7 ms·

> "that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument " How is that different from any other asset; stocks, land, property. It's all s

> "that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument " How is that different from any other asset; stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. From what I've read there are pretty much three use cases: 1. store of value akin to gold (bitcoin) 2. decentralised privacy money (monero etc, to avoid taxes?) 3. a platform on which to build decentralised technologies (ethereum, ada, thorchain...countless others - some with specific niches: gaming, streaming etc) I think your evaluation is bit unfair and shortsighted. Maybe we are not "there" yet, but why should we be? It is still a nascent technology and I think it would be foolish, and history has shown that, to dismiss it. Of course, like other asset classes, crypto is now infested with shills, scammers and their jargon designed to confuse and obfuscate in order to take money from the naive.

aabbcc1241 6y ago
I don't want to call cryptocurrency as money because they're not circulating as you'd expect from money. Globally limited transaction rate, relatively long confirmation time, and few adoption.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  An ACH transfer through my bank takes multiple days. I've only made a few transactions on crypto, but confirmation was more like seconds to minutes.
  - aabbcc1241 6y ago
    I was imagining paying subway for my lunch using money.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      Most people use debit/credit cards which batch process in the evening and the store doesn't get the funds until some time after that. And the fees to merchants on those cards are in the range of 2%.
  - audunw 6y ago
    > An ACH transfer through my bank takes multiple days But that's just a regulation and/or implementation issue. You can transfer in minutes between countries in different currencies without blockchain. The fact that your country is stuck in the stone age in this regard isn't really a good argument that cryptocurrencies fundamentally provide value over a solution without blockchains. I guess the main value blockchain could provide here is to give banks and politicians a kick in the butt, and force them to invest in solutions and regulations that speed up money transfers.
    - afiori 6y ago
      In practical terms the main value of cripto is to people that are legally forbidden to access these kind of services. Even if the Nigerian prince was a scan there are many countries where limited access to financial services is unescapable; it is to them that crypto has the greatest value proposition (whether it will be good or bad in reality I have no idea)
      - UncleMeat 6y ago
        That’d be true if the BCH people won, but btc as a mechanism to evade oppressive governments doesn’t work for the masses when transaction costs are so high.
        imtringued 6y ago
        Yes, nowadays Bitcoin is just a shell of its former self. It simply is not practical for anything other than Tulip manias. That's incredibly sad. Practical usage of Bitcoin doesn't even compete with the speculation beyond transaction capacity. If anything speculators would prefer an economy built on Bitcoin that actually guarantees that it's more than just an instrument for speculation.
  - jpalomaki 6y ago
    In euro area we have SEPA instant payments. Cross border payments that take place in real-time (10 seconds max). Took some time for the old banks to wake up, but I think they have been doing decent work on catching up.
Proven 6y ago
> 1 store of value akin to gold (bitcoin) It's not. It has no other popular uses than crypto trading. > 2 decentralised privacy money (monero etc) Who quotes prices in only crypto (outside of stablecoins)? Noone. It's not at all useful as unit of account - it doesn't have 2 out of 3 properties of money (store of value, unit of account). > 3 a platform on which to build decentralised technologies (ethereum, ada, thorchain...countless others - some with specific niches: gaming, streaming etc) Many of those (probably most) can work just fine with centralized or decentralized non-blockhain apps. One use case is (relatively) censorship resistant messaging and that's only because no major government has decided to censor it.
satyrnein 6y ago
Land (for example) is NOT primarily used as a speculation instrument. Speculation on land is theoretically a bet on whether the inherent value will go up.
audunw 6y ago
> At the end of the day, crypto is mountain you can't ignore anymore Is it really? Is there anyone that can say that a company has suffered because it didn't adopt crypto? It seems like it's perfectly safe to ignore crypto completely. You could gain a bit of advantage. You can use it as a marketing tool, or to attract certain kinds of investors, by cashing in on the blockchain hype. But I haven't seen that there's any advantage yet in using the technology itself. Regarding the use-cases you mention: > 1 store of value akin to gold (bitcoin) Bitcoin is not a store of value. It's a destructor or sink of value. A store of value should have some reserves behind them or some physical asset. Something that has value to others that have not invested in it. Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrency only has value to those that hold them. The value of Bitcoin could crash to 0 tomorrow, and nobody except the investors would care at all. If the gold price crashed I'd be very interested. Would be cool to buy some gold just to play with. Maybe make my own jewelry. But WAY before that there'd be plenty of others buying it for a higher price, for jewelry or manufacturing. > 2 decentralised privacy money (monero etc) Aka a gift to crime. I mean, in an ideal world it'd be amazing to have a currency like this. But in practice it does more damage to good. Yes, IMO it's a bad thing even in corrupt countries where you might have legitimate reasons to hide from the state. Because having currency like that doesn't solve all the other problems with having a corrupt government, so it's really just a distraction from solving real problems. > 3 a platform on which to build decentralised technologies This is the only legitimate use-case IMO. But it has yet to be proven that using a platform like this has a real advantage. I think the issue is that problems that you can solve with trustless decentralized algorithms are mostly very trivial. Who has ever had issues with a bank money transfer itself? Meanwhile, the problems we'd really like to solve around currencies, payment and financial services, are basically impossible to solve with trustless. The real problem in payment is to ensure that the seller delivers the product. The real problem in lending is to ensure that the borrower can afford the loan and uses the money on what he says he will. So you really can't get rid of the human component in most of these applications, if you want a solution that's as good as what you're trying to replace. And in that case, the blockchain is just a fancy and expensive implementation detail that serves little to no practical purpose. There may be some crossover point where these technologies provide some value. But I suspect it's a much smaller niche than most blockchain proponents would like to admit. I think settling international transactions between banks is one of the very few use-cases where it may be valuable.
brabel 6y ago
> How is that different from any other asset, stocks, land, property. You're putting completely different things in the same bag. I would say you're right that crypto currencies and stocks are kind of similar, but stocks at least have a small (very tenuous, I admit) connection to reality. Stocks are related to real-world companies that deal things people are willing to pay for with real money. Stocks go up and down based on how much money the companies are making, not only based on how much speculation their stocks are being subjected to. Crypto is purely and solely speculation. There's no one actually trading anything else other than the crypto coins themselves! That's quite different in my opinion. Now, even though, sometimes, land and property are used as instruments of speculation, they're still connected strongly to the real world, real people. If the world forbid speculation overnight, people would still need to own property and land to survive, and they would still be willing to buy it in exchange for their work or other assets. If crypto were forbidden overnight, the real world would be unaffected. Some people would lose savings they bet on a fictional economy, but beyond that, nothing would change. These things are fundamentally different.
lmm 6y ago
> How is that different from any other asset, stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. Just look at the housing market in London and other places. This is a common talking point but it's not actually true. 99% of London housing is used for living in.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  > 99% of London housing is used for living in. Are they all owners or the owners actually "invested" in a piece of property calculating the rent passive income and the possible increase in market value as part of the overall rentability of their investment?
  - lmm 6y ago
    Even owner-occupiers may be "investors" - plenty of people's retirement plan involves selling their London home. But the houses are being lived in and are therefore providing real-world value, which is the main thing IMO - speculators can toss money back and forth all day, as long as the useful thing keeps happening.
imtringued 6y ago
>How is that different from any other asset; stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. How is that different from any other asset; stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. Just because other people are insane doesn't mean you should be insane too. You can sanely invest into stocks, land and property. You can never sanely invest into cryptocurrencies, the same way nobody invests into dollars. No, buying dollars when your national currency is hyperinflating is not an investment since you merely expect your purchasing power to stay the same.

aabbcc1241 6y ago

I don't want to call cryptocurrency as money because they're not circulating as you'd expect from money. Globally limited transaction rate, relatively long confirmation time, and few adoption.

Consultant32452 6y ago
An ACH transfer through my bank takes multiple days. I've only made a few transactions on crypto, but confirmation was more like seconds to minutes.
- aabbcc1241 6y ago
  I was imagining paying subway for my lunch using money.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    Most people use debit/credit cards which batch process in the evening and the store doesn't get the funds until some time after that. And the fees to merchants on those cards are in the range of 2%.
- audunw 6y ago
  > An ACH transfer through my bank takes multiple days But that's just a regulation and/or implementation issue. You can transfer in minutes between countries in different currencies without blockchain. The fact that your country is stuck in the stone age in this regard isn't really a good argument that cryptocurrencies fundamentally provide value over a solution without blockchains. I guess the main value blockchain could provide here is to give banks and politicians a kick in the butt, and force them to invest in solutions and regulations that speed up money transfers.
  - afiori 6y ago
    In practical terms the main value of cripto is to people that are legally forbidden to access these kind of services. Even if the Nigerian prince was a scan there are many countries where limited access to financial services is unescapable; it is to them that crypto has the greatest value proposition (whether it will be good or bad in reality I have no idea)
    - UncleMeat 6y ago
      That’d be true if the BCH people won, but btc as a mechanism to evade oppressive governments doesn’t work for the masses when transaction costs are so high.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        Yes, nowadays Bitcoin is just a shell of its former self. It simply is not practical for anything other than Tulip manias. That's incredibly sad. Practical usage of Bitcoin doesn't even compete with the speculation beyond transaction capacity. If anything speculators would prefer an economy built on Bitcoin that actually guarantees that it's more than just an instrument for speculation.
- jpalomaki 6y ago
  In euro area we have SEPA instant payments. Cross border payments that take place in real-time (10 seconds max). Took some time for the old banks to wake up, but I think they have been doing decent work on catching up.

Proven 6y ago

> 1 store of value akin to gold (bitcoin) It's not. It has no other popular uses than crypto trading. > 2 decentralised privacy money (monero etc) Who quotes prices in only crypto (outside of stablecoins)? Noone. It's not at all useful as unit of account - it doesn't have 2 out of 3 properties of money (store of value, unit of account). > 3 a platform on which to build decentralised technologies (ethereum, ada, thorchain...countless others - some with specific niches: gaming, streaming etc) Many of those (probably most) can work just fine with centralized or decentralized non-blockhain apps. One use case is (relatively) censorship resistant messaging and that's only because no major government has decided to censor it.

satyrnein 6y ago

Land (for example) is NOT primarily used as a speculation instrument. Speculation on land is theoretically a bet on whether the inherent value will go up.

audunw 6y ago

> At the end of the day, crypto is mountain you can't ignore anymore Is it really? Is there anyone that can say that a company has suffered because it didn't adopt crypto? It seems like it's perfectly safe to ignore crypto completely. You could gain a bit of advantage. You can use it as a marketing tool, or to attract certain kinds of investors, by cashing in on the blockchain hype. But I haven't seen that there's any advantage yet in using the technology itself. Regarding the use-cases you mention: > 1 store of value akin to gold (bitcoin) Bitcoin is not a store of value. It's a destructor or sink of value. A store of value should have some reserves behind them or some physical asset. Something that has value to others that have not invested in it. Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrency only has value to those that hold them. The value of Bitcoin could crash to 0 tomorrow, and nobody except the investors would care at all. If the gold price crashed I'd be very interested. Would be cool to buy some gold just to play with. Maybe make my own jewelry. But WAY before that there'd be plenty of others buying it for a higher price, for jewelry or manufacturing. > 2 decentralised privacy money (monero etc) Aka a gift to crime. I mean, in an ideal world it'd be amazing to have a currency like this. But in practice it does more damage to good. Yes, IMO it's a bad thing even in corrupt countries where you might have legitimate reasons to hide from the state. Because having currency like that doesn't solve all the other problems with having a corrupt government, so it's really just a distraction from solving real problems. > 3 a platform on which to build decentralised technologies This is the only legitimate use-case IMO. But it has yet to be proven that using a platform like this has a real advantage. I think the issue is that problems that you can solve with trustless decentralized algorithms are mostly very trivial. Who has ever had issues with a bank money transfer itself? Meanwhile, the problems we'd really like to solve around currencies, payment and financial services, are basically impossible to solve with trustless. The real problem in payment is to ensure that the seller delivers the product. The real problem in lending is to ensure that the borrower can afford the loan and uses the money on what he says he will. So you really can't get rid of the human component in most of these applications, if you want a solution that's as good as what you're trying to replace. And in that case, the blockchain is just a fancy and expensive implementation detail that serves little to no practical purpose. There may be some crossover point where these technologies provide some value. But I suspect it's a much smaller niche than most blockchain proponents would like to admit. I think settling international transactions between banks is one of the very few use-cases where it may be valuable.

brabel 6y ago

> How is that different from any other asset, stocks, land, property. You're putting completely different things in the same bag. I would say you're right that crypto currencies and stocks are kind of similar, but stocks at least have a small (very tenuous, I admit) connection to reality. Stocks are related to real-world companies that deal things people are willing to pay for with real money. Stocks go up and down based on how much money the companies are making, not only based on how much speculation their stocks are being subjected to. Crypto is purely and solely speculation. There's no one actually trading anything else other than the crypto coins themselves! That's quite different in my opinion. Now, even though, sometimes, land and property are used as instruments of speculation, they're still connected strongly to the real world, real people. If the world forbid speculation overnight, people would still need to own property and land to survive, and they would still be willing to buy it in exchange for their work or other assets. If crypto were forbidden overnight, the real world would be unaffected. Some people would lose savings they bet on a fictional economy, but beyond that, nothing would change. These things are fundamentally different.

lmm 6y ago

> How is that different from any other asset, stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. Just look at the housing market in London and other places. This is a common talking point but it's not actually true. 99% of London housing is used for living in.

jobigoud 6y ago
> 99% of London housing is used for living in. Are they all owners or the owners actually "invested" in a piece of property calculating the rent passive income and the possible increase in market value as part of the overall rentability of their investment?
- lmm 6y ago
  Even owner-occupiers may be "investors" - plenty of people's retirement plan involves selling their London home. But the houses are being lived in and are therefore providing real-world value, which is the main thing IMO - speculators can toss money back and forth all day, as long as the useful thing keeps happening.

imtringued 6y ago

>How is that different from any other asset; stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. How is that different from any other asset; stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. Just because other people are insane doesn't mean you should be insane too. You can sanely invest into stocks, land and property. You can never sanely invest into cryptocurrencies, the same way nobody invests into dollars. No, buying dollars when your national currency is hyperinflating is not an investment since you merely expect your purchasing power to stay the same.