Cryptocurrency as the next significant stage for computing technology, not just an investment

[KovalainenFanBoy]

[goDel]

Replies like this are expected, this is what most people think at first.  But literally everything I said is true.

 

 

To be honest, I think it's mostly technological wankery. Just like other digital currencies/financial assets. The only reason to delve into it, is potential growth of value. It's a volatile business, imo. One day you're rich. The next, your bitcoins are worthless. Good luck.

[goDel]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2017/05/17/bitcoin-is-an-asset-not-a-currency/

 good article

thx

[Tricone RC]

For a while I thought shit like cryptocurrency could be an example of "eco-economic decoupling" i.e. the detachment of the economy from physical resource use and, consequently, its environmental footprint. Our economy needs to do this eventually, so it'd be fantastic if we could all pay our bills by sitting at home in our undies doing bullshit with bitcoin.

 

Turns out when you look at the electricity use it's basically more of the same

[acid1]

I'm kinda surprised by the lack of foresight on the blockchain size. I figured that Satoshi-san would have anticipated the incredibly slow transaction times. I don't really see lightning networks saving BTC either.

[eugene]

i don't think i've ever had such a poor understanding of a contemporary, hot and important topic than of this whole e-shekels biz. i'm totally full republican on this thing. is there a youtubed explanation of this thing with cool graphics that lasts less than 5 minutes?

[patternoverlap]

[joshuatxuk]

i'm noticing a severe lack of tayne in this thread...

 

computer, what have you got for me?

 

 

pretty neutral about cryptocurrency for now, though TBH hearing an oddball relative I saw at xmas, who is a self described 'trump libertarian' running for congress via a gofundmepage (make of that what you will), being super pumped about the concept has tainted it a bit or me. it's nice seeing a more in depth discussion on WATMM about it to shake that off - going to bookmark these links for later

Edited January 4, 2018 by joshuatx

[koolkeyZ865]

[hello spiral]

i don't think i've ever had such a poor understanding of a contemporary, hot and important topic than of this whole e-shekels biz. i'm totally full republican on this thing. is there a youtubed explanation of this thing with cool graphics that lasts less than 5 minutes?

 

There was a really good/interesting article a few years ago where a guy (as an experiment) methodically found out how to mine some, got a couple, and then went through the convoluted process of turning into cash in his hand.

 

Of course now if you try to search for it google is gummed up with 10,000 'TURN BITCOIN INTO CASH!!1' clickbait sites.

[Bechuga]

Thanks, but waiting for an hour for my cryptocoin purchase of milk and cheese to go through is not the future. Cryptocoins may be worth a bunch, but my time is worth more.

 

edit: also money is really boring

Edited January 4, 2018 by Bechuga

[zaphod]

I’ve been heavily invested since last January. I’ve made a lot of money catching alt coins in their infancy. The most I made was on antshares/neo. Right now I’ve pulled almost everything out except for a small amount diversified into Req and eth and xrp. From an investment standpoint, it’s incredibly risky but the ROI is often a lifetimes worth of stock returns. Anyone who tells you this is not mostly gambling has no experience trading real stocks. But if we’re going to talk about crypto currency for its supposed use case as a world currency and replacement for fiat, there are a lot of issues.

You’re deluding yourself if you think bitcoin is ever going to function as a replacement for cash. The transaction times, fees, energy usage from mining, complexity (my latte cost .00000004 satoshi and I have to file for capital gains tax for the sale of property??)... these are all things that limit bitcoin and other cryptos use in the real world. But if you look at blockchain as a technology, you can see where the possible world changing implications are. Research projects like golem to see a use case that exists outside the world of finance.

I don’t think everything will be good though. The government will develop its own digital currency which will allow an audit of every financial transaction using block chain scanners. Crypto is a massive windfall for the IRS. The amount of tax evasion and under reporting going on right now is kind of stunning. And reporting is a nightmare. I’ve spent weeks preparing my return and it’s really shown me how utterly useless this tech is as a practical currency. Not to mention the issues I’ve had with converting coins back into real money. If the idea is to stay in crypto, then there needs to be an ecosystem to support that. And right now, it’s just not feasible. No one is really buying major life purchases with crypto. If they are, and they live in the US, the tax implications are a complete mess. 2018 is going to see privacy coins take off, and it’s also going to see banks developing their own block chains. Someday we might use digital currency, but all of the coins in the top ten market cap right now, including btc, will be gone.

[sweepstakes]

also money is really boring

[manmower]

Don't really care for it in its current state, my money's in a savings account that's how much of a daredevil investor I am.

 

Sometimes I wish I at least understood what's going on, in case one or more of these coins ever see wider use as actual currency; then again I'm probably equally clueless on how current state-issued money actually works.

[YangYing]

[manmower]

[usagi]

lol

[BobDobalina]

i don't think i've ever had such a poor understanding of a contemporary, hot and important topic than of this whole e-shekels biz. i'm totally full republican on this thing. is there a youtubed explanation of this thing with cool graphics that lasts less than 5 minutes?

 

Saw this the other day, illuminating:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeMv9uKpAZg

 

Mostly ambivalent about this shit, but I do find the energy requirements to "mine" to be absurd and highly unsustainable (though p much everything else we do is unsustainable too, but w/e amirite).  I am however fascinated about information theory and how data, in addition to having it's own entropy, must necessarily be tied to the physical domain and the thermodynamic entropy that holds sway over the universe as we know it.

 

Nothings for free. Take it away boys.

 

 

i'm noticing a severe lack of tayne in this thread...

 

computer, what have you got for me?

 

 

Now Tayne I can get into!

[zlemflolia]

Since I live in a wood shack in Siberia, what is the monetary value of bitcoin really based on? What makes it 'scarce' enough so that it has some sort of value? Is it the cryptography and the computing power needed to encrypt/decrypt stuff? And all that real money being spent buying bitcoins and paying transaction fees at the end of that cycle is picked up by the lucky guy with the best rig?

 

Last month, hackers stole 56 million eur from NiceHash wallet in our country. So I think hackers are the new bank robbers and that might be a serious security issue with the whole concept.

 

It's based on your ability to take part in the global, uncensorable, pseudonymous, indestructible money transfer protocol that Bitcoin is.  Its monetary value is based on demand to enter such a highly useful network.  It is a deflationary currency where only 21m bitcoins will ever be created no matter what, as opposed to fiat currencies which are continuously produced and degraded in value every year.  

 

Nicehash was likely an inside job.  I personally was monetarily affected by a large amount but it's not a serious issue - it's still the wild west right now, once things get more stable and we have user friendly security methods this won't be as common

[zlemflolia]

Don't really care for it in its current state, my money's in a savings account that's how much of a daredevil investor I am.

 

Sometimes I wish I at least understood what's going on, in case one or more of these coins ever see wider use as actual currency; then again I'm probably equally clueless on how current state-issued money actually works.

 

State issued currency - central control, they issue as much as they want.  In places like the US they have a decent currency, the USD which only loses 3% in value yearly.  In other places like Venezuela they have 100000% yearly inflation meaning their currency is absolute garbage compared to even the biggest shittiest cryptocurrency, quite literally

 

Fiat = printed by government

Banks = fractional reserve lending = multiplication of money supply which forms a feedback loop since some lent funds result in deposits into the bank AGAIN which they can then lend out fractionally.  Fractional reserve banking is a massive bubble - deflationary cryptocurrencies eliminate the possibility of this happening since you can't create currency out of thin air to lend to people

[Nebraska]

 

https://i.imgur.com/HLedxMg.gifv

 

 

[zlemflolia]

i don't think i've ever had such a poor understanding of a contemporary, hot and important topic than of this whole e-shekels biz. i'm totally full republican on this thing. is there a youtubed explanation of this thing with cool graphics that lasts less than 5 minutes?

You need an understanding of intro computer science, distributed networks, cryptography, economics, game theory, and monetary policy to understand cryptocurrencies fully right now.  A basic explanation is this

 

We're all trapped on an island

We have a piece of paper where we write down how much money everyone has

You can only append new changes to the end i.e. "Bob gave Joyrex $500"

 

How do you make it so nobody can write fake entries for themselves or other people, and anyone can write entries whenever they want?  Satoshi solved that through distributed proof of work consensus

[zlemflolia]

For a while I thought shit like cryptocurrency could be an example of "eco-economic decoupling" i.e. the detachment of the economy from physical resource use and, consequently, its environmental footprint. Our economy needs to do this eventually, so it'd be fantastic if we could all pay our bills by sitting at home in our undies doing bullshit with bitcoin.

 

Turns out when you look at the electricity use it's basically more of the same

 

It looks like that initially but you're ignoring how much electricity the current financial services and banking industry uses to build its buildings, keep its lights on, pay its employees, and things like that.  Cryptocurrencies are aiming to eliminate all of it, yes, all of it completely.  When you take that into account the energy expenditure is worth it, and on top of that this also removes the inefficiencies inherent to the way those existing institutions work, and removes the ability for centralized corruption, and the gains society makes on that can easily be invested back into the environment

 

Ignoring all of that completely though, there are still other cryptocurrency implementation methods that are far more environmentally friendly and we are luckily moving closer towards them as I said in the OP

[zlemflolia]

Also it's the first 100% literally completely uncounterfeitable object that humanity has created, in this case as money.  Sounds farfetched but it's true.  It just ironically isn't even an object in the traditional sense, and exists everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and if 99.999% of blockchain copies are destroyed, all you need is one of them to restore the entire network because you can verify that the copy is real independently of any authoritative source through mathematics (backwards rehashing the chain and checking that the hashes match up)

Edited January 5, 2018 by Zeffolia

[zlemflolia]

It's kind of like the ultimate philosopher's stone time paradox of game theory and economics in that once it's invented it will always dominate because decentralization is such a superior system because of the massive profit-taking inefficiencies in society it's capable of exploiting and therefore eliminating, making us more efficient and free from centralized control.

 

The only risk of these not transforming society is some sort of mass government oppression taking place like the dark ages, but in the end it will prevail because all that is needed is one copy of the whitepaper or one person who understands how to reimplement it, and even if they are all destroyed it WILL be invented again.  It exists and is real, it will exist forever, this is a way out of the matrix of greedy despots and rulers

Edited January 5, 2018 by Zeffolia