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It's probably not the place. But I'd like to say still that my opinion is not based on ignorance. The more I read (and I mean books too, not just rando's blogs

It's probably not the place. But I'd like to say still that my opinion is not based on ignorance. The more I read (and I mean books too, not just rando's blogs and tweetstorms) on this, listen to pro-coin as well as anti, and talk to actual lawyers and economists about what problems the space actually has, the more I see it's just a scam. Well, almost. Probably cryptocurrencies have more of a chance of actually succeeding in providing realistic microtransactions. Not BTC (PoW and way WAY too few tps, too slow, too high fees, etc...), but it's something traditional finance has failed to provide. (cryptocurrencies have, for a decade now, also failed though. So I'm not getting my hopes up)

fleddr 5y ago
If you look at the total space, some 10,000 different coins/tokens, all but perhaps 10 are shit tokens. They have zero purpose but to pump and dump. Of the remaining ones that should at least get the benefit of the doubt, here's my rough opinion... Bitcoin is king and proven in its function as "digital gold". Based on its enormous market cap, network effect (100m users and growing exponentially) and one-of-a-kind performance of 200% per year on average, for 12 years straight. Which is no guarantee for the future, but nothing is. Bitcoin is the invention of an entirely new asset class with unique properties, good ones and bad ones. Ether and adjacent helpers (such as link) are also a winner, if you take the long term perspective. Almost anything application-wise is built on top of it (DeFi, NFT) touching potentially almost any industry one can think of. It is true that most things built on Ether are crap and likely to fail, but that doesn't have to be true forever. The point is that even if 1% becomes successful, it's likely Ether-based. Even failed development on Ether grows usage of Ether, and the network effect quickly gets beyond the point of no return. Compare it to the world settling on Git/Github for software development. This doesn't guarantee good or useful software, yet when such software is produced, it's from that infrastructure. Besides Bitcoin and Ether, there's a few semi-serious outliers like Cardano and XRP. I expect them to fail fully. So that sums up my opinion of the space: - Bitcoin as asset class, long term. - Bitcoin's Lighting Network for payments, yet needs to become more user friendly and get wide support (give it 3 years). - Ether and helpers for a wide range of uses. Bitcoin and Ether are not only here to stay, they will grow exponentially. Pretty much anything else is safe to ignore. For now.
- knorker 5y ago
  But bitcoin doesn't scale. And incentives are not aligned to making it scale. So having it not scale is an unfortunate equilibrium. It's consuming more electricity now than Sweden. It can't really grow exponentially. The world just does not have enough electricity for more growth at that rate. Unless you just mean "exponential in price", in which case that's just speculation, and completely disconnected from, as they say, the fundamentals.
fleddr 5y ago
Running out of reply nesting levels so responding to your latest comment here. For its current purpose (store of value, so not an every day payment currency), Bitcoin does scale. Should for some reason miners be unable to gain access to more energy in the physical world, the protocol automatically adjusts the difficulty. Scaling transactions has no relation to energy usage, only mining does. As for its energy usage, that is a wildly complex topic, and it's moving very fast. Energy consumption in itself is not a problem, it is only considered a problem when: 1. The energy source is not renewable 2. The consumption directly competes with purposes deemed more useful by society (perceived or real). As for renewables, I believe the score to be somewhere between 30-50%, which is greener than almost any other industry. Furthermore, this score is going to rapidly improve as coal-based mining in China is in major decline whilst North America gains in mining. The NA mining companies have formed a council to report on energy usage and stimulate not just the use of renewables, specifically to go for stranded energy sources. These are types of energy that are locally available, yet too remote or costly to transport to civilization. To sum it up, it's not as bad as the headlines say, and rapidly improving for the better. Energy usage, not even it being dirty or green, isn't the heart of the debate though. Keeping devices powered on/plugged in costs more energy and serves no purpose, yet zero headlines about that. Rather, the debate is that a lot of energy is consumed for what skeptics consider to be no purpose. And now we do get to a hard divide. Believers and non-believers. A true believer thinks of Bitcoin as the hardest money ever created, absolute scarcity as a one time human invention. This classic article is one of many making the case for it: https://vijayboyapati.medium.com/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoin-6ecc8bdecc1 https://vijayboyapati.medium.com/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoi... Read it with an open, but skeptical mind. If you're disgusted by it, your personal outcome is clear. If it does tickle some interest, this Twitter thread links to a few of such articles: https://twitter.com/anilsaidso/status/1290758632238276609?s=11 https://twitter.com/anilsaidso/status/1290758632238276609?s=... As for Bitcoin being speculative, yes and no. With a long term perspective, it is predictable to a degree. A dutch stock expert came up with a valuation model called "stock to flow": https://stats.buybitcoinworldwide.com/stock-to-flow/ https://stats.buybitcoinworldwide.com/stock-to-flow/ Actual price action versus predicted price is so accurate that it's creepy. And there's a reason for it. Bitcoin's supply is entirely predictable and mining rewards are cut in half every 4 years, triggering the next bull run, followed by a bear market. Like clockwork. Even the financial establishment agrees that Bitcoin is the most asymmetrical bet there is. The risk/reward ratio is one of its kind. To translate that to any ordinary citizen: you pick a portion of your wealth you can afford to lose entirely. 10-25% of savings are often heard numbers. There's a really small chance that this money, which you could afford to lose anyway, will be lost. A so-called "Black Swan event". More likely, the money would be halved and never recover. Against that limited risk (due to your limited exposure), is a much higher chance of it multiplying by 10, 20, more...depending on how long you hold the asset. As in, almost guaranteed. For Bitcoin, not for the shitcoins. This sounds like a sales pitch for buying Bitcoin, which is not my goal. I don't care if you do or don't. My point is to highlight the uniqueness of this asymmetrical bet. It has no comparison. There's no asset in the world with a risk/reward ratio this favorable. Or, you can call it funny internet money that heads to zero. Either conclusion is fine, if its an informed one.

fleddr 5y ago

If you look at the total space, some 10,000 different coins/tokens, all but perhaps 10 are shit tokens. They have zero purpose but to pump and dump. Of the remaining ones that should at least get the benefit of the doubt, here's my rough opinion... Bitcoin is king and proven in its function as "digital gold". Based on its enormous market cap, network effect (100m users and growing exponentially) and one-of-a-kind performance of 200% per year on average, for 12 years straight. Which is no guarantee for the future, but nothing is. Bitcoin is the invention of an entirely new asset class with unique properties, good ones and bad ones. Ether and adjacent helpers (such as link) are also a winner, if you take the long term perspective. Almost anything application-wise is built on top of it (DeFi, NFT) touching potentially almost any industry one can think of. It is true that most things built on Ether are crap and likely to fail, but that doesn't have to be true forever. The point is that even if 1% becomes successful, it's likely Ether-based. Even failed development on Ether grows usage of Ether, and the network effect quickly gets beyond the point of no return. Compare it to the world settling on Git/Github for software development. This doesn't guarantee good or useful software, yet when such software is produced, it's from that infrastructure. Besides Bitcoin and Ether, there's a few semi-serious outliers like Cardano and XRP. I expect them to fail fully. So that sums up my opinion of the space: - Bitcoin as asset class, long term. - Bitcoin's Lighting Network for payments, yet needs to become more user friendly and get wide support (give it 3 years). - Ether and helpers for a wide range of uses. Bitcoin and Ether are not only here to stay, they will grow exponentially. Pretty much anything else is safe to ignore. For now.

knorker 5y ago
But bitcoin doesn't scale. And incentives are not aligned to making it scale. So having it not scale is an unfortunate equilibrium. It's consuming more electricity now than Sweden. It can't really grow exponentially. The world just does not have enough electricity for more growth at that rate. Unless you just mean "exponential in price", in which case that's just speculation, and completely disconnected from, as they say, the fundamentals.

fleddr 5y ago

Running out of reply nesting levels so responding to your latest comment here. For its current purpose (store of value, so not an every day payment currency), Bitcoin does scale. Should for some reason miners be unable to gain access to more energy in the physical world, the protocol automatically adjusts the difficulty. Scaling transactions has no relation to energy usage, only mining does. As for its energy usage, that is a wildly complex topic, and it's moving very fast. Energy consumption in itself is not a problem, it is only considered a problem when: 1. The energy source is not renewable 2. The consumption directly competes with purposes deemed more useful by society (perceived or real). As for renewables, I believe the score to be somewhere between 30-50%, which is greener than almost any other industry. Furthermore, this score is going to rapidly improve as coal-based mining in China is in major decline whilst North America gains in mining. The NA mining companies have formed a council to report on energy usage and stimulate not just the use of renewables, specifically to go for stranded energy sources. These are types of energy that are locally available, yet too remote or costly to transport to civilization. To sum it up, it's not as bad as the headlines say, and rapidly improving for the better. Energy usage, not even it being dirty or green, isn't the heart of the debate though. Keeping devices powered on/plugged in costs more energy and serves no purpose, yet zero headlines about that. Rather, the debate is that a lot of energy is consumed for what skeptics consider to be no purpose. And now we do get to a hard divide. Believers and non-believers. A true believer thinks of Bitcoin as the hardest money ever created, absolute scarcity as a one time human invention. This classic article is one of many making the case for it: https://vijayboyapati.medium.com/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoin-6ecc8bdecc1 https://vijayboyapati.medium.com/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoi... Read it with an open, but skeptical mind. If you're disgusted by it, your personal outcome is clear. If it does tickle some interest, this Twitter thread links to a few of such articles: https://twitter.com/anilsaidso/status/1290758632238276609?s=11 https://twitter.com/anilsaidso/status/1290758632238276609?s=... As for Bitcoin being speculative, yes and no. With a long term perspective, it is predictable to a degree. A dutch stock expert came up with a valuation model called "stock to flow": https://stats.buybitcoinworldwide.com/stock-to-flow/ https://stats.buybitcoinworldwide.com/stock-to-flow/ Actual price action versus predicted price is so accurate that it's creepy. And there's a reason for it. Bitcoin's supply is entirely predictable and mining rewards are cut in half every 4 years, triggering the next bull run, followed by a bear market. Like clockwork. Even the financial establishment agrees that Bitcoin is the most asymmetrical bet there is. The risk/reward ratio is one of its kind. To translate that to any ordinary citizen: you pick a portion of your wealth you can afford to lose entirely. 10-25% of savings are often heard numbers. There's a really small chance that this money, which you could afford to lose anyway, will be lost. A so-called "Black Swan event". More likely, the money would be halved and never recover. Against that limited risk (due to your limited exposure), is a much higher chance of it multiplying by 10, 20, more...depending on how long you hold the asset. As in, almost guaranteed. For Bitcoin, not for the shitcoins. This sounds like a sales pitch for buying Bitcoin, which is not my goal. I don't care if you do or don't. My point is to highlight the uniqueness of this asymmetrical bet. It has no comparison. There's no asset in the world with a risk/reward ratio this favorable. Or, you can call it funny internet money that heads to zero. Either conclusion is fine, if its an informed one.