5 ms·

> crypto ecosystem still ended up It's decades from its final form.

tmcw 5y ago
Give it a few decades, it'll still be early, somehow.
rzwitserloot 5y ago
Perhaps. But we're, what? 10 years in and so far crypto has enabled 'I encrypted your data!' scams, caused political instability, been a vehicle for highly volatile investment (but the world wasn't hurting for such opportunities...), and served as a fine buzzword for dev teams around the world to get a sack of cash to update some systems. That's a pretty poor result for 10 years of this much investment and focus. The internet was waaaaaaaaaaaaay more useful 10 years in. I don't think crypto gets to claim the benefits of the oft touted protection against centralized bullies or scams. Quite the opposite: You need to go pretty deep into political dictatorships before crypto on net balance seems favourable. So far crypto coins are far more likely to be fleeced, and the vast majority of crypto holding folks are working with mostly centralized entities (such as Tether), which rate, as far as trustability and good shepherdship goes, not in a good place. Better than Pol Pot and Mugabe. Maybe. Oof. So if it's decades from its final form, when is it going to deliver on its first actually useful to humanity milestone? I'm still waiting.
- bonestamp2 5y ago
  > so far crypto has enabled 'I encrypted your data!' scams These scams existed long before crypto. But, crypto currencies are a better solution to international money transfers so of course they became the preferred currencies for these scams.
  - varjag 5y ago
    It took crypto to make them Web scale.
  - lottin 5y ago
    If cryptocurrencies were a better solution, they would have been widely adopted. Instead, they have been adopted by people who can't use real money for one reason or another, e.g. criminals. Which tells us they are a poor substitute for real money.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      Or those without decent banking access
      - lottin 5y ago
        I don't know that one can use crypto without a bank account. Is there a black market where you can buy/sell crypto with/for cash?
        exdsq 5y ago
        In several African countries people use their phone credit as a currency to barter and there are trials to use crypto instead with on/off cash ramps in the same way as the phone credit works but with the additional benefit of things like financial records to start building credit scores
        lottin 5y ago
        Can you provide a link? None of this makes any sense. Why would anybody buy phone credit and then use that to barter instead of just buying whatever they need directly? How do you build a credit score from a record of transactions? Why do Africans that don't have access to banking are so worried about building a credit score? So many questions...
        exdsq 5y ago
        I can give a more complete answer later but here’s a link that looks relevant https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2013/01/19/airtime-is-money https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/finance-and-e... Credit scores help introduce micro loans which help with social mobility and is key to bringing communities out of poverty
- flipbrad 5y ago
  Don't forget the environmental catastrophe of all that wasted electricity generation, and driving up prices of GPUs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- kbenson 5y ago
  If that's the trend, by the time it reaches it's final form we'll all be smoking husks left over from the great AI uprising wars, but don't judge those AIs too harshly, that new testnet that paid out for verified kills was just too good to pass up.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > I don't think crypto gets to claim the benefits of the oft touted protection against centralized bullies or scams. The big problem here is that the core benefit of cryptocurrency is in removing the bank as a middle man. But the bank is the chokepoint where governments impose constraints. When you're up against an authoritarian government imposing unreasonable constraints, that's what you need. But it works the same against any constraints. So if you want constraints on "money laundering" or processing transactions related to criminal activity, those constraints are gone too. The constraints are already gone for anyone willing to break the law. You can't un-invent Bitcoin, so from here on drug dealers will be able to use it or something like it to transfer their drug money etc. That's happened, it's in the past, no regulations you put on law-abiding people will undo it because the people doing it are already the people breaking the law. We still have all the regulations. They just don't work anymore. We're still paying the cost and the benefit has evaporated. But for all the honest people who are following the law, the regulations still apply. The overhead is still there. All the paperwork and the false positives. So you can use Bitcoin to buy drugs but you can't use it to buy a sandwich, because to accept Bitcoin the sandwich shop would have to deal with filing fees and lawyers that the drug dealer is just ignoring. Regular people don't get the benefit until we have a regulatory system that makes it as easy to accept cryptocurrency as it is to accept cash.
  - clusterfish 5y ago
    You can't uninvent Bitcoin but you can certainly make it illegal, making it all but useless for drug trade or money laundering. Nobody needs a currency that you can't exchange for, you know, real currency that you can buy real things with. So although the government doesn't have the power to eliminate Bitcoin, they do have the power to make it useless. I don't think they will though, because guess who is using it for bribes and money laundering?
    - mwint 5y ago
      If you can’t trade BTC for USD, you’ll trade it for Yen, and then trade for USD. Some country will want to cash in on the demand for their currency, and will leave it legal to exchange.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > when is it going to deliver on its first actually useful to humanity milestone Technologically speaking, most cryptocurrencies are utterly useless. Bitcoin included. There are some good projects though. Monero, for example. It allows people to transact without anybody knowing anything about the details of the transaction. Where the money came from, where it's going, how much money was moved. Everything is obfuscated. Block chain analysis is at the very least hard and inconclusive, if not impossible. So it essentially works like digital cash. This is an invaluable achievement that allows people to reclaim their financial privacy in a world where governments think it's acceptable to surveil everyone.

tmcw 5y ago

Give it a few decades, it'll still be early, somehow.

Perhaps. But we're, what? 10 years in and so far crypto has enabled 'I encrypted your data!' scams, caused political instability, been a vehicle for highly volatile investment (but the world wasn't hurting for such opportunities...), and served as a fine buzzword for dev teams around the world to get a sack of cash to update some systems. That's a pretty poor result for 10 years of this much investment and focus. The internet was waaaaaaaaaaaaay more useful 10 years in. I don't think crypto gets to claim the benefits of the oft touted protection against centralized bullies or scams. Quite the opposite: You need to go pretty deep into political dictatorships before crypto on net balance seems favourable. So far crypto coins are far more likely to be fleeced, and the vast majority of crypto holding folks are working with mostly centralized entities (such as Tether), which rate, as far as trustability and good shepherdship goes, not in a good place. Better than Pol Pot and Mugabe. Maybe. Oof. So if it's decades from its final form, when is it going to deliver on its first actually useful to humanity milestone? I'm still waiting.

bonestamp2 5y ago
> so far crypto has enabled 'I encrypted your data!' scams These scams existed long before crypto. But, crypto currencies are a better solution to international money transfers so of course they became the preferred currencies for these scams.
- varjag 5y ago
  It took crypto to make them Web scale.
- lottin 5y ago
  If cryptocurrencies were a better solution, they would have been widely adopted. Instead, they have been adopted by people who can't use real money for one reason or another, e.g. criminals. Which tells us they are a poor substitute for real money.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Or those without decent banking access
    - lottin 5y ago
      I don't know that one can use crypto without a bank account. Is there a black market where you can buy/sell crypto with/for cash?
      - exdsq 5y ago
        In several African countries people use their phone credit as a currency to barter and there are trials to use crypto instead with on/off cash ramps in the same way as the phone credit works but with the additional benefit of things like financial records to start building credit scores
        lottin 5y ago
        Can you provide a link? None of this makes any sense. Why would anybody buy phone credit and then use that to barter instead of just buying whatever they need directly? How do you build a credit score from a record of transactions? Why do Africans that don't have access to banking are so worried about building a credit score? So many questions...
        exdsq 5y ago
        I can give a more complete answer later but here’s a link that looks relevant https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2013/01/19/airtime-is-money https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/finance-and-e... Credit scores help introduce micro loans which help with social mobility and is key to bringing communities out of poverty
flipbrad 5y ago
Don't forget the environmental catastrophe of all that wasted electricity generation, and driving up prices of GPUs.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kbenson 5y ago
If that's the trend, by the time it reaches it's final form we'll all be smoking husks left over from the great AI uprising wars, but don't judge those AIs too harshly, that new testnet that paid out for verified kills was just too good to pass up.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> I don't think crypto gets to claim the benefits of the oft touted protection against centralized bullies or scams. The big problem here is that the core benefit of cryptocurrency is in removing the bank as a middle man. But the bank is the chokepoint where governments impose constraints. When you're up against an authoritarian government imposing unreasonable constraints, that's what you need. But it works the same against any constraints. So if you want constraints on "money laundering" or processing transactions related to criminal activity, those constraints are gone too. The constraints are already gone for anyone willing to break the law. You can't un-invent Bitcoin, so from here on drug dealers will be able to use it or something like it to transfer their drug money etc. That's happened, it's in the past, no regulations you put on law-abiding people will undo it because the people doing it are already the people breaking the law. We still have all the regulations. They just don't work anymore. We're still paying the cost and the benefit has evaporated. But for all the honest people who are following the law, the regulations still apply. The overhead is still there. All the paperwork and the false positives. So you can use Bitcoin to buy drugs but you can't use it to buy a sandwich, because to accept Bitcoin the sandwich shop would have to deal with filing fees and lawyers that the drug dealer is just ignoring. Regular people don't get the benefit until we have a regulatory system that makes it as easy to accept cryptocurrency as it is to accept cash.
- clusterfish 5y ago
  You can't uninvent Bitcoin but you can certainly make it illegal, making it all but useless for drug trade or money laundering. Nobody needs a currency that you can't exchange for, you know, real currency that you can buy real things with. So although the government doesn't have the power to eliminate Bitcoin, they do have the power to make it useless. I don't think they will though, because guess who is using it for bribes and money laundering?
  - mwint 5y ago
    If you can’t trade BTC for USD, you’ll trade it for Yen, and then trade for USD. Some country will want to cash in on the demand for their currency, and will leave it legal to exchange.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> when is it going to deliver on its first actually useful to humanity milestone Technologically speaking, most cryptocurrencies are utterly useless. Bitcoin included. There are some good projects though. Monero, for example. It allows people to transact without anybody knowing anything about the details of the transaction. Where the money came from, where it's going, how much money was moved. Everything is obfuscated. Block chain analysis is at the very least hard and inconclusive, if not impossible. So it essentially works like digital cash. This is an invaluable achievement that allows people to reclaim their financial privacy in a world where governments think it's acceptable to surveil everyone.