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I disagree with the characterization that the primary use is a scam. That’s like saying the primary use of email is to receive ads and phishing mail.
by meowkit 5y ago
I disagree with the characterization that the primary use is a scam. That’s like saying the primary use of email is to receive ads and phishing mail.
- crummy 5y agoAre there numbers on what the primary uses of cryptocurrency are? I would guess remittances, purchasing illegal things, purchasing legal things, and ransomware - but I'm not sure in what order.
- idlewords 5y agoI think it also depends on what you count as "use". The #1 function of Bitcoin is as a speculative asset.
- morelisp 5y agoI am not sure remittance counts as a "use", especially if it is only useful for remitting money because it is also actually "used" for settling ransomware payouts or buying cocaine.
- jamal-kumar 5y agoI have a lot of digital artist friends who used to rely on live performances and installations for their money, now they're seriously killing it selling NFTs Some of them opt out of more environmentally unfriendly stuff like Ethereum for sure Personally I've developed systems for paying for everyday things like your bus fare or phone bill using crypto in a country where there's a hell of a lot less confidence in fiat (Brazil) -- hell check out the history of the Brazilian Real if you want an idea of what real candycorn money looks like Personally I just feel a hell of a lot of privileged bullshit out of people arguing that crypto is some good for nothing shit. Yeah sure great try living in a country where your government is fucked. We truly don't live in some francis fukuyama neoliberal fantasy world where we can trust stuff like traditional financial markets which have gone and failed us in the non english speaking world time and time again. I welcome any and all alternatives
- mandelken 5y agoTL;DR [CITATION NEEDED] ;-) Wow, you can actually pay your bus fare and phone bills in Brazil with crypto? That sounds either very impressive or totally unbelievable. I could not find anything on Google, so if someone could you link/cite to some actually used examples (I guess apps or utility website?) that would be very helpful. Sincere thanks.
- ufo 5y agoAs with anything cryptocurrency related, it's safe to assume that the justification is contrived and the actual use case is niche, at best. My experience as a Brazilian is that I've never seen anyone using cryptocurrencies in real life. On the other hand, the government's new instant payments system (Pix), allows anyone with a mobile phone to easily make small payments. In less than one year since launch it's already ubiquitous.
- jamal-kumar 5y agook lammer on the other hand the boleto system is incredibly sweet and is what we based our stuff around
- jamal-kumar 5y agoyeah i mean not like a condescending tone is going to covince me to try and convince you to give away PII on this one i mean this account is linked to my name you can do your thing
- jamal-kumar 5y agoby the way you try searching in portuguese? https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=comprar%20passagem%20de%20%C3%B4nibus%20com%20criptomoeda https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=comprar%20passagem%20d... plenty of options now wow so hard to find
- Jarwain 5y agoI think the interesting use is more in the blockchain than the currency. Public, verifiable, tied to an identity, decentralized statements that can be used as public records or provide an audit trail. Cryptographically & blockchain secured bodycams is an example that I've been looking into recently
- ufo 5y agoThe problem is that the distributed consensus in a blockchain is only possible if that blockchain is also used as a currency. If you remove the currency aspect, it's no better than a Git repository, which also has a merkle tree ( but no way to say which repo is the canonical one).
- throwaway743 5y agoAren't those things also purchased with usd, euro, yen, won, rmb, etc?
- crummy 5y agoYes, though (to their benefit) traditional currencies don't work as well for ransomware. Possibly the same for illegal purchases. Remittances seems like one of the true benefits of cryptocurrency... but that's why I'd like to know what amount of usage is actually that and what is, let's say non-beneficial.
- throwaway743 5y agoAh I see what you're getting at now. Understandable.
- ttt0 5y agoThe primary use of cryptocurrency is in its name - a currency.
- tornato7 5y agoYes, take a look at this article by Coinbase for some well-sourced numbers: https://blog.coinbase.com/fact-check-crypto-is-increasingly-being-used-for-criminal-activity-and-is-a-haven-for-illicit-856a71dfb399 https://blog.coinbase.com/fact-check-crypto-is-increasingly-...
- harwoodleon 5y agoAbsolutely. And of course new sectors that are not established can seem like snake oil, simply because they are new industries. The internet has steamrollered many industries and fundamentally changed the way they work. Manufacturing, Music, Politics and now The final big boss, money. It will take another ten years for this industry to mature. But in amongst the sham and drudgery we have the first non-violent system of currencies.
- zzzeek 5y agolighting the earth's natural resources literally on fire to create currency is pretty violent towards human life.
- shieVae4I 5y ago> Manufacturing, Music, Politics and now The final big boss, money. Isn't that a "they laughed at Galileo" argument? They thought the Internet was snake oil. They thought Napster was snake oil. They thought BitTorrent was snake oil. ... but they also thought Pixelon was snake oil.
- joepie91_ 5y agoConsidering that almost all legitimate users have been priced out of the market due to ever-increasing transaction fees and increasingly draconian regulations (often stricter than for non-cryptocurrency) and the resulting interoperability issues... Yeah, I think it's safe to say that the primary use of cryptocurrency nowadays is as either casino chips or a money laundering mechanism. The economics no longer make any sense for anyone else.
- seibelj 5y agoIs it so worthless that no one uses it, or so useful that only the highest-value transactors are willing to pay the fee? It’s like arguing the most popular restaurant is so crowded, no one goes there anymore.
- SubiculumCode 5y agoPlenty of crypto has low transaction fees these days.
- zzzeek 5y agoit depends on how you count. if you measure "primary use of email" by number of emails, then yes spam wins out, but that's only because a tiny fraction of human users are sending out tens of millions of spams. if you measure "primary use of email" in terms of users, the vast majority of people who use email use it for useful, non spammy purposes. The same can't necessarily be said for cryptocurrencies, as far as trying to prove that cryptocurency has a large userbase that is not there just for speculation/inflation and/or illicit use cases.
- LegitShady 5y agoBecause email has no value except as a means of communication. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are massive speculation scams. It's popular because everyone wants to hold one in the hopes it goes up in value. There's no reason for it to go up in value except that other people think it will go up in value and want to buy one too. You're buying a number on a blockchain somewhere in the hope someone else will want it for more money, that's it.
- boringg 5y agoI’m curious if it is actually such a large scam with too many people that they can’t let it fail.
- LegitShady 5y agothere is no such thing. Too big to fail is another coded way to describe political allies and backers who get influence in the government through their contributions. The size of the problem isn't the issue, it's who has the problem that is.
- boringg 5y agoGood point. Slightly conspiratorial but probably fairly accurate.
- d10r 5y agowhich may even be technically true - if measured in quantitative terms :-)