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I read that institutional investors are “afraid of crypto” and this will be bad in the long run. Bad in the long run for who? What did these VCs invest in? A h

I read that institutional investors are “afraid of crypto” and this will be bad in the long run. Bad in the long run for who? What did these VCs invest in? A huge pile of scam alt coins / alt chains, centralized exchanges, stuff no one wants. Bitcoin is digital gold. It’s boring and has operated mostly the same since the beginning. We don’t need FTX and I hope the tourists don’t come back.

anonporridge 4y ago
Bitcoin and reusable proof of work is the mind blowing innovation that represents a turning point for human civilization. Mutually assured preservation via softwar. The rest will at best be iterative technology that may eventually be integrated into the traditional securities and exchange systems governed by the local monopoly on violence, but is generally uninvestable in its current form.
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  The whole thing is uninvestable. None of it (including Bitcoin) generates any value. Nothing is created that benefits the human race. It's speculation all the way down - the only value that a bitcoin has is the likelihood of someone else paying more for it than you paid for it. It's not a turning point for human civilisation; it's a slot machine in a digital casino. Not that the derivatives of "tradfi" are any better. But underneath all that speculation at least there is actual stocks in actual companies that are actually making real human value.
  - rahen 4y ago
    > Nothing is created that benefits the human race. With Bitcoin, we're talking about nothing less than the separation of money and state, like we obtained the separation of church and state. This is huge.
    - unicornmama 4y ago
      There's no separation of money and state - unless the state allows it.
      - rahen 4y ago
        Doesn't seem to go so well, does it?
        unicornmama 4y ago
        Relative to what?
    - jamiek88 4y ago
      Yes but it’s controlled by like 3 people. They can revert the chain and have done so in the past. How is that better?
      - rahen 4y ago
        Mining is more decentralized now than it was when Chinese pools had 60% of the hashrate. We're also rolling the Stratum v2 protocol, which will considerably improve the decentralization. https://braiins.com/blog/stratum-v2-bitcoin-decentralization https://braiins.com/blog/stratum-v2-bitcoin-decentralization
      - roland35 4y ago
        Let's not forget that the entire point of "proof of work" is to waste electricity and waste electronics in persuit of making pointless calculations until one is randomly correct. What a great system!!
        rahen 4y ago
        The point of PoW is to make money hard to create, unlike state money (fiat). You could say gold, silver or basically any store of value use PoW too: they require a considerable amount of time and energy to obtain. If you could just use dirt as money, it would be worthless as anyone could produce some effortlessly. It's the basis of sound money. Bitcoin currently uses about 85TW/year of energy for its mining. Estimations for the traditional finance system seem to be around 2000TW/year. Factoring the amount of transactions, Bitcoin is about 50 more efficient per transaction (accounting transportation, paper and coin production, datacenters, energy used by banks). Its energy usage is also independent of the amount of transactions, so it becomes more efficient as the number of transactions grow.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    I don't own any crypto but I think this is an overly reductive take and fails to make comparisons to its natural competitors - cash and gold. Cash has zero intrinsic value and while gold's intrinsic value is non-zero it would be worth far less if only industrial uses were considered. It isn't reasonable to compare crypto to stocks or farmland for this reason. The distinction between cash and crypto boils down to if you have more trust in centralization or de-centralization.

anonporridge 4y ago

Bitcoin and reusable proof of work is the mind blowing innovation that represents a turning point for human civilization. Mutually assured preservation via softwar. The rest will at best be iterative technology that may eventually be integrated into the traditional securities and exchange systems governed by the local monopoly on violence, but is generally uninvestable in its current form.

marcus_holmes 4y ago
The whole thing is uninvestable. None of it (including Bitcoin) generates any value. Nothing is created that benefits the human race. It's speculation all the way down - the only value that a bitcoin has is the likelihood of someone else paying more for it than you paid for it. It's not a turning point for human civilisation; it's a slot machine in a digital casino. Not that the derivatives of "tradfi" are any better. But underneath all that speculation at least there is actual stocks in actual companies that are actually making real human value.
- rahen 4y ago
  > Nothing is created that benefits the human race. With Bitcoin, we're talking about nothing less than the separation of money and state, like we obtained the separation of church and state. This is huge.
  - unicornmama 4y ago
    There's no separation of money and state - unless the state allows it.
    - rahen 4y ago
      Doesn't seem to go so well, does it?
      - unicornmama 4y ago
        Relative to what?
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    Yes but it’s controlled by like 3 people. They can revert the chain and have done so in the past. How is that better?
    - rahen 4y ago
      Mining is more decentralized now than it was when Chinese pools had 60% of the hashrate. We're also rolling the Stratum v2 protocol, which will considerably improve the decentralization. https://braiins.com/blog/stratum-v2-bitcoin-decentralization https://braiins.com/blog/stratum-v2-bitcoin-decentralization
    - roland35 4y ago
      Let's not forget that the entire point of "proof of work" is to waste electricity and waste electronics in persuit of making pointless calculations until one is randomly correct. What a great system!!
      - rahen 4y ago
        The point of PoW is to make money hard to create, unlike state money (fiat). You could say gold, silver or basically any store of value use PoW too: they require a considerable amount of time and energy to obtain. If you could just use dirt as money, it would be worthless as anyone could produce some effortlessly. It's the basis of sound money. Bitcoin currently uses about 85TW/year of energy for its mining. Estimations for the traditional finance system seem to be around 2000TW/year. Factoring the amount of transactions, Bitcoin is about 50 more efficient per transaction (accounting transportation, paper and coin production, datacenters, energy used by banks). Its energy usage is also independent of the amount of transactions, so it becomes more efficient as the number of transactions grow.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  I don't own any crypto but I think this is an overly reductive take and fails to make comparisons to its natural competitors - cash and gold. Cash has zero intrinsic value and while gold's intrinsic value is non-zero it would be worth far less if only industrial uses were considered. It isn't reasonable to compare crypto to stocks or farmland for this reason. The distinction between cash and crypto boils down to if you have more trust in centralization or de-centralization.