6 ms·

While the market is likely driven by fomo and manipulation, cryptocurrencies do have valuable use-cases. See this book[0] for a list of some and an explanation

by lawn 6y ago

While the market is likely driven by fomo and manipulation, cryptocurrencies do have valuable use-cases. See this book[0] for a list of some and an explanation of how Bitcoin works. [0]: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/ https://whycryptocurrencies.com/

arcticbull 6y ago
There is not a single use case better solved by cryptocurrencies or blockchain than by a classical solution. Name one, I’ll wait. When there is I’ll eat my, err, hat.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  The permissionless nature does enable some use cases where the overhead associated with the classical solutions makes them impractical. With Bitcoin, anyone can start a cash-to-bitcoin/bitcoin-to-cash office. All you need is a phone with Internet. Could Western Union solve the same problem? In theory, yes, in practice, the overhead cost of joining the network means the guy with a phone in some remote village isn't going to do it. This is obviously mostly relevant where the classic solutions aren't already ubiquitous. Want to wire money from Germany to France? Just use SEPA. Want to wire money from Germany to the US? You're probably better off with some traditional money transfer service like TransferWise or (for bigger amounts) a Forex/brokerage account. Want to "wire" money from a remote village in Africa to a remote village in Asia? That's where you might benefit from your neighbor having set up a physical crypto exchange.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jasonlaramburu 6y ago
    The remote African Village use case is already solved by mobile money solutions like M-Pesa, which are cheap and easy to use via SMS or low-end feature phones. The cost of buying a smartphone with data plan to use a BTC wallet is prohibitively expensive for most people in developing countries.
    - lawn 6y ago
      Naturally you don't verify the blockchain yourself, but use a light wallet that uses very little data. And you don't use BTC as the fees are way too expensive. This is what people are doing in Venezuela for example.
      - jasonlaramburu 6y ago
        OK but are there any secure BTC or alt coin wallets (even light wallets) that will work on feature phones or SMS? Very few people in in remote villages can afford even the most basic Android smartphone. What incentive would they have to switch from M-PESA (or Alipay/wechatpay in Asia) that is already secure, cheap and widely accepted. Cryptocurrency is a fascinating technology and social experiment but so far has no unique use case other than speculation.
        lawn 6y ago
        Not that I know of. The real use-case is transferring to and from places that you cannot normally do. Smartphones are prevalent in Venezuela for example, but it's basically impossible to send money in or out unless you use cryptocurrencies. The charity eatBCH uses this to give food to Venezuelans for example: https://eatbch.org/ https://eatbch.org/. I think that's a pretty unique use case.
        jasonlaramburu 6y ago
        You can already send money from US to Venezuela using Moneygram and several other services cheaply. There are relatively few countries where sanctions prohibit Americans from sending money, and cryptocurrency would not make this legal.
        lawn 6y ago
        You cannot send USD to Venezuela, only Bolivars, which isn't so good as hyperinflation will kill most of the value instantly. One of the point of cryptocurrencies is that some countries may think certain things are illegal, but that doesn't make them wrong. To me helping to feed starving Venezuelans by sending them help directly is morally right, even if it was illegal.
- jakupovic 6y ago
  The problem of exchanging value between parties without intermediary or third-parties.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Yeah that’s not a problem though, it’s a feature.
    - safog 6y ago
      Tell that to the Iranians or to the people in Venezuela. Countries can be mis managed, currencies can be mis managed, people can be targeted (financial sanctions), traditional financial services are just not available in a lot of places. To top it off, It's Gold vs BTC for store of value and Gold has many, many downsides as well that we just chose to ignore because it's a shiny metal and has been in use longer.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        This is another classic misunderstanding. The problem those folks have isn’t bad currency it’s bad government. You can’t solve that by allowing people to violate sanctions suddenly. Remember, sanctions are what’s preventing these folks from trading internationally and sanctions are what’s preventing these folks from using USD. That doesn’t go away in a Bitcoin world. Amazon isn’t going to deploy stealth C-130s to airdrop in their prime packages if they pay with Bitcoin. When the government has failed your currency is the least of your problems, and once you change the government your currency returns to normalcy. Allowing the transfer of value in violation of sanctions has allowed North Korea to accumulate billions of dollars of crypto to fund their nuclear weapons programs. The livelihood of the average citizen changes not at all, but the largesse of the rogue state increases.
  - zzbzq 6y ago
    > than by a classical solution cash
    - 6y ago
- anythingdude321 6y ago
  there are many problems better solved by bitcoin than classical solutions. one example is as a bank account in a low trust society with high inflation (there are many such countries). creating a bitcoin wallet is extraordinarily easy and once you've acquired the bitcoin it's uncensorable and unconfiscatable. this is better than the classical solution, right?
  - mdoms 6y ago
    The US government literally just confiscated a billion dollar wallet just a few days ago.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Confiscation is good when executed through a legal process so I would argue it’s strictly worse. If the government is confiscating your money through unlawful means you’ve got much bigger problems. For instance, an unlawful government can easily confiscate your coins by means of a rubber hose and some pliers. Further a sufficiently motivated unlawful government can just turn off the internet.
- lawn 6y ago
  The link has many such examples...
jonfw 6y ago
Crypto is great- but BTC is a terrible crypto. Modern cryptos trade faster, with more anonymity, and more efficiently. BTC will never see mainstream transactional use- it's purely a store of value. It still has some transactional use in online black markets for ease of purchase and name recognition- but it's considered 'legacy' and moving into unreccomended and unsupported territory on most markets. I do believe that crypto does and will continue to gain use cases- but BTC is already on the tail end of it's useful life in any of those.
- kainaloo 6y ago
  btc is just the value layer, it does not need to be fast or cheap chain. other chains like ethereum will be used for the more complex applications and these chains will interoperate with bitcoin.

by lawn 6y ago

arcticbull 6y ago

There is not a single use case better solved by cryptocurrencies or blockchain than by a classical solution. Name one, I’ll wait. When there is I’ll eat my, err, hat.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
The permissionless nature does enable some use cases where the overhead associated with the classical solutions makes them impractical. With Bitcoin, anyone can start a cash-to-bitcoin/bitcoin-to-cash office. All you need is a phone with Internet. Could Western Union solve the same problem? In theory, yes, in practice, the overhead cost of joining the network means the guy with a phone in some remote village isn't going to do it. This is obviously mostly relevant where the classic solutions aren't already ubiquitous. Want to wire money from Germany to France? Just use SEPA. Want to wire money from Germany to the US? You're probably better off with some traditional money transfer service like TransferWise or (for bigger amounts) a Forex/brokerage account. Want to "wire" money from a remote village in Africa to a remote village in Asia? That's where you might benefit from your neighbor having set up a physical crypto exchange.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jasonlaramburu 6y ago
  The remote African Village use case is already solved by mobile money solutions like M-Pesa, which are cheap and easy to use via SMS or low-end feature phones. The cost of buying a smartphone with data plan to use a BTC wallet is prohibitively expensive for most people in developing countries.
  - lawn 6y ago
    Naturally you don't verify the blockchain yourself, but use a light wallet that uses very little data. And you don't use BTC as the fees are way too expensive. This is what people are doing in Venezuela for example.
    - jasonlaramburu 6y ago
      OK but are there any secure BTC or alt coin wallets (even light wallets) that will work on feature phones or SMS? Very few people in in remote villages can afford even the most basic Android smartphone. What incentive would they have to switch from M-PESA (or Alipay/wechatpay in Asia) that is already secure, cheap and widely accepted. Cryptocurrency is a fascinating technology and social experiment but so far has no unique use case other than speculation.
      - lawn 6y ago
        Not that I know of. The real use-case is transferring to and from places that you cannot normally do. Smartphones are prevalent in Venezuela for example, but it's basically impossible to send money in or out unless you use cryptocurrencies. The charity eatBCH uses this to give food to Venezuelans for example: https://eatbch.org/ https://eatbch.org/. I think that's a pretty unique use case.
        jasonlaramburu 6y ago
        You can already send money from US to Venezuela using Moneygram and several other services cheaply. There are relatively few countries where sanctions prohibit Americans from sending money, and cryptocurrency would not make this legal.
        lawn 6y ago
        You cannot send USD to Venezuela, only Bolivars, which isn't so good as hyperinflation will kill most of the value instantly. One of the point of cryptocurrencies is that some countries may think certain things are illegal, but that doesn't make them wrong. To me helping to feed starving Venezuelans by sending them help directly is morally right, even if it was illegal.
jakupovic 6y ago
The problem of exchanging value between parties without intermediary or third-parties.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Yeah that’s not a problem though, it’s a feature.
  - safog 6y ago
    Tell that to the Iranians or to the people in Venezuela. Countries can be mis managed, currencies can be mis managed, people can be targeted (financial sanctions), traditional financial services are just not available in a lot of places. To top it off, It's Gold vs BTC for store of value and Gold has many, many downsides as well that we just chose to ignore because it's a shiny metal and has been in use longer.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      This is another classic misunderstanding. The problem those folks have isn’t bad currency it’s bad government. You can’t solve that by allowing people to violate sanctions suddenly. Remember, sanctions are what’s preventing these folks from trading internationally and sanctions are what’s preventing these folks from using USD. That doesn’t go away in a Bitcoin world. Amazon isn’t going to deploy stealth C-130s to airdrop in their prime packages if they pay with Bitcoin. When the government has failed your currency is the least of your problems, and once you change the government your currency returns to normalcy. Allowing the transfer of value in violation of sanctions has allowed North Korea to accumulate billions of dollars of crypto to fund their nuclear weapons programs. The livelihood of the average citizen changes not at all, but the largesse of the rogue state increases.
- zzbzq 6y ago
  > than by a classical solution cash
  - 6y ago
anythingdude321 6y ago
there are many problems better solved by bitcoin than classical solutions. one example is as a bank account in a low trust society with high inflation (there are many such countries). creating a bitcoin wallet is extraordinarily easy and once you've acquired the bitcoin it's uncensorable and unconfiscatable. this is better than the classical solution, right?
- mdoms 6y ago
  The US government literally just confiscated a billion dollar wallet just a few days ago.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Confiscation is good when executed through a legal process so I would argue it’s strictly worse. If the government is confiscating your money through unlawful means you’ve got much bigger problems. For instance, an unlawful government can easily confiscate your coins by means of a rubber hose and some pliers. Further a sufficiently motivated unlawful government can just turn off the internet.
lawn 6y ago
The link has many such examples...

jonfw 6y ago

Crypto is great- but BTC is a terrible crypto. Modern cryptos trade faster, with more anonymity, and more efficiently. BTC will never see mainstream transactional use- it's purely a store of value. It still has some transactional use in online black markets for ease of purchase and name recognition- but it's considered 'legacy' and moving into unreccomended and unsupported territory on most markets. I do believe that crypto does and will continue to gain use cases- but BTC is already on the tail end of it's useful life in any of those.

kainaloo 6y ago
btc is just the value layer, it does not need to be fast or cheap chain. other chains like ethereum will be used for the more complex applications and these chains will interoperate with bitcoin.