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The great irony is that the main interest in cryptocurrency is increasing fiat currency. There's some mildly interesting ideas for cryptocurrency other than a c

The great irony is that the main interest in cryptocurrency is increasing fiat currency. There's some mildly interesting ideas for cryptocurrency other than a commodity, but none of them have shown any real public interest. There has yet to be a useful ICO and the majority of them are scams. Smart contracts are a hilariously bad idea. NFTs are a gold rush for fiat and memes. If cryptocurrency had any potential as a currency, bitcoin cash would have already won. Another irony is the fundamentally terrible design of cryptocurrency seems to be why it's a gold rush to increase fiat. Generating random numbers until you find the right one as a means of verifying transactions is almost as a bad idea as a smart contract, and yet! This profound waste and inefficiency is precisely why the fiat price is going up, increasing interest, not at all increasing the desire for use.

yellowapple 6y ago
This is a big reason why I think Dogecoin, of all cryptocurrencies, is one of the better candidates for a cryptocurrency that's actually potentially useful as a currency. Since there's no hard cap on the money supply, said supply has at least some chance of scaling with the global economy in the long term, and you won't see nearly as many crazy surges in value. For being meme money, it seems to do a better job of being actual money than more serious contenders.
- jpadkins 6y ago
  > nearly as many crazy surges in value. This is hard to explain, like explaining air to animals or water to fish. Deflationary currencies aren't surging in value. Fiat currencies are dropping in value. Your frame of reference is a $ is a fixed unit of measurement, like a cm or gram. This is wrong. $ value is not fixed, and intentionally designed to decrease in value at fixed rate (but in practice does not decrease in value uniformly across all parts of the economy). What you see as surges in value of Bitcoin are more impacted by decreases in value of $s than anything else. Yes there are changes in demand to hold BTC vs. $, but that is dwarfed by expectations of future changes in the global supply of credit derived $$$s. Credit based inflationary fiat currencies have a lot of really bad properties. But it's very hard to see those effects, because it surrounds us (like air or water for a fish) and is often confused as the measuring stick of value. If you are still skeptical, maybe another example: Do you think gold is really 100x more valuable now than it was in 1971? Or do you think a change in ratio of $ : gold available is what causes the 'crazy surge in value'.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    > Deflationary currencies aren't surging in value. Fiat currencies are dropping in value. At about this point in 2011, 1 BTC was worth $1. Today 1 BTC is worth about $60k. Are you suggesting that BTC has been mostly consistent in value in that time and that it's the USD which has dropped in value by 60000x in 10 years?
    - mszcz 6y ago
      Your reply sound like a straw man, sorry. Bitcoin is a relatively new asset. What I think he's saying is that some of the price increases are attributable to the loss of value of 1 USD and some to geniune BTC price discovery.
      - Jtsummers 6y ago
        How is my question a strawman? They wrote this: > What you see as surges in value of Bitcoin are more impacted by decreases in value of $s than anything else. How can that sentence be read as anything other than saying the majority, or at least the largest and primary cause, of the increase in BTC value is the decrease in value of USD (and presumably other fiat currencies based on the rest of their comment)? EDIT: For grins, a quick calculation on what 10% (3-10x higher than the official annual inflation numbers over that period) of inflation per year over 10 years does to the USD: $1 (2011) -> $2.60 (2021). That is, a 2.6x change in value over a decade. BTC has increased in value by 60,000x. Even going with this very high estimate for inflation, we still have about 23,000x change in value to find an explanation for. I'd suggest looking at its deflationary nature.
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        GP's comment (emphasis added): > What you see as surges in value of Bitcoin are more impacted by decreases in value of $s than anything else. Yes there are changes in demand to hold BTC vs. $, but that is dwarfed by expectations of future changes in the global supply of credit derived $$$s. That particular word choice strongly suggests to me that GP sincerely believes that the 10× jump in BTC price is because the USD has (or will shortly) collapsed to well less than a quarter its prior value.
jimmaswell 6y ago
> Smart contracts are a hilariously bad idea How exactly?
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) serves as an illustrative example.
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    So one hack and we write off a whole set of revolutionary ideas and projects? Have you looked into all the other big projects that are providing useful services to people? Maker, compound, aave, uniswap comes to mind.
    - ufo 6y ago
      For me, the most illustrative aspect of the Dao was the hard fork that happened afterwards. For all the talk of smart contracts, the mess was eventually fixed by a small cadre of miners and Ethereum developers who agreed to a hard fork.
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      But that's just it: It's not a hack. The DAO was functioning exactly as intended.
  - viklove 6y ago
    > In June 2016, users exploited a vulnerability in The DAO code to enable them to siphon off one-third of The DAO's funds to a subsidiary account. On 20 July 2016 01:20:40 PM +UTC at Block 1920000, the Ethereum community decided to hard-fork the Ethereum blockchain to restore virtually all funds to the original contract.[11] This was controversial, and led to a fork in Ethereum, where the original unforked blockchain was maintained as Ethereum Classic, thus breaking Ethereum into two separate active blockchains, each with its own cryptocurrency. Is this what you're referring to? The vulnerability has been patched, so I'm not sure what your argument here is. Are you saying we should never use code because code can have flaws?
viklove 6y ago
> Smart contracts are a hilariously bad idea. Care to explain?
itsdsmurrell 6y ago
Bitcoin cash will win given a long horizon.
alwillis 6y ago
The great irony is that the main interest in cryptocurrency is increasing fiat currency. I have no interest in acquiring more fiat, above and beyond what's needed to pay living expenses. Using Strike, I can pay someone in USD (or any other fiat) using bitcoin with no capital gains taxes: https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-by-zap-4f578c7c8984 https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-by-zap-4f578c7...
alwillis 6y ago
This is the best short description I've found for bitcoin: Bitcoin is a non-sovereign, hard-capped supply, global, immutable, decentralized digital store of value. It’s an insurance policy against monetary and fiscal policy irresponsibility from central banks and governments globally. — @Travis_Kling

yellowapple 6y ago

This is a big reason why I think Dogecoin, of all cryptocurrencies, is one of the better candidates for a cryptocurrency that's actually potentially useful as a currency. Since there's no hard cap on the money supply, said supply has at least some chance of scaling with the global economy in the long term, and you won't see nearly as many crazy surges in value. For being meme money, it seems to do a better job of being actual money than more serious contenders.

jpadkins 6y ago
> nearly as many crazy surges in value. This is hard to explain, like explaining air to animals or water to fish. Deflationary currencies aren't surging in value. Fiat currencies are dropping in value. Your frame of reference is a $ is a fixed unit of measurement, like a cm or gram. This is wrong. $ value is not fixed, and intentionally designed to decrease in value at fixed rate (but in practice does not decrease in value uniformly across all parts of the economy). What you see as surges in value of Bitcoin are more impacted by decreases in value of $s than anything else. Yes there are changes in demand to hold BTC vs. $, but that is dwarfed by expectations of future changes in the global supply of credit derived $$$s. Credit based inflationary fiat currencies have a lot of really bad properties. But it's very hard to see those effects, because it surrounds us (like air or water for a fish) and is often confused as the measuring stick of value. If you are still skeptical, maybe another example: Do you think gold is really 100x more valuable now than it was in 1971? Or do you think a change in ratio of $ : gold available is what causes the 'crazy surge in value'.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  > Deflationary currencies aren't surging in value. Fiat currencies are dropping in value. At about this point in 2011, 1 BTC was worth $1. Today 1 BTC is worth about $60k. Are you suggesting that BTC has been mostly consistent in value in that time and that it's the USD which has dropped in value by 60000x in 10 years?
  - mszcz 6y ago
    Your reply sound like a straw man, sorry. Bitcoin is a relatively new asset. What I think he's saying is that some of the price increases are attributable to the loss of value of 1 USD and some to geniune BTC price discovery.
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      How is my question a strawman? They wrote this: > What you see as surges in value of Bitcoin are more impacted by decreases in value of $s than anything else. How can that sentence be read as anything other than saying the majority, or at least the largest and primary cause, of the increase in BTC value is the decrease in value of USD (and presumably other fiat currencies based on the rest of their comment)? EDIT: For grins, a quick calculation on what 10% (3-10x higher than the official annual inflation numbers over that period) of inflation per year over 10 years does to the USD: $1 (2011) -> $2.60 (2021). That is, a 2.6x change in value over a decade. BTC has increased in value by 60,000x. Even going with this very high estimate for inflation, we still have about 23,000x change in value to find an explanation for. I'd suggest looking at its deflationary nature.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      GP's comment (emphasis added): > What you see as surges in value of Bitcoin are more impacted by decreases in value of $s than anything else. Yes there are changes in demand to hold BTC vs. $, but that is dwarfed by expectations of future changes in the global supply of credit derived $$$s. That particular word choice strongly suggests to me that GP sincerely believes that the 10× jump in BTC price is because the USD has (or will shortly) collapsed to well less than a quarter its prior value.

jimmaswell 6y ago

> Smart contracts are a hilariously bad idea How exactly?

ceejayoz 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) serves as an illustrative example.
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  So one hack and we write off a whole set of revolutionary ideas and projects? Have you looked into all the other big projects that are providing useful services to people? Maker, compound, aave, uniswap comes to mind.
  - ufo 6y ago
    For me, the most illustrative aspect of the Dao was the hard fork that happened afterwards. For all the talk of smart contracts, the mess was eventually fixed by a small cadre of miners and Ethereum developers who agreed to a hard fork.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    But that's just it: It's not a hack. The DAO was functioning exactly as intended.
- viklove 6y ago
  > In June 2016, users exploited a vulnerability in The DAO code to enable them to siphon off one-third of The DAO's funds to a subsidiary account. On 20 July 2016 01:20:40 PM +UTC at Block 1920000, the Ethereum community decided to hard-fork the Ethereum blockchain to restore virtually all funds to the original contract.[11] This was controversial, and led to a fork in Ethereum, where the original unforked blockchain was maintained as Ethereum Classic, thus breaking Ethereum into two separate active blockchains, each with its own cryptocurrency. Is this what you're referring to? The vulnerability has been patched, so I'm not sure what your argument here is. Are you saying we should never use code because code can have flaws?

viklove 6y ago

> Smart contracts are a hilariously bad idea. Care to explain?

itsdsmurrell 6y ago

Bitcoin cash will win given a long horizon.

alwillis 6y ago

The great irony is that the main interest in cryptocurrency is increasing fiat currency. I have no interest in acquiring more fiat, above and beyond what's needed to pay living expenses. Using Strike, I can pay someone in USD (or any other fiat) using bitcoin with no capital gains taxes: https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-by-zap-4f578c7c8984 https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-by-zap-4f578c7...

alwillis 6y ago

This is the best short description I've found for bitcoin: Bitcoin is a non-sovereign, hard-capped supply, global, immutable, decentralized digital store of value. It’s an insurance policy against monetary and fiscal policy irresponsibility from central banks and governments globally. — @Travis_Kling