4 ms·

I’m not sure what to say. Some of us have been saying this at every single NFT release, every influencer-backed shitcoin release, before every rugpull. They all

by smcl 4y ago

I’m not sure what to say. Some of us have been saying this at every single NFT release, every influencer-backed shitcoin release, before every rugpull. They all predictably collapse, the community swoons in astonishment and immediately move on. There’s maybe a utility in crypto, but every one of these dumb scams erodes trust in it and lessens the likelihood of widespread adoption

woodruffw 4y ago
I think the GP meant "still waiting" in the sense that they don't believe it will ever happen, not in the sense that they're optimistic.
stusmall 4y ago
There is but it isn't pretty and the utility was found years ago. It is amazing for online black markets and monetizing organization's weak security through ransomware. Cryptocurrencies are extremely well made for moving value online without limit opportunities for government intervention. People have been trying to jam that square peg in endless number of more socially acceptable round holes and, unsurprisingly, it doesn't work out well.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  It reminds me of white elephants: > It was a blessing because the animal was sacred and a sign of the monarch's favour, and a curse because the recipient now had an expensive-to-maintain animal he could not give away and could not put to much practical use. Crypto is a blessing because it allows people to move value freely, but a curse in that it forces us to really come to terms with the fact that selective oppression (i.e. you can't use a credit card to pay for a hitman) actually helps us live higher quality lives.
syspec 4y ago
I feel that part of that is attributable to the idea that, people know very well that it is a scam, but they're hoping that they can get in on the next iteration early enough to be the ones pulling the rug.
sosodev 4y ago
It's because crypto has never been anything more than an investment vehicle. Bitcoin was briefly used as a real currency until people realized that it was inflationary in nature and then the mantra became "HODL".
- cowtools 4y ago
  Allow me to make the case for cryptocurrency as a payment system. There are still systems like Monero, Firo, and others which are heavily used as payment networks on the DN due to their ability to obfuscate the source/destination/amount of transactions. Even then, many micro-transactions have little need for anonymity/security and might happily make a tradeoff for lower anonymity and/or higher centralization in exchange for lower fees. There are systems like Nano and GNU Taler which try to address this. There's a lot of BS surrounding "web3", but the dream is really this: Imagine you could have a spam-prevention system that requires a small fee for users to access a scarce and easily DoS-able service or resource - all without the vendor lock-in, tracking, insecurity, fraud, proprietary software or fees associated with middlemen like PayPal. I might pay to read a news article for 0.2 cents if I didn't have to give them my credit card. I might pay youtube a cent for every video I watch without ads, in fact I might even pay a cent for a third-party service to strip youtube of ads even if they didn't offer that service. Such a hyper-competitive system would discourage easily-bypassed advertisements and tracking in favor of an online economy that makes it easy to securely spend or donate a minuscule amount of money. I think the largest reason why we don't see bitcoin taking this role as a payment processor goes back to the 2017 XT dispute wherein bitcoin users decided not to increase the block size limit and the users who wanted to decrease payment fees forked off into "bitcoin cash", which happened to coincide with the 2017 bull market. In this sense, bitcoin is a bad example of a cryptocurrency because of its disproportionately high fees and it's use of extra measures like LN. An example of a more "normal" cryptocurrency would be something like litecoin or bitcoin cash.
  - iamben 4y ago
    I'll bite! Why does it have to be crypto currency? Why couldn't I load ten dollars credit into YouTube, in exchange for 1000 credits - one of which I'd use for every video I watch? Google has my card on file already, I'd trust them to deduct one credit per video properly. I'm pretty sure some startups have already attempted a micropayment content gate. You pay them 5 bucks, they portion out the money to the content creators every month based on the articles you choose to read. Other than an immediate payment (in the case where you're not running it yourself), why does it need cryptocurrency? Not for or against btw!

by smcl 4y ago

woodruffw 4y ago

I think the GP meant "still waiting" in the sense that they don't believe it will ever happen, not in the sense that they're optimistic.

stusmall 4y ago

There is but it isn't pretty and the utility was found years ago. It is amazing for online black markets and monetizing organization's weak security through ransomware. Cryptocurrencies are extremely well made for moving value online without limit opportunities for government intervention. People have been trying to jam that square peg in endless number of more socially acceptable round holes and, unsurprisingly, it doesn't work out well.

RC_ITR 4y ago
It reminds me of white elephants: > It was a blessing because the animal was sacred and a sign of the monarch's favour, and a curse because the recipient now had an expensive-to-maintain animal he could not give away and could not put to much practical use. Crypto is a blessing because it allows people to move value freely, but a curse in that it forces us to really come to terms with the fact that selective oppression (i.e. you can't use a credit card to pay for a hitman) actually helps us live higher quality lives.

syspec 4y ago

I feel that part of that is attributable to the idea that, people know very well that it is a scam, but they're hoping that they can get in on the next iteration early enough to be the ones pulling the rug.

sosodev 4y ago

It's because crypto has never been anything more than an investment vehicle. Bitcoin was briefly used as a real currency until people realized that it was inflationary in nature and then the mantra became "HODL".

cowtools 4y ago
Allow me to make the case for cryptocurrency as a payment system. There are still systems like Monero, Firo, and others which are heavily used as payment networks on the DN due to their ability to obfuscate the source/destination/amount of transactions. Even then, many micro-transactions have little need for anonymity/security and might happily make a tradeoff for lower anonymity and/or higher centralization in exchange for lower fees. There are systems like Nano and GNU Taler which try to address this. There's a lot of BS surrounding "web3", but the dream is really this: Imagine you could have a spam-prevention system that requires a small fee for users to access a scarce and easily DoS-able service or resource - all without the vendor lock-in, tracking, insecurity, fraud, proprietary software or fees associated with middlemen like PayPal. I might pay to read a news article for 0.2 cents if I didn't have to give them my credit card. I might pay youtube a cent for every video I watch without ads, in fact I might even pay a cent for a third-party service to strip youtube of ads even if they didn't offer that service. Such a hyper-competitive system would discourage easily-bypassed advertisements and tracking in favor of an online economy that makes it easy to securely spend or donate a minuscule amount of money. I think the largest reason why we don't see bitcoin taking this role as a payment processor goes back to the 2017 XT dispute wherein bitcoin users decided not to increase the block size limit and the users who wanted to decrease payment fees forked off into "bitcoin cash", which happened to coincide with the 2017 bull market. In this sense, bitcoin is a bad example of a cryptocurrency because of its disproportionately high fees and it's use of extra measures like LN. An example of a more "normal" cryptocurrency would be something like litecoin or bitcoin cash.
- iamben 4y ago
  I'll bite! Why does it have to be crypto currency? Why couldn't I load ten dollars credit into YouTube, in exchange for 1000 credits - one of which I'd use for every video I watch? Google has my card on file already, I'd trust them to deduct one credit per video properly. I'm pretty sure some startups have already attempted a micropayment content gate. You pay them 5 bucks, they portion out the money to the content creators every month based on the articles you choose to read. Other than an immediate payment (in the case where you're not running it yourself), why does it need cryptocurrency? Not for or against btw!