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There has been a lot of advancements since Bitcoin: -Ethereum created a general purpose blockchain -Algorithmic stablecoins like DAI were derided as impossibl

There has been a lot of advancements since Bitcoin: -Ethereum created a general purpose blockchain -Algorithmic stablecoins like DAI were derided as impossible until they started working - DEX’s were slow and useless at first but now functional and doing tons of volume. - NFT standards like ERC-721, and NFT platforms, have flourished. -ETH2 promises a 99% reduction in energy vs POW -Crypto will never go truly mainstream while scaling causes txs to cost hundreds of dollars. Sidechains like Matic are functional and being used by many, and L2s like Arbitum and Optimism are launching this year. I expect to see a real acceleration of use cases and usage by normal users once those things are live. - Wallet software has improved enormously, with hardware wallets like Ledger and Trevor and software wallets like Rainbow. -DeFi is innovating like crazy with AAVE, Alchemix, Mirror, etc. Going from Bitcoin to ETH2 with L2s and stable coins and other primitives took a while, but those innovations were key. Once those are all live, I think the real use cases will finally start to take off.

Daishiman 5y ago
You're going in around in circles. How is this relevant to actually transacting? How is this relevant to the world outside of cryptocoins? What does this enable that you can't get by a large Postgres instance with decent ownership?
version_five 5y ago
Comments like this are really all anyone needs to look at to understand what a scam it all is. Nothing personal, what I mean is the list of semi-technical nonsense promising how something worthwhile is just around the corner. It's the same pattern across confidence scams, just a little more and it will all pay off. The same is true in the bigger recent discussion, all you have to do is look at what the proponents are talking about to see what a scam it all is. But I think that's the point of the original article. People who are confident in their technical understanding can easily dismiss this nonsense out of hand, but a layperson sees a list of acronyms and smart sounding absurdities like the above comment and assumes they must be missing something and gets taken in.
- t0mbstone 5y ago
  Yes, I agree that people should definitely educate themselves and watch out for scams. While it is true that there are certainly a ton of pump and dump schemes and outright scams in the crypto space, I don't think it's fair to just dismiss all of crypto as a scam. There is a HUGE demand for an electronic currency that can be freely transacted globally. Because the currency needs to be globally usable, this currency can't be controlled by any particular government. It needs to be owned and controlled democratically by the people actually using it. It needs to have low (or zero fees). It needs to be extremely simple to perform transactions. It should be a safe place to store your money. It should be difficult or impossible to steal. It should be stable. I could keep going and list a hundred other things, but my point is simply that we aren't there yet. This magical currency does not yet exist, but cryptocurrency is absolutely the closest we have ever gotten to it, and I'm confident that if we keep iterating and trying out different ideas, a winner will eventually arise from the mix. Or maybe the winning solution will be some combination of different cryptocurrencies? Maybe an inflationary one, a deflationary one, and a stable one? Who knows?

Daishiman 5y ago

You're going in around in circles. How is this relevant to actually transacting? How is this relevant to the world outside of cryptocoins? What does this enable that you can't get by a large Postgres instance with decent ownership?

version_five 5y ago

Comments like this are really all anyone needs to look at to understand what a scam it all is. Nothing personal, what I mean is the list of semi-technical nonsense promising how something worthwhile is just around the corner. It's the same pattern across confidence scams, just a little more and it will all pay off. The same is true in the bigger recent discussion, all you have to do is look at what the proponents are talking about to see what a scam it all is. But I think that's the point of the original article. People who are confident in their technical understanding can easily dismiss this nonsense out of hand, but a layperson sees a list of acronyms and smart sounding absurdities like the above comment and assumes they must be missing something and gets taken in.

t0mbstone 5y ago
Yes, I agree that people should definitely educate themselves and watch out for scams. While it is true that there are certainly a ton of pump and dump schemes and outright scams in the crypto space, I don't think it's fair to just dismiss all of crypto as a scam. There is a HUGE demand for an electronic currency that can be freely transacted globally. Because the currency needs to be globally usable, this currency can't be controlled by any particular government. It needs to be owned and controlled democratically by the people actually using it. It needs to have low (or zero fees). It needs to be extremely simple to perform transactions. It should be a safe place to store your money. It should be difficult or impossible to steal. It should be stable. I could keep going and list a hundred other things, but my point is simply that we aren't there yet. This magical currency does not yet exist, but cryptocurrency is absolutely the closest we have ever gotten to it, and I'm confident that if we keep iterating and trying out different ideas, a winner will eventually arise from the mix. Or maybe the winning solution will be some combination of different cryptocurrencies? Maybe an inflationary one, a deflationary one, and a stable one? Who knows?