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The rise and fall of crypto culture
- jqpabc123 4y agoHow many people have ever actually bought some physical real world product with crypto? Even among crypto fans, I suspect the answer is a very small minority. As an actual currency, crypto has yet to get out of the starting gate. Any popularity it has is mostly among those who don't know much about monetary policy and for the most part, really don't care. Any crypto "culture" is built around myth and imagination of what might be but has never been.
- eimrine 4y agoDo you really believe most crypto fans are just holding and doing nothing else? Especially after earning 10x 100x 1000x in dollars? I have convinced several ppl to buy crypto pretty early but nobody of them kept holding after earning several times more they have bought.
- rco8786 4y agoOP said literally nothing about buying and holding, so you’re starting off with a straw man. How many of those people have used crypto to purchase any goods?
- eimrine 4y agoCan VPN be considered as goods?
- Grimburger 4y agoIt would classified a service, not goods. But feels a bit pedantic in this context.
- jqpabc123 4y agonobody of them kept holding after earning several times more they have bought. No? So did they spend it ... or did they exchange it into something that is actually a working currency?
- eimrine 4y ago> actually a working currency Isn't "working currency" a "physical real world product"?
- Toine 4y agoSick of arrogant & condescending comments like this made by ignorant people. You're flexing because you took advantage of a bubble, congratulations, nobody cares, and it's completely irrelevant to the parents comment.
- eimrine 4y agoI was maybe condescending but in what place I was arrogant? And who seems more ignorant - dollars & bitcoins user or only dollars user? > nobody cares Except of you?
- StevenWaterman 4y agoI have, I bought some jewellery for around $100 worth of crypto. Admittedly, that was before crypto culture really became what it is now - probably 2014 or so. I've distanced myself from it all now, but it was reasonably easy to buy real products back then. I'd be surprised if it wasn't easier now, assuming transaction fees aren't absurdly high.
- davidktr 4y agoDrugs is the answer you are seeking.
- digianarchist 4y agoLSD, Ketamine, 2CB and MDMA. It’s cryptos only use for me personally.
- seibelj 4y agohttps://app.ribbon.finance/v2/theta-vault/T-yvUSDC-P-ETH https://app.ribbon.finance/v2/theta-vault/T-yvUSDC-P-ETH This is an automated put-selling strategy using stablecoins (USDC). Every week the smart contract picks a new strike based on the Black Scholes formula and sells puts for the ETH price. This is just one use case for one project in the DeFi space. It has $115 million deposited which is a small amount of the total put to work in DeFi. Crypto doesn’t need to be a currency - crypto is permissionless finance. There are thousands of projects like the one I linked. HN commenters generally have no idea what’s going on in this space and continue to argue “bUt iS iT a CuRrEnCy???” talking points as if anyone gives a fuck who works or invests in the ecosystem.
- DebtDeflation 4y agoPeople implemented automated trading strategies decades before Blockchain or "smart contracts" existed.
- seibelj 4y agoKey word is “permissionless” - anyone on earth can create more projects and anyone on earth can invest. No license, government, or agreement needed.
- DebtDeflation 4y agoWhat does permissionless even mean in the context of an automated trading strategy? Ultimately, someone needs to put up the initial capital, meet marginal calls when required, and cover losses when they happen. What happens when your smart contract goes to initiate a sell and there are no buyers (a real possibility in any market but especially illiquid crypto markets)? Exchanges exist for a reason.
- seibelj 4y agoEverything is building blocks. For the project I linked it’s fully collateralized - you can’t withdraw money that would make the system unstable. Other projects build on other pieces of infrastructure to do all of that automatically. Again it seems like the person I’m talking to understands very little about this space because your questions are rudimentary to anyone who understands crypto, but you comment as if you are an authority. This is the central problem with HN and crypto conversations.
- elif 4y agoDoes 100% living off of crypto count as 'actual' to you? Plenty of people in that boat. The fact that someone doesn't want to pay an extra $3 and wait 15 minutes to buy a coke is really a poor basis for reasoning. Is TSLA also not "actually" valuable? You have to sell it for it to do anything too. From before the Bitcoin whitepaper, the goal has been to decouple value from arbitrary, inflationary, corporate and state-imposed forces. It was referred to as egold not ePayPal. EDIT: literally asking for crypto perspective then downvoting when it's provided. This is why no one responds positively on HN crypto threads. Too much head in the sand with karma.
- dimgl 4y agoYikes. There's a lot to unpack here. > Does 100% living off of crypto count as 'actual' to you? Plenty of people in that boat. Who? Lol. The overwhelming majority of people do not "live off of crypto". > The fact that someone doesn't want to pay an extra $3 and wait 15 minutes to buy a coke is really a poor basis for reasoning. No it isn't. If I go to CVS to buy a Coke I don't want to be there for fifteen minutes. I want to be there for a few seconds at most. > Is TSLA also not "actually" valuable? You have to sell it for it to do anything too. Yeah but it's unlikely people are _living off of it_ or trying to convince other people that if they get in, then they too can live off of it. > From before the Bitcoin whitepaper, the goal has been to decouple value from arbitrary, inflationary, corporate and state-imposed forces. It was referred to as egold not ePayPal. Yes, we know why Bitcoin exists. We also know why _it doesn't work_. The power of the State dictates the power of the currency.
- jrsj 4y agoWithin the next year you will literally be able to go to CVS and buy whatever you want via Lightning Network and it’ll be nearly instant. An actual completed transaction too, not something that doesn’t settle until later.
- dimgl 4y agoI just don't care that much really. The current systems work fine IMO.
- bgroat 4y agoI hold Monero since it's popular on darknet marketplaces. With the global drug trade estimated at ~$8 trillion, if XMR captures 1% of that it's ~$80B. XMR is currently valued at ~$4.3B so I'd be looking at 18.6x ROI But I don't think this is the utopia use-case that crypto proponents support
- Uehreka 4y agoWhenever I hear someone say “if X captures 1% of the market, that’s $Y Billion” I can’t help but feel like that’s backwards: If X captured $Y Billion of revenue then it’ll have 1% marketshare. Capturing 1% marketshare is not equally easy in all markets, it’s much harder to capture 1% of a very large market. There’s no hard-and-fast rule that “surely anyone working hard enough will get at least 1% marketshare”.
- bgroat 4y agoI agree with you. It's so easy! I'll just capture 1% of global GDP and make $847B/yr I think my thesis is directionally correct (I do hold XMR broadly for the reasons stated) But the spirit of the post was to be ridiculous
- duped 4y agoAmong my peers, we learned about cryptocurrency back when it was the best/only way to buy MDMA off the Silk Road.
- edem 4y agoIt is quite the opposite. It is pouplar among thoes who __know a lot__ about monetary policy and they want to get __out__ from the fraud that our current global regime is. As for "has yet to get out of the starting gate": you have to get your head out of the sand instead. It is already mainstream and it is already being adopted by huge companies including JPMorgan, KPMG and a lot of others and also by countries like El Salvador.
- lesuorac 4y agoI've long felt that cryptocoins real promise to sellers is the lack of chargebacks / fraud. Once you've received the money, you've received the money. For a bunch of coins the high transaction fees make it pretty pointless (why pay 20$ worth of BTC for a 5$ exchange). But something like monero's with ~0.0007$ fees [1] (which the buyer pays anyways) should be attractive to a seller. [1]: https://www.monero.how/monero-transaction-fees https://www.monero.how/monero-transaction-fees
- thinkmassive 4y agoThere were well over 30k attendees at the Miami Bitcoin 2022 Conference last week. Every single vendor accepted Bitcoin payments over the Lightning Network. Many local shops and restaurants in Miami Beach also accept Bitcoin. I purchased multiple coffees and meals using BTC/LN, with zero issues and the payments were processed faster than a credit card. In addition to physical goods, some prominent online services have been accepting Bitcoin for a while, such as Namecheap (dns registrar) and Mullvad (vpn).
- yabones 4y agoOne of my old pals bought lots of drugs on the dark web over the course of 5 years, nearly a decade ago. They estimate that if they would have held that bitcoin instead of it (quite literally) going up in smoke, it would be worth nearly 5 million USD today. But that's the only real world transaction that comes to mind, buying illegal stuff (which is now legal where we live). Normal people don't pay for a coffee with cryptocurrency because it's not convenient, not fast, and and not "easy".
- ______-_-______ 4y agoUkraine's military is using it. > “In a situation like this, where the national bank is not fully operating, crypto is helping to perform fast transfers, to make it very quick and get results almost immediately,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/technology/bitcoin-ukraine-russia-roose.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/technology/bitcoin-ukrain...
- shafyy 4y ago> We are entering a new age, the current iteration will become the badlands, where unknown wallets lurk in the shadows, we will see the rise of a new blockchain economy, not one driven by greed, but instead driven by trust, not trustlessness. (Public, permissionless) blockchain will never be a mainstream technology. It simply doesn't have any practical advantages over existing technologies, and hence doesn't solve a problem better than existing technologies. There are technologies like VR which are also in their infancy, but already provide real value to customers. And if you squint your eyes you can see where incremental improvements will lead to (and no, I don't mean everyone living in the metaverse). But with blockchain - I have tried, I really tried. I just can't see it, and I yet to have find a crypto proponent that gives me a real example where a blockchain based tech adds real value to customers.
- Dzugaru 4y agoI bought some crypto for the first time recently. Because Mastercard and Visa don't work for me anymore - I can't pay for services outside my country of residence, and maybe there is some obscure way to do it not touching crypto, but I chose to get some Bitcoin because that was relatively easy.
- neoromantique 4y agoSo, illegally overcoming sanctions. That's literally the problem
- jrsj 4y agoOnly a problem if you’re a fan of U.S. imperialism.
- neoromantique 4y agoНет, но я понимаю что сейчас есть большее зло. I'd much rather have some regulation than no regulation at all. It doesn't have to be one of the extremes.
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- josht 4y agoThe notion that regulation equates to the fall of crypto is a falsehood. Regulation will help clarify crypto usage.
- jrsj 4y agoYep. A lot of major institutions want to get in but can’t until there’s a regulatory framework in place.
- rvz 4y ago> The notion that regulation equates to the fall of crypto is a falsehood. Hence why Stripe waited for regulations first and entered in again, with everyone in this thread screaming and crying at them. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30628677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30628677
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- edem 4y agoThis article has no substance and the author doesn't understand the basic concepts of the ecosystem. For example trustless is completely misunderstood in this context. I agree that we need regulation but not because of the reasons outlined in this article.
- beckman466 4y ago> we will see the rise of a new blockchain economy, not one driven by greed, but instead driven by trust, not trustlessness. it sounds to me like he is talking about the holochain p2p app framework, and other projects like Ceptr, Hypercore/DAT, Secure Scuttlebutt, etc., loosely united under the umbrella term 'DWeb'. this is Cronje doing a code review of holochain a few years ago: "The Holochain scalable distributed computing model seems to be taking decentralization to a new level, but bloody hell, is this thing just too good to be true?" [...] "I think the above is an important distinction. “A holochain is a validating distributed hash table (DHT) where every node enforces validation rules on data against the signed chains where the data originated, this is not consensus [instead it's agent-centric like Git]" [...] "The idea here, is that not all data needs to be shared with everyone. If A and B wish to transfer value, and they agree, C doesn’t have to know about it. This is a good idea for systems where not all parties need to participate, social networks, chat programs, p2p platforms, things like shared document updates. It’s essentially a large scale hosted shared git repository for collaboration." [...] "Holo, Holochain, Ceptr, and MetaCurrency are all the same thing, this is confusing at first, but MetaCurrency is the root, they have their next generation Operating System (Ceptr), and Ceptr is Holochain, with Holo being their first real world application system." [...] "First impressions, this is really good code. New standard kind of good." [...] "A lot of production considerations already in. This code is scary good." [...] "I love this code. File after file after file is just amazing. I’m going to be spending a lot more time here." Credit given and optimization added. I can’t get enough of this code. (Editor’s note: cold water thrown at Andre about this point.)" [...] "Guys, this is something else, after seeing the above code, I started exploring a bit more." [...] "Clutter, a fully distributed twitter built on holochain." [...] "Holochat, a distributed Slack. This is actually insane. There is so much here already. Everyone is going on about the new distributed Internet, here it is. Ready to be used." https://cryptobriefing.com/holochain-code-review-and-distributed-computing-thoughts/ https://cryptobriefing.com/holochain-code-review-and-distrib...
- jasfi 4y agoThere are some good trading opportunities. Anyone who has previously traded stocks can apply a lot of the same knowledge. See my auto crypto trading SaaS under development if you like: https://tradecast.one https://tradecast.one