4 ms·

Is there anyone out there discussing things like Ecash in the cryptocurrency space, or has blockchain essentially eaten all those brains in the short term? Jus

Is there anyone out there discussing things like Ecash in the cryptocurrency space, or has blockchain essentially eaten all those brains in the short term? Just seems like Ecash got so much right in terms of the properties one would want for digital cash...

gruez 5y ago
Because people who are into cryptocurrencies are in it for the "not fiat" aspect, not the "electronic transactions" aspect. If you care about the latter, credit cards and/or mobile wallets adequately covers 90% of the use cases.
- swiley 5y ago
  I don't know how you expect to come to reasonable conclusions when you generalize that extremely.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Am I wrong? Is there a silent majority somewhere who thinks that bitcoin's 1T valuation can be justified by being a slightly better paypal/alipay? As for the "generalize" bit, would adding a "most" qualifier in there placate you?
    - wmf 5y ago
      You're not wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "in it for the tech" people are doing some really heavy rationalization about how number go up is just market validation of superior tech and not a massive bubble.
      - Geee 5y ago
        It's a combination of both. You can think that the bottom price of every cycle is the actual non-hype price for Bitcoin. Hype drives adoption and when the hype dies, there's always people who want to be in it for the long run. "Come for the greed, stay for the revolution."
        wmf 5y ago
        People who are in it for the long run are planning to cash in on the next bubble, not real-world usage. There will be no revolution.
        Geee 5y ago
        Revolution is already happening. Owning bitcoin is your vote for it.
    - swiley 5y ago
      >would adding a "most" qualifier in there placate you? Yes probably, there are a decent number of people that see crypto as an alternative to paypal. The SMS/MMS over IP provider I use primarily uses bitcoin for payments probably because paypal did something stupid that made it unusable. There are lots of smaller projects like this where the maintainers just don't want to deal with paypal and bitcoin works very well.
- Geee 5y ago
  That's true. The primary purpose of Bitcoin is to replace central banks who steal wealth away from savings accounts. Millions of people are already using Bitcoin-backed debit cards to make payments. This way it's possible to get the benefits of sound money while being able to use it for daily spending.
kerng 5y ago
I think the idea of Bitcoin enthusiasts is much more foundational, than just having "digital cash". I have been reading a book called "The Bitcoin Standard" which highlights that the goal is a switch for society towards Austrian economics and getting back to something like the gold standard (Hint: Bitcoin is the better gold). The book is quite good and I learned a lot about the history of money - so I'd recommend it. To paraphrase, the current cash printing is vaporware and not backed by anything anymore - making it quite weak and easy to attack - disaster waiting to happen. Central planning of currency should be replaced by a democratic and capitalist system where the best currency evolves naturally. Which might or might not possibly happen with Bitcoin. Something like a government bailout using tax payer money of a "too big to fail" organization would not happen in such a world - making the economic system a lot stronger for the individuals.
- harwoodleon 5y ago
  Bitcoin is not digital gold. Bitcoin is an extremely expensive and uncensorable method of value transfer. Nano is more like digital gold as it can be passed from hand to hand with no fee, but like Bitcoin has a fixed deflationary supply.
  - poundofshrimp 5y ago
    I think you got "gold" and "currency" mixed up. Gold is not supposed to be cheap/free to exchange. It is a property of a currency.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ______- 5y ago
  > Bitcoin is the better gold Held up by a house of cards since it's so volatile (at least for now). Can't wait for it to become a stablecoin
- lukifer 5y ago
  > government bailout using tax payer money of a "too big to fail" organization would not happen in such a world - making the economic system a lot stronger for the individuals. At the risk of starting a flamewar over Keynesianism (or MMT): while I agree that tolerating "TBTF" firms leads to serious moral hazards, let's just say it is highly disputed among economists whether or not it's advantageous for states to have macroeconomic levers. I'm happy to acknowledge the Austrian school's perspective, but it's not exactly a universal consensus. > a democratic and capitalist system These two things are in tension. That's not necessarily a problem, a free and just society has to balance multiple concerns (minority rights vs. majority rule); but the very issue with monetary or economic policy is that it lives at an intersection point between public and private interests, and any policy decision (or non-decision) is likely to have winners and losers.
rictic 5y ago
China's digital Yuan has some similar properties to Ecash. You have horizontal privacy (you can spend your money without your partners knowing how much you have or what you do with it), but not vertical privacy (the government gets to know _everything_). They're even working on extending it to support offline transactions. This is a scary thing to put into any government's hands, let alone the Chinese government's, but it has enough attractive properties that it has a good chance of catching on.
wmf 5y ago
I think Taler is the closest heir of Chaum's DigiCash around today.
atleta 5y ago
I don't think people care. They don't really care about traceability/anonymity. By now basically everybody is happy to buy (almost) anything with their card. Also, you almost never need to do an offline transaction. (I'm not 100% sure, but IIRC that is a feature of at least some of those digital cash solutions based on blind signatures.) And if you can do prompt online transactions and you don't care much about privacy (because you trust the banks) then you don't need digital cash. BTC and all the other blockchain bases solutions are speculative assets. They hold the promise of creating value out of nothing. So it's a strong motivation for at least some of the developers and most of the adopters. Digital cash, on the other hand, would be issued by banks, so no one could earn a profit from holding them (well, compared to holding the actual currency on their account). Though, in theory digital cash could be issued by its developers (just as blockchain based ones), but since it would sound new and obscure, people wouldn't trust it. (BTC and the blockchain took quite a few years too.)
- candiodari 5y ago
  BTC (actually Ethereum) are incredibly handy when doing international transactions. That these things are effectively global also makes them very useful, because of bank fees and the difficulty. At one point I actually sat down with a bank consultant to "design" a way to move money between (sets of) bank accounts in 2 countries just so we can do business. Still takes 4+ days (non-bank holidays) to actually happen. Ethereum can certainly match that and with much less costs.

gruez 5y ago

Because people who are into cryptocurrencies are in it for the "not fiat" aspect, not the "electronic transactions" aspect. If you care about the latter, credit cards and/or mobile wallets adequately covers 90% of the use cases.

swiley 5y ago
I don't know how you expect to come to reasonable conclusions when you generalize that extremely.
- gruez 5y ago
  Am I wrong? Is there a silent majority somewhere who thinks that bitcoin's 1T valuation can be justified by being a slightly better paypal/alipay? As for the "generalize" bit, would adding a "most" qualifier in there placate you?
  - wmf 5y ago
    You're not wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "in it for the tech" people are doing some really heavy rationalization about how number go up is just market validation of superior tech and not a massive bubble.
    - Geee 5y ago
      It's a combination of both. You can think that the bottom price of every cycle is the actual non-hype price for Bitcoin. Hype drives adoption and when the hype dies, there's always people who want to be in it for the long run. "Come for the greed, stay for the revolution."
      - wmf 5y ago
        People who are in it for the long run are planning to cash in on the next bubble, not real-world usage. There will be no revolution.
        Geee 5y ago
        Revolution is already happening. Owning bitcoin is your vote for it.
  - swiley 5y ago
    >would adding a "most" qualifier in there placate you? Yes probably, there are a decent number of people that see crypto as an alternative to paypal. The SMS/MMS over IP provider I use primarily uses bitcoin for payments probably because paypal did something stupid that made it unusable. There are lots of smaller projects like this where the maintainers just don't want to deal with paypal and bitcoin works very well.
Geee 5y ago
That's true. The primary purpose of Bitcoin is to replace central banks who steal wealth away from savings accounts. Millions of people are already using Bitcoin-backed debit cards to make payments. This way it's possible to get the benefits of sound money while being able to use it for daily spending.

kerng 5y ago

I think the idea of Bitcoin enthusiasts is much more foundational, than just having "digital cash". I have been reading a book called "The Bitcoin Standard" which highlights that the goal is a switch for society towards Austrian economics and getting back to something like the gold standard (Hint: Bitcoin is the better gold). The book is quite good and I learned a lot about the history of money - so I'd recommend it. To paraphrase, the current cash printing is vaporware and not backed by anything anymore - making it quite weak and easy to attack - disaster waiting to happen. Central planning of currency should be replaced by a democratic and capitalist system where the best currency evolves naturally. Which might or might not possibly happen with Bitcoin. Something like a government bailout using tax payer money of a "too big to fail" organization would not happen in such a world - making the economic system a lot stronger for the individuals.

harwoodleon 5y ago
Bitcoin is not digital gold. Bitcoin is an extremely expensive and uncensorable method of value transfer. Nano is more like digital gold as it can be passed from hand to hand with no fee, but like Bitcoin has a fixed deflationary supply.
- poundofshrimp 5y ago
  I think you got "gold" and "currency" mixed up. Gold is not supposed to be cheap/free to exchange. It is a property of a currency.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
______- 5y ago
> Bitcoin is the better gold Held up by a house of cards since it's so volatile (at least for now). Can't wait for it to become a stablecoin
lukifer 5y ago
> government bailout using tax payer money of a "too big to fail" organization would not happen in such a world - making the economic system a lot stronger for the individuals. At the risk of starting a flamewar over Keynesianism (or MMT): while I agree that tolerating "TBTF" firms leads to serious moral hazards, let's just say it is highly disputed among economists whether or not it's advantageous for states to have macroeconomic levers. I'm happy to acknowledge the Austrian school's perspective, but it's not exactly a universal consensus. > a democratic and capitalist system These two things are in tension. That's not necessarily a problem, a free and just society has to balance multiple concerns (minority rights vs. majority rule); but the very issue with monetary or economic policy is that it lives at an intersection point between public and private interests, and any policy decision (or non-decision) is likely to have winners and losers.

rictic 5y ago

China's digital Yuan has some similar properties to Ecash. You have horizontal privacy (you can spend your money without your partners knowing how much you have or what you do with it), but not vertical privacy (the government gets to know _everything_). They're even working on extending it to support offline transactions. This is a scary thing to put into any government's hands, let alone the Chinese government's, but it has enough attractive properties that it has a good chance of catching on.

wmf 5y ago

I think Taler is the closest heir of Chaum's DigiCash around today.

atleta 5y ago

I don't think people care. They don't really care about traceability/anonymity. By now basically everybody is happy to buy (almost) anything with their card. Also, you almost never need to do an offline transaction. (I'm not 100% sure, but IIRC that is a feature of at least some of those digital cash solutions based on blind signatures.) And if you can do prompt online transactions and you don't care much about privacy (because you trust the banks) then you don't need digital cash. BTC and all the other blockchain bases solutions are speculative assets. They hold the promise of creating value out of nothing. So it's a strong motivation for at least some of the developers and most of the adopters. Digital cash, on the other hand, would be issued by banks, so no one could earn a profit from holding them (well, compared to holding the actual currency on their account). Though, in theory digital cash could be issued by its developers (just as blockchain based ones), but since it would sound new and obscure, people wouldn't trust it. (BTC and the blockchain took quite a few years too.)

candiodari 5y ago
BTC (actually Ethereum) are incredibly handy when doing international transactions. That these things are effectively global also makes them very useful, because of bank fees and the difficulty. At one point I actually sat down with a bank consultant to "design" a way to move money between (sets of) bank accounts in 2 countries just so we can do business. Still takes 4+ days (non-bank holidays) to actually happen. Ethereum can certainly match that and with much less costs.