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«It has so far produced nothing» Censorship resistance. Digital money that does not require constant "authorizations" from incompetent, flaky, slow, or even so

• adreamingsoul 5y ago
  This reads like a wish list. In all seriousness, the entire concept of money has always been created by people. IMO, cryptocurrency seems like a religion. I’m seeing a lot of belief of what said religion will do for you.
  • trophycase 5y ago
    This reads like a person who has never used cryptocurrency or defi in any manner whatsoever. If I want to right now, I can get a multimillion dollar loan, no questions asked, against most any crypto I own for an interest rate lower than credit cards or scammy payday loans will charge. I can be a market maker for trades without being an institution and with no barrier to entry, I can liquidated overleveraged loans, I can trade derivatives otherwise not allowed to me by my country, and I mint and trade synthetic assets, the list goes on and on. You're the one who sounds like they are subscribing to a religion and haven't actually even attempted to understand what financial freedoms are suddenly afforded to you when you use cryptocurrency.
    • Kiro 5y ago
      One of the best comments in the thread, actually describing the utility of crypto and the power of DeFi, and you're getting downvoted to oblivion.
      • adreamingsoul 5y ago
        Could be the tone, when removed it does make a good argument.
        • trophycase 5y ago
          Strange because I intentionally matched the tone of the comment I replied to. Comparing cryptocurrency to religion is incredibly ignorant at best, and trolling or FUDing at worst.
          • randomhodler84 5y ago
            Its close (oh and I’m absolutely on your side here). It’s not a religion (this would require it be not-math and not-physics), but it is a very virulent meme, like religion. It might even be the greatest meme - that is, energy based PoW 21 million coin sha256^2/ripemd/ecdsa with 10 min blocks just as our savior Satoshi commanded. As another commenter said, it actually delivers unlike religion.
    • pushrax 5y ago
      There’s definitely some reasons for real value in defi but cheap loans is not one of them. With millions in collateral you can get ~1% APR from several places right now. That’s way lower than any crypto loan I know of. One way is to sign up for an IBKR account from several countries, and wire them assets, completely without human interaction.
      • trophycase 5y ago
        I wasn't aware of this. What kind of collateralization ratio is required and what sort of assets are needed for this? Also signing up for an account from many countries sounds irritating and possibly illegal
        • vineyardmike 5y ago
          I think they mean ibkr is available in several countries
        • pushrax 5y ago
          As the sibling comment says, I mean you can access them from several countries. Collateral requirements vary by asset and account country according to national law. Generally it’s 50% LTV on equity collateral but leverage can be higher depending on the case. I paid for a house with their margin to avoid triggering gains on long term positions, while waiting for some locked up options to liquidate.
    • adreamingsoul 5y ago
      Is this a constructive argument? Financial freedom is an interesting topic, and one that I don’t have much expertise in. What is cryptocurrency freeing you from? You listed several opportunities that cryptocurrency could provide you, but I don’t exactly see the correlation with financial freedom.
      • trophycase 5y ago
        What is freedom if not the ability to take advantage of opportunities? Again, the correlation is obvious to anyone who actually uses this stuff. If I want to trade on margin on Fidelity, I need to sign some forms, go through a lengthy application process which may or may not actually be accepted to finally be able to trade with high interest rates and non-transparent margin requirements (my fidelity margin requirements change out from under me nearly every single day) routed through rent seeking, too-big-to-fail hedge funds and dark pools with T+2 order execution and restrictions on when during the day I can trade (only during day trading hours). Oh and don't accidentally trip up a "good faith" violation and have your account suspended from margin trading for a month even though you've done nothing wrong, and their antiquated systems simply aren't able to account for the fact that you weren't, in fact, trading money you didn't have. Just let me do what I want with my money, it's pretty simple. Sure maybe there are negative externalities that come with that, but freedom isn't free.
        • adreamingsoul 5y ago
          > "What is freedom if not the ability to take advantage of opportunities?" We probably have differing perspectives of what freedom means. Financial freedom to me means dedicating my time to doing things that enrich my lived experience. > "Again, the correlation is obvious to anyone who actually uses this stuff" I don't know if it is your intention, but I find that to be dismissive and unnecessary. I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss opposing viewpoints with civility.
    • arp242 5y ago
      > If I want to right now, I can get a multimillion dollar loan, no questions asked, against most any crypto I own for an interest rate lower than credit cards or scammy payday loans will charge Giving people loans with "no questions asked" has lead to significant amount of problems in the past.
      • trophycase 5y ago
        I see your point but they are collateralized. Let's put it this way, my friend just bought his house and spent 2 weeks with mortgage agents and brokers. Meanwhile I deposit some ETH-USDC LP into maker and in 2 minutes get a no questions asked loan at 3.5%. Sure it's lower leverage when compared to most mortgages but I think my point still stands.
        • qwytw 5y ago
          What happens when the price of BTC/ETH falls by 50%? I don't see how would lending at 3.5% (unless it's very short term) would make sense considering the risk.
        • arp242 5y ago
          And what happens if you can't pay back this loan? And what happens if thousands or even millions of people can't pay back their loans? The current systems may not be perfect, but they do exist for a reason. Chesterton's Fence and all.
  • killerstorm 5y ago
    But it's an objective fact that you don't need to open an account with a financial institution to start using Bitcoin. That was always the case. Unlike religion, it actually delivers.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • ineedasername 5y ago
      How do you buy bitcoins without it touching some financial institution at some point? You can buy bitcoin with cash, yes, but if it has to go through a financial institution or other regulated entity at any point then it is not delivering on any promise of independence from those institutions.
      • mikro2nd 5y ago
        Why do you need to "buy" Bitcoin? Do some work for someone, sell them some produce you grew or something you made, have them pay you in BTC. Go to a vendor who also is happy to take Bitcoin, buy stuff you need in turn. Yes, I know it's not happening much. Bitcoin has failed (so far) as a payment/exchange system, and that's cause for sadness to me, but also a good way to look at the history and ask the questions about why it has failed and how to go about creating a better "King-proof Money".
        • ineedasername 5y ago
          You're not going further in the chain: The person you work for has to buy bitcoins then. Or the next link in backwards has to. At some point, people will need to convert current assets into bitcoin. You're arguing from a point of view that requires bitcoin to already be an established currency. I'm saying that there is no practical way to get to that point without that sanction of governments to use traditional financial institutions along the way. Further, even if you got there, governments could simply ban bitcoin. It then becomes extremely hard to use as a common medium of exchange because literally no legal business could accept it without risking the business and their life outside of prison. It would also render useless the scenario of fleeing a despot country with hard currency assets intact because wherever your destination, those assets are still illegal to use. All of this means that, at any point, governments could reduce bitcoin to-- at best-- another side of shadow banking, like how drugs can be a medium of exchange in the criminal world. That does not allow room for common usage by the masses. Bitcoin & other crypto exist because nation states allow them to exist.
  • II2II 5y ago
    > IMO, cryptocurrency seems like a religion. That implies a sincerity in their beliefs. While it's difficult to figure out what people's true motivations are, the promotion of new cryptocurrencies, the "get in early" rhetoric, leads me to believe most cryptocurrencies are little more than pyramid schemes. The ability to mint/mine/farm currency without paying in directly doesn't really negate that since it is intended to become more difficult as time progresses. The actual value comes from speculative investments from a growing number of people.
    • ziml77 5y ago
      The spike in Dogecoin led to people talking about regretting not getting in on it. Feeling like they missed out on their chance. The motivations are clear. They wanted easy money. If it was about having a decentralized financial system then it wouldn't matter that they didn't get in early.
• thedufer 5y ago
  You could more concisely say that it is useful for completing transactions that are illegal, which encompasses nearly your entire list but I guess doesn't sound as nice.
  • mrb 5y ago
    Any technology can be used to facilitate illegal activities. Vehicles, weapons, phones, computers... Nothing new here. Cryptocurrency is no different.
    • peteretep 5y ago
      Crypto-currency’s _only_ use case today, other than speculation, is illegal payments. For almost everything else the traditional banking system is faster, cheaper, and safer.
      • slewis 5y ago
        It’s Saturday now in many places in the world. Can you move a few thousand USD between your two primary accounts at different traditional banks before Monday?
        • peteretep 5y ago
          ... yes? Faster Payments for my GBP balances and Prompt Pay for my THB ones tend to take a few seconds and be free? Added bonus: both will confirm the recipient name, and if I truly, actually fuck up the payment, I can get the money back again rather than it disappearing into the ether. Finally: the money I have transferred is now available to actually spend on things straight away, without needing to then reconvert it to real people money with a sizeable cost.
        • comex 5y ago
          Don’t know, I’ve never had any need to do that. But I can pay a merchant $50 by credit card without spending $30 in transaction fees or waiting 30-60 minutes for confirmations.
• throwaway_kufu 5y ago
  > Money that works even where traditional systems fail. Just playing devils advocate, but isn’t it’s usage reliant on traditional systems like electricity, ISPs, hardware makers, software makers, mining operations, etc? Say you were in California during rolling blackouts, or Florida post hurricane that knocks the power out for weeks, or an authoritative country that has historically turned the internet off on its citizens during protests/uprisings. How would it all work?
  • porknubbins 5y ago
    I believe cell towers in hurricane threatened places like Florida plan for generator backups and flood countermeasures etc. That said I'm sure throughput is squeezed, but I don't think anyone really plans for a catastrophic scenario where large numbers of US residents lose all internet. Kind of like saying "what good is Bitcoin during a hurricane Katrina scenario" but by that point its survival, not money you're worried about.
    • parineum 5y ago
      People often buy things with money to survive.
    • tolbish 5y ago
      Surely enough, the people at Disaster Radio [0] are passionately working on this very problem. [0] https://disaster.radio/ https://disaster.radio/
  • killerstorm 5y ago
    Well, you need very little to use Bitcoin - basically, just internet access. And, potentially, you only need to smuggle as little as 250 bytes. Banking systems has more choke points. If money is on your bank account and it gets blocked, that's it, nothing can be done about it. With Bitcoin, even if internet in the entire country is blocked, you still have options: you can transmit data by phone. There are many ways to smuggle 250 bytes out of a country. You can also just memorize the mnemonic phrase (so-called brainwallet) and move yourself out. They won't find your bitcoins even if they strip-search you. (But if they know you have them, wrench attack might work, no defense against that if your privacy is compromised.) All the other things are not necessary for using cryptocurrency, they just need to happen somewhere. So the system can route around the damage. Mining is not possible in your country? That's OK, it will work as long as there's at least one country where mining is possible. So Bitcoin resilience is not about working when power is out, obviously. It is about giving people options to route around the damage. If your bank blocks you, you can't go to another bank to get money on your account, since that money resides within a particular bank. But Bitcoin is global - you can access your funds from any computer in any country, as long as you have a private key.
• ineedasername 5y ago
  The US could shut bitcoin almost completely any time it wanted simply by saying that no US bank is allowed to deal with it, and no US bank is allowed to deal with any foreign bank that deals with it. On/Off ramps to actually buy things with bitcoin would dry up, and its lack of practical use as a day-to-day currency would mean it had practically no value. Legal business that tried to accept it would essentially have to become money launderers to do so. It is not censorship resistant, the entire system could be censored. Heck, FinCEN is already moving forward with regulations that require regulatory reporting on crypto transactions touching US institutions in a similar way to CTR reports. Bitcoin exists only because it is not a threat to governmental monetary control, and could be squashed the moment that changes.
  • lixtra 5y ago
    If that is so easy, why was the war on drugs never won? The government can deliver serious blows to BTC but I’m not sure it can be totally destroyed.
    • nitrogen 5y ago
      Are people as addicted to BTC as they are to drugs?
      • randomhodler84 5y ago
        Moar addictive. I just can’t get enough. I keep putting more dollars in, and keep getting less and less bitcoin back every year. Addicted.
    • ineedasername 5y ago
      Because drugs were not a digital abstraction that required buyers & sellers to go through traditional financial institutions to convert their fiat cash into physical drugs. Banning bitcoins as I described would mean the vast majority of all banks in the world would not be able to act as on/off ramps to crypto so it could never hit mainstream as a medium of exchange. It would also be worthless as a store of value because you wouldn't be able to get that value anywhere useful. It might live on as some part of the existing shadow banking networks, but it would never deliver on the promise of currency available to the masses & disconnected from arbitrary nation-state monetary policy. I'd like to be clear in my viewpoint though: I am not anti-crypto. I think there are many improvements it can bring to the existing global financial infrastructure. I just don't have any faith that it can deliver on promises of freedom from government regulations & control. If it exists, it will always exist because of government forbearance in killing it, not despite government antipathy.
• NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Wouldn't money created by chinese miners be more correct?
• tdeck 5y ago
  Don't "the people" want money that's stable in value and works at the grocery store?