in a numbered account in Panama or Switzerland, which the government can't seize? And what's this Singularity nonsense of which you speak?
- sowbug 8y agoNo need for the hostility. And if you want to have a discussion whether there are alternative ways to achieve specific valuable outcomes, count me out. This thread is about whether cryptocurrencies have any potential valuable outcomes besides the potential of lottery-style winnings for early adopters.
- loomstate 8y agoThat is a false premise. For a crypto to be valuable it needs a network of actors who agree on its value. Looks at bitcoin for example, its bar the most valuable crypto network yet there are many options that a technically superior. However, has first mover advantage and a large network of believers.
- solotronics 8y agoMost of us involved since early times ( <$1 / BTC ) were intially attracted to the libertarian ideal of a decentralized currency. Like gold, it's truly yours, and nobody can take it from you if you control the private keys.
- buboard 8y agoIt's not like gold's price went to 0 (more precisely, to the level of other noble metals) after the end of the gold standard. Bitcoin might well remain forever as a sort of digital gold with its (entirely stochastic) ups and downs. And why would people invest in a currency just because it is circulating? People invest in dollars because it's stable, not because it circulates a lot (more accurately, in derived products such as bonds, anchored to the US State, not on the dollar printing machines). and yes i think most cryptocoin loonies want any one of them to succeed , the potential is so crazy high, that wishing otherwise would be foolish
- packet_nerd 8y agoYou can call me a fan, I at least think they are cool and clever, and I like the idea. If a magic coin comes along and is the one true coin that elegantly solves all current problems, I'd think that was great. I don't currently hold any amount of crypto with any hope of getting rich off it.. so it wouldn't really matter to me.
- koonsolo 8y agoYes of course! But it needs to be a proper cryptocurrency. Which means worldwide, feeless, instant transactions.
- sbenitoj 8y agoAbsolutely — I would gladly trade all my gains for a world where governments have no control over the creation and regulation of money.
- ryan_j_naughton 8y agoA predetermined monetary policy would be great when a financial crisis or credit crunch hit, causing a collapse in the velocity of money /s While I have invested in crypto and believe it has great potential, one of its touted benefits by its supporters is also one of its biggest pitfalls, namely that its money supply is predetermined. The inability to actively manage a money supply given exogenous shocks to the economy is a big problem.
- hanniabu 8y agoI think it makes sense. You have an economy built on an economic model rather than an economic model based on an economy. With the latter you're constantly guessing and tweaking the model and roughly every 10 years there's a crash and the economists say okay, NOW we have it perfect and we'll never get it wrong again. Why do you need an unlimited money supply? The only thing causing these shocks is that the economy is doing whatever it wants and then the economic model collapses.
- sbenitoj 8y agoExactly, any supply of money will do, no need to permanently increase the amount in circulation — this is why the market settled on gold (which has an inherently low inflation rate due to the difficulties of mining) and impossible to pass off counterfeit gold at scald.
- ur-whale 8y ago>this is why the market settled on gold Gold, which, by the way, has an extraordinarily high energy and environmental cost to extract.
- 0xdxdt 8y agoYES!! Emphatically Yes! I travel quite a bit. I would much rather have 1 wallet no matter the digital currencies than have 10 physical currencies at dubious future value.
- DSingularity 8y agoWay to hit at the heart of so many issues.
- throwaway415415 8y agoCan we focus on an interesting discussion instead of the usual
- wuliwong 8y agoI would assume you would get mixed responses as cryptocurrency "fans" are not of one mind.
- BenoitEssiambre 8y agoYou don't have to ask that question. If they really cared about the tech, they would make sure their tokens are not deflationary. Deflationary tokens are not much good as a currency but they are good as a Ponzi scheme.
- sparkie 8y agoI think here's your answer: It isn't just about the tech. This is what most "blockchain" enthusiasts get wrong. They think it is just about technology, and thus, they can come up with "a better bitcoin." They're missing that the predetermined monetary policy is the key innovation of Bitcoin, and that by creating a new "blockchain" which prints new money, they are shooting themselves in the foot, because they can't ever be "a superior bitcoin" when they have inflation as part of the parcel. A free market does not really care about whether some people have the opinion that deflation is bad. At the end of the day, nobody can change Bitcoin's monetary policy, and it will be left to the free market to decide whether or not they are going to put their money in this, or whether they're going to bet on inflation.
- BenoitEssiambre 8y agoA predetermined monetary policy is fine but the fact that it is predetermined to be deflationary is a fatal flaw. I would have much more faith in a cryptocoin's potential as a currency if the predetermined monetary policy was something like Friedman's k-percent rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman%27s_k-percent_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman%27s_k-percent_rule Of course this would vastly reduce the Ponzi aspect for early owners which might remove most of the appeal. And I still wouldn't have much faith in it since I doubt being decentralized is enough of a benefit for people to switch away from government currency and normal banking.
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- zanny 8y ago> At the end of the day, nobody can change Bitcoin's monetary policy A majority of hashing power in the network could change Bitcoins monetary policy.
- etherael 8y agoThat's fine with me as long as it maintains the purpose of the original; to disintermediate the state and political authority from money, and to create a ledger which they cannot tamper with, confiscate, or spy on.
- ur-whale 8y ago>This is a long way of asking: do you want cryptocurrency to succeed if you knew that you could not profit from it doing so? You seem to be assuming that anyone interested in crypto is in it for the money. I assure you, that's not the case. To me, getting the money supply out of the clutches of governments is the most important aspect of crypto-currencies. To answer your question: Which crypto wins and how much it'll be worth are the last of my concern, as I will profit, along with all of society, from getting the govt to surrender management of something they're basically terrible at.
- grandmczeb 8y ago> do you want cryptocurrency to succeed if you knew that you could not profit from it doing so? If the cryptocurrency was at least somewhat open and efficient, then I would be extremely happy. If it was more like a payment layer that only a few large banks could use, I would be still be happy, but much less so.
- cherafel 8y agoI'd answer in the negative here. Most cryptocurrency fans seem to be optimistic investors looking to join in on the massive returns seen by investors in 2016-2017. Most of them care more for generating 'hype' and seeing an increase in the value of the coin they hold, just so they can dump their holdings later. I don't think they'd be too interested in a coin that inflated in value that they didn't hold (they'd probably instead promote something they did hold). Most cryptocurrency fans do not hold one particular coin, and generally change which coin they advocate for pretty often. Cryptocurrency communities are generally pretty toxic and non-constructive environments. I've been part of a couple, and I've noticed multiple times a massive decline in the quality of the community (and, sometimes, in development as well) as the cryptocurrency got more popular (and more people joined the community).
- 4bpp 8y agoYes, as far as I am concerned. There has been a nontrivial number of instances of the payment processor oligopoly wielding its power against things that I care about (by preventing certain companies/institutions/organisations from using it) in the past decade, and I want that sort of thing to become impossible.
- sonofaragorn 8y agoThat highly depends on the amount (in USD) at stake: $100: Absolutely. $1000: Tough, but I'd do it if it meant the promised change to financial services $10000: Unlikely, I'd rather keep my non-perfect coins $100000: No way.
- int_19h 8y agoYes, although ironically I might not end up using it much if at all. But it'd be good to have it even so. The reason is that I think that while governments can be better at monetary policy, they need competition to keep them in check. Other currencies technically provide that competition, but they can be suppressed via legislation in a given jurisdiction, and this is, in fact, commonly done precisely where such competition would have practical sense (e.g. countries with hyperinflation often try to regulate and even outright ban currency exchange; or the various historical bans on private ownership of bullion gold in many countries). Bitcoin is always there, available to anyone who has Internet access and can get past "great firewalls" (and when people's money are at stake, they are surprisingly good at learning such things). Consequently, the government can only do so much to its own money before it starts losing that competition - Venezuela is one ongoing example.
- heimatau 8y agoWhy does everyone, especially within crypto, seem to believe a One Coin theory? Plurality is the name of the game. History has endless examples. Yes nothing would last but...the better monies would move to a better monies. It's called competition. There is very little competition when it comes to monetary policies. Crypto will foster more of it. It can get messy but hopefully it won't get deadly.
- AgentME 8y agoThe question also presumes that all cryptocurrency fans want cryptocurrency to replace fiat currency in general. I mainly want cryptocurrency to get a niche like what PayPal has. A decentralized PayPal sounds good. It doesn't need to overthrow governments in order to useful.
- GoblinSlayer 8y agoSpeculation is not really a point. It's a temporary method of popularization, because people can't be reasoned with in other ways.
- fandango 8y agoI would be delighted because imho it would make the world a better place. However if there is a slight chance I might profit from it, I'll gladly take those odds.
- chrisco255 8y agoAbsolutely. When I first read about Bitcoin back in 2010 I loved the concept but didn't buy in until 2013. I've happily supported and followed other crypto projects. I've bought into about 5 but follow about 10-15 of them closely. An overnight crypto miracle won't happen, by the way. Money is too important and requires too much trust for an overnight success to occur. Every year that the BTC network runs without a major exploit, is another year of confidence in the network protocol's security. Unlike some software categories that are prone to rapid disruption, money is not one of those things. Disruption occurs a lot slower for very important reasons. People have to trust in a crypto currency in order to store value in it and exchange value for it. That takes time, to test in production if any major exploits exist. It's not trivial what Bitcoin has accomplished this far.