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What's actually funny is how people still believe that no use cases exist. Here are just some examples: * Uncensorable donations * No way for a third party to

by lawn 7y ago

What's actually funny is how people still believe that no use cases exist. Here are just some examples: * Uncensorable donations * No way for a third party to freeze your payments (internet is full of horror stories of PayPal) * Not all businesses can accept digital payments (marijuana stores or porn have trouble) * Credit cards and payment processors take a 2-4% cut, of all transactions. * You can use cryptocurrencies anonymously (to for example buy VPNs) * It's possible to flee your country with some of your wealth intact (for example by converting to Bitcoin and crossing the Venezuela border)

cyphar 7y ago
Excluding the transaction fees problem you mentioned (which cryptocurrencies also have -- while it might not be 4% it's definitely not 0%), all of the uses you listed are really just one use-case -- uncensorable transactions. Don't get me wrong, that's a very good feature of cryptocurrencies (assuming that you have the ability to transform crypto back to real money on the other end), but you should be aware that your list of use-cases is only one element long. I also want to point out that the use-case of "get your money out of the country" is not exactly perfect for Bitcoin because of how volatile it is (imagine if someone had to get their money out during December 2017).
- lawn 7y ago
  Good point. I'd say anonymous payments is a little different from being uncensorable though. You'll stay anonymous even after the payment has gone through. As for transaction fees, if we exclude Bitcoin which has really high fees, cryptocurrency fees are very small and almost negligible.[0] Getting money out of the country is always relative. Even with Bitcoin's volatility it's much preferred to losing all your money. Either you cannot bring it with you through the border, or Venezuela's hyperinflation will eat it up in a flash. [0]: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/cheaper_faster.html https://whycryptocurrencies.com/cheaper_faster.html
  - mamon 7y ago
    >> As for transaction fees, if we exclude Bitcoin which has really high fees, cryptocurrency fees are very small and almost negligible.[0] That's probably because their popularity among users is also negligible. Problem with cryptocurrencess is that they don't scale well, with increased transaction volumes the fees and processing times also tend to rise until network's hashing power catches up.
    - lawn 7y ago
      Not exactly. Fees are high in Bitcoin because they want it to be. Bitcoin Cash could for example handle at least 20x of transaction throughput, with the same low fees. Of course scaling is difficult. But Bitcoin isn't a good example of that.
- dunkelheit 7y ago
  I'm struggling to understand if uncensorable transactions are a good thing (note: struggling not in a sense of "I actually think it is evil but let's hear your bullshit arguments so that I can easily debunk them", but in a sense of really being undecided). I am not a libertarian so I don't think that laws are just a useless form of violence. So how can uncensorable transactions be useful for a law-abiding citizen? One thing I can think of is when a transaction is in the gray area - you do it without asking anyone and then can argue that it is legitimate from a relative position of power, similar to asking for forgiveness instead of permission. Another thing is that existence of uncensorable money can push nation-states to adopt more equitable and just laws. But of course there are downsides in enabling crime and so on. So is uncensorable money a good thing in aggregate? I don't know.
  - jotakami 7y ago
    Thank you for substantially raising the mean thoughtfulness of the comments in this thread.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    The most obvious example I can think of is when WikiLeaks (or pick your own politically-unfriendly charitable cause) had their PayPal and bank accounts frozen -- people donated using Bitcoin because the transactions couldn't be blocked by private companies. There are also several other examples of completely legal but unfriendly-to-large-corporations transactions -- in the several US states where marijuana has been legalised it is still difficult to conduct non-cash transactions with the proceeds because most payment processors are under federal jurisdiction thus making it possible for your (completely legal) funds to be seized.
    - asdff 7y ago
      You are always at the mercy of your platform. But wikileaks could have continued accepting cash in the mail instead of being sidelined by a third party service. And at least with legal pot the tide is quickly shifting to make traditional banking easier; there was talk in LA about opening a municipal bank kinda for this purpose. For most people, the utility of sticking your money into a volatile and slow system with no recourses is just never going to be there. A municipal credit union would be more useful and offer an out from private for-profit banking for most people.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
sireat 7y ago
Those are real use cases. However the adoption is severely lacking. The problem is that it has gotten worse not better. There has not been a good use case for a Joe NormalCitizen for crypto in a while. Anecdata: I first mined BTC in 2011 and used BTC quite a bit in 2013 to buy bunch of online and offline services. It was relatively painless since I had my own BTC. (Also it was really pseudo-anonymous since I was only using mining rewards and didn't reuse addresses). Since I do not own any significant crypto anymore there is no use case for me anymore. If I want do something shady, I'd have the problem of onramp KYC etc. If I want to do something legal, crypto costs including onramp is less convenient/costs more than normal SEPA/CC etc.
- DennisP 7y ago
  We can't have real adoption until we have the scaling to support it.
- dorgo 7y ago
  >If I want do something shady, I'd have the problem of onramp KYC etc. Is it still possible to circumwent KYC by mining? Or is it too expensive? Sounds like an advantage of PoW over PoS
  - qes 7y ago
    > Is it still possible to circumwent KYC by mining? Not really. You can't earn much at all mining any coins without significant and reoccurring capital investment. There are de-centralized exchanges like Bisq that you can use without KYC. Also Monero has true anonymity so while you might need a KYC onramp to get into crypto, once your value is on the Monero chain it's anonymous, transactions cannot be followed, balances can't be seen (without permission).
Avamander 7y ago
> Credit cards and payment processors take a 2-4% cut, of all transactions. Most payments regular people make every day are sub three-digit. On those payments 2-4% in the US is much cheaper than the current Bitcoin (and similar) transaction fees. That means crypto is rather unusable for most people. I won't even start talking how Bitcoin doesn't compete at all with European SEPA Instant payments for most use-cases. The only use crypto currently has is censorship resistance, pseudonymity and illegal purposes.
- lawn 7y ago
  > On those payments 2-4% in the US is much cheaper than the current Bitcoin (and similar) transaction fees. Bitcoin is a horrible example. Bitcoin Cash for example have fees of less than a cent.
  - ppf 7y ago
    It's probably so cheap because no-one wants to use a chain that is so susceptible to a 51% attack.
    - lawn 7y ago
      No, it's so cheap because Bitcoin has full blocks and people have to outbid each other to get their transaction through. Bitcoin Cash could handle at least 20x the volume of Bitcoin, with the same low fees. It's not Bitcoin Cash that's special. It's Bitcoin, but in a bad way. Even Monero has very low fees with better capacity for example.
      - ppf 7y ago
        If that's the case, why is the transaction count per time period for Bitcoin Cash about 20% of Bitcoin's? On the other hand, it's a significant problem that Bitcoin Cash has about 2% of the hashrate of Bitcoin. Any sensible person would not put any significant value into Bitcoin Cash when such a small percentage of Bitcoin miners could reorg the chain.

by lawn 7y ago

cyphar 7y ago

Excluding the transaction fees problem you mentioned (which cryptocurrencies also have -- while it might not be 4% it's definitely not 0%), all of the uses you listed are really just one use-case -- uncensorable transactions. Don't get me wrong, that's a very good feature of cryptocurrencies (assuming that you have the ability to transform crypto back to real money on the other end), but you should be aware that your list of use-cases is only one element long. I also want to point out that the use-case of "get your money out of the country" is not exactly perfect for Bitcoin because of how volatile it is (imagine if someone had to get their money out during December 2017).

lawn 7y ago
Good point. I'd say anonymous payments is a little different from being uncensorable though. You'll stay anonymous even after the payment has gone through. As for transaction fees, if we exclude Bitcoin which has really high fees, cryptocurrency fees are very small and almost negligible.[0] Getting money out of the country is always relative. Even with Bitcoin's volatility it's much preferred to losing all your money. Either you cannot bring it with you through the border, or Venezuela's hyperinflation will eat it up in a flash. [0]: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/cheaper_faster.html https://whycryptocurrencies.com/cheaper_faster.html
- mamon 7y ago
  >> As for transaction fees, if we exclude Bitcoin which has really high fees, cryptocurrency fees are very small and almost negligible.[0] That's probably because their popularity among users is also negligible. Problem with cryptocurrencess is that they don't scale well, with increased transaction volumes the fees and processing times also tend to rise until network's hashing power catches up.
  - lawn 7y ago
    Not exactly. Fees are high in Bitcoin because they want it to be. Bitcoin Cash could for example handle at least 20x of transaction throughput, with the same low fees. Of course scaling is difficult. But Bitcoin isn't a good example of that.
dunkelheit 7y ago
I'm struggling to understand if uncensorable transactions are a good thing (note: struggling not in a sense of "I actually think it is evil but let's hear your bullshit arguments so that I can easily debunk them", but in a sense of really being undecided). I am not a libertarian so I don't think that laws are just a useless form of violence. So how can uncensorable transactions be useful for a law-abiding citizen? One thing I can think of is when a transaction is in the gray area - you do it without asking anyone and then can argue that it is legitimate from a relative position of power, similar to asking for forgiveness instead of permission. Another thing is that existence of uncensorable money can push nation-states to adopt more equitable and just laws. But of course there are downsides in enabling crime and so on. So is uncensorable money a good thing in aggregate? I don't know.
- jotakami 7y ago
  Thank you for substantially raising the mean thoughtfulness of the comments in this thread.
- cyphar 7y ago
  The most obvious example I can think of is when WikiLeaks (or pick your own politically-unfriendly charitable cause) had their PayPal and bank accounts frozen -- people donated using Bitcoin because the transactions couldn't be blocked by private companies. There are also several other examples of completely legal but unfriendly-to-large-corporations transactions -- in the several US states where marijuana has been legalised it is still difficult to conduct non-cash transactions with the proceeds because most payment processors are under federal jurisdiction thus making it possible for your (completely legal) funds to be seized.
  - asdff 7y ago
    You are always at the mercy of your platform. But wikileaks could have continued accepting cash in the mail instead of being sidelined by a third party service. And at least with legal pot the tide is quickly shifting to make traditional banking easier; there was talk in LA about opening a municipal bank kinda for this purpose. For most people, the utility of sticking your money into a volatile and slow system with no recourses is just never going to be there. A municipal credit union would be more useful and offer an out from private for-profit banking for most people.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

sireat 7y ago

Those are real use cases. However the adoption is severely lacking. The problem is that it has gotten worse not better. There has not been a good use case for a Joe NormalCitizen for crypto in a while. Anecdata: I first mined BTC in 2011 and used BTC quite a bit in 2013 to buy bunch of online and offline services. It was relatively painless since I had my own BTC. (Also it was really pseudo-anonymous since I was only using mining rewards and didn't reuse addresses). Since I do not own any significant crypto anymore there is no use case for me anymore. If I want do something shady, I'd have the problem of onramp KYC etc. If I want to do something legal, crypto costs including onramp is less convenient/costs more than normal SEPA/CC etc.

DennisP 7y ago
We can't have real adoption until we have the scaling to support it.
dorgo 7y ago
>If I want do something shady, I'd have the problem of onramp KYC etc. Is it still possible to circumwent KYC by mining? Or is it too expensive? Sounds like an advantage of PoW over PoS
- qes 7y ago
  > Is it still possible to circumwent KYC by mining? Not really. You can't earn much at all mining any coins without significant and reoccurring capital investment. There are de-centralized exchanges like Bisq that you can use without KYC. Also Monero has true anonymity so while you might need a KYC onramp to get into crypto, once your value is on the Monero chain it's anonymous, transactions cannot be followed, balances can't be seen (without permission).

Avamander 7y ago

> Credit cards and payment processors take a 2-4% cut, of all transactions. Most payments regular people make every day are sub three-digit. On those payments 2-4% in the US is much cheaper than the current Bitcoin (and similar) transaction fees. That means crypto is rather unusable for most people. I won't even start talking how Bitcoin doesn't compete at all with European SEPA Instant payments for most use-cases. The only use crypto currently has is censorship resistance, pseudonymity and illegal purposes.

lawn 7y ago
> On those payments 2-4% in the US is much cheaper than the current Bitcoin (and similar) transaction fees. Bitcoin is a horrible example. Bitcoin Cash for example have fees of less than a cent.
- ppf 7y ago
  It's probably so cheap because no-one wants to use a chain that is so susceptible to a 51% attack.
  - lawn 7y ago
    No, it's so cheap because Bitcoin has full blocks and people have to outbid each other to get their transaction through. Bitcoin Cash could handle at least 20x the volume of Bitcoin, with the same low fees. It's not Bitcoin Cash that's special. It's Bitcoin, but in a bad way. Even Monero has very low fees with better capacity for example.
    - ppf 7y ago
      If that's the case, why is the transaction count per time period for Bitcoin Cash about 20% of Bitcoin's? On the other hand, it's a significant problem that Bitcoin Cash has about 2% of the hashrate of Bitcoin. Any sensible person would not put any significant value into Bitcoin Cash when such a small percentage of Bitcoin miners could reorg the chain.