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I like the guy, he seems like a genuine technologist / hacker. I wish him well. None of the things he has worked on are any good so far. Objectively nobody act

I like the guy, he seems like a genuine technologist / hacker. I wish him well. None of the things he has worked on are any good so far. Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff. My definition: nobody would choose this stuff at arms length from a financial interest in pretending it is the correct technological + business choice.

thefounder 4y ago
I thought ICOs had a chance to help small projects but unfortunately they became the worst of crypto. I don't blame the technology though. It's the "investors/ponzi hungers" that blew it.
- lottin 4y ago
  It's inseparable from the technology. The technology is about issuing and transferring, and exchanging virtual tokens. This is all it does. And what can you do with virtual tokens? Not much, other than trying to sell them for money. I think Ponzis will always be one of the main use cases, if not the main use case.
golergka 4y ago
> Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff. Spoken with a privilege of a first-country citizen with a working banking system. I personally know dozens of people who use crypto for their main purpose: to transact. Without it, they wouldn't have been able to earn their living or have any access to their money.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Ah yes here comes the privilege argument to derail legitimate discourse. You love to see it. Your first approach should be a Wise multi-currency account. Where Wise doesn't work the only thing that makes any sense are stablecoins from a proper issuer, like USDC (definitely not USDT). These are of course issued and controlled by centralized entities, making them antithetical to the very principles of crypto. They may as well be private scrip CBDCs. Any decentralized/floating-rate coins are utter garbage for folks without access to meaningful banking systems in so-called third-world countries due to the volatility, embedded systemic leverage, high fees and potential long transaction times. These folks are the least able to stomach the 90% drawdowns (and 100% rug-pulls) we've seen market-wide. Frankly, I think the Turkish Lira has outperformed every major cryptocurrency for the last year. What these people need are actual privacy-preserving CBDCs, of which there are exactly zero in the market. Please put away the faux privilege defense. Folks of any level of privilege are able to comment meaningfully on the fitness of a technical system for purpose. Allow their arguments to stand on their own merits.
  - michaelscott 4y ago
    Although I agree that the expression that OP made maybe wasn't the best, they do have a point. > Your first approach should be a Wise multi-currency account. Excellent example; Wise is not available for account setup in the vast majority of developing countries, so if that's your solution it's already a failure. But why? For the most part it seems to come down to banking and currency regulations, which is exactly what cryptocurrency (at least Bitcoin) was designed to circumvent. I'm not even talking about countries that are essentially kleptocracies and have moulded their regulations to fit that structure, or remittances that have become such a large industry they practically power the GDP of a number of extremely poor countries. > Any decentralized/floating-rate coins are utter garbage for folks without access to meaningful banking systems in so-called third-world countries due to the volatility, embedded systemic leverage, high fees and potential long transaction times. I'm not sure this argument still holds with all the defi options today, but if this is an improvement on the status quo I guarantee people in third world countries will use it in spite of its deficiencies. A central bank that throttles access to alternative currency options will practically shut down the use of existing banking infrastructure, whether it's good or not.
    - LegionMammal978 4y ago
      > Wise is not available for account setup in the vast majority of developing countries, so if that's your solution it's already a failure. Do you have a source for this? The closest thing I can find is this list of countries where it isn't allowed [0], which includes several developing countries but certainly not the vast majority of them. [0] https://wise.com/help/articles/2978049/which-countries-can-i-use-wise-in https://wise.com/help/articles/2978049/which-countries-can-i...
      - michaelscott 4y ago
        Personal experience attempting to open an account with them while living in a developing country. Granted, this was about 5 years ago so the situation may have changed since then.
    - 4y ago
- moritonal 4y ago
  Neat, in what kind of industry/countries have you seen this?
  - golergka 4y ago
    Russia, Ukraine and refugees from these countries all around the globe.
    - dgroshev 4y ago
      Russia doesn't have refugees, it has a tiny number of people seeking asylum after protesting against the regime. Middle class Russians fleeing conscription are not exactly comparable with people seeking refuge from Russian bombs, are they?
  - michaelscott 4y ago
    Uptake in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and a number of other African countries has been climbing
- Wata2 4y ago
- dayve 4y ago
  I am based in Nigeria, a ‘third-world country’, I work remotely for a company domiciled in the US and get paid in Stablecoins (USDC & USDT). Crypto has been a life saver for me. Before that, one alternative was to get a USD account in a local bank & get paid via Western Union. The challenges are numerous. To setup a USD account locally takes a long time & multiple requirements. Assuming that hurdle is crossed, the more challenging issue is how restrictive Central bank policies are. In an economy with high inflation & parallel market rates for USD, there’s an incentive for the government to retain as much USD in the economy due to poor trade policies preventing $ revenues from coming in. Withdrawal limits have been reduced over the last 2 years alone, & the flexibility to make $ payments is hindered by low transaction limits with a USD card ($15 per transaction). To navigate this, I tried creating a virtual USD bank account with a local Fintech, with which to receive salaries. However these virtual accounts can only receive payments from US accounts (via ACH transfers) so can be restrictive. The most seamless solution to my problem has been to setup a crypto wallet. In minutes I receive my salary and can spend any amount, whenever I like. Plus, it makes it easier to save in USD, avoiding the local currency devaluation (The Naira has fallen 52% in the last 7 years under the current regime). So speaking as a ‘third-country citizen’, crypto provide a far more effective banking system.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    > The Naira has fallen 52% in the last 7 years under the current regime How much has crypto grown in Nigeria? Is it possible that the migration to crypto / loss of faith in the local currency in lieu of USD is what’s actually behind the collapse vs government policies themselves?
    - lottin 4y ago
      It's usually a combination of both. When the local currency is unreliable, as a result of bad government policies, the locals will try get hold of a stronger foreign currency. They will sell the local currency to buy the foreign currency, which will contribute to the depreciation of the local currency, which in turn will make it even less attractive, prompting more people to sell, and so on so forth.
  - 4y ago
- tgv 4y ago
  Strange. How did anybody live there before 2015?
- freejazz 4y ago
  Maybe people should be clear that they meant it'd only be useful in the context of living in the "third world"?
legulere 4y ago
Playing with new technology and research is an important thing, but you have to be open that you are doing that and don’t pretend you are developing a usable product.
aqme28 4y ago
> Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff. Why did you use the word objectively here? It seems like people objectively do use this stuff, though you possibly don't think that they're actually getting value out of it. Ethereum likely has more users than anything either of us will ever build.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
  No meaningful percentage of the global population uses crypto and a large majority that do are bad actors, either in their use or their motivations for marketing it's "uses". Maybe "relatively" would have been better but the point is the same.
  - aqme28 4y ago
    Is this the goalpost now? That a "meaningful percentage of the global population" uses your creation? That's a high bar.
    - danans 4y ago
      For a currency that is not issued by a sovereign state and purports to be useful for day to day transactions and a hedge against inflation, that's not a high bar. It would be a high bar for a currency whose purpose is to facilitate dark or illicit transactions, though. Unfortunately the valuations seem to have been predicated on the former use case, not the latter
    - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
      I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm assuming "your" means eth, which I'm not directly talking about in my response. I'm talking about the failure of crypto adoption that's original purpose was a fast, cheap and decentralized currency - none of which has come to fruition and by the looks of it, never will.
dylkil 4y ago
>Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff Stay tuned for major central banks deploying CDBCs on ethereum. Swiss, EU and Singapore are launching a pilot program.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  You can't claim something that large without a source. And why should governments pick Ethereum to enrich the bagholders with tax money?
cypress66 4y ago
> Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff. Objectively this is trivial to disprove.
- DennisP 4y ago
  Yep, just Uniswap alone has transaction volume comparable to major centralized exchanges. https://decrypt.co/114665/uniswap-overtakes-coinbase-second-largest-exchange-trading-ethereum-today https://decrypt.co/114665/uniswap-overtakes-coinbase-second-...
  - lambdadmitry 4y ago
    Between bots, wash trading, and algo traders it doesn't say much about real world adoption.
    - DennisP 4y ago
      Regarding wash trading at least, it's easier on central exchanges, since they can do it without cost. Nobody can avoid Uniswap's transaction fees.
  - dereg 4y ago
    This is incorrect/misleading on many fronts: 1. This is an outdated article citing a single point in time 2. The source tweet is comparing Uniswap's volume on all x:ETH pairs against only ETHUSDT volume on centralized exchanges. [0] 3. The date of comparison is an outlier day - when FTX's "hacker" decided to move huge sums of tokens uneconomically on chain. 4. Volume across CEXs have collapsed, a sign of the ecosystem's weakness, not strength. 5. Even then, Uniswap doesn't hold a candle to Binance. ($600m volume vs $10b volume, past 24 hours on spot pairs) 6. Liquidity is horrible right now. If you try to execute a trade of reasonable size on a non-major coin you will face a lot of slippage. [0]: The tweeter, Alex Svanevik is the founder of Nansen, a chain analytics company. It doesn't make sense that he would make such a simple mistake unless he was deliberately trying to bullpost. See for yourself: https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/uniswap#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/uniswap#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/coinbase#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/coinbase#statistics
RetpolineDrama 4y ago
So what's the next hackernews? Anyone have a link? Reason I ask is comments like this are objectively wrong yet continue to be the norm here.
karaterobot 4y ago
He starts the article with an example of someone using Ethereum in their store
iskander 4y ago
fwiw, I use USDC transfers on Ethereum in preference over wire transfers (which for me seem to require a physical bank visit to clear) or Zelle (which has very low max limit per day). I actually don't know of any robust alternatives in the US.
overtonwhy 4y ago
The son of a Russian computer scientist who cloned Bitcoin as a teenager definitely all by himself?

thefounder 4y ago

I thought ICOs had a chance to help small projects but unfortunately they became the worst of crypto. I don't blame the technology though. It's the "investors/ponzi hungers" that blew it.

lottin 4y ago
It's inseparable from the technology. The technology is about issuing and transferring, and exchanging virtual tokens. This is all it does. And what can you do with virtual tokens? Not much, other than trying to sell them for money. I think Ponzis will always be one of the main use cases, if not the main use case.

golergka 4y ago

> Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff. Spoken with a privilege of a first-country citizen with a working banking system. I personally know dozens of people who use crypto for their main purpose: to transact. Without it, they wouldn't have been able to earn their living or have any access to their money.

arcticbull 4y ago
Ah yes here comes the privilege argument to derail legitimate discourse. You love to see it. Your first approach should be a Wise multi-currency account. Where Wise doesn't work the only thing that makes any sense are stablecoins from a proper issuer, like USDC (definitely not USDT). These are of course issued and controlled by centralized entities, making them antithetical to the very principles of crypto. They may as well be private scrip CBDCs. Any decentralized/floating-rate coins are utter garbage for folks without access to meaningful banking systems in so-called third-world countries due to the volatility, embedded systemic leverage, high fees and potential long transaction times. These folks are the least able to stomach the 90% drawdowns (and 100% rug-pulls) we've seen market-wide. Frankly, I think the Turkish Lira has outperformed every major cryptocurrency for the last year. What these people need are actual privacy-preserving CBDCs, of which there are exactly zero in the market. Please put away the faux privilege defense. Folks of any level of privilege are able to comment meaningfully on the fitness of a technical system for purpose. Allow their arguments to stand on their own merits.
- michaelscott 4y ago
  Although I agree that the expression that OP made maybe wasn't the best, they do have a point. > Your first approach should be a Wise multi-currency account. Excellent example; Wise is not available for account setup in the vast majority of developing countries, so if that's your solution it's already a failure. But why? For the most part it seems to come down to banking and currency regulations, which is exactly what cryptocurrency (at least Bitcoin) was designed to circumvent. I'm not even talking about countries that are essentially kleptocracies and have moulded their regulations to fit that structure, or remittances that have become such a large industry they practically power the GDP of a number of extremely poor countries. > Any decentralized/floating-rate coins are utter garbage for folks without access to meaningful banking systems in so-called third-world countries due to the volatility, embedded systemic leverage, high fees and potential long transaction times. I'm not sure this argument still holds with all the defi options today, but if this is an improvement on the status quo I guarantee people in third world countries will use it in spite of its deficiencies. A central bank that throttles access to alternative currency options will practically shut down the use of existing banking infrastructure, whether it's good or not.
  - LegionMammal978 4y ago
    > Wise is not available for account setup in the vast majority of developing countries, so if that's your solution it's already a failure. Do you have a source for this? The closest thing I can find is this list of countries where it isn't allowed [0], which includes several developing countries but certainly not the vast majority of them. [0] https://wise.com/help/articles/2978049/which-countries-can-i-use-wise-in https://wise.com/help/articles/2978049/which-countries-can-i...
    - michaelscott 4y ago
      Personal experience attempting to open an account with them while living in a developing country. Granted, this was about 5 years ago so the situation may have changed since then.
  - 4y ago
moritonal 4y ago
Neat, in what kind of industry/countries have you seen this?
- golergka 4y ago
  Russia, Ukraine and refugees from these countries all around the globe.
  - dgroshev 4y ago
    Russia doesn't have refugees, it has a tiny number of people seeking asylum after protesting against the regime. Middle class Russians fleeing conscription are not exactly comparable with people seeking refuge from Russian bombs, are they?
- michaelscott 4y ago
  Uptake in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and a number of other African countries has been climbing
Wata2 4y ago
dayve 4y ago
I am based in Nigeria, a ‘third-world country’, I work remotely for a company domiciled in the US and get paid in Stablecoins (USDC & USDT). Crypto has been a life saver for me. Before that, one alternative was to get a USD account in a local bank & get paid via Western Union. The challenges are numerous. To setup a USD account locally takes a long time & multiple requirements. Assuming that hurdle is crossed, the more challenging issue is how restrictive Central bank policies are. In an economy with high inflation & parallel market rates for USD, there’s an incentive for the government to retain as much USD in the economy due to poor trade policies preventing $ revenues from coming in. Withdrawal limits have been reduced over the last 2 years alone, & the flexibility to make $ payments is hindered by low transaction limits with a USD card ($15 per transaction). To navigate this, I tried creating a virtual USD bank account with a local Fintech, with which to receive salaries. However these virtual accounts can only receive payments from US accounts (via ACH transfers) so can be restrictive. The most seamless solution to my problem has been to setup a crypto wallet. In minutes I receive my salary and can spend any amount, whenever I like. Plus, it makes it easier to save in USD, avoiding the local currency devaluation (The Naira has fallen 52% in the last 7 years under the current regime). So speaking as a ‘third-country citizen’, crypto provide a far more effective banking system.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  > The Naira has fallen 52% in the last 7 years under the current regime How much has crypto grown in Nigeria? Is it possible that the migration to crypto / loss of faith in the local currency in lieu of USD is what’s actually behind the collapse vs government policies themselves?
  - lottin 4y ago
    It's usually a combination of both. When the local currency is unreliable, as a result of bad government policies, the locals will try get hold of a stronger foreign currency. They will sell the local currency to buy the foreign currency, which will contribute to the depreciation of the local currency, which in turn will make it even less attractive, prompting more people to sell, and so on so forth.
- 4y ago
tgv 4y ago
Strange. How did anybody live there before 2015?
freejazz 4y ago
Maybe people should be clear that they meant it'd only be useful in the context of living in the "third world"?

legulere 4y ago

Playing with new technology and research is an important thing, but you have to be open that you are doing that and don’t pretend you are developing a usable product.

aqme28 4y ago

> Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff. Why did you use the word objectively here? It seems like people objectively do use this stuff, though you possibly don't think that they're actually getting value out of it. Ethereum likely has more users than anything either of us will ever build.

halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
No meaningful percentage of the global population uses crypto and a large majority that do are bad actors, either in their use or their motivations for marketing it's "uses". Maybe "relatively" would have been better but the point is the same.
- aqme28 4y ago
  Is this the goalpost now? That a "meaningful percentage of the global population" uses your creation? That's a high bar.
  - danans 4y ago
    For a currency that is not issued by a sovereign state and purports to be useful for day to day transactions and a hedge against inflation, that's not a high bar. It would be a high bar for a currency whose purpose is to facilitate dark or illicit transactions, though. Unfortunately the valuations seem to have been predicated on the former use case, not the latter
  - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
    I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm assuming "your" means eth, which I'm not directly talking about in my response. I'm talking about the failure of crypto adoption that's original purpose was a fast, cheap and decentralized currency - none of which has come to fruition and by the looks of it, never will.

dylkil 4y ago

>Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff Stay tuned for major central banks deploying CDBCs on ethereum. Swiss, EU and Singapore are launching a pilot program.

polygamous_bat 4y ago
You can't claim something that large without a source. And why should governments pick Ethereum to enrich the bagholders with tax money?

cypress66 4y ago

> Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff. Objectively this is trivial to disprove.

DennisP 4y ago
Yep, just Uniswap alone has transaction volume comparable to major centralized exchanges. https://decrypt.co/114665/uniswap-overtakes-coinbase-second-largest-exchange-trading-ethereum-today https://decrypt.co/114665/uniswap-overtakes-coinbase-second-...
- lambdadmitry 4y ago
  Between bots, wash trading, and algo traders it doesn't say much about real world adoption.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    Regarding wash trading at least, it's easier on central exchanges, since they can do it without cost. Nobody can avoid Uniswap's transaction fees.
- dereg 4y ago
  This is incorrect/misleading on many fronts: 1. This is an outdated article citing a single point in time 2. The source tweet is comparing Uniswap's volume on all x:ETH pairs against only ETHUSDT volume on centralized exchanges. [0] 3. The date of comparison is an outlier day - when FTX's "hacker" decided to move huge sums of tokens uneconomically on chain. 4. Volume across CEXs have collapsed, a sign of the ecosystem's weakness, not strength. 5. Even then, Uniswap doesn't hold a candle to Binance. ($600m volume vs $10b volume, past 24 hours on spot pairs) 6. Liquidity is horrible right now. If you try to execute a trade of reasonable size on a non-major coin you will face a lot of slippage. [0]: The tweeter, Alex Svanevik is the founder of Nansen, a chain analytics company. It doesn't make sense that he would make such a simple mistake unless he was deliberately trying to bullpost. See for yourself: https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/uniswap#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/uniswap#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/coinbase#statistics https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/coinbase#statistics

RetpolineDrama 4y ago

So what's the next hackernews? Anyone have a link? Reason I ask is comments like this are objectively wrong yet continue to be the norm here.

karaterobot 4y ago

He starts the article with an example of someone using Ethereum in their store

iskander 4y ago

fwiw, I use USDC transfers on Ethereum in preference over wire transfers (which for me seem to require a physical bank visit to clear) or Zelle (which has very low max limit per day). I actually don't know of any robust alternatives in the US.

overtonwhy 4y ago

The son of a Russian computer scientist who cloned Bitcoin as a teenager definitely all by himself?