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Crypto is a mess of scammers and criminals. There’s occasionally actual uses, like nfts. But we only need to check the nft marketplace to see how that actual us
by Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
Crypto is a mess of scammers and criminals. There’s occasionally actual uses, like nfts. But we only need to check the nft marketplace to see how that actual use cases has died. Pushing ordinary people into crypto with no recourse for their funds is asinine. Modern societies are built around the fact that goods and services are exchanged for money that will clawed back if the deliverables are unacceptable. Crypto makes it impossible for unilateral or third party refunds.
- borissk 3y agoSure, there are problems with crypto. But the stuff you mentioned has nothing to do with using say BitCoin as virtual gold - as a long term store of value, instead of say a savings account.
- _heimdall 3y agoIf bitcoin is only a long term store of value it really needs to be paired with a separate currency for daily transactions. What should we consider using as a checking account if bitcoin is mainly savings?
- thinkmassive 3y agoHow about composing a digital currency stack in layers, similar to the OSI model for networking? Bitcoin already has second layers: the Lightning Network, Stacks, and bridges to other blockchain systems.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y agoAh yes. Solving broken systems with little legitimate use by building ever more complicated solutions.
- _heimdall 3y agoThose second layers seen to lose the benefits behind bitcoin if I'm not mistaken. Most layer solutions act more like PayPal than anything else, with a trusted mediator taking offish transactions in their own system. No more immutable ledger, traceability, fungibility, or censorship protections.
- thinkmassive 3y agoYou are mistaken. The Lightning Network literally consists of Bitcoin transactions. There are custodial solutions that serve each layer, but that’s orthogonal to the network itself.
- _heimdall 3y agoUnless it's changed drastically over the last couple years, the lightning network attempts to effectively buffer transactions outside the ledger. Transactions are "deposited" into the network and passed around similar to marked bills. The bitcoin block chain is only involved when a transaction is initially moved to the lightning network and when one of more transactions chained into that are written back to the ledger when moved back out of the network. This design has nothing to do with bitcoin other than the input and output formats. You depends solely on the lightning network itself and have given up all benefits from using a public ledger-based system. There is literally no way a layer two solution can offer faster transactions than bitcoin block times without requiring off-ledger transactions that aren't protected by the consensus protocol.
- thinkmassive 3y agoThe protocol consists of passing signed multisig transactions back and forth through a network of payment channels. Every single one is a first class bitcoin transaction than can be redeemed by broadcasting to the base layer, enforced by consensus. You have misunderstood since the beginning, because this is how it’s worked since the initial spec was proposed in 2015, years before it was actually implemented. Here’s a book you may find informative: https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y agoWhen’s the last time you lost a billion dollars of gold by accidentally tossing it in the trash? The ux of crypto is horrific.
- kodah 3y agoI would not personally put my savings in BitCoin. The price is far too volatile [1] and storage of BitCoin revolves around problematic centralized wallets or keeping your wallet offline which is similarly problematic for lay people. You might be able to create a fund that amortizes risk across various coins to get what our existing popular savings funds are, but you'd need some anchor coins that are mostly stable to do that. 1: https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin/ https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin/
- astrange 3y agoYou can't store value in something whose only purpose is to store value. Insofar as you can save an asset, it's because you're defecting in a game where other people are actively using it to provide the future value you want to claim later. If everyone only ever saved Bitcoin, then who's going to buy it when you want to sell it later? Someone else who wants to store it forever? The reason saving currency in a bank works for the economy is because they're loaning out the back to productive businesses and then giving you some of the interest. This doesn't work if you keep it under your bed/in a crypto wallet. (Maybe you could solve it by paying people more to take risk, but I don't think interest is that attractive to people?)
- sdfghswe 3y ago> There’s occasionally actual uses, like nfts Surely you're being sarcastic.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y agoWhat legitimate use reached general appeal more than nfts? Drug dealing, sanction evasion, money laundering, murder for hire, and csam are not legitimate uses. What’s left besides hodlers?
- astrange 3y agoLegal drugs that payment providers think are icky are legitimate uses. Nootropics for instance. Also the only one I've ever seen; adult sites and sex work don't take crypto.