The title is a bit misleading. The crypto exchange was legal already. The new law seems to consider crypto exchanges regular financial institutions, thus more regulated. As a result crypto is expected to be more trusted industry.
> One of the main caveats to the enactment of the amendment is that cryptocurrency exchanges will need to comply with reporting requirements. Although the larger exchanges mostly comply with the new rules already, small and medium-sized exchanges may have trouble obtaining the contracts to reach full compliance.
Even taking into account the bear market of the last two years, bitcoin still has an average annual return of 350%. To say that all cryptocurrency equates to gambling is just foolish.
Even taking into account the average losses at the casino, I won an average return of 350% playing roulette. To say that all gambling equates to gambling is just foolish.
I would argue “All on red” with known risks and rewards is more educated than a blind investment into a technology that you don’t even understand, which describes most speculative crypto investments by “laymen” as the op said
Whether something is gambling depends on what odds you're taking. If your odds are consistently better than 50%, then it's not gambling. Whether something is gambling describes your decisions, not their outcomes. An outcome never affects the quality of the decision: if you win a 1%-odds-to-win bet, the decision to take it was irregardless bad.
This is... false. For a number of reasons. Something can be economically rational at scale and still a gamble, because you do not have infinite funds. More importantly, past results are not indicative of future results in valuations. Thinking that a thing must increase in value because it increased in value previously is perhaps the dumbest fallacy in in finance possible.
Option 1: I offer you 99,999/100,000 chance to lose everything you have, And a 1/100,000 chance to get 100,001 times more. Expected value is net positive. And yet, you’d be pretty dumb to do it. Gambling.
Option 2: I offer you 9/10 chance to get 1.01x more. 1/10 chance to get 0x. Expected loss. Better than 50% odds of gain. Gambling.
Option 3:
Coin toss. Triple your lifespan on heads. Die on tails. Definitely gambling.
I'm not sure I follow, but you're probably talking about a scenario where the risk/reward ratio is not 1:1. Sure, it's more complicated then. If you take a 10% chance bet 10 times and it has a risk of -1 and reward of +10, on average you'll get (-1 * 9) + (+10 * 1) = 1.
The point in option 1 and 3 is to illustrate that betting 10 times isn’t an option in many systems. You can’t say you should always do something because the risk reward is favorable. That’s still gambling, and sometimes a stupid decision.
The average outcome of a gamble is not the likely outcome of taking it. And even ignoring that, it’s still a gamble unless you can confidently run it at sufficient scale to hit the theoretical distribution.
I've seen too many sad go-all-in stories to not mention the dangers of gambling.
> average annual return of 350%
That's misleading. The price is currently at the ~35-40% retrace from the high of 20k. What happened so far (for example the rally to 20k) is not an indicator that Bitcoin's value will grow or even be sustained.
I'm not saying Bitcoin doesn't have speculative value, but you have to be already an experienced analyst and trader (in case of day trading) to have a chance at profiting from it. "If it were easy everyone would be doing it" proverb is true. Crypto is much harder than forex for example. Again, unless you really know what you're doing, trading will hardly be more profitable than going to the casino.
>I'm not saying Bitcoin doesn't have speculative value, but you have to be already an experienced analyst and trader
If you buy and hold for multiple years, on average you will make 350% a year, very similarly to how you would see a certain level of average annual returns from buying and holding on the conventional stock market. The growth is being fueled by the adoption of a new technology.
That's why they're average annual returns, and the idea is to hold for multiple years. The same could be said about people who bought stocks and real estate in 2007.
If your solution to making a trade profitable is to hold it longer, then you don't have the right mentality for trading. What chances are of this (hypothetical, I presume) trade turning profitable? If you don't know, or if it's not much better than 50%, you're making a mistake.
When actively trading, profitably is calculated a bit differently, but I presume we're talking about a one off trade.
Most active traders don't beat the market (any market), as they shouldn't provided that the EMH is true. I'm proposing a strategy of long term investing.
Bitcoin is well known and widely used at this point, even if it hasn’t reached its maximum audience it’s approaching that. Contrast the stock market who’s potential is capped by a combination of fossil fuels and the solar radiation flowing into the earth, which we’re no where near using efficiently, and you can see why they’re not at all in the same category.
Bitcoin's maximum (and future) audience is 100% of world's GDP, so that governments can no longer steal value through inflation (FRB and QE). So far it isn't anywhere near that level yet.
1. You have no grasp of how bitcoin works - the whole idea is that there is a finite number that cannot be manipulated.
2. No matter how you try to justify it - it is still theft. It is not really surprising that such a weak and crooked "man" as you are has nothing but flawed arguments and ad hominem attacks.
3. Not to mention that your justification is only supported by the Keynsean half of economists which is known not to produce long-term functioning results. Read something by Hayek and von Mieses and if you are clever enough to understand it, you might stop defending and justifying a bunch of useless corrupted crooks.
Yours dear,
Stupid idiot, who considers theft a bad thing
P.S. Your justification of theft reminds me of how convinced those tribal people (not saying muslims in general as it is mostly tribal people who partake, some of whom are not muslim) are that stoning women who commit adultery is a good thing.
And the credit crisis was good because it flooded the market with cheap credit... That did what, exactly?
God saves us from the real idiots - those that think they have all the answers, instead of humbly accepting how little they know, about what they imagine they can design
(Those idiots are unfortunately those that seem to be good at the game of: "heads i win, tails others lose"
> The growth is being fueled by the adoption of a new technology.
What adoption?
Adoption appears to have stalled and fallen back, with multiple companies having announced that attempting to accept bitcoin had been a waste of time or even a net negative.
The annual average has been constantly growing - the 20k peak was only several hours long and there are 8760 hours in an year.
The 360-day WME gain being consistently in the double figures IS an indicator of BTC's value having no intention to stop growing.
In this phase of blockchain/cryptocurrency a link is created between the two worlds that is neither cryptoanarchist nor anticrypto. We are seeing different strategies on how states are dealing with this. For example, Germany initiatives [1] are different than US state based ones [2].
Even if we don't agree, cryptocurrencies are now an unstoppable force. We can say that the worst case scenario for cryptocurrencies would be to share the same destiny as the BitTorrent protocol [3] where there is a lot of usage but is not popular. Cryptocurrencies are moving beyond BitTorrent fate because there are many financial institutions, regulators, etc that are connecting these two worlds.
Ironically, it is more practical to use stable coins for global transfers than the volatile currencies in the permissionless blockchains that host these stable coins [4], and also more practical and cheaper than a wire transfer between two US accounts.
I am not saying that cryptocurrencies are not used for illicit purposes also, or that there is some magic intrinsic value behind them. Just saying the in the political context cryptocurrencies are gaining territory.
> Even if we don't agree, cryptocurrencies are now an unstoppable force.
I'm sorry, but this is far from obvious.
> We can say that the worst case scenario for cryptocurrencies would be to share the same destiny as the BitTorrent protocol [3] where there is a lot of usage but is not popular.
Actually, the worst case is a crash and the whole scene collapsing in a mess of criminal trials and bitter recriminations.
Just because cryptocurrencies are 'legalised' doesn't mean a whole lot for the long term. In fact I would hope to see this sort of thing result in much more active enforcement of existing legal and financial protections, something the cryptocurrency scene has been unnervingly able to dodge so far.
> gaining territory
Not in many places. They seem to be seen by most folks I encounter as both passe (that was so 2017!) and basically as crimebux.
I'm also enjoying the frantic handwaving away of power usage concerns in the wake of the current rebirth of the green movement, post Thunberg.
> Actually, the worst case is a crash and the whole scene collapsing in a mess of criminal trials and bitter recriminations.
As I said in my comment and my post[4]: [even if they crash] stable coins are one of the major drivers of cryptocurrencies/blockchains and by definition fully collateralized stable coins does not crash or if they crash it is because the underlying standard financial system crashes.
I also highlight that in this context the most interesting thing about blockchains is that "Openness and interoperability have become more important than decentralization".
The biggest (Tether) have admitted that they are not fully collateralised and withrawn their claims to such. In a court filing last year they announced they had around 73% of the funds available in 'cash or cash-like instruments', but even that hasn't really been verified, nor is it apparent whether "cash-like instruments" includes other cryptocurrencies.
>I also highlight that in this context the most interesting thing about blockchains is that "Openness and interoperability have become more important than decentralization".
The most interesting thing to me about "blockchains" is how the hype train is still limping on, after almost zero actual delivery of anything useful or world-changing. I expect it to continue to lose steam, as all the pupported use-cases turn out (as they all have so far) either to be some sort of impractical techno-utopian dream, an unnecessary complication where a database works just fine (better in fact), or an outright scam.
I am sharing your sentiment but not 100%. My point there was different, and I highlighted that was an irony: now we have a way to interoperate with less friction than banks or other financial institutions thanks to a new infrastructure. This infrastructure could not be a blockchain and can be a better technology based more in typical federations and less on BFT like descentralization.
For example, USD 10,000 is the absolute maximum you can bring into or take out of the US, or move between accounts in the US, without intrusive and possibly annoying declarations of source of funds, and potential exposure to instant civil forfeiture if you are deemed suspicious [0].
Stablecoins may not be practically subject to these restrictions (they may have other very serious risks and limitations, but not the same ones as USD).
So choose whatever currency is best for you. Isn't it nice to have a choice?
Even if most exchanges are shut down and the price crashes, the network can't be undone, in that, if there's demand, it's sufficiently resilient to continue to exist. For crypto to function as currency we need it to be at least somewhat stable. We currently have that. We also need to be able to exchange it, which we also have. Remember that decentralized, anonymous and trustless crypto<->fiat exchanges are possible, like Bisq https://bisq.network/
One of the failure states for cryptocurrencies at present seems to be a period of falling demand accompanied with a falling hashrate, at which point the blockchain can be manipulated relatviely cheaply by bad actors and all hell breaks loose.
Bisq appears to rely on bank transfer services, which are usually traceable, reversible etc, so I'm not sure it's quite the panacea one would hope.
I feel like this question is meant for speculators and investors.
> Bisq appears to rely on bank transfer services, which are usually traceable, reversible
Bank trasnfers are of course not anonymous, but there's nothing linking them to crypto trading, because those are direct transfers from buyer to seller. The platform, Bisq, doesn't ever touch the money. Bank transfers are sometimes reversible (called chargeback), but for example for SEPA that's only in the case of theft and you're not actually obligated to return the money, but you would have to explain why you received it. The worst that I've heard happen is a bank account being frozen, because of suspect activity (unexplained transfers from many different private individuals). Bisq has effective mechanisms for dealing with the chargeback risk. If anyone reading this is at all interested in trustless system, I highly recommend taking a closer look at Bisq.
It's trustless in that you don't need to trust the system. It's not risk free; however, in practice the risk has proven to be negligible. The platform is matching buyers and sellers. There isn't a middleman in the transactions, so there isn't any passing of risk. The risk of freezing your account is only a problem if trading crypto is not permited by your bank, otherwise you can just explain/prove what you're doing. Even if it's not permited, you can be smart about how you trade to minimize risk exposure. Again, it's not risk-free, but you're aware of the risks and the platform doesn't require trust (definition of trustless).
The risk is that you start getting looked at for regular large transactions.
The platform does require trust, it requires trust in the banking system and in the person you're transacting with. Not sure really what it achieves apart from delegating trust from a central authority to a disparate set of individuals. I'm not convinced that's a good thing.
Generating bizzare banking activity is one of the risks, but, again, only where what you're doing is illegal. Also, you don't have to trade in attention attracting sums.
You don't have to trust the person you're trading with, because the platform uses an escrow system (multi-signature BTC addresses), account age signing (an old account is unlikely to have been stolen) and has mediation. That leaves negligible risk, of which you're aware.
> delegating trust from a central authority to a disparate set of individuals. I'm not convinced that's a good thing
Bisq provides very similar decentralization and privacy guarantees as Bitcoin (which is the point, because a system is as decentralized/private as its weakest link), so I'll delegate answering this to the myriad of articles about Bitcoin's trustworthiness.
> the platform uses an escrow system (multi-signature BTC addresses),
But still acknowledges that some methods can result in the money being recalled after the BTC has been released.
> account age signing (an old account is unlikely to have been stolen)
Unlikely, but you still have to trust that the account hasn't simply been used to build up trust before the big score, which is something we see over and over and over again in the cryptocurrency space.
> Bisq provides very similar decentralization and privacy guarantees as Bitcoin
Which is absolutely not the same thing I pointed out to you as the problem. You can't just say "but bitcoin!" to wave away that this platform still involves trust, and not trust in a regulated actor like a bank, but trust in a number of actors, any of whom may not be trustworthy. You may not have to trust the platform itself, but it's not clear to me that that is any sort of positive.
> I'm also enjoying the frantic handwaving away of power usage concerns
Because headlines focus on the amount of power used and not the source of power used, which is overwhelmingly renewable and wasted energy that had no prior economic use which undermines the whole reductive argument about power used, and is an outcome resolved purely by market forces.
Let me know if you would like examples for your independent corroboration.
What's the point of starting your comment by unnecessarily painting this entire community with such a broad brush and dismissing the nuanced opinions on cryptocurrencies found here? What does it add? It just makes me more skeptical of whatever you're about to say, to the point where I barely feel like it's worth reading.
I just edited my comment and removed that part. As an active HN community member I shared my feelings here but never said that all the HN community was anti crypto. I said "mainly" because I see a shift to the anti crypto camp. I can obviously be wrong but it is based on my cognitive device reading thousands of messages for years.
I think I speak for more than just myself when I say that blockchain has enormous potential and cryptocurrencies have already proven themselves to be a viable technology.
The problem is more the social and economic aspects of cryptocurrencies. The community is filled with scammers, get rich quick schemes, and self-appointed blockchain experts who have no idea what a Merkle tree is. All these people who see cryptocurrencies as this profitable investment creates a roller coaster market that undermines their usefulness as an actual currency. What you want in a currency is stability, you don't want to suddenly not be able to afford rent because the market collapsed over the last week.
There is an abundance of evidence that HN was one of the most anti cryptocurrency sites. It was/is surprisingly bizarre, given the expectation that the posters would be more knowledgeable of future tech than other sites. History has now shown that it way too high of an expectation.
It'll take less than 0.0001% of any State Actor's military budget to perform a 51% attack on public blockchain and I'm not even talking about simply taking over the Miners with a stroke of Pen or a Phone Call
Stablecoins so far are not able to be cryptocurrencies. They involve the oracle problem. No functional cryptocurrency operates w outside data like that.
As I said in [4]: "Furthermore, stable coins are centralized, but they take advantage of the interoperability features and open finance capabilities in decentralized blockchains. Openness and interoperability have become more important than decentralization."
Also worth noting is that South Korea is considered to be a country with a serious gambling problem
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2019/11/119_255191.h...
This is partly due to the fact that upward mobility in South Korea is notoriously hard without the right connections and also the reason why the country went full YOLO on ICOs in 2017.
Still even with the current ruling only spot exchanges are legal and derivates are still not allowed which means koreans exchanges are still not allowed to offer shitcoin futures with 125x leverage.
> This is partly due to the fact that upward mobility in South Korea is notoriously hard without the right connections
This is perceived to be the case, yes, but I have seen no evidence indicating that it is in fact the case. In fact, all measures I can find put Korea somewhere around the middle of developed countries in social mobility.
HN worships AI - something of questionable value that has yet to deliver on its promises (self driving cars?) - and despises cryptocurrency / blockchain - something that went from 0 to $250 billion market cap in a decade. The delusion is stunning.
Keep commenting about how the entire industry is worthless, blockchain is a scam, the entire world is being conned, etc. etc. etc. Be sure to call a self-driving car to come pick you up after work.
Your comment is like attacking the traditional financial system whenever any fraud occurs. Why didn’t Bernie Madoff get stopped? Madoff’s existence doesn’t damn the entire traditional financial system.
Blockchain is a new financial system, and people choose to use it for various things.
I have fallen into this trap soooo many times here. “What’s it even used for?” I provide a list. “All of that is dumb and you are dumb.”
Look up MakerDAO. If that whole thing isn’t even remotely interesting to you, I don’t know what to say. There are plenty of interesting and useful projects. Is there anything AI has delivered other than surveillance tech and giving me suggestions while typing that I just turn off because it’s annoying?
Just recently there was a comment thread on HN about Reddit being used as a place for financial advice, with many of the HN commentators complaining about the collective mentality and tribalism of the entire Reddit forum and many of its subreddits. Yes, just as you say, the tribalism that gets taken to absurd degrees here on HN with regards to crypto and blockchains is amusingly obvious and emotional ,regardless of numerous pieces of evidence and case studies showing exactly the opposite, but if you point many of them out, you risk being persistently downvoted. What makes the entire tendency so frustrating is that most here self-identify as intelligent, reasoned people who avoid her mentalities, yet visibly practice these tendencies for all the same very human reasons you see them elsewhere.
Also, yes, it's extremely obvious to my eye that blockchains and cryptocurrencies are here to stay and expand even. For those of us who do indeed use them here and there, the value of having something that lets you send money to someone else on the other side of the world almost instantly with very few if any intermediaries being able to block the transaction is wonderful. Yes some of you in here who send money inside the EU or inside the US markets keep insisting from within your bubbles that money transfers are easy and instant, but really, try sending money to someone on the literal other side of the world, outside your market, without spending unreasonable money on fees or dealing with terrible customer services, then perhaps reconsider the value of crypto.. In addition to this, there are indeed many legitimate uses for them in the form of anonymous payments for services that ARE NOT illegal, and the market for such products and services could easily grow in a number of ways.. But easier to ignore that and wave ones hands about the crypto scam and the supposedly pending collapse of everything. (It's been several years already and things slowly, sometimes haphazardly but persistently keep growing in this whole sphere, so, don't hold your breath)
> but really, try sending money to someone on the literal other side of the world, outside your market, without spending unreasonable money on fees or dealing with terrible customer services,
I have done, many times, for small and large amounts. No problems with the traditional system, way more protections too.
The fact is that cryptocurrency continues to fail to make inroads in this space, despite cheerleaders having shouted about it for years now.
Wonderful, your single anecdote negates a whole litany of international payments problems that many people right here on HN have complained about repeatedly in numerous comments across numerous threads. International payments outside of major mutually coordinated markets are a known, frequently mentioned difficulty for many businesses and people. This is something that should be as easy as sending an email, but it doesn't even come close to that on a global scale. Crypto needs to be ironed out very thoroughly but it at least offers one possible avenue for avoiding these problems, with the added benefit of giving users access to a certain degree of anonymity and resiliance to arbitrary institutional payment/account freezes.
Wonderful, your single rebuttal negates the actual market response to cryptocurrency as an international remittance tool, which so far has has been utterly negligible, because it turns out not to actually solve any of those problems where they are felt, and where they aren't it's rendered irrelevant by the lack of protections and inability to compete, either on ease of use or fees.
And naturally, my comment gets downvoted, way to stay so predictable HN crowd-mind, keep patting yourselves on the back about how much you disdain these tendencies in places like Reddit. It's frankly amazing that crypto and the blockchains behind these digital currencies can't be perceived by so many here for the potential they have despite the obvious attractions of the concept. You simply point to their errors and deride the whole concept as a scam, ponzi scheme, pie-in-the-sky and etc, while then complaining about all the nonsense and bullshit that institutionalized payment processing causes for many of you and others. It's not possible to see something flawed and look beyond its defects to how the basic concept of a global anonymized near instant payment system that doesn't depend on heavily regulated institutions might just possibly not be such a bad thing?
> It's frankly amazing that crypto and the blockchains behind these digital currencies can't be perceived by so many here for the potential they have
They've been around over a decade, generated an absolute ton of hot air and fanboyism, but have made next to zero impact on the real world or even on the rest of the tech world.
Ten years is long enough for anything 'with potential' to show at least some signs of realising that potential. But nothing much has come of it other than gambling and scams.
In 10 years they've gone from being a trivial little quirk that's shared by a tiny handful of people to digital asset tools with multibillion dollar market caps and growing (admittedly still limited) use by at least several hundred thousand frequent users and likely a few million or more dabblers. Blockchain technology has a ways to go before we see some sort of concrete, widespread development for it and the same goes for crypto tokens but to say either is looking like a bust is grossly, almost absurdly premature. To see this repeated ad nauseum almost as a dogmatic mantra in a hardcore technology-loving site is sort of sad. The analogy is a bit worn but valid I think: The internet also spent decades as a little-used niche system before it combined with the right market and additional technologies to start exploding in the early 90's.
Market caps are meaningless, and there you are again claiming ten years isn't long enough to be shown useful.
It is, it really is.
There's no reason to think it's anything like the internet in terms of use or adoption.
The dogmatic mantra at this point is on the side of the enthusiasts, who have shouted at us for ten years that blockchains are going to change the world, but have done no such thing.
To criticise people for lack of vision after a ten year history of scam and failure after scam and failure is looking a lot like denial.
I've fallen in a different trap so many times here.
Someone will mention a crypto that is supposedly different.
* Check Project Page
* Check Whitepaper
* Check glowing usage reports
* Check success stories
* Check actual usage - find none that is outside other crypto holders
99% of crypto is eating some other crypto.
MakerDAO seems interesting but really is a way for ETH holders to borrow against it. Checking r/MakerDAO seems people are using DAI to speculate on ETH not much else.
Crypto has fallen into permanent Year of Linux on Desktop phase.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] thread> One of the main caveats to the enactment of the amendment is that cryptocurrency exchanges will need to comply with reporting requirements. Although the larger exchanges mostly comply with the new rules already, small and medium-sized exchanges may have trouble obtaining the contracts to reach full compliance.
It ain’t gambling if you win
Sure anyone can lose money and it's a gamble, but it's an educated one, roulette is not
Option 1: I offer you 99,999/100,000 chance to lose everything you have, And a 1/100,000 chance to get 100,001 times more. Expected value is net positive. And yet, you’d be pretty dumb to do it. Gambling.
Option 2: I offer you 9/10 chance to get 1.01x more. 1/10 chance to get 0x. Expected loss. Better than 50% odds of gain. Gambling.
Option 3: Coin toss. Triple your lifespan on heads. Die on tails. Definitely gambling.
The point in option 1 and 3 is to illustrate that betting 10 times isn’t an option in many systems. You can’t say you should always do something because the risk reward is favorable. That’s still gambling, and sometimes a stupid decision.
The average outcome of a gamble is not the likely outcome of taking it. And even ignoring that, it’s still a gamble unless you can confidently run it at sufficient scale to hit the theoretical distribution.
> average annual return of 350%
That's misleading. The price is currently at the ~35-40% retrace from the high of 20k. What happened so far (for example the rally to 20k) is not an indicator that Bitcoin's value will grow or even be sustained.
I'm not saying Bitcoin doesn't have speculative value, but you have to be already an experienced analyst and trader (in case of day trading) to have a chance at profiting from it. "If it were easy everyone would be doing it" proverb is true. Crypto is much harder than forex for example. Again, unless you really know what you're doing, trading will hardly be more profitable than going to the casino.
If you buy and hold for multiple years, on average you will make 350% a year, very similarly to how you would see a certain level of average annual returns from buying and holding on the conventional stock market. The growth is being fueled by the adoption of a new technology.
When actively trading, profitably is calculated a bit differently, but I presume we're talking about a one off trade.
Bitcoin is well known and widely used at this point, even if it hasn’t reached its maximum audience it’s approaching that. Contrast the stock market who’s potential is capped by a combination of fossil fuels and the solar radiation flowing into the earth, which we’re no where near using efficiently, and you can see why they’re not at all in the same category.
Where you see governments 'stealing value', the rest of us see sensible monetary policy.
God save us from idiots who would hand said policy to a handful of software engineers and a self-interested mining cartel.
2. No matter how you try to justify it - it is still theft. It is not really surprising that such a weak and crooked "man" as you are has nothing but flawed arguments and ad hominem attacks.
3. Not to mention that your justification is only supported by the Keynsean half of economists which is known not to produce long-term functioning results. Read something by Hayek and von Mieses and if you are clever enough to understand it, you might stop defending and justifying a bunch of useless corrupted crooks.
Yours dear,
Stupid idiot, who considers theft a bad thing
P.S. Your justification of theft reminds me of how convinced those tribal people (not saying muslims in general as it is mostly tribal people who partake, some of whom are not muslim) are that stoning women who commit adultery is a good thing.
And the credit crisis was good because it flooded the market with cheap credit... That did what, exactly?
God saves us from the real idiots - those that think they have all the answers, instead of humbly accepting how little they know, about what they imagine they can design
(Those idiots are unfortunately those that seem to be good at the game of: "heads i win, tails others lose"
What adoption? Adoption appears to have stalled and fallen back, with multiple companies having announced that attempting to accept bitcoin had been a waste of time or even a net negative.
Speculating on a volatile asset, as an admitted layman, based on non-news is gambling, period.
>bitcoin still has an average annual return of 350%
Utterly irrelevant to all of the buyers in at $15,000+.
Even if we don't agree, cryptocurrencies are now an unstoppable force. We can say that the worst case scenario for cryptocurrencies would be to share the same destiny as the BitTorrent protocol [3] where there is a lot of usage but is not popular. Cryptocurrencies are moving beyond BitTorrent fate because there are many financial institutions, regulators, etc that are connecting these two worlds.
Ironically, it is more practical to use stable coins for global transfers than the volatile currencies in the permissionless blockchains that host these stable coins [4], and also more practical and cheaper than a wire transfer between two US accounts.
I am not saying that cryptocurrencies are not used for illicit purposes also, or that there is some magic intrinsic value behind them. Just saying the in the political context cryptocurrencies are gaining territory.
[1] Germany on chain: National Blockchain Strategy Released - https://medium.com/@philippsandner/germany-national-blockcha... & Bitcoin officially recognized as a legal financial instrument in Germany: https://www.somagnews.com/bitcoin-officially-recognized-lega...
[2] State Regulations on Virtual Currency and Blockchain Technologies: https://www.carltonfields.com/insights/publications/2018/sta...
[3] File-Sharing and VPN Traffic Grow Explosively: https://torrentfreak.com/filesharing-and-vpn-traffic-grow-ex...
[4] The Rise of Stable Coins: Beyond Facebook Libra: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-stable-coins-beyond-face...
I'm sorry, but this is far from obvious.
> We can say that the worst case scenario for cryptocurrencies would be to share the same destiny as the BitTorrent protocol [3] where there is a lot of usage but is not popular.
Actually, the worst case is a crash and the whole scene collapsing in a mess of criminal trials and bitter recriminations.
Just because cryptocurrencies are 'legalised' doesn't mean a whole lot for the long term. In fact I would hope to see this sort of thing result in much more active enforcement of existing legal and financial protections, something the cryptocurrency scene has been unnervingly able to dodge so far.
> gaining territory
Not in many places. They seem to be seen by most folks I encounter as both passe (that was so 2017!) and basically as crimebux.
I'm also enjoying the frantic handwaving away of power usage concerns in the wake of the current rebirth of the green movement, post Thunberg.
As I said in my comment and my post[4]: [even if they crash] stable coins are one of the major drivers of cryptocurrencies/blockchains and by definition fully collateralized stable coins does not crash or if they crash it is because the underlying standard financial system crashes.
I also highlight that in this context the most interesting thing about blockchains is that "Openness and interoperability have become more important than decentralization".
[4] The Rise of Stable Coins: Beyond Facebook Libra: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-stable-coins-beyond-face...
Which ones are those?
The biggest (Tether) have admitted that they are not fully collateralised and withrawn their claims to such. In a court filing last year they announced they had around 73% of the funds available in 'cash or cash-like instruments', but even that hasn't really been verified, nor is it apparent whether "cash-like instruments" includes other cryptocurrencies.
>I also highlight that in this context the most interesting thing about blockchains is that "Openness and interoperability have become more important than decentralization".
The most interesting thing to me about "blockchains" is how the hype train is still limping on, after almost zero actual delivery of anything useful or world-changing. I expect it to continue to lose steam, as all the pupported use-cases turn out (as they all have so far) either to be some sort of impractical techno-utopian dream, an unnecessary complication where a database works just fine (better in fact), or an outright scam.
That just doesn't make any damn sense, whatsoever.
Stablecoins may not be practically subject to these restrictions (they may have other very serious risks and limitations, but not the same ones as USD).
So choose whatever currency is best for you. Isn't it nice to have a choice?
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22489103
Presumably they are subject to these restrictions in law, it's just that right now they fly under the radar.
So ... you're advising people that stablecoins are a good way to break the law?
So ... you're in favor of innocent people having their money confiscated on the spot without due process?
Your imagination beyond that is up to you.
And if there isn't?
One of the failure states for cryptocurrencies at present seems to be a period of falling demand accompanied with a falling hashrate, at which point the blockchain can be manipulated relatviely cheaply by bad actors and all hell breaks loose.
Bisq appears to rely on bank transfer services, which are usually traceable, reversible etc, so I'm not sure it's quite the panacea one would hope.
> And if there isn't?
I feel like this question is meant for speculators and investors.
> Bisq appears to rely on bank transfer services, which are usually traceable, reversible
Bank trasnfers are of course not anonymous, but there's nothing linking them to crypto trading, because those are direct transfers from buyer to seller. The platform, Bisq, doesn't ever touch the money. Bank transfers are sometimes reversible (called chargeback), but for example for SEPA that's only in the case of theft and you're not actually obligated to return the money, but you would have to explain why you received it. The worst that I've heard happen is a bank account being frozen, because of suspect activity (unexplained transfers from many different private individuals). Bisq has effective mechanisms for dealing with the chargeback risk. If anyone reading this is at all interested in trustless system, I highly recommend taking a closer look at Bisq.
The platform does require trust, it requires trust in the banking system and in the person you're transacting with. Not sure really what it achieves apart from delegating trust from a central authority to a disparate set of individuals. I'm not convinced that's a good thing.
You don't have to trust the person you're trading with, because the platform uses an escrow system (multi-signature BTC addresses), account age signing (an old account is unlikely to have been stolen) and has mediation. That leaves negligible risk, of which you're aware.
> delegating trust from a central authority to a disparate set of individuals. I'm not convinced that's a good thing
Bisq provides very similar decentralization and privacy guarantees as Bitcoin (which is the point, because a system is as decentralized/private as its weakest link), so I'll delegate answering this to the myriad of articles about Bitcoin's trustworthiness.
But still acknowledges that some methods can result in the money being recalled after the BTC has been released.
> account age signing (an old account is unlikely to have been stolen)
Unlikely, but you still have to trust that the account hasn't simply been used to build up trust before the big score, which is something we see over and over and over again in the cryptocurrency space.
> Bisq provides very similar decentralization and privacy guarantees as Bitcoin
Which is absolutely not the same thing I pointed out to you as the problem. You can't just say "but bitcoin!" to wave away that this platform still involves trust, and not trust in a regulated actor like a bank, but trust in a number of actors, any of whom may not be trustworthy. You may not have to trust the platform itself, but it's not clear to me that that is any sort of positive.
Because headlines focus on the amount of power used and not the source of power used, which is overwhelmingly renewable and wasted energy that had no prior economic use which undermines the whole reductive argument about power used, and is an outcome resolved purely by market forces.
Let me know if you would like examples for your independent corroboration.
And here's the handwaving.
Here's a counter-example:
https://www.coindesk.com/a-new-york-power-plant-is-mining-50...
What's the point of starting your comment by unnecessarily painting this entire community with such a broad brush and dismissing the nuanced opinions on cryptocurrencies found here? What does it add? It just makes me more skeptical of whatever you're about to say, to the point where I barely feel like it's worth reading.
The problem is more the social and economic aspects of cryptocurrencies. The community is filled with scammers, get rich quick schemes, and self-appointed blockchain experts who have no idea what a Merkle tree is. All these people who see cryptocurrencies as this profitable investment creates a roller coaster market that undermines their usefulness as an actual currency. What you want in a currency is stability, you don't want to suddenly not be able to afford rent because the market collapsed over the last week.
Is it? A few people got super rich, a few others did alright, and there have been several notable failures or downright frauds.
The huge amount of obvious marketing pitches also did (and does) make it sound super sketchy.
But I agree it's here to stay.
Delusional to call it Unstoppable
[4] The Rise of Stable Coins: Beyond Facebook Libra: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-stable-coins-beyond-face...
Still even with the current ruling only spot exchanges are legal and derivates are still not allowed which means koreans exchanges are still not allowed to offer shitcoin futures with 125x leverage.
This is perceived to be the case, yes, but I have seen no evidence indicating that it is in fact the case. In fact, all measures I can find put Korea somewhere around the middle of developed countries in social mobility.
Keep commenting about how the entire industry is worthless, blockchain is a scam, the entire world is being conned, etc. etc. etc. Be sure to call a self-driving car to come pick you up after work.
The entire space keeps turning up scams and collapses, especially of exchanges. How many days is it since an exchange exit scam now?
Blockchain is a new financial system, and people choose to use it for various things.
Look up MakerDAO. If that whole thing isn’t even remotely interesting to you, I don’t know what to say. There are plenty of interesting and useful projects. Is there anything AI has delivered other than surveillance tech and giving me suggestions while typing that I just turn off because it’s annoying?
Also, yes, it's extremely obvious to my eye that blockchains and cryptocurrencies are here to stay and expand even. For those of us who do indeed use them here and there, the value of having something that lets you send money to someone else on the other side of the world almost instantly with very few if any intermediaries being able to block the transaction is wonderful. Yes some of you in here who send money inside the EU or inside the US markets keep insisting from within your bubbles that money transfers are easy and instant, but really, try sending money to someone on the literal other side of the world, outside your market, without spending unreasonable money on fees or dealing with terrible customer services, then perhaps reconsider the value of crypto.. In addition to this, there are indeed many legitimate uses for them in the form of anonymous payments for services that ARE NOT illegal, and the market for such products and services could easily grow in a number of ways.. But easier to ignore that and wave ones hands about the crypto scam and the supposedly pending collapse of everything. (It's been several years already and things slowly, sometimes haphazardly but persistently keep growing in this whole sphere, so, don't hold your breath)
I have done, many times, for small and large amounts. No problems with the traditional system, way more protections too.
The fact is that cryptocurrency continues to fail to make inroads in this space, despite cheerleaders having shouted about it for years now.
They've been around over a decade, generated an absolute ton of hot air and fanboyism, but have made next to zero impact on the real world or even on the rest of the tech world.
Ten years is long enough for anything 'with potential' to show at least some signs of realising that potential. But nothing much has come of it other than gambling and scams.
It's looking like a bust.
It is, it really is.
There's no reason to think it's anything like the internet in terms of use or adoption.
The dogmatic mantra at this point is on the side of the enthusiasts, who have shouted at us for ten years that blockchains are going to change the world, but have done no such thing.
To criticise people for lack of vision after a ten year history of scam and failure after scam and failure is looking a lot like denial.
Someone will mention a crypto that is supposedly different.
* Check Project Page
* Check Whitepaper
* Check glowing usage reports
* Check success stories
* Check actual usage - find none that is outside other crypto holders
99% of crypto is eating some other crypto.
MakerDAO seems interesting but really is a way for ETH holders to borrow against it. Checking r/MakerDAO seems people are using DAI to speculate on ETH not much else.
Crypto has fallen into permanent Year of Linux on Desktop phase.
Oh I also make donations. As for why that's a good use case, remember that USA froze all donations to WikiLeaks before.