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Yes - stocks on the blockchain make sense. But through this plumbing, the barista wants USD. Imagine there is a coin the barista trusts is as good as USD (a "st

Yes - stocks on the blockchain make sense. But through this plumbing, the barista wants USD. Imagine there is a coin the barista trusts is as good as USD (a "stablecoin"). Or imagine that there is a service in the background that has interfaced with the traditional credit card system as well as the blockchain, and does a bunch of functions really fast. Then, when the customer pays with a token, protocols just instantly convert it in the background to the exact amount of USD of the coffee. This stuff sort-of already exists. USDC is a US-dollar backed stablecoin https://www.coinbase.com/usdc https://www.coinbase.com/usdc and Uniswap https://uniswap.exchange/swap https://uniswap.exchange/swap is a decentralized algorithmic protocol for auto-converting between any 2 supported tokens. So if the barista takes USDC and you have some scammy token that few people want, you can instant-convert (well, "instant" in Ethereum is 15 to 30 seconds) from your token to the USD to the coffee. So what I'm saying is, you need to change your mind from buckets, where assets are only in one bucket. The token is not either a stock or a "utility" token. It's all of the above, simultaneously, and more as the plumbing keeps innovating. As long as someone, somewhere, is willing to purchase it for some price, it can function in a huge variety of ways.

ashtonkem 7y ago
I agree, that’s all solvable. But “we can make this work” is quite different from “you want this”. Credit cards work just fine for me, I’m even rewarded 1-5% for using them. I can’t see why I’d want to switch over to this and deal with the nightmare it would make my book keeping, not why my barista would want it over cash or credit card.
- seibelj 7y ago
  That is the endgame - paying for coffee with cryptocurrency tokens. That would be if crypto really took off so much that payment networks for the average person and physical businesses accepted cryptocurrency. This would be in the future - if it happens at all. There are some moves to do something like this for online payments - think "stripe for crypto" - such as Circle's business SDK for USDC https://www.circle.com/en/ https://www.circle.com/en/ and USDT on Tron for Pornhub payments https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/53826/pornhub-adds-tether-to-its-payment-options-via-tron-wallet https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/53826/pornhub-adds-tet... I reiterate - this is a massive experiment. It's rethinking the entire financial system to be rebuilt using open APIs and protocols. All sorts of weird stuff is happening on it, most of which will fail. Just like in the real financial system, which attracts lots of scammers who are constantly hounded and penalized by regulators, there are lots of scammers here. Even more so because they can't be arrested as easily (or ever). But it's open and anyone can use it, for better or worse. So the question is not why you won't use it for bookkeeping, purchases, credit card rewards, etc. It's why is anyone using it at all? You know easily why you yourself won't use it. But Bitcoin is still worth $150 billion and Ethereum $20 billion - clearly a lot of people want it, and value it. It's a slow, difficult, complex, risky network. But people keep building on it, experimenting, improving. People find it useful for certain things. As long as those things stay useful, I believe it will at least maintain its value. But if people build more things, and find more utility, then it goes up in value. Do I personally have all of my wealth and retirement tied up in this? No, absolutely not. Way too risky. But do I own some crypto, find utility in it, speculate, and experiment? Yes! The ecosystem is so vast I can't briefly explain all the use cases. There are many use cases, many reasons, many things people want and use crypto for, and more every year. This is a multi-generational experiment. It took hundreds of years for the modern financial system to come, and only a decade for this new one, so it needs more time.
  - ashtonkem 7y ago
    I personally have always found the idea that “tons of people are using it” to be a pretty unconvincing argument. Sometimes people invest huge amounts of money and time into useful things, like the internet, but people have also invested huge amounts of time and money into some really stupid bubbles too. I would 100% be comfortable saying that thousands of people and $150B are completely and utterly wrong. They might not be, but it wouldn’t be the dumbest bubble in living financial history.

ashtonkem 7y ago

I agree, that’s all solvable. But “we can make this work” is quite different from “you want this”. Credit cards work just fine for me, I’m even rewarded 1-5% for using them. I can’t see why I’d want to switch over to this and deal with the nightmare it would make my book keeping, not why my barista would want it over cash or credit card.

seibelj 7y ago
That is the endgame - paying for coffee with cryptocurrency tokens. That would be if crypto really took off so much that payment networks for the average person and physical businesses accepted cryptocurrency. This would be in the future - if it happens at all. There are some moves to do something like this for online payments - think "stripe for crypto" - such as Circle's business SDK for USDC https://www.circle.com/en/ https://www.circle.com/en/ and USDT on Tron for Pornhub payments https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/53826/pornhub-adds-tether-to-its-payment-options-via-tron-wallet https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/53826/pornhub-adds-tet... I reiterate - this is a massive experiment. It's rethinking the entire financial system to be rebuilt using open APIs and protocols. All sorts of weird stuff is happening on it, most of which will fail. Just like in the real financial system, which attracts lots of scammers who are constantly hounded and penalized by regulators, there are lots of scammers here. Even more so because they can't be arrested as easily (or ever). But it's open and anyone can use it, for better or worse. So the question is not why you won't use it for bookkeeping, purchases, credit card rewards, etc. It's why is anyone using it at all? You know easily why you yourself won't use it. But Bitcoin is still worth $150 billion and Ethereum $20 billion - clearly a lot of people want it, and value it. It's a slow, difficult, complex, risky network. But people keep building on it, experimenting, improving. People find it useful for certain things. As long as those things stay useful, I believe it will at least maintain its value. But if people build more things, and find more utility, then it goes up in value. Do I personally have all of my wealth and retirement tied up in this? No, absolutely not. Way too risky. But do I own some crypto, find utility in it, speculate, and experiment? Yes! The ecosystem is so vast I can't briefly explain all the use cases. There are many use cases, many reasons, many things people want and use crypto for, and more every year. This is a multi-generational experiment. It took hundreds of years for the modern financial system to come, and only a decade for this new one, so it needs more time.
- ashtonkem 7y ago
  I personally have always found the idea that “tons of people are using it” to be a pretty unconvincing argument. Sometimes people invest huge amounts of money and time into useful things, like the internet, but people have also invested huge amounts of time and money into some really stupid bubbles too. I would 100% be comfortable saying that thousands of people and $150B are completely and utterly wrong. They might not be, but it wouldn’t be the dumbest bubble in living financial history.