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This is a genuine question - should anyone take cryptocurrency seriously? To me, the only purpose of it is to make money. It's the stock market, but with less r

This is a genuine question - should anyone take cryptocurrency seriously? To me, the only purpose of it is to make money. It's the stock market, but with less rules, and it's 24/7. People will say that crypto is important because it's decentralized and non-fiat or whatever, with the implication being that it's not controlled by a government. But we have seen time and time again that that isn't true, and if a government wants to freeze your crypto assets, they can do so easily. So in all seriousness, what is the point of crypto, other than a "new stock market"?

toomuchtodo 5y ago
If you want to speculate on a digital asset with limited regulation around the market, sure, it is fine for that. For any other purpose, no.
- poiuiopkj 5y ago
  Except for the ability to easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes, bringing a form of storing assets to the 2 billion or so unbanked individuals of the world, and comparatively cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country. These are just a few worth mentioning that quite literally change people's lives.
miracle2k 5y ago
> But we have seen time and time again that that isn't true, and if a government wants to freeze your crypto assets, they can do so easily. We have seen no such thing. The claim is not that the government can't put your wallet on a blacklist in an attempt to ban local companies from serving you. Nor is the claim that the government can't come to your home and arrest you, nor that they can't have your server taken down where you store your private keys. These things happen, but it is unreasonable to ask cryptocurrencies to protect you from real world violence, anymore than encryption is useless because someone can use a hammer.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
adventured 5y ago
> should anyone take cryptocurrency seriously? To me, the only purpose of it is to make money. It's the stock market, but with less rules, and it's 24/7. It's not the stock market at all. Not even close. The stock market is a system that enables the buying and selling of shares in productive business - businesses that provide goods and services, that generate revenue and (ideally) profit. As a shareholder you own a fraction of that production, the assets, the profit. That's ultimately what determines the value of a stock over the long-term, its ability to generate sales and profit (and of course the bounds on valuations can swing widely over that time, multiples can contract and expand). You maybe see crypto markets and think: gambling; and so that's where you're making an incorrect connection to stock markets. The stock market, if you're doing it right, is absolutely not gambling. Stocks are supported by the productive capacity of the business in question, ultimately; crypto doesn't work that way (at least not at present, maybe one will in the future). This is why Bitcoin has dramatically more in common with gold than eg stocks (gold isn't a producing asset, it's not going to spit off a dividend from profit every year). The reason an entity like Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft can so astoundingly trounce gold in generating returns over the long-term, is precisely because they're generative entities and gold is not. There's no compounding action to gold from the consequence of production growth (a lot more production is generally bad for the holders of eg gold or Bitcoin, as their value is based in part on scarcity), it's a hedging device primarily. Whereas if it's 1981 and Microsoft generates $3m in profit, they can plausibly reinvest profit and maybe get $5m the next year by hiring more engineers, launching new products, more advertising, etc. Rolling that expansion process forward is how you end up with $50m in profit instead of $3m. Gold, as with Bitcoin, does not work like that at all, there's no compounding mechanism. It's why gold sucks as an investment compared to eg the S&P index over time; although it's perfectly reasonable as an inflation hedge for a fraction of your assets, if one so desires to diversify.
- eric_cc 5y ago
  Bitcoin is attempting to BE value better than fiat. There is a possibility that we eventually achieve a bitcoin circular economy. In such a scenario, Bitcoin does not go up or down against fiat because there will be no demand for fiat.
eric_cc 5y ago
> if a government wants to freeze your crypto assets, they can do so easily. Lol source?
- jhap 5y ago
  I'm not the OP, but this from the Matt Levine newsletter last week, which I think is what he is getting at: > 1. If you hold your coins at a regulated exchange, sure yeah the authorities can probably get a warrant and seize your Bitcoins. > 2. If you hold your coins in your own wallet but you write down your private key in, like, your phone’s notes app, and it backs up to the cloud, then the authorities can probably get your cloud provider to give them access to your notes and read the key and use that to seize all your Bitcoins. (This happened to the alleged Bitfinex hack launderers.) > 3. If you write your private key on a scrap of paper, the authorities can search your house until they find it and seize all your Bitcoins. > 4. If you memorize your private key, or just write it down somewhere really safe, then they can arrest you and throw you in jail until you tell them what it is, and then seize all your Bitcoins.
  - eric_cc 5y ago
    Ah gotcha. Agree that no one man is going to stop a nation state from using Physical violence to achieve their goal.
  - berberous 5y ago
    This is ignoring that 3 and 4 are still improvements. This argument is similar to me saying there is no point to encrypted communications because the government can hack it, plant back doors, throw you in jail, etc. That is all true, but making the government’s job harder, even if not theoretically impossible for a nation state, is still something that is worthwhile.
tablespoon 5y ago
> This is a genuine question - should anyone take cryptocurrency seriously? To me, the only purpose of it is to make money. It's the stock market, but with less rules, and it's 24/7. I would say no. It's a technology that serves no practical purpose, since the problems it addresses are ones purely created by certain peculiar ideologies. If you're not indulging in one of those ideologies, there's no point. And, like you mentioned, it doesn't even succeed at addressing those problems. A virtual technology can't free you from real-world power, because it's dependent on the real world and can be attacked there, where it's weak. From outside those peculiar ideologies, something like Bitcoin is like an application written so badly that it's like 486 PC that requires as much energy as Argentina to run. Why should anyone want something like that?
- poiuiopkj 5y ago
  No practical purpose EXCEPT for the ability to easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes, bringing a form of storing assets to the 2 billion or so unbanked individuals of the world, and comparatively cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country. These are just a few of the incredibly practical use cases that quite literally change people's lives.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Except for the ability to easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes, bringing a form of storing assets to the 2 billion or so unbanned individuals of the world, and cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country. These are just a few worth mentioning because they quite literally change people's lives. I'm not disputing you can still do work on a 486 PC that requires as much power as Argentina; the question is why would you want to when a regular PC works just as well or even better? Also, most of those use-cases break down in practice at the intersection with the real world. Sure if you've got some Bitcoin and an internet connection (and a big HD to store the blockchain), you can transfer it around to your heart's content. But how (for instance) are you supposed to get Bitcoin for your authoritarian-regime fiat? Wire it to Binance? That defeats the point. Why would you use Bitcoin as a store of value, when there are better, less volatile alternatives like the dollar, the euro, or even gold? When you work through the particulars, there's not that many cases where Bitcoin actually makes sense to use, from a practical perspective.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
>"To me, the only purpose of it is to make money." Understandable, but a wide variety of things exist for the sole purpose of making money. That fact doesn't invalidate cryptocurrency. Without launching into the tried and true "what is money" pontification that crypto advocates usually bring up, it does have use cases for many people and even if those use cases are only valid when they interact with other crypto true-believers, it still has utility for those folks nonetheless.
belter 5y ago
These are amateurs, you supposed to buy your own NFT for fks sake... "Analyzing the Very Bizarre Sale of Melania Trump’s $170,000 NFT" "The crypto used to purchase the former first lady’s NFT came from the NFT creator themselves, blockchain records reveal." https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vpx8/analyzing-the-very-bizarre-sale-of-melania-trumps-dollar170000-nft https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vpx8/analyzing-the-very-bi...
- DebtDeflation 5y ago
  >you supposed to buy your own NFT for fks sake You joke, but that is exactly correct. The only real use case for NFTs is money laundering. Create silly NFT, purchase it from yourself with millions of dollars from some other illegal activity (using shell entities to hide your identity), money is now "laundered" having been legitimately earned by selling an NFT.
tasuki 5y ago
> if a government wants to freeze your crypto assets, they can do so easily They can, but only if they get physical hold of you and like, threaten you with a $5 wrench. This is not limited to governments, if whoever gets hold of you and threatens you, they will mostly be able to get your assets, and there's nothing anyone can do about that. > So in all seriousness, what is the point of crypto, other than a "new stock market"? The second time you mention the stock market. From my pov, (most?) crypto is very dissimilar to stock market. Stock market includes mostly somewhat productive assets. Crypto usually isn't productive, it's just predictably scarce. Esp Bitcoin and similar are much closer to digital gold than to stocks. See eg https://www.lynalden.com/what-is-money/ https://www.lynalden.com/what-is-money/
root_axis 5y ago
It's not even the stock market - buying stocks is an investment into a company, meaning the company has access to more funds which can be used to grow the business and generate more revenue, cryptocurrency trading is just shifting bits around, it doesn't create any new value.
jmrm 5y ago
For most of the people cryptos are a way to make money or a way to use money for illegal purposes. Outside of that, you'll only find preachers of this tech. Cryptos now have a lot more control in China, and the European Union is going to force the identification of those who interchange Euros or other currency to/from cryptos, so I don't know how much is going to last the bubble of earning money with that.
notyourday 5y ago
> So in all seriousness, what is the point of crypto, other than a "new stock market"? The society needs to start hanging banksters. This is a way there. It is a market where the scum fat cats who entrenched themselves in political class by buying politicians do not have a monopoly on swindling gullible public. cryptocurrency democratized behavior of scum. It is a good thing. When JPM Chase f!cks grandma out of her house there's some hand waving goes on as Chase does good hence maybe it was grandma fault and the CEO of JPM does not go to prison where he belongs. When grandma gets screwed by Jose the Neighborhood slickster, society will get the incentives to throw everyone who behaves like Jose the Nieghborhood slickster into prison, ensuring that the CEO of JPM and wall st bros go there as well. And that's a good thing.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

If you want to speculate on a digital asset with limited regulation around the market, sure, it is fine for that. For any other purpose, no.

poiuiopkj 5y ago
Except for the ability to easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes, bringing a form of storing assets to the 2 billion or so unbanked individuals of the world, and comparatively cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country. These are just a few worth mentioning that quite literally change people's lives.

miracle2k 5y ago

> But we have seen time and time again that that isn't true, and if a government wants to freeze your crypto assets, they can do so easily. We have seen no such thing. The claim is not that the government can't put your wallet on a blacklist in an attempt to ban local companies from serving you. Nor is the claim that the government can't come to your home and arrest you, nor that they can't have your server taken down where you store your private keys. These things happen, but it is unreasonable to ask cryptocurrencies to protect you from real world violence, anymore than encryption is useless because someone can use a hammer.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

adventured 5y ago

> should anyone take cryptocurrency seriously? To me, the only purpose of it is to make money. It's the stock market, but with less rules, and it's 24/7. It's not the stock market at all. Not even close. The stock market is a system that enables the buying and selling of shares in productive business - businesses that provide goods and services, that generate revenue and (ideally) profit. As a shareholder you own a fraction of that production, the assets, the profit. That's ultimately what determines the value of a stock over the long-term, its ability to generate sales and profit (and of course the bounds on valuations can swing widely over that time, multiples can contract and expand). You maybe see crypto markets and think: gambling; and so that's where you're making an incorrect connection to stock markets. The stock market, if you're doing it right, is absolutely not gambling. Stocks are supported by the productive capacity of the business in question, ultimately; crypto doesn't work that way (at least not at present, maybe one will in the future). This is why Bitcoin has dramatically more in common with gold than eg stocks (gold isn't a producing asset, it's not going to spit off a dividend from profit every year). The reason an entity like Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft can so astoundingly trounce gold in generating returns over the long-term, is precisely because they're generative entities and gold is not. There's no compounding action to gold from the consequence of production growth (a lot more production is generally bad for the holders of eg gold or Bitcoin, as their value is based in part on scarcity), it's a hedging device primarily. Whereas if it's 1981 and Microsoft generates $3m in profit, they can plausibly reinvest profit and maybe get $5m the next year by hiring more engineers, launching new products, more advertising, etc. Rolling that expansion process forward is how you end up with $50m in profit instead of $3m. Gold, as with Bitcoin, does not work like that at all, there's no compounding mechanism. It's why gold sucks as an investment compared to eg the S&P index over time; although it's perfectly reasonable as an inflation hedge for a fraction of your assets, if one so desires to diversify.

eric_cc 5y ago
Bitcoin is attempting to BE value better than fiat. There is a possibility that we eventually achieve a bitcoin circular economy. In such a scenario, Bitcoin does not go up or down against fiat because there will be no demand for fiat.

eric_cc 5y ago

> if a government wants to freeze your crypto assets, they can do so easily. Lol source?

jhap 5y ago
I'm not the OP, but this from the Matt Levine newsletter last week, which I think is what he is getting at: > 1. If you hold your coins at a regulated exchange, sure yeah the authorities can probably get a warrant and seize your Bitcoins. > 2. If you hold your coins in your own wallet but you write down your private key in, like, your phone’s notes app, and it backs up to the cloud, then the authorities can probably get your cloud provider to give them access to your notes and read the key and use that to seize all your Bitcoins. (This happened to the alleged Bitfinex hack launderers.) > 3. If you write your private key on a scrap of paper, the authorities can search your house until they find it and seize all your Bitcoins. > 4. If you memorize your private key, or just write it down somewhere really safe, then they can arrest you and throw you in jail until you tell them what it is, and then seize all your Bitcoins.
- eric_cc 5y ago
  Ah gotcha. Agree that no one man is going to stop a nation state from using Physical violence to achieve their goal.
- berberous 5y ago
  This is ignoring that 3 and 4 are still improvements. This argument is similar to me saying there is no point to encrypted communications because the government can hack it, plant back doors, throw you in jail, etc. That is all true, but making the government’s job harder, even if not theoretically impossible for a nation state, is still something that is worthwhile.

tablespoon 5y ago

> This is a genuine question - should anyone take cryptocurrency seriously? To me, the only purpose of it is to make money. It's the stock market, but with less rules, and it's 24/7. I would say no. It's a technology that serves no practical purpose, since the problems it addresses are ones purely created by certain peculiar ideologies. If you're not indulging in one of those ideologies, there's no point. And, like you mentioned, it doesn't even succeed at addressing those problems. A virtual technology can't free you from real-world power, because it's dependent on the real world and can be attacked there, where it's weak. From outside those peculiar ideologies, something like Bitcoin is like an application written so badly that it's like 486 PC that requires as much energy as Argentina to run. Why should anyone want something like that?

poiuiopkj 5y ago
No practical purpose EXCEPT for the ability to easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes, bringing a form of storing assets to the 2 billion or so unbanked individuals of the world, and comparatively cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country. These are just a few of the incredibly practical use cases that quite literally change people's lives.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Except for the ability to easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes, bringing a form of storing assets to the 2 billion or so unbanned individuals of the world, and cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country. These are just a few worth mentioning because they quite literally change people's lives. I'm not disputing you can still do work on a 486 PC that requires as much power as Argentina; the question is why would you want to when a regular PC works just as well or even better? Also, most of those use-cases break down in practice at the intersection with the real world. Sure if you've got some Bitcoin and an internet connection (and a big HD to store the blockchain), you can transfer it around to your heart's content. But how (for instance) are you supposed to get Bitcoin for your authoritarian-regime fiat? Wire it to Binance? That defeats the point. Why would you use Bitcoin as a store of value, when there are better, less volatile alternatives like the dollar, the euro, or even gold? When you work through the particulars, there's not that many cases where Bitcoin actually makes sense to use, from a practical perspective.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

>"To me, the only purpose of it is to make money." Understandable, but a wide variety of things exist for the sole purpose of making money. That fact doesn't invalidate cryptocurrency. Without launching into the tried and true "what is money" pontification that crypto advocates usually bring up, it does have use cases for many people and even if those use cases are only valid when they interact with other crypto true-believers, it still has utility for those folks nonetheless.

belter 5y ago

These are amateurs, you supposed to buy your own NFT for fks sake... "Analyzing the Very Bizarre Sale of Melania Trump’s $170,000 NFT" "The crypto used to purchase the former first lady’s NFT came from the NFT creator themselves, blockchain records reveal." https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vpx8/analyzing-the-very-bizarre-sale-of-melania-trumps-dollar170000-nft https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vpx8/analyzing-the-very-bi...

DebtDeflation 5y ago
>you supposed to buy your own NFT for fks sake You joke, but that is exactly correct. The only real use case for NFTs is money laundering. Create silly NFT, purchase it from yourself with millions of dollars from some other illegal activity (using shell entities to hide your identity), money is now "laundered" having been legitimately earned by selling an NFT.

tasuki 5y ago

> if a government wants to freeze your crypto assets, they can do so easily They can, but only if they get physical hold of you and like, threaten you with a $5 wrench. This is not limited to governments, if whoever gets hold of you and threatens you, they will mostly be able to get your assets, and there's nothing anyone can do about that. > So in all seriousness, what is the point of crypto, other than a "new stock market"? The second time you mention the stock market. From my pov, (most?) crypto is very dissimilar to stock market. Stock market includes mostly somewhat productive assets. Crypto usually isn't productive, it's just predictably scarce. Esp Bitcoin and similar are much closer to digital gold than to stocks. See eg https://www.lynalden.com/what-is-money/ https://www.lynalden.com/what-is-money/

root_axis 5y ago

It's not even the stock market - buying stocks is an investment into a company, meaning the company has access to more funds which can be used to grow the business and generate more revenue, cryptocurrency trading is just shifting bits around, it doesn't create any new value.

jmrm 5y ago

For most of the people cryptos are a way to make money or a way to use money for illegal purposes. Outside of that, you'll only find preachers of this tech. Cryptos now have a lot more control in China, and the European Union is going to force the identification of those who interchange Euros or other currency to/from cryptos, so I don't know how much is going to last the bubble of earning money with that.

notyourday 5y ago

> So in all seriousness, what is the point of crypto, other than a "new stock market"? The society needs to start hanging banksters. This is a way there. It is a market where the scum fat cats who entrenched themselves in political class by buying politicians do not have a monopoly on swindling gullible public. cryptocurrency democratized behavior of scum. It is a good thing. When JPM Chase f!cks grandma out of her house there's some hand waving goes on as Chase does good hence maybe it was grandma fault and the CEO of JPM does not go to prison where he belongs. When grandma gets screwed by Jose the Neighborhood slickster, society will get the incentives to throw everyone who behaves like Jose the Nieghborhood slickster into prison, ensuring that the CEO of JPM and wall st bros go there as well. And that's a good thing.