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I didn’t downvote you, but I’m personally pretty skeptical that there is anything of value for me that will come out of cryptocurrencies. Even pets.com offered

I didn’t downvote you, but I’m personally pretty skeptical that there is anything of value for me that will come out of cryptocurrencies. Even pets.com offered value for customers, it just wasn’t profitable. For the case of Google, it was always clear that search engines provided value, but Google figured out how to do it way better than its competitors. I’ll be honest, I just haven’t seen a use case for cryptocurrencies that I actually want in my life.

benreesman 4y ago
So I’m also really skeptical of blockchain-panacea. But there are a lot of wicked smart people (like Turing winners and shit) working on the Byzantine distributed consensus problem. It’s by no means solved, but also not proven insoluble, so kind of a toss up. And even if crypto-shitcoin mania did nothing but fund successful research into that problem it would have manifold applications outside of cyber-money. Cyber-money is also kind of cool in that conventional electronic securities markets (which are every bit as crooked btw) don’t really innovate much because there’s no Jobs/Wozniak version of being an electronic financial market participant. When that stuff gets more efficient, everyone’s 401k compounds a little faster. So as a farm league for ARCA there’s some value there. But the main use case that speaks to me is going from “unbanked” to “quite reasonably banked” in remittance scenarios. I live in California and sadly we put most of our crap jobs on semi-legal folks from Central and South America. Speaks a bit to their superior moral fiber that they often work hard to send every spare dollar home. Difficult to do via SWIFT, easy to do via USDC. So, no fanboy here, but it’s not all bullshit.
- bombcar 4y ago
  I suspect something will come of it but it won’t actually be blockchain in the end. The reason SWIFT is difficult has nothing to do with technological reasons.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    There are both technological and non-technological reasons why you’re lucky to get an international wire done in less than 2-5 days even if you’re the kind of person who has a law firm retained. I don’t mind people having the last word in general, but a vague and inaccurate swipe at one of several substantial points that I raised isn’t really HN style. In the spirit of giving you the last word I’d like to invite you to reply substantially.
    - henrikschroder 4y ago
      > an international wire done in less than 2-5 days Uh... What? Every time I transfer money from my US bank account to my European bank account it's the same story. I put in the transfer at Chase, they go "Oh, sorry, the bank is closed now because it's after 3pm in New York, because that's apparently still a thing, but we'll transfer it first thing tomorrow morning." At 6am New York time or whatever, their shitty batch job runs, and seconds later the money is available to me in my EU bank account. A couple of hours later I then get an email from Chase telling me that the money has been sent and I should anticipate it in about three business days. You don't know what you don't know, and most Americans simply have no idea how much US banks suck in an international comparison. SWIFT transfers are instant when your bank doesn't suck.
      - benreesman 4y ago
        I’m aware that when both banks have KYC and a pre-existing account relationship on file between US and the EU it runs as smoothly as you’ve described (which is frankly not that smoothly). Now try a new employee, or not being white, or a million other things. The conventional international money transfer scenarios start to get some serious grit in the gears. If you hit even one of those potholes the USDC there in 15 minutes thing has already won. By your own admission it’s already won if it’s after 5pm (not 3) Eastern. 24/7/365: 15 minutes, 5 bucks or 50 million. That’s better than SWIFT for you at dinner time, and for a lot of people ever.
    - Nursie 4y ago
      > you’re lucky to get an international wire done in less than 2-5 days LOL. Money can be sent internationally in a lot of places instantly. Hell, I've transferred six figures between the UK and Australia recently as well, and never waited more than a handful of hours for the mone to arrive. This is such an enormous non-use-case for cryptocurrency it's hilarious.
- pavlov 4y ago
  More efficient remittances is a problem that can be solved without the massive negative externalities of the crypto ecosystem. “Banking the unbanked” is a core part of the crypto narrative, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of traction in the real world. El Salvador ought to be a showcase, since it’s a dollar economy (no local currency) and the government gave crypto wallets to everyone with a $30 free money incentive. Yet crypto remittances is only a few percent of the total, IIRC, and the wallets mostly go unused. More regulation around crypto on the remittance sender side (USA / Europe) is inevitable, and that makes the case even weaker. A non-crypto startup is probably a better, nimbler disruptor for this market than one carrying the ideological and technological baggage of crypto.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    What are the massive negative externalities? Port of of Work/Waste L1s like BTC and ETH burn a fuck ton of power, but it’s climate impact is mostly in places where sketchy municipal managers with cheap coal would be burning it anyhow. They also drive massive interest in renewables and soak up a fuck ton of otherwise wasted renewable electricity. When the aluminum market tanked with COVID the ETH boom caused a net increase in Icelandic geothermal exploitation. Dirty mid-level PRC officials in NK-adjacent, coal rich provinces are a problem, but a different problem than BTC mining. There’s arguable nothing on earth keeping so much renewable energy in-demand, fully-loaded, at all possible times than blockchain. So what’s your beef?
    - jeromegv 4y ago
      So burning all this power is actually "good" because... we would waste this energy otherwise? That's non-sense. Everything you just said is just made up and backed by absolutely no studies. And you would need studies to prove that because it goes against everything we know about energy. If our energy consumption is increasing, then new energy supply must come up to fill that gap, and more often than not, it's not renewable.
      - benreesman 4y ago
        PoW blockchain mining is like the absolute sweet spot for surplus renewables: it’s time insensitive, energy-intensive, and fucking lucrative. I’m a little reluctant to write off anything putting massive upward pressure on photovoltaic efficiency. I don’t remember where I read the thing about Iceland, but I was trying to buy a bunch of NVIDIA cards at the time and every supplier I spoke to was like: “Iceland bro, sorry”. If you’re just against this thing by all means be against it. I’m certainly against parts of it. But whether some sketchy-ass coal from China gets used to mine BitCoin or gets shipped to NK to run whatever godawful shit they’re up to? I hope NK is just mining BTC, because I can think of about a zillion worse things they could be doing with off-the-books coal. Ultimately HN isn’t a speculation society, and if you really think I’m in outer space on this tell me so and I’ll carve an hour or three out of a busy work week to pull all the footnotes and resoundingly corner you with facts and figures. But if you just don’t like BitCoin? Well I don’t exactly love it either, and we can leave it at that.
- monkey_monkey 4y ago
  > But the main use case that speaks to me is going from “unbanked” to “quite reasonably banked” in remittance scenarios. You really need to look at solutions like M-Pesa. This feels like a solved problem.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    I’ll check it out! Thanks for the pointer. I don’t have a personal need for a remittance solution (bachelor without much family), but given my geography I bump into people who do with some frequency.
copx 4y ago
Bitcoin offers "value" too - in the market economy sense. It allows you to buy illegal products and services on the DarkNet and do so anonymously (if you use one of the Bitcoin "washing" services which make it impossible to track the transfer back to you). That is a major "value" for some people and the reason why they buy Bitcoin.
- benreesman 4y ago
  There is clearly a major use case for “cyber-money” as the new cash. What we used to call freedom we now call “privacy” and while BTC L1 is not all that private really, it at a minimum makes people feel like they have more privacy than using their Visa and not bothering to email the NSA their bank statement directly. If they’re buying drugs for personal use? I’ve got no beef with that, the various legislatures are constantly changing their minds about that, who am I to judge? If they’re trying to buy a hit on someone? I’m sure the authorities are on top of that with or without BitCoin. As you can read on my sibling reply I think it’s more nuanced even than that, but to play Devil’s Advocate: even if BitCoin’s use case was only to seem a little more like cash and therefore feel a little less crowded by the equation group putting full-take on every traffic light they drive past, is that evil or bad or a scam? Fuck I’d pay a lot more than gas fees for a truly private phone call.

benreesman 4y ago

So I’m also really skeptical of blockchain-panacea. But there are a lot of wicked smart people (like Turing winners and shit) working on the Byzantine distributed consensus problem. It’s by no means solved, but also not proven insoluble, so kind of a toss up. And even if crypto-shitcoin mania did nothing but fund successful research into that problem it would have manifold applications outside of cyber-money. Cyber-money is also kind of cool in that conventional electronic securities markets (which are every bit as crooked btw) don’t really innovate much because there’s no Jobs/Wozniak version of being an electronic financial market participant. When that stuff gets more efficient, everyone’s 401k compounds a little faster. So as a farm league for ARCA there’s some value there. But the main use case that speaks to me is going from “unbanked” to “quite reasonably banked” in remittance scenarios. I live in California and sadly we put most of our crap jobs on semi-legal folks from Central and South America. Speaks a bit to their superior moral fiber that they often work hard to send every spare dollar home. Difficult to do via SWIFT, easy to do via USDC. So, no fanboy here, but it’s not all bullshit.

bombcar 4y ago
I suspect something will come of it but it won’t actually be blockchain in the end. The reason SWIFT is difficult has nothing to do with technological reasons.
- benreesman 4y ago
  There are both technological and non-technological reasons why you’re lucky to get an international wire done in less than 2-5 days even if you’re the kind of person who has a law firm retained. I don’t mind people having the last word in general, but a vague and inaccurate swipe at one of several substantial points that I raised isn’t really HN style. In the spirit of giving you the last word I’d like to invite you to reply substantially.
  - henrikschroder 4y ago
    > an international wire done in less than 2-5 days Uh... What? Every time I transfer money from my US bank account to my European bank account it's the same story. I put in the transfer at Chase, they go "Oh, sorry, the bank is closed now because it's after 3pm in New York, because that's apparently still a thing, but we'll transfer it first thing tomorrow morning." At 6am New York time or whatever, their shitty batch job runs, and seconds later the money is available to me in my EU bank account. A couple of hours later I then get an email from Chase telling me that the money has been sent and I should anticipate it in about three business days. You don't know what you don't know, and most Americans simply have no idea how much US banks suck in an international comparison. SWIFT transfers are instant when your bank doesn't suck.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      I’m aware that when both banks have KYC and a pre-existing account relationship on file between US and the EU it runs as smoothly as you’ve described (which is frankly not that smoothly). Now try a new employee, or not being white, or a million other things. The conventional international money transfer scenarios start to get some serious grit in the gears. If you hit even one of those potholes the USDC there in 15 minutes thing has already won. By your own admission it’s already won if it’s after 5pm (not 3) Eastern. 24/7/365: 15 minutes, 5 bucks or 50 million. That’s better than SWIFT for you at dinner time, and for a lot of people ever.
  - Nursie 4y ago
    > you’re lucky to get an international wire done in less than 2-5 days LOL. Money can be sent internationally in a lot of places instantly. Hell, I've transferred six figures between the UK and Australia recently as well, and never waited more than a handful of hours for the mone to arrive. This is such an enormous non-use-case for cryptocurrency it's hilarious.
pavlov 4y ago
More efficient remittances is a problem that can be solved without the massive negative externalities of the crypto ecosystem. “Banking the unbanked” is a core part of the crypto narrative, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of traction in the real world. El Salvador ought to be a showcase, since it’s a dollar economy (no local currency) and the government gave crypto wallets to everyone with a $30 free money incentive. Yet crypto remittances is only a few percent of the total, IIRC, and the wallets mostly go unused. More regulation around crypto on the remittance sender side (USA / Europe) is inevitable, and that makes the case even weaker. A non-crypto startup is probably a better, nimbler disruptor for this market than one carrying the ideological and technological baggage of crypto.
- benreesman 4y ago
  What are the massive negative externalities? Port of of Work/Waste L1s like BTC and ETH burn a fuck ton of power, but it’s climate impact is mostly in places where sketchy municipal managers with cheap coal would be burning it anyhow. They also drive massive interest in renewables and soak up a fuck ton of otherwise wasted renewable electricity. When the aluminum market tanked with COVID the ETH boom caused a net increase in Icelandic geothermal exploitation. Dirty mid-level PRC officials in NK-adjacent, coal rich provinces are a problem, but a different problem than BTC mining. There’s arguable nothing on earth keeping so much renewable energy in-demand, fully-loaded, at all possible times than blockchain. So what’s your beef?
  - jeromegv 4y ago
    So burning all this power is actually "good" because... we would waste this energy otherwise? That's non-sense. Everything you just said is just made up and backed by absolutely no studies. And you would need studies to prove that because it goes against everything we know about energy. If our energy consumption is increasing, then new energy supply must come up to fill that gap, and more often than not, it's not renewable.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      PoW blockchain mining is like the absolute sweet spot for surplus renewables: it’s time insensitive, energy-intensive, and fucking lucrative. I’m a little reluctant to write off anything putting massive upward pressure on photovoltaic efficiency. I don’t remember where I read the thing about Iceland, but I was trying to buy a bunch of NVIDIA cards at the time and every supplier I spoke to was like: “Iceland bro, sorry”. If you’re just against this thing by all means be against it. I’m certainly against parts of it. But whether some sketchy-ass coal from China gets used to mine BitCoin or gets shipped to NK to run whatever godawful shit they’re up to? I hope NK is just mining BTC, because I can think of about a zillion worse things they could be doing with off-the-books coal. Ultimately HN isn’t a speculation society, and if you really think I’m in outer space on this tell me so and I’ll carve an hour or three out of a busy work week to pull all the footnotes and resoundingly corner you with facts and figures. But if you just don’t like BitCoin? Well I don’t exactly love it either, and we can leave it at that.
monkey_monkey 4y ago
> But the main use case that speaks to me is going from “unbanked” to “quite reasonably banked” in remittance scenarios. You really need to look at solutions like M-Pesa. This feels like a solved problem.
- benreesman 4y ago
  I’ll check it out! Thanks for the pointer. I don’t have a personal need for a remittance solution (bachelor without much family), but given my geography I bump into people who do with some frequency.

copx 4y ago

Bitcoin offers "value" too - in the market economy sense. It allows you to buy illegal products and services on the DarkNet and do so anonymously (if you use one of the Bitcoin "washing" services which make it impossible to track the transfer back to you). That is a major "value" for some people and the reason why they buy Bitcoin.

benreesman 4y ago
There is clearly a major use case for “cyber-money” as the new cash. What we used to call freedom we now call “privacy” and while BTC L1 is not all that private really, it at a minimum makes people feel like they have more privacy than using their Visa and not bothering to email the NSA their bank statement directly. If they’re buying drugs for personal use? I’ve got no beef with that, the various legislatures are constantly changing their minds about that, who am I to judge? If they’re trying to buy a hit on someone? I’m sure the authorities are on top of that with or without BitCoin. As you can read on my sibling reply I think it’s more nuanced even than that, but to play Devil’s Advocate: even if BitCoin’s use case was only to seem a little more like cash and therefore feel a little less crowded by the equation group putting full-take on every traffic light they drive past, is that evil or bad or a scam? Fuck I’d pay a lot more than gas fees for a truly private phone call.