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I'm always amazed at how many years into the future crypto enthusiasts are willing to wait for the basic use case of their product to be practical. "Sure, you c

I'm always amazed at how many years into the future crypto enthusiasts are willing to wait for the basic use case of their product to be practical. "Sure, you can't use this currency for day to day transactions, and it's incredibly volatile and risky to hold significant amounts of it, but one day, by magic one assumes, it might be useful!"

rglullis 4y ago
Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest. (http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html) > you can't use this currency for day to day transactions Not with this attitude, you can't. ;) What currency is "this"? BTC, ETH, Doge, USDC, DAI? > incredibly volatile How volatile is USDC, DAI, GUSD? > risky to hold significant amounts of it It's also risky to walk around with significant amounts of cash in the wallet. It doesn't stop people from wanting to carry some money around. And more importantly, the alternative of "going cashless" is a whole other set of systemic risks. > it might be useful! The use cases exist already. Micropayments and streaming transfers (as an alternative for subscriptions) using stable currencies are already possible. If you don't care about it, it's a different story.
- shkkmo 4y ago
  > Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. You could make that argument 10 years ago. It's been plenty long enough to find a use case that isn't breaking laws.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    > It's been plenty long enough to find a use case that isn't breaking laws. It's impressive... Like clockwork, there will always be one coming to throw the "only use-case is illegal stuff!" line. It's like people can't wait to throw their opinions about a topic while displaying their complete ignorance of it. Tell me how you can do the use-case for Brave - ie, sharing revenue from the ads with millions of users from anywhere in the world - within the traditional payment networks. You can't. There is no Paypal or any other financial institution interested in making monthly transactions that can go as low as a few dollar cents. And somehow Brave does it, legally, and it all works out.
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      > Tell me how you can do the use-case for Brave - ie, sharing revenue from the ads with millions of users from anywhere in the world - within the traditional payment networks Brave collects money from advertisers, Brave sends money to sites and users. Nothing in that requires any sort of blockchain. If the monthly amounts are so small as to make flat transaction costs significant, then the amounts are themselves insignificant. None of this requires a decentralized trustless ledger.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        > If the monthly amounts are so small as to make flat transaction costs significant, then the amounts are themselves insignificant. That is the hole in your argument. Imagine the amount of business opportunities if the total cost of a transaction was a fraction of a cent. > None of this requires a decentralized trustless ledger. That is an implementation detail. If you find any other method to securely send value across the world for fractions of a cent (even if with intermediaries), I'm all for it.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  Quoting Paul Graham simply makes you look as incompetent as he is, watch out.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Of all the insults you could throw at PG as an attempt to make an ad-hominem, are you really going to stick with incompetent?
    - ohgodplsno 4y ago
      I could also go with full of himself, pompous, pretentious, more-boring-than-a-slatestarcodex-post-at-3AM-without-drugs, but incompetent is a good recap for a man whose career can be resumed as "got lucky during the dot com boom and has been riding that money ever since"
      - rglullis 4y ago
        And creating YC after and completely changing the nature of venture capital, that doesn't count as well. Right? Anyway, I'd be eager to hear all the amazing achievements from Mr. ohgodplsno. You must be very fun at parties.
        ohgodplsno 4y ago
        You're damn right, I'm fucking hilarious at parties. But maybe not the ones where it's just a bunch of VC bros. Once again, you said it yourself. His accomplishments are "he made money" and "he found ways to give money". Let's not mention the fact that YC has funded many extremely dubious companies and that _giving money isn't work_. Had PG not been here, someone else would have had that money, and would have given it to startups. He's a glorified (quite bad) essayist with money.
        rglullis 4y ago
        I am not into VC parties either, and I have no intention of budding with anyone into the Silicon Valley life. Anyway, I've heard lots of PG critics, and some of them I even say I'd admire because they actually did something of interest and according to their values. But you? You haven't shown anything of value that you can do. Let me repeat: I'd love to know more about your accomplishments.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  I'm not dismissing crypto as a toy. Most cryptos are Ponzi Schemes. BTC and ETH I'm dismissing as not practical.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    For the purposes of an application, calling it "not practical" is the same as calling it a "toy".
    - burnished 4y ago
      Eeeeh? I think not. A toy implies that is has no, or cannot have, practical uses and is a property of the object or idea. Not practical is an engineering problem, it is contingent on external factors. A fidget spinner is a toy, a space elevator is not practical. They are both ways to dismiss an idea though.
  - gfodor 4y ago
    The part where you moved BTC and ETH from the 'ponzi' slot to the 'not practical' slot will continue for other elements. BTC will slide into the next slot soon probably, going from 'not practical' to 'practical for a very narrow set of things that aren't the set of things people originally expected.' So it goes.
kloch 4y ago
It took many thousands of years to switch from gold/silver money to paper (fiat) money. It was tried many times and failed each time until the US succeeded in the 20th century. Even that final transition took 38 years to complete from 1933-1971 despite the US having the power of both nuclear weapons and the world's reserve currency after 1945. The transition from paper fiat dollars to electronic (credit/debit cards and later NFC apps) for ordinary everyday payments which began in ernest ~1990* is still not complete (30+ years). This is despite the fact that it is only a different method of payment, not a change in monetary system like gold/silver -> fiat was. Why would anyone expect a transition from fiat (paper and/or electronic) money to crypto to only take 10 years? * one of the places I worked in high school in 1988 was People's Drug (CVS). While we did have the primitive early electronic swipe terminals for credit cards, they were only used by the cashier for pre-authorizations (replacing the earlier method of calling an 800 number). The pre-auth step could take several minutes. We then had to imprint the card on carbon paper vouchers with the mechanical "click-clack" machines and write down various information on the vouchers with ballpoint pens. Fortunately very few customers used credit cards due to this long tedious process. Payment by check wasn't much faster as we had to write down driver's license number and address on the check by hand. In 1990 or so the first gas stations started to accept payments at the pump. Before that you had to walk inside and pay with paper money or the old slow mechanical credit card method or checks. For the first few years they only accepted debit cards at the pump, not credit. A few grocery stores started accepting debit cards around the same time as the gas stations.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  If this comment means "the current transition to crypto is likely to fail" then we agree.
  - kloch 4y ago
    Many central banks including the Fed are looking into CBDC's. While not quite the same as the distributed consensus based algorithm of Bitcoin, there are too many benefits to governments/central banks to ignore the technology. The question is not whether cryptographically secured algorithmic money will be a part of future monetary systems but who will control the algorithm and/or how will different systems compete with each other.
burnished 4y ago
Eeeeh, a lot of stuff we think of as being normal or obvious took a really long time to develop into something useful, so I don't know if "early adopters excited about technology well before it becomes useful or even has a clear use" is really the strongest point you can make. Especially on a tech centered forum right?

rglullis 4y ago

Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest. (http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html) > you can't use this currency for day to day transactions Not with this attitude, you can't. ;) What currency is "this"? BTC, ETH, Doge, USDC, DAI? > incredibly volatile How volatile is USDC, DAI, GUSD? > risky to hold significant amounts of it It's also risky to walk around with significant amounts of cash in the wallet. It doesn't stop people from wanting to carry some money around. And more importantly, the alternative of "going cashless" is a whole other set of systemic risks. > it might be useful! The use cases exist already. Micropayments and streaming transfers (as an alternative for subscriptions) using stable currencies are already possible. If you don't care about it, it's a different story.

shkkmo 4y ago
> Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. You could make that argument 10 years ago. It's been plenty long enough to find a use case that isn't breaking laws.
- rglullis 4y ago
  > It's been plenty long enough to find a use case that isn't breaking laws. It's impressive... Like clockwork, there will always be one coming to throw the "only use-case is illegal stuff!" line. It's like people can't wait to throw their opinions about a topic while displaying their complete ignorance of it. Tell me how you can do the use-case for Brave - ie, sharing revenue from the ads with millions of users from anywhere in the world - within the traditional payment networks. You can't. There is no Paypal or any other financial institution interested in making monthly transactions that can go as low as a few dollar cents. And somehow Brave does it, legally, and it all works out.
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    > Tell me how you can do the use-case for Brave - ie, sharing revenue from the ads with millions of users from anywhere in the world - within the traditional payment networks Brave collects money from advertisers, Brave sends money to sites and users. Nothing in that requires any sort of blockchain. If the monthly amounts are so small as to make flat transaction costs significant, then the amounts are themselves insignificant. None of this requires a decentralized trustless ledger.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      > If the monthly amounts are so small as to make flat transaction costs significant, then the amounts are themselves insignificant. That is the hole in your argument. Imagine the amount of business opportunities if the total cost of a transaction was a fraction of a cent. > None of this requires a decentralized trustless ledger. That is an implementation detail. If you find any other method to securely send value across the world for fractions of a cent (even if with intermediaries), I'm all for it.
ohgodplsno 4y ago
Quoting Paul Graham simply makes you look as incompetent as he is, watch out.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Of all the insults you could throw at PG as an attempt to make an ad-hominem, are you really going to stick with incompetent?
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    I could also go with full of himself, pompous, pretentious, more-boring-than-a-slatestarcodex-post-at-3AM-without-drugs, but incompetent is a good recap for a man whose career can be resumed as "got lucky during the dot com boom and has been riding that money ever since"
    - rglullis 4y ago
      And creating YC after and completely changing the nature of venture capital, that doesn't count as well. Right? Anyway, I'd be eager to hear all the amazing achievements from Mr. ohgodplsno. You must be very fun at parties.
      - ohgodplsno 4y ago
        You're damn right, I'm fucking hilarious at parties. But maybe not the ones where it's just a bunch of VC bros. Once again, you said it yourself. His accomplishments are "he made money" and "he found ways to give money". Let's not mention the fact that YC has funded many extremely dubious companies and that _giving money isn't work_. Had PG not been here, someone else would have had that money, and would have given it to startups. He's a glorified (quite bad) essayist with money.
        rglullis 4y ago
        I am not into VC parties either, and I have no intention of budding with anyone into the Silicon Valley life. Anyway, I've heard lots of PG critics, and some of them I even say I'd admire because they actually did something of interest and according to their values. But you? You haven't shown anything of value that you can do. Let me repeat: I'd love to know more about your accomplishments.
ALittleLight 4y ago
I'm not dismissing crypto as a toy. Most cryptos are Ponzi Schemes. BTC and ETH I'm dismissing as not practical.
- rglullis 4y ago
  For the purposes of an application, calling it "not practical" is the same as calling it a "toy".
  - burnished 4y ago
    Eeeeh? I think not. A toy implies that is has no, or cannot have, practical uses and is a property of the object or idea. Not practical is an engineering problem, it is contingent on external factors. A fidget spinner is a toy, a space elevator is not practical. They are both ways to dismiss an idea though.
- gfodor 4y ago
  The part where you moved BTC and ETH from the 'ponzi' slot to the 'not practical' slot will continue for other elements. BTC will slide into the next slot soon probably, going from 'not practical' to 'practical for a very narrow set of things that aren't the set of things people originally expected.' So it goes.

kloch 4y ago

It took many thousands of years to switch from gold/silver money to paper (fiat) money. It was tried many times and failed each time until the US succeeded in the 20th century. Even that final transition took 38 years to complete from 1933-1971 despite the US having the power of both nuclear weapons and the world's reserve currency after 1945. The transition from paper fiat dollars to electronic (credit/debit cards and later NFC apps) for ordinary everyday payments which began in ernest ~1990* is still not complete (30+ years). This is despite the fact that it is only a different method of payment, not a change in monetary system like gold/silver -> fiat was. Why would anyone expect a transition from fiat (paper and/or electronic) money to crypto to only take 10 years? * one of the places I worked in high school in 1988 was People's Drug (CVS). While we did have the primitive early electronic swipe terminals for credit cards, they were only used by the cashier for pre-authorizations (replacing the earlier method of calling an 800 number). The pre-auth step could take several minutes. We then had to imprint the card on carbon paper vouchers with the mechanical "click-clack" machines and write down various information on the vouchers with ballpoint pens. Fortunately very few customers used credit cards due to this long tedious process. Payment by check wasn't much faster as we had to write down driver's license number and address on the check by hand. In 1990 or so the first gas stations started to accept payments at the pump. Before that you had to walk inside and pay with paper money or the old slow mechanical credit card method or checks. For the first few years they only accepted debit cards at the pump, not credit. A few grocery stores started accepting debit cards around the same time as the gas stations.

ALittleLight 4y ago
If this comment means "the current transition to crypto is likely to fail" then we agree.
- kloch 4y ago
  Many central banks including the Fed are looking into CBDC's. While not quite the same as the distributed consensus based algorithm of Bitcoin, there are too many benefits to governments/central banks to ignore the technology. The question is not whether cryptographically secured algorithmic money will be a part of future monetary systems but who will control the algorithm and/or how will different systems compete with each other.

burnished 4y ago

Eeeeh, a lot of stuff we think of as being normal or obvious took a really long time to develop into something useful, so I don't know if "early adopters excited about technology well before it becomes useful or even has a clear use" is really the strongest point you can make. Especially on a tech centered forum right?