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However three years on, crypto still does not have a "killer app" and is 99.99% used for speculation. The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open sou

However three years on, crypto still does not have a "killer app" and is 99.99% used for speculation. The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open source, and censorship resistant network. Bitcoin's narrative has had to morph from "digital currency" to "digital gold". Gold morphed from worthless rocks in the the ground, to coins traded by traveling merchants, to stores of value that were eventually centralized and monopolized by governments. RE: Tether I don't trust them either, but we need more evidence of this alleged printing. We saw that they did remove the 1:1 peg briefly when Crypto Capital in Panama (?) froze a few hundred million of their USD. Bitcoin now finds itself a high tech manifestation of the very thing that Satoshi sought to address. Bitcoin is sound. The centralized exchange layer built on top of it is dirty.

vorpalhex 6y ago
> The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open source, and censorship resistant network. Yes, but what can I do with that other than toot/tweet/twit at other people and buy LSD tabs?
- doggosphere 6y ago
  With Bitcoin you own property that can never be confiscated or debased by any government. With IPFS you can host and access files that can't be censored. (same level of censorship resistance as torrents) With Monero you can transact free from surveillance. The biggest applications on Ethereum right now is decentralized finance, with billions of dollars locked in.
  - corrys 6y ago
    Bitcoins have been confiscated by many governments. A quick Google search reveals many instances of that.
    - doggosphere 6y ago
      Lets clarify semantics. Can the government seize Bitcoin directly? No. Can the government seize your bank account directly? Yes. Can they threaten you with jail if you don't hand over your Bitcoin? Yes
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        Can the government seize Bitcoin directly? No. Yes, it can. The U.S. government has in fact seized Bitcoin directly and sold it at auction several times. It is arguably the single largest non-exchange seller of Bitcoin in Bitcoin's history.
        doggosphere 6y ago
        It can only be taken in these events: 1) Seed phrases are discovered (ie. plaintext document or physical artifact). 2) Seed phrases are handed over by willing party. If #1 doesn't exist, then #2 is the only option.
        elvatoloco55 6y ago
        Nobody here seems interested in actually understanding how BTC works. It looks like a circle jerk of pseudo intellectuals coping with not buying early.
        gamblor956 6y ago
        This is the same as with cash money. Money can only be seized if the safe is found. And the combination is handed over by a willing party. The difference is that money is actually more secure because you don't have a public ledger telling you that it exists and who owns it and how much of it they own as you do with the public cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
        doggosphere 6y ago
        Cash needs to be accessible to be useful. Crypto is magnitudes more accessible. I can travel to any country in the world with an encrypted usb drive of my seed words, and no one is wiser. OR even upload a file to the internet and forego carrying anything at all. A government can try to censor transactions belonging to an address, but we don't have good precedent to see how the network will behave. Miners in other jurisdictions have no reason to follow someone else's censorship.
  - schmichael 6y ago
    > With Bitcoin you own property that can never be confiscated or debased by any government. Private keys can be confiscated like anything else. They won't do you much good if you're thrown in prison for not turning them over if legally compelled. Sure you can try to hide your ownership, but my point is that actual cryptocurrencies are only one layer of very deep opsec you need to resist state actors. For the common illegal goods consumer it's unlikely to do much more than provide a false sense of security due to other opsec failures (use of phones, use of cookies, use of mailing addresses, use of non-e2e chat, using a hosted wallet, lack of anonymous vpn, etc etc etc). > The biggest applications on Ethereum right now is decentralized finance, with billions of dollars locked in. Interesting use of "dollars." How much is actually Tether? How much is manipulated market cap (through wash trading or more convoluted defi mechanisms)? How much is actually liquid USD?
    - doggosphere 6y ago
      A wrench attack will always be the easiest vector. That said, there is no other asset in history that gives you this level of security for such marginal cost. The cost of securing $100 is essentially the same as the cost of securing $100m.
      - ProZsolt 6y ago
        The chances of loosing $100 is essentially the same as the chances of loosing $100m. If you loose your private key nobody can help you recover your money.
        doggosphere 6y ago
        I would hope that someone with $100m in crypto is smart enough to not leave their seed words on a piece of paper on their coffee table. Your exactly correct that nobody can help you recover your money if you lose your keys.
  - mdoms 6y ago
    > With Bitcoin you own property that can never be confiscated or debased by any government. So the killer app for bitcoin is owning bitcoin?
- damon_c 6y ago
  Here are a few projects that use Ethereum to do things that have nothing to do with acquiring chemicals or crypto asset speculation. https://www.nucypher.com https://www.nucypher.com https://filecoin.io https://filecoin.io https://alice.si https://alice.si https://www.augur.net https://www.augur.net
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    I can do all that right now without inserting a power-wasting cryptocoin layer.
    - doggosphere 6y ago
      Go ahead subscribe to Pornhub with your credit card. Or donate to Wikileaks with your paypal.
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        Why would I pay for Porn? But on that note, the PH website still accepts several types of credit cards. Whatever Wikileaks originally was, it is now a Russian propaganda tool. Go ahead and try to post leaks critical of Russia on Wikileaks, or for that matter, of Donald Trump. Why would I want to donate to a website that is openly seeking the destruction of my country?
Proven 6y ago
I don't think that's how gold became money. It may have been less hoarded and used only for ornaments because there was less trade and people were busy enough to find, hunt or cultivate enough to survive. As trade took off, gold became more useful because it already was universally valued everywhere. > to coins traded by traveling merchants, to stores of value Why would I accept gold coin in exchange for anything if I don't already consider it store of value? It must had been considered as store of value before merchants started using it as money.
jcranmer 6y ago
> RE: Tether I don't trust them either, but we need more evidence of this alleged printing. We saw that they did remove the 1:1 peg briefly when Crypto Capital in Panama (?) froze a few hundred million of their USD. Tether's page (https://wallet.tether.to/transparency https://wallet.tether.to/transparency) claims $23.6 billion in total assets. Despite their claims to transparency, I see no report of what those assets are, how risky those assets are, or any audit that assets they even own those assets. Their front page has a big link saying "Proof of funds", which leads to an audit published 2½ years ago, claiming only $2.5 billion in cash in two bank accounts with unnamed banks. For a company that claims to be "always fully transparent," that is shockingly opaque.
- Forbo 6y ago
  Especially considering their last auditor walked away from the situation, I'd say the whole project reeks.
viraptor 6y ago
> The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open source, and censorship resistant network. That's the "how" part, not the "what". What's the killer app implemented using that network? What do we do with it?
- doggosphere 6y ago
  Lots of examples in this thread. A replacement for gold is one.
  - pionar 6y ago
    > A replacement for gold is one. Gold is relatively stable and has physical backing. BTC does not.
    - doggosphere 6y ago
      Gold is relatively stable and has physical backing. Up to 4% of China's gold reserves could be fake. Gold fraud article: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/chinas-biggest-gold-fraud-4-of-its-reserves-may-be-fake-report/articleshow/76707339.cms?from=mdr https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/worl... Bitcoin is open source and completely auditable in an instant. As the price of gold goes up, the quantity supplied goes up. Bitcoin's issuance protocol is fixed and unchangeable unless the network agrees. The cost of securing or transporting $1b of gold bars is magnitudes higher than the cost of securing $1b of Bitcoin.
      - incrudible 6y ago
        Securing $1 billion of bitcoin? Who needs to secure $827 million of Bitcoin? Securing $937 million of Bitcoin is not a killer app. In all seriousness, securing the value of Bitcoin is the problem that is not easily solved.
        doggosphere 6y ago
rednerrus 6y ago
The hurdle for bitcoin is finding a way for people to turn it into a currency they can use. This is where you end up with a centralized exchange layer built on top of it. I can make a $12,000,000 transaction for $.35 but if I actually want to get the money, I have to pay 2.5% to a legit exchange or take my chances on some janky ass exchange. Why not just transfer the money via ACH and pay the small fee and save myself the headache?
- jerry1979 6y ago
  You can start by asking people to take bitcoin for various transactions. For example, my friends and I all use it settle debts between each other.
  - anakaine 6y ago
    The barriers to entry, usage, and understanding are just too high for average Joe. That and how the value of their money fluctuates compared to fiat makes it more difficult to use as a daily currency. Also, when things go wrong there's nobody to turn to in most cases.
    - spurgu 6y ago
      > The barriers to entry, usage, and understanding are just too high for average Joe. Mentioned in another thread[0], the Phoenix wallet more or less solves this on the Lightning Network. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706312
  - nly 6y ago
    Bet you don't lend one another bitcoin though
- gruez 6y ago
  What kind of an exchange charges 2.5%?
- doggosphere 6y ago
  In a long enough time frame, people transact with cryptoassets directly and don't need to exchange into fiat. We are early in this development, money as we know it is changing.
agumonkey 6y ago
I find this a little bit too biased. The Bitcoin universe is waving between a lot of reason why to love bitcoin and it shifts often. I stopped following the money side of it (atm and sites accepting btc) but a vast majority of btc and cryptos attention right now.. is simply better yearly returns than other kinds of possessions.
lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
> The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open source, and censorship resistant network. That’s like saying the killer app of the internet is the internet. The web gives me access to information quicker and easier than going to a library or bookshop. Email and IM means I can communicate with people in other countries quicker and easier than I could by post. Crypto doesn’t change anything. A few drug dealers and some people living in countries with hyperinflation may care about “permissionlessness” and “censorship* resistance”, but for most people, actual money is far, far more convenient. * That’s some Orwellian newspeak, btw. If someone defrauds me and a court of law ensures that I am restituted, the reversal of that fraudulent transaction isn’t “censorship” because stealing money isn’t “speech” or “expression”.
- justicezyx 6y ago
  Digital gold is the kill app. That is enough to justify its market cap. For example, Chinese can use bit coin to exchange large amount of funds to other currency, although this can only be done in private because the official ban.
  - liuliu 6y ago
    You cannot. There is no exchange from CNY to Bitcoin.
    - justicezyx 6y ago
      Come on, it was banned, but there is plenty of underground channel... Why is that even needed to be mentioned... Maybe I should be more clear in the OP.
      - rognjen 6y ago
        There are underground channels for USD - CNY as well haha
    - tim333 6y ago
      CNY buys mining rigs and electricity which makes bitcoins.
TomSwirly 6y ago
> The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open source, and censorship resistant network. That's not an app. That's meaningless advertising lingo.

vorpalhex 6y ago

> The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open source, and censorship resistant network. Yes, but what can I do with that other than toot/tweet/twit at other people and buy LSD tabs?

doggosphere 6y ago
With Bitcoin you own property that can never be confiscated or debased by any government. With IPFS you can host and access files that can't be censored. (same level of censorship resistance as torrents) With Monero you can transact free from surveillance. The biggest applications on Ethereum right now is decentralized finance, with billions of dollars locked in.
- corrys 6y ago
  Bitcoins have been confiscated by many governments. A quick Google search reveals many instances of that.
  - doggosphere 6y ago
    Lets clarify semantics. Can the government seize Bitcoin directly? No. Can the government seize your bank account directly? Yes. Can they threaten you with jail if you don't hand over your Bitcoin? Yes
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      Can the government seize Bitcoin directly? No. Yes, it can. The U.S. government has in fact seized Bitcoin directly and sold it at auction several times. It is arguably the single largest non-exchange seller of Bitcoin in Bitcoin's history.
      - doggosphere 6y ago
        It can only be taken in these events: 1) Seed phrases are discovered (ie. plaintext document or physical artifact). 2) Seed phrases are handed over by willing party. If #1 doesn't exist, then #2 is the only option.
        elvatoloco55 6y ago
        Nobody here seems interested in actually understanding how BTC works. It looks like a circle jerk of pseudo intellectuals coping with not buying early.
        gamblor956 6y ago
        This is the same as with cash money. Money can only be seized if the safe is found. And the combination is handed over by a willing party. The difference is that money is actually more secure because you don't have a public ledger telling you that it exists and who owns it and how much of it they own as you do with the public cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
        doggosphere 6y ago
        Cash needs to be accessible to be useful. Crypto is magnitudes more accessible. I can travel to any country in the world with an encrypted usb drive of my seed words, and no one is wiser. OR even upload a file to the internet and forego carrying anything at all. A government can try to censor transactions belonging to an address, but we don't have good precedent to see how the network will behave. Miners in other jurisdictions have no reason to follow someone else's censorship.
- schmichael 6y ago
  > With Bitcoin you own property that can never be confiscated or debased by any government. Private keys can be confiscated like anything else. They won't do you much good if you're thrown in prison for not turning them over if legally compelled. Sure you can try to hide your ownership, but my point is that actual cryptocurrencies are only one layer of very deep opsec you need to resist state actors. For the common illegal goods consumer it's unlikely to do much more than provide a false sense of security due to other opsec failures (use of phones, use of cookies, use of mailing addresses, use of non-e2e chat, using a hosted wallet, lack of anonymous vpn, etc etc etc). > The biggest applications on Ethereum right now is decentralized finance, with billions of dollars locked in. Interesting use of "dollars." How much is actually Tether? How much is manipulated market cap (through wash trading or more convoluted defi mechanisms)? How much is actually liquid USD?
  - doggosphere 6y ago
    A wrench attack will always be the easiest vector. That said, there is no other asset in history that gives you this level of security for such marginal cost. The cost of securing $100 is essentially the same as the cost of securing $100m.
    - ProZsolt 6y ago
      The chances of loosing $100 is essentially the same as the chances of loosing $100m. If you loose your private key nobody can help you recover your money.
      - doggosphere 6y ago
        I would hope that someone with $100m in crypto is smart enough to not leave their seed words on a piece of paper on their coffee table. Your exactly correct that nobody can help you recover your money if you lose your keys.
- mdoms 6y ago
  > With Bitcoin you own property that can never be confiscated or debased by any government. So the killer app for bitcoin is owning bitcoin?
damon_c 6y ago
Here are a few projects that use Ethereum to do things that have nothing to do with acquiring chemicals or crypto asset speculation. https://www.nucypher.com https://www.nucypher.com https://filecoin.io https://filecoin.io https://alice.si https://alice.si https://www.augur.net https://www.augur.net
- gamblor956 6y ago
  I can do all that right now without inserting a power-wasting cryptocoin layer.
  - doggosphere 6y ago
    Go ahead subscribe to Pornhub with your credit card. Or donate to Wikileaks with your paypal.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      Why would I pay for Porn? But on that note, the PH website still accepts several types of credit cards. Whatever Wikileaks originally was, it is now a Russian propaganda tool. Go ahead and try to post leaks critical of Russia on Wikileaks, or for that matter, of Donald Trump. Why would I want to donate to a website that is openly seeking the destruction of my country?

Proven 6y ago

I don't think that's how gold became money. It may have been less hoarded and used only for ornaments because there was less trade and people were busy enough to find, hunt or cultivate enough to survive. As trade took off, gold became more useful because it already was universally valued everywhere. > to coins traded by traveling merchants, to stores of value Why would I accept gold coin in exchange for anything if I don't already consider it store of value? It must had been considered as store of value before merchants started using it as money.

jcranmer 6y ago

> RE: Tether I don't trust them either, but we need more evidence of this alleged printing. We saw that they did remove the 1:1 peg briefly when Crypto Capital in Panama (?) froze a few hundred million of their USD. Tether's page (https://wallet.tether.to/transparency https://wallet.tether.to/transparency) claims $23.6 billion in total assets. Despite their claims to transparency, I see no report of what those assets are, how risky those assets are, or any audit that assets they even own those assets. Their front page has a big link saying "Proof of funds", which leads to an audit published 2½ years ago, claiming only $2.5 billion in cash in two bank accounts with unnamed banks. For a company that claims to be "always fully transparent," that is shockingly opaque.

Forbo 6y ago
Especially considering their last auditor walked away from the situation, I'd say the whole project reeks.

viraptor 6y ago

> The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open source, and censorship resistant network. That's the "how" part, not the "what". What's the killer app implemented using that network? What do we do with it?

doggosphere 6y ago
Lots of examples in this thread. A replacement for gold is one.
- pionar 6y ago
  > A replacement for gold is one. Gold is relatively stable and has physical backing. BTC does not.
  - doggosphere 6y ago
    Gold is relatively stable and has physical backing. Up to 4% of China's gold reserves could be fake. Gold fraud article: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/chinas-biggest-gold-fraud-4-of-its-reserves-may-be-fake-report/articleshow/76707339.cms?from=mdr https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/worl... Bitcoin is open source and completely auditable in an instant. As the price of gold goes up, the quantity supplied goes up. Bitcoin's issuance protocol is fixed and unchangeable unless the network agrees. The cost of securing or transporting $1b of gold bars is magnitudes higher than the cost of securing $1b of Bitcoin.
    - incrudible 6y ago
      Securing $1 billion of bitcoin? Who needs to secure $827 million of Bitcoin? Securing $937 million of Bitcoin is not a killer app. In all seriousness, securing the value of Bitcoin is the problem that is not easily solved.
      - doggosphere 6y ago

rednerrus 6y ago

The hurdle for bitcoin is finding a way for people to turn it into a currency they can use. This is where you end up with a centralized exchange layer built on top of it. I can make a $12,000,000 transaction for $.35 but if I actually want to get the money, I have to pay 2.5% to a legit exchange or take my chances on some janky ass exchange. Why not just transfer the money via ACH and pay the small fee and save myself the headache?

jerry1979 6y ago
You can start by asking people to take bitcoin for various transactions. For example, my friends and I all use it settle debts between each other.
- anakaine 6y ago
  The barriers to entry, usage, and understanding are just too high for average Joe. That and how the value of their money fluctuates compared to fiat makes it more difficult to use as a daily currency. Also, when things go wrong there's nobody to turn to in most cases.
  - spurgu 6y ago
    > The barriers to entry, usage, and understanding are just too high for average Joe. Mentioned in another thread[0], the Phoenix wallet more or less solves this on the Lightning Network. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706312
- nly 6y ago
  Bet you don't lend one another bitcoin though
gruez 6y ago
What kind of an exchange charges 2.5%?
doggosphere 6y ago
In a long enough time frame, people transact with cryptoassets directly and don't need to exchange into fiat. We are early in this development, money as we know it is changing.

agumonkey 6y ago

I find this a little bit too biased. The Bitcoin universe is waving between a lot of reason why to love bitcoin and it shifts often. I stopped following the money side of it (atm and sites accepting btc) but a vast majority of btc and cryptos attention right now.. is simply better yearly returns than other kinds of possessions.

lawtalkinghuman 6y ago

> The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open source, and censorship resistant network. That’s like saying the killer app of the internet is the internet. The web gives me access to information quicker and easier than going to a library or bookshop. Email and IM means I can communicate with people in other countries quicker and easier than I could by post. Crypto doesn’t change anything. A few drug dealers and some people living in countries with hyperinflation may care about “permissionlessness” and “censorship* resistance”, but for most people, actual money is far, far more convenient. * That’s some Orwellian newspeak, btw. If someone defrauds me and a court of law ensures that I am restituted, the reversal of that fraudulent transaction isn’t “censorship” because stealing money isn’t “speech” or “expression”.

justicezyx 6y ago
Digital gold is the kill app. That is enough to justify its market cap. For example, Chinese can use bit coin to exchange large amount of funds to other currency, although this can only be done in private because the official ban.
- liuliu 6y ago
  You cannot. There is no exchange from CNY to Bitcoin.
  - justicezyx 6y ago
    Come on, it was banned, but there is plenty of underground channel... Why is that even needed to be mentioned... Maybe I should be more clear in the OP.
    - rognjen 6y ago
      There are underground channels for USD - CNY as well haha
  - tim333 6y ago
    CNY buys mining rigs and electricity which makes bitcoins.

TomSwirly 6y ago

> The killer app is decentralized, permissionless, open source, and censorship resistant network. That's not an app. That's meaningless advertising lingo.