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I can move my assets across borders instantaneously and exchange them for local currency whenever I need it. There is value in digital assets that are not bound

by glerk 3y ago

I can move my assets across borders instantaneously and exchange them for local currency whenever I need it. There is value in digital assets that are not bound to any jurisdiction.

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
I assume you're going to whip out another currency that doesn't or suggest that the user complicate their experience by using a third party as an intermediary, but don't bitcoin transactions take over an hour to clear? And your use case is the exact same thing I can do instantly with my MasterCard.
- Zpalmtree 3y ago
  No, they take under 10 minutes, a business will often wait for a large amount of confirmations of the block your tx is included in to ensure they aren't vulnerable to a double spend, but if you're sending to a trusted party then this delay is not required. Can you use your MasterCard to pay a Russian person?
- glerk 3y ago
  A bitcoin block is mined every 10min and 1-2 blocks is usually enough for the transaction to be considered settled (6 blocks used to be the convention, but with today’s hash rates it is very unlikely 2 blocks will be reversed). The confirmation time is different depending on the network, for example, Algorand has ~4s transaction finality. And yeah, you can use MasterCard until you hit your daily withdrawal limit, or your account is frozen, or your transactions are flagged and reversed and you have to explain why you want to spend your own money a certain way.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    20 minutes is still an inconveniently long time. 4s is much faster, but now we're on a proof of stake coin. Mastercard doesn't have a daily withdrawal limit. Bitcoin requires access to both your wallet and whatever security paraphernalia you have set up around accessing it. If you lose access or it's compromised you're out all that coin unlike a credit card, and you're burning massive amounts of fossil fuels for these "conveniences".
    - andirk 3y ago
      Bitcoin is a great storage of value for now. Mastercard is also very useful for transactions. The US military burns more fossil fuels than any entity on earth, and that's how your USD is protected.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        The US military protects the US; if the US dropped the dollar for any other currency, be that bitcoins or the Euro or gold or antimatter, the military in particular would still have to burn exactly as much energy. Conversely, bitcoin and other similar cryptocurrencies, whichever collective burns more than half of all computational resources, gets to wage economic war on anyone else. By extension this also includes them getting the ability to undo transactions they don't like, which is actually a genuinely useful thing, despite being used as totemic example by pro-crypto people against fiat currencies. But there is no upper bound to this connected to any underlying asset, so a K2 Dyson swarm does exactly the same number of BTC transactions as the current network, and that number isn't enough for even just the daily fast food purchases in Berlin. Conversely, the US military cost is basically "how much do we want to spend to defend our country and way of life?" to which the answer is "lots, but not too much".
    - glerk 3y ago
      You conveniently skipped over the "your account is frozen" and "your transactions are flagged and reversed" parts, and you are splitting hairs now. If you're not concerned by the problems addressed by cryptocurrency, nobody is forcing you to use it. Cryptocurrency users aren't lobbying the government and attempting to ban MasterCard last time I checked.
- detrites 3y ago
  Bitcoin is 14 years old. There are many alternatives in wide-use by now, that can settle in seconds, for sub-penny tx fees regardless of transfer amount. Where credit card transactions are reversible even to 60 days later, crypto txn's are final. There are many pro's and con's on both sides. Crypto's unique and fills a niche it built for itself. People have mocked it, attacked it, misrepresented it and underestimated it for over a decade now. It's still here, and it's still growing hugely.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    What is Crypto's unique niche? It seems to be more possible privacy (assuming someone doesn't determine your wallet) at the expense of a huge amount of fossil fuels and no way to protect yourself. It also seems to be used a speculative asset by the vast majority of users, but I don't think that's its intended niche. I think you need to back up the claim that it's growing hugely. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin are down a great deal from their recent highs, that seems contra-indicative of growth. If the argument here is that there are tons of new types of coins being constantly created then sure, I believe that, but I don't know the value of all those new coins that are at the moment used primarily for speculation and will never have the momentum required to break into any sort of mainstream adoption.
    - detrites 3y ago
      I guess it has many, but to me the overall niche is as a potential replacement for the existing financial system, which is a grand mess held together by early 20th century economic theory, mid systems architecture, and... COBOL. The first of those is the most important and impactful, in that economic theory has not, to date, been adequately updated for a world where labour markets can suddenly be replaced in their entirety by a few lines of python. Or a world where manual labour can be downloaded, printed-out and assembled autonomously. It isn't here yet, but is not too far away, all the various bits are being created as we speak. The shift has to be away from a labour-based economy. This is because labour value will drop to zero eventually. So we need another way to distribute generated value. It's a bit of a mess and large experimentation is going on - but crypto is at least in there touching those things. As for growing hugely: Crypto is reliably volatile, and also reliably exponential in its general growth. The linear charts look horrific, but the logarithmic versions are quite stable. This is the only way - historically - to measure its growth accurately: https://www.coingecko.com/en/global-charts https://www.coingecko.com/en/global-charts (select logarithmic) Given the final point on the chart represents about $1.2 trillion, you can see there's a large amount of exponential momentum there. ("Technically" it could go to zero overnight, but it seems unlikely... the NASDAQ technically could too.)

by glerk 3y ago

I can move my assets across borders instantaneously and exchange them for local currency whenever I need it. There is value in digital assets that are not bound to any jurisdiction.

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago

I assume you're going to whip out another currency that doesn't or suggest that the user complicate their experience by using a third party as an intermediary, but don't bitcoin transactions take over an hour to clear? And your use case is the exact same thing I can do instantly with my MasterCard.

Zpalmtree 3y ago
No, they take under 10 minutes, a business will often wait for a large amount of confirmations of the block your tx is included in to ensure they aren't vulnerable to a double spend, but if you're sending to a trusted party then this delay is not required. Can you use your MasterCard to pay a Russian person?
glerk 3y ago
A bitcoin block is mined every 10min and 1-2 blocks is usually enough for the transaction to be considered settled (6 blocks used to be the convention, but with today’s hash rates it is very unlikely 2 blocks will be reversed). The confirmation time is different depending on the network, for example, Algorand has ~4s transaction finality. And yeah, you can use MasterCard until you hit your daily withdrawal limit, or your account is frozen, or your transactions are flagged and reversed and you have to explain why you want to spend your own money a certain way.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  20 minutes is still an inconveniently long time. 4s is much faster, but now we're on a proof of stake coin. Mastercard doesn't have a daily withdrawal limit. Bitcoin requires access to both your wallet and whatever security paraphernalia you have set up around accessing it. If you lose access or it's compromised you're out all that coin unlike a credit card, and you're burning massive amounts of fossil fuels for these "conveniences".
  - andirk 3y ago
    Bitcoin is a great storage of value for now. Mastercard is also very useful for transactions. The US military burns more fossil fuels than any entity on earth, and that's how your USD is protected.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      The US military protects the US; if the US dropped the dollar for any other currency, be that bitcoins or the Euro or gold or antimatter, the military in particular would still have to burn exactly as much energy. Conversely, bitcoin and other similar cryptocurrencies, whichever collective burns more than half of all computational resources, gets to wage economic war on anyone else. By extension this also includes them getting the ability to undo transactions they don't like, which is actually a genuinely useful thing, despite being used as totemic example by pro-crypto people against fiat currencies. But there is no upper bound to this connected to any underlying asset, so a K2 Dyson swarm does exactly the same number of BTC transactions as the current network, and that number isn't enough for even just the daily fast food purchases in Berlin. Conversely, the US military cost is basically "how much do we want to spend to defend our country and way of life?" to which the answer is "lots, but not too much".
  - glerk 3y ago
    You conveniently skipped over the "your account is frozen" and "your transactions are flagged and reversed" parts, and you are splitting hairs now. If you're not concerned by the problems addressed by cryptocurrency, nobody is forcing you to use it. Cryptocurrency users aren't lobbying the government and attempting to ban MasterCard last time I checked.
detrites 3y ago
Bitcoin is 14 years old. There are many alternatives in wide-use by now, that can settle in seconds, for sub-penny tx fees regardless of transfer amount. Where credit card transactions are reversible even to 60 days later, crypto txn's are final. There are many pro's and con's on both sides. Crypto's unique and fills a niche it built for itself. People have mocked it, attacked it, misrepresented it and underestimated it for over a decade now. It's still here, and it's still growing hugely.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  What is Crypto's unique niche? It seems to be more possible privacy (assuming someone doesn't determine your wallet) at the expense of a huge amount of fossil fuels and no way to protect yourself. It also seems to be used a speculative asset by the vast majority of users, but I don't think that's its intended niche. I think you need to back up the claim that it's growing hugely. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin are down a great deal from their recent highs, that seems contra-indicative of growth. If the argument here is that there are tons of new types of coins being constantly created then sure, I believe that, but I don't know the value of all those new coins that are at the moment used primarily for speculation and will never have the momentum required to break into any sort of mainstream adoption.
  - detrites 3y ago
    I guess it has many, but to me the overall niche is as a potential replacement for the existing financial system, which is a grand mess held together by early 20th century economic theory, mid systems architecture, and... COBOL. The first of those is the most important and impactful, in that economic theory has not, to date, been adequately updated for a world where labour markets can suddenly be replaced in their entirety by a few lines of python. Or a world where manual labour can be downloaded, printed-out and assembled autonomously. It isn't here yet, but is not too far away, all the various bits are being created as we speak. The shift has to be away from a labour-based economy. This is because labour value will drop to zero eventually. So we need another way to distribute generated value. It's a bit of a mess and large experimentation is going on - but crypto is at least in there touching those things. As for growing hugely: Crypto is reliably volatile, and also reliably exponential in its general growth. The linear charts look horrific, but the logarithmic versions are quite stable. This is the only way - historically - to measure its growth accurately: https://www.coingecko.com/en/global-charts https://www.coingecko.com/en/global-charts (select logarithmic) Given the final point on the chart represents about $1.2 trillion, you can see there's a large amount of exponential momentum there. ("Technically" it could go to zero overnight, but it seems unlikely... the NASDAQ technically could too.)