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I don't know if we're there yet or not, but I remember last peak I started to here about crypto in my non crypto media feeds, aka comedy podcasts. I just saw my

by Crye 5y ago

I don't know if we're there yet or not, but I remember last peak I started to here about crypto in my non crypto media feeds, aka comedy podcasts. I just saw my disc golf feeds talk about crypto. I think that's a strong signal.

entropic88 5y ago
Last peak was pretty much 100% retail investors like your disc golf gang. The amount of institutional investment this round offer legitimacy and absolute scale of potential that can't be overlooked by anyone that's been paying attention. Honestly, for the amount of forward thinking technologists that call this nook of the internet home, there is a ridiculous blind spot for cryptocurrency. It's actually ridiculous to me that such forward thinkers could be such luddites. Will it take another decade before you realize we're there - or if not yet, where this is going?
- sebmellen 5y ago
  I have been around in the crypto space for a significant amount of time (think $700 BTC) and have started two startups which use blockchain tech to a significant degree. But I am very disappointed in BTC and ETH. BTC did not become “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” and we haven’t seen the explosion of uses-cases I hoped to see from ETH (like tokenization and trading of real-world assets). There’s a ton of froth and solutionism in this space, which is OK, but it also understandably puts off a lot of people who see it as a scam-ridden wasteland. That’s to say nothing of the Tether black swan to come.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > I hoped to see from ETH (like tokenization and trading of real-world assets) For ETH to trade real-world assets it needs everything else that the real world already provides: laws, courts, verification systems. Hell, it actually needs that even for digital systems.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Correct. Blockchain is only able to extend its guarantees to concepts wholly encapsulated by the blockchain. That's the reason only "currencies" have been successful thus far. The boundary between the blockchain and the real world is not a surmountable one - not with the guarantees of the blockchain anyways. And once you get rid of the guarantees it's just a slow, inefficient database. This is why, try as people might (in over a decade) they have yet to achieve literally anything that isn't a currency with it.
      - kruxigt 5y ago
        This is a very good point! The first thing that crypto will succeed with is thus probably a store of value (Bitcoin seems to be going there) and the second is as a currency (we will see which one/ones will take this role). For contracts connected to things off the blockchain...that probably has no real solution yet.
      - acjohnson55 5y ago
        I think this is not quite true. You can represent real world events and data with oracles. This is being now through Chainlink for things like security price data. Of course, it's probably not so simple to keep oracles in sync with increasingly niche real world data.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        > You can represent real world events and data with oracles. You can represent them, but that's about it. For Ethereum contracts to be enforceable in the real world (and even in the digital world) you need significantly more than just representation.
  - matkoniecz 5y ago
    > That’s to say nothing of the Tether black swan to come. Black swan refer to unexpected events, right?
    - sebmellen 5y ago
      By black swan I mean that I'm convinced something bad will happen with Tether, but I don't know what. It's like Rumsfelds' "known unknowns" [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        That's a white swan. Unknown unknowns are black swans.
      - CTDOCodebases 5y ago
        It will be interesting to see what happens when those who exit at the top move into USDTether and try to cash out.
  - PKop 5y ago
    >BTC did not become “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” I understand that people are disappointed by this thus seeing the idea of BTC as a whole as a "failure", but given the fundamental properties of the system (finite supply, distributed network) it was never possible for BTC to become a currency used widely in everyday high volume transactions. Impossible. Hal Finney even recognized this in early discussions predicting BTC wouldn't be used in high volume but more likely as a reserve asset, which BTC can absolutely be. Functioning as a digital gold, despite people's aversion or annoyance at this concept. Acting in concert w/ other payment methods or fiat currencies used for payments, taxes, commerce, transactions. A store of value to complement inevitable debasement or dilution of uncapped supplied fiat.
    - alwillis 5y ago
      Sure but Hal probably didn’t realize layer 2 solutions such as Lightning Network were possible, with low fees and fast transaction times using bitcoin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
      - entropic88 5y ago
        I see that as third party rent seeking behavior and a bit of a co-opting. And that's fine, because the beauty of satoshi releasing it as open source spawned an entire ecosystem of ideas and implementations, so while his 'baby' may not be what he envisioned the basic idea and problems solved live on through evolution.
  - alwillis 5y ago
    BTC did not become “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”… It certainly has when you consider that by cash Satoshi meant cash as a bearer instrument. Unlike a federal reserve note—a piece of paper—that represented the thing that’s valuable—gold, bitcoin itself is the thing of value.
  - entropic88 5y ago
    I've been around since I read about it on slashdot in 2009. Was one of the first online retailers accepting bitcoin for purchases (late 2010). And I completely agree. Monero is the 'ideological' best cryptocurrency in my opinion, and I've hedged my bets across a handful of coins that I think at least offer something valuable to the future space. Bitcoin has the first mover advantage and although bastardized into a 'gold like store of value' completely detached from its original use case I'd still want to own a decent amount because why fight momentum. I agree with everything you say (wild west token scams, tether backing and sketchy accounting) but I think there is too much benefit at the core for one to disregard the entire space. The cream will rise to the top.
- lottin 5y ago
  What makes you think a forward thinking person should be supporting bitcoin? The ideology behind bitcoin is anything but forward thinking.
- grey-area 5y ago
  Either you are wrong, or lots of people here are wrong. Which do you think it is?
  - entropic88 5y ago
    If I've been wrong since 2010 then I don't care and don't want to be 'right'
- deschutes 5y ago
  Crypto is a grift that grew into a scam economy. That's why it's unpopular on this site.

by Crye 5y ago

entropic88 5y ago

Last peak was pretty much 100% retail investors like your disc golf gang. The amount of institutional investment this round offer legitimacy and absolute scale of potential that can't be overlooked by anyone that's been paying attention. Honestly, for the amount of forward thinking technologists that call this nook of the internet home, there is a ridiculous blind spot for cryptocurrency. It's actually ridiculous to me that such forward thinkers could be such luddites. Will it take another decade before you realize we're there - or if not yet, where this is going?

sebmellen 5y ago
I have been around in the crypto space for a significant amount of time (think $700 BTC) and have started two startups which use blockchain tech to a significant degree. But I am very disappointed in BTC and ETH. BTC did not become “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” and we haven’t seen the explosion of uses-cases I hoped to see from ETH (like tokenization and trading of real-world assets). There’s a ton of froth and solutionism in this space, which is OK, but it also understandably puts off a lot of people who see it as a scam-ridden wasteland. That’s to say nothing of the Tether black swan to come.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > I hoped to see from ETH (like tokenization and trading of real-world assets) For ETH to trade real-world assets it needs everything else that the real world already provides: laws, courts, verification systems. Hell, it actually needs that even for digital systems.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Correct. Blockchain is only able to extend its guarantees to concepts wholly encapsulated by the blockchain. That's the reason only "currencies" have been successful thus far. The boundary between the blockchain and the real world is not a surmountable one - not with the guarantees of the blockchain anyways. And once you get rid of the guarantees it's just a slow, inefficient database. This is why, try as people might (in over a decade) they have yet to achieve literally anything that isn't a currency with it.
    - kruxigt 5y ago
      This is a very good point! The first thing that crypto will succeed with is thus probably a store of value (Bitcoin seems to be going there) and the second is as a currency (we will see which one/ones will take this role). For contracts connected to things off the blockchain...that probably has no real solution yet.
    - acjohnson55 5y ago
      I think this is not quite true. You can represent real world events and data with oracles. This is being now through Chainlink for things like security price data. Of course, it's probably not so simple to keep oracles in sync with increasingly niche real world data.
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        > You can represent real world events and data with oracles. You can represent them, but that's about it. For Ethereum contracts to be enforceable in the real world (and even in the digital world) you need significantly more than just representation.
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  > That’s to say nothing of the Tether black swan to come. Black swan refer to unexpected events, right?
  - sebmellen 5y ago
    By black swan I mean that I'm convinced something bad will happen with Tether, but I don't know what. It's like Rumsfelds' "known unknowns" [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      That's a white swan. Unknown unknowns are black swans.
    - CTDOCodebases 5y ago
      It will be interesting to see what happens when those who exit at the top move into USDTether and try to cash out.
- PKop 5y ago
  >BTC did not become “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” I understand that people are disappointed by this thus seeing the idea of BTC as a whole as a "failure", but given the fundamental properties of the system (finite supply, distributed network) it was never possible for BTC to become a currency used widely in everyday high volume transactions. Impossible. Hal Finney even recognized this in early discussions predicting BTC wouldn't be used in high volume but more likely as a reserve asset, which BTC can absolutely be. Functioning as a digital gold, despite people's aversion or annoyance at this concept. Acting in concert w/ other payment methods or fiat currencies used for payments, taxes, commerce, transactions. A store of value to complement inevitable debasement or dilution of uncapped supplied fiat.
  - alwillis 5y ago
    Sure but Hal probably didn’t realize layer 2 solutions such as Lightning Network were possible, with low fees and fast transaction times using bitcoin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
    - entropic88 5y ago
      I see that as third party rent seeking behavior and a bit of a co-opting. And that's fine, because the beauty of satoshi releasing it as open source spawned an entire ecosystem of ideas and implementations, so while his 'baby' may not be what he envisioned the basic idea and problems solved live on through evolution.
- alwillis 5y ago
  BTC did not become “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”… It certainly has when you consider that by cash Satoshi meant cash as a bearer instrument. Unlike a federal reserve note—a piece of paper—that represented the thing that’s valuable—gold, bitcoin itself is the thing of value.
- entropic88 5y ago
  I've been around since I read about it on slashdot in 2009. Was one of the first online retailers accepting bitcoin for purchases (late 2010). And I completely agree. Monero is the 'ideological' best cryptocurrency in my opinion, and I've hedged my bets across a handful of coins that I think at least offer something valuable to the future space. Bitcoin has the first mover advantage and although bastardized into a 'gold like store of value' completely detached from its original use case I'd still want to own a decent amount because why fight momentum. I agree with everything you say (wild west token scams, tether backing and sketchy accounting) but I think there is too much benefit at the core for one to disregard the entire space. The cream will rise to the top.
lottin 5y ago
What makes you think a forward thinking person should be supporting bitcoin? The ideology behind bitcoin is anything but forward thinking.
grey-area 5y ago
Either you are wrong, or lots of people here are wrong. Which do you think it is?
- entropic88 5y ago
  If I've been wrong since 2010 then I don't care and don't want to be 'right'
deschutes 5y ago
Crypto is a grift that grew into a scam economy. That's why it's unpopular on this site.