5 ms·

Look. I don't love it or hate it; not an evangelist or anything. 99% of what you see calling it a scam is accurate. But once that all shakes out -- I still thi

by jrm4 4y ago

Look. I don't love it or hate it; not an evangelist or anything. 99% of what you see calling it a scam is accurate. But once that all shakes out -- I still think it's just getting started. The use cases aren't what a lot of people thought they would be -- but the ones that are actually useful are doing fine, and the world of "all the other money" is in such a bad state that I can't help but see some form of widespread adoption as completely inevitable.

smoldesu 4y ago
Having felt this for a while (and then jumping off the bandwagon in ~2017), I feel like Crypto's dream of a 'money protocol' has been perverted too far to touch. Go figure, introducing money into a democratic system incentivizes the wrong things. Maybe things will shake out differently in the future, but there's not a chance in hell that a money API gets made without some form of regulation or profiteering. Goodwill alone is not enough to drive a bartering system, as proven by the disaster that is crypto's overall price instability and corresponding 'stablecoin' corruption.
- jrm4 4y ago
  "API" is a funny term to use here, considering that APIs are always "permission based," borderline political. Crypto is designed to be somewhat of the opposite of that idea. Anyway, I think the real use case isn't "day to day transactions," it's better "money in a mattress." along with a staking/savings instrument.
dale_glass 4y ago
No, I don't think so. I think it's not dead yet, but it's definitely stalling. On the tech side, it seems to be stagnating. Bitcoin is still the most popular one, and it's stopped improving. The capacity is fixed, the use for normal people is not really there, adoption has gone backwards. Things like NFTs have been a temporary boon, but then didn't quite work. For the big players, there seem to be daily scandals and bankruptcies. It's becoming clear that many of them were barely hanging by a thread, and many have complete morons in charge. They're also being targeted by law enforcement. On the public side, I think it's peaked. Crypto got advertised more or less everywhere and nobody really cared. By now pretty much who was going to get into it already has, and there's not much more room to expand into.
- jrm4 4y ago
  I always find takes likes this super weird and conclusory given that there's a LOT of revolutionary tech that nonetheless takes forever to catch on, especially one that threatens to disrupt big incumbents. The fax machine was invented in, what, the 1800s?
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    Revolutionary tech gets packaged in some user friendly form for non-experts. A smartphone is chock full of amazing tech but is reasonably user friendly to use, to the point that pretty much everyone has one. Crypto isn't really like that. The real stuff is deeply technical. The simplified stuff (eg, storing your coins at an exchange) loses the entire point of crypto. It also solves problems people have. Crypto aims at a very narrow, very ideological set of problems that the vast majority of people doesn't really need solving. Its tradeoffs only make sense if those are real problems you have. Eg, if you're a drug dealer the lack of customer service or law that can rescue you from your errors isn't a problem. The law is your enemy anyway, so you already made peace with that if somebody steals from you, going to the police isn't an option. Having a normal person put all their life's savings into crypto on the other hand is an absolutely terrible idea. Anyone doing that is risking a single error or a single bug ruining their life with next to zero chance of recovery.
    - jrm4 4y ago
      "Life's savings" is disingenuous though. No one puts their life savings in much of anything. Moreover, what you're saying about crypto presumes that its competitors are all high-quality,and what I'm saying is there are likely enough low-quality competitors such that crypto becomes more attractive. Life-savings would be stupid. But part of an investment strategy on the other hand potentially makes a ton of sense, and that's all that's needed for survival/popularity.
      - dale_glass 4y ago
        > "Life's savings" is disingenuous though. No one puts their life savings in much of anything. There's a fair amount of that, actually: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/yy37cy/i_lost_my_life_savings_compilation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/yy37cy/i_lost_my_... > Moreover, what you're saying about crypto presumes that its competitors are all high-quality,and what I'm saying is there are likely enough low-quality competitors such that crypto becomes more attractive. What is lower quality out there than crypto? Crypto is appallingly low quality. Crypto-related businesses like exchanges go bust dramatically at an alarming rate. If your bank goes bust at least there's insurance for that. > But part of an investment strategy on the other hand potentially makes a ton of sense, and that's all that's needed for survival/popularity. But that comes back to the original problem: it's only a good investment if you can keep it safe, AND if it keeps on growing. Keeping safe in the space is an extremely difficult task as it is, as every wallet out there is a self-awarding bug bounty. As to growth it comes back to what I was saying before. First, there has to be increased value for it to grow. That's actually decreasing as crypto becomes more trackable and less safe for illegal activity over time. It's also at best a zero sum. Any money you get from such an investment can only come from the traditional economical system putting it in, and that just can't go on forever. And any gain you might make comes from somebody else's loss. You're just betting on that you won't be somebody else's gain.

by jrm4 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago

Having felt this for a while (and then jumping off the bandwagon in ~2017), I feel like Crypto's dream of a 'money protocol' has been perverted too far to touch. Go figure, introducing money into a democratic system incentivizes the wrong things. Maybe things will shake out differently in the future, but there's not a chance in hell that a money API gets made without some form of regulation or profiteering. Goodwill alone is not enough to drive a bartering system, as proven by the disaster that is crypto's overall price instability and corresponding 'stablecoin' corruption.

jrm4 4y ago
"API" is a funny term to use here, considering that APIs are always "permission based," borderline political. Crypto is designed to be somewhat of the opposite of that idea. Anyway, I think the real use case isn't "day to day transactions," it's better "money in a mattress." along with a staking/savings instrument.

dale_glass 4y ago

No, I don't think so. I think it's not dead yet, but it's definitely stalling. On the tech side, it seems to be stagnating. Bitcoin is still the most popular one, and it's stopped improving. The capacity is fixed, the use for normal people is not really there, adoption has gone backwards. Things like NFTs have been a temporary boon, but then didn't quite work. For the big players, there seem to be daily scandals and bankruptcies. It's becoming clear that many of them were barely hanging by a thread, and many have complete morons in charge. They're also being targeted by law enforcement. On the public side, I think it's peaked. Crypto got advertised more or less everywhere and nobody really cared. By now pretty much who was going to get into it already has, and there's not much more room to expand into.

jrm4 4y ago
I always find takes likes this super weird and conclusory given that there's a LOT of revolutionary tech that nonetheless takes forever to catch on, especially one that threatens to disrupt big incumbents. The fax machine was invented in, what, the 1800s?
- dale_glass 4y ago
  Revolutionary tech gets packaged in some user friendly form for non-experts. A smartphone is chock full of amazing tech but is reasonably user friendly to use, to the point that pretty much everyone has one. Crypto isn't really like that. The real stuff is deeply technical. The simplified stuff (eg, storing your coins at an exchange) loses the entire point of crypto. It also solves problems people have. Crypto aims at a very narrow, very ideological set of problems that the vast majority of people doesn't really need solving. Its tradeoffs only make sense if those are real problems you have. Eg, if you're a drug dealer the lack of customer service or law that can rescue you from your errors isn't a problem. The law is your enemy anyway, so you already made peace with that if somebody steals from you, going to the police isn't an option. Having a normal person put all their life's savings into crypto on the other hand is an absolutely terrible idea. Anyone doing that is risking a single error or a single bug ruining their life with next to zero chance of recovery.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    "Life's savings" is disingenuous though. No one puts their life savings in much of anything. Moreover, what you're saying about crypto presumes that its competitors are all high-quality,and what I'm saying is there are likely enough low-quality competitors such that crypto becomes more attractive. Life-savings would be stupid. But part of an investment strategy on the other hand potentially makes a ton of sense, and that's all that's needed for survival/popularity.
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      > "Life's savings" is disingenuous though. No one puts their life savings in much of anything. There's a fair amount of that, actually: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/yy37cy/i_lost_my_life_savings_compilation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/yy37cy/i_lost_my_... > Moreover, what you're saying about crypto presumes that its competitors are all high-quality,and what I'm saying is there are likely enough low-quality competitors such that crypto becomes more attractive. What is lower quality out there than crypto? Crypto is appallingly low quality. Crypto-related businesses like exchanges go bust dramatically at an alarming rate. If your bank goes bust at least there's insurance for that. > But part of an investment strategy on the other hand potentially makes a ton of sense, and that's all that's needed for survival/popularity. But that comes back to the original problem: it's only a good investment if you can keep it safe, AND if it keeps on growing. Keeping safe in the space is an extremely difficult task as it is, as every wallet out there is a self-awarding bug bounty. As to growth it comes back to what I was saying before. First, there has to be increased value for it to grow. That's actually decreasing as crypto becomes more trackable and less safe for illegal activity over time. It's also at best a zero sum. Any money you get from such an investment can only come from the traditional economical system putting it in, and that just can't go on forever. And any gain you might make comes from somebody else's loss. You're just betting on that you won't be somebody else's gain.