/biz/ - Business & Finance

Why did they fail

>>7158418

Because they weren't backed up by anything, and because they were outside of regulation.

Someone would go to a town and open a bank. Then they would issue their own "dollars". And it would work well for 5 or 6 years until one morning the bank doesn't open, and everyone finds out the banker ran off with all the dollars.

When that happened, people were left with nothing. Since it was a currency independent of the country, there were no guarantees, no controls, no solutions.

This happened all the time, wiping out entire towns worth of people at at a time.

The same is true with crypto's. We've already seen "money" going "missing", people suddenly closing shop, etc.

If people were to take the time to study the history of finance and bubbles, they would recognize cryptos for what they are.

Everyone talks about how this is something new. It isn't. Everyone talks about how they're going to change the world. EVERY generation thinks they are going to change the world.

>>7158771
They were backed by state bonds and regulated by state laws.

Fly by night scams are certainly a universal, but the math behind the legitimate cryptocurrencies is novel. Their potential is considerable.

>>7158826

The math, the technology might be, but they coin itself is not.

My understanding is that the coin/hash is open source. Which explains why we have roughly 1500 different crypto coins.

So the question becomes.... if the tech can be used by anyone (including the big bank), why do they need Bitcoin (or others) for? Especially when there is a financial advantage to doing it themselves?

I agree with you that the tech is novel and has value, but you need to understand how this is going to work.

Right now, you have 1500 cryptos almost all serving a speculative use instead of a utility use. In other worlds, you can buy and sell, hoping the price goes up, but you are very limited where you can use them to buy and sell real product and service.

So what happens when the big banks decide to adopt blockchain?

1. They get together and devise a standard they can agree on.

2. They devise the system to transfer money back and forth between themselves and individuals that can be regulated enough to protect both the buyer and seller.

3. They agree that they will only work with THEIR system, and not the other coins.

4. On rollout day, a download is sent to the 10 million credit card machines in the country, and everyone can suddenly start using it at every store.

5. And when this happens, you'll have block chain, you'll have the same sort of system, you'll have the ability to transfer money between individuals.

But what you WON"T have is bitcoin, ether, or the rest. Because their name has no value, and they don't own their own tech.

Leave /biz/ and never come back, you retarded boomer.

>>7159051

Listen you young whipper-snapper. We have this thing called free speech.

In "my day", we weren't afraid to hear people who disagreed with us.

>>7159100
Leave /biz/ and never come back, you retarded boomer.

Or rather, understand why SWIFT is shit, how everything runs on 50 year old COBOL, friction introduced by anti-terrorism and money laundering laws, Metcalfe's law, the whitepapers of CMC's top 20, and the reason Dogecoin exists in the first place. Then post your half-relevant historical trivia.

Under the "big bank" system, here's how it will probably work (and it solves a real world problem.)

Person A and B have bank accounts at different banks.

If A wants to transfer money back and forth right now with B, they have to write a check, or withdraw cash, or do a wire transfer, all of which takes time and is a pain in the ass.

So the big bank system will work this way...

1. Each bank would be responsible for giving their customers access to their own accounts in the form of a universal blockchain transfer medium.

2. A and B walk up to any credit card machine, and swipe their cards, key in the amount, and hit a button.

3. The money is instantly moved to/from A and B's bank, giving one an instant debit and the other an instant credit.

4. Poof, they're done.

The only think lacking is the ability to use this on the black market. And the black market doesn't have a large enough customer base for the big banks to care.

>>7159194
>understand why SWIFT is shit, how everything runs on 50 year old COBOL, friction introduced by anti-terrorism and money laundering laws

Quit posting, you retarded boomer.

>>7158418
Wouldn't scrip be a more accurate comparison?

>>7159174

I get it. Some people want a mechanism where they can anonymously buy drugs or women,or otherwise do trade in the black market.

But that's not enough to build a universal currency on. At least not one that will last.

I mean, even the idea isn't original. Before all of your cryptos, you still had TideCoin

>>7159232

Probably. But I went with private banks because crypos are more likely to think of their shit coins as a replacement for real currency; an alternative to the dollar, etc.

And private banks fits that topic better. I mean, someone just printing their own money and hoping things just work out?

I mean, a storage of wealth can be anything people agree on.

Maybe we should follow the lead of the Yap and bring back the Rai Stone.

I mean, why shouldn't a big fucking rock be worth as much as ether?

>>7159232
Scrip is/was centralized. Most coins have decentralized issuance and the ones that don't (e.g. Whoppercoin, Tether) neither require blockchains nor are fundamental drivers of new use cases.

>>7159253
DNMs are a core use case but, here's a hint, your "A and B card swiping" example introduces an idiotic amount of overhead in an international, 21st century economy. Figure out what that is.

Banks/Government want
1) control
2) to be able to track all transactions (while masking some of their own)

No coins offer this so theyll eventually roll their own and figure out the way to do their own shady laundering outside of the coin.

>>7159368
>>7159451

You both seem to think that any sort of regulation is bad. I disagree.

Let's just make up an example....

Person A hooks up with person B where A is going to sell B a large quantity of illegal drugs, and A is going to pay in bitcoin.

So A transfers the bitcoin, and B does nothing.

What are A's options? Sure, he can complain to everyone that B can't be trusted, he can say he'll never do business with B again, but then what?

While blockchain coins do a good job making sure that there is a paper trail to verify the financial transaction, there is still no recourse, because there is no regulating mechanism to force one.

Yes, there will always be people who want to operate on the black market, and they will always figure out a way to do so. But most people don't. Most people want convenience.

You speak of overhead, but there's probably no real ADDITIONAL overhead. Banks already have their electronic clearing house to transfer money between them. They already have the hardware and software to electronically use and transfer money to the customer. Nearly all of it is already built into the existing system.

All that's missing is the paper trail for the transaction. And the blockchain can serve that purpose.

>>7159637
>tfw he doesn't know about smart contracts

>>7159726
Sergey looks elegant as fuck. Certainly a great man.

There's also the issue of the volatility of cryptos.

One of the reason the Federal reserve was set up was because of a series of bank panics where people lost a shit load of money.

As long as crypo prices keep shooting up and down, it's value as a store of wealth is reduced.

Consider this...

1. A retail store decided to accept bitcoin as payment.

2. They sell a product, and it is paid for.

3. They now need to use this bitcoin to replenish their stock so they can sell more.

4. But when they order more product 4 days later, their bitcoin is only worth 40% of what it was when they got it?

How are they supposed to run a business like that?

Now, you will probably say that at the end of each business day they convert their bitcoin back to dollars. Which is the smart thing do to.

But if they're doing that, what is the value of using bitcoin at all? Why not just use dollars for the whole transaction?

You might say convenience, but a credit card is more convenient because it offers protection for both buyer and seller.

For anyone thinking these coins will conquer the world, these are the sort of things you need to fix before it will ever be usable in the real merchant world.

>>7158771
>EVERY generation thinks they are going to change the world
For fuck's sake friend, think for 2 minutes about 1) who you're communicating with 2) how you're communicating with them 3) what you're actually discussing. Every generation has changed the world irreparably for the last few hundred years and the rate of change is still increasing.

>>7158418
Wow read all your posts and you are really quite the nutcase. You probably watch CNN or Fox and think that the system you boomers built is the greatest thing since Brutus killed Caesar. GTFO and study some basic economics. Wildcat banks hurt the stupid and rewarded the intelligent. They were replaced with a system that rewarded the powerful who "protected" the stupid. Boomers think this is great because their parents fought in WW2 and wanted their kids to have an easy life. What they don't realize is that struggle is necessary for strength, or otherwise you get boomers. Fat, lazy, entitled, and constantly looking to the government (parent replacement) for a bailout for their social security and medicaid handouts.

>>7159000

Good post. Research smart contracts. Come back and elaborate.

>>7159726

If this is what you mean, you really haven't changed anything, have you? Except who the regulator is.

You still have the "exchange" which is supposed to verify that the transaction takes place.

So much for the decentralized no regulator argument.

Not to mention... if I'm buying a quart of milk and a loaf of bread with bitcoin, it's not like the exchange is going to have a refrigerator to hold it until the transaction is finished.

It just seems like you're trading one master for another.

>>7159947
lol you are completely technologically illiterate.

>>7159000
> So what happens when the big banks decide to adopt blockchain?

"Blockchain", the technology itself, does not need a token or a coin to work.

All it is, is a decentralized database, a database no one controls.

In bitcoin, it's used to keep track of "how many coins everyone has" trustlessly.

BUT you can implement blockchain WITHOUT a token or coin.

This is why a LOT of the current altcoin projects will eventually fail. Not only is decentralizing everything not really necessary or wanted by many (when did mass adoption of Tor over the normal internet happen? Right, never), many of these projects can work as decentralized networks WITHOUT a coin.

Also, banks don't really need a blockchain (since they can just use a database). And if they do use one, they don't need a coin. They can just keep track of other data, like storing it as "debts" to each other.

This is why if bitcoin fails, everything crypto is doomed. It's the "original experiment" of creating money using a blockchain. If it fails, it means that was not a viable idea.

>>7160169
>if it fails, all crypto will fail
Or maybe the problem with Bitcoin is that it is based off of hashcash and is thus 90's era tech? Transactions with bitcoin are basically impossible, thats why everyone is pumped about nano.

>>7160169

Oh I think it will fail at some point, because it has most of the symptoms of any and every other bubble / ponzi scheme in history...

1. The first people in are the ones who made all the money. Those in last lose most of all.

2. The "value" isn't tied to any utility, but is a purely speculative play, with a small group bidding each other up, creating the illusion of growth where none exists.

I saw an article from December 17 which said that 1000 people hold roughly 40% of all bitcoin. I don't know if this is true or not, but if it's probably fairly close.

These crypos aren't widely circulated, it's the same people moving back and forth in a small circle.

3. The so-called market cap of bitcoin is an illusion. If a handful of people suddenly decided to cash out their coin , it would collapse overnight.

I mean... does anyone believe that there is really $171B floating around in bitcoin?

Not even close. Because the bid/ask is separated from the reality, it has bubbled exponentially beyond it's real market cap.

If a bunch of people started cashing out, there would be a liquidity crisis that would probably drop the price to less than $200.

>>7159947
>You still have the "exchange" which is supposed to verify that the transaction takes place.
You mean a set of open-source smart contracts whose terms are automatically enforced when certain conditions are met?

There are already digital exchanges (see: Etherdelta) which run in a completely decentralized way. No regulator needed, except for a distributed network of computers. I trust that way more than I trust a corrupt and paid-off politician to regulate anything.

Smart contracts are really important, because they allow developers to build DApps, which are decentralized applications which run on the blockchain instead of on a central server. This is cool for a number of reasons, but one reason is that they don't have to worry about scalability anymore. Whereas now, any application needs to rent out warehouses full of servers and storage to handle widespread use, developers will simply be able to deploy their applications on a large, distributed AWS of sorts. And they have the benefit of their applications being uncensorable, impossible to take down.

>>7160169
>BUT you can implement blockchain WITHOUT a token or coin.
Yes, but in a lot of cases this is stupid because it means that people have no incentive to perform work for the network, or not to set up malicious nodes. Financial incentives encourage adoption and decentralization. It's why way more people are mining Ether than are running Tor nodes (which are all owned by the government anyway).

>This is why if bitcoin fails, everything crypto is doomed. It's the "original experiment" of creating money using a blockchain. If it fails, it means that was not a viable idea.
Why? Bitcoin was a good first iteration, but it has a lot of problems that were solved by later technology. This is like saying that, because nobody uses giant brick cellphones anymore, the concept of a mobile phone is not viable.

>>7159947
You really don't understand the technology behind cryptocurrencies and how a blockchain with a distributed ledger is a novel way to do things. There are these things called decentralized exchanges where nobody needs to "verify that the transaction takes place"; the transactions are verified by the people using their computers spare gpu/cpu in exchange for the digital asset of the network as payment. Admit you don't know what you're talking about and then go do some research and then come back you retarded fucking faggot.

>>7160255

I don't think the problem is with the tech. The problem is with human nature and the the traditional boom/bust cycle.

Is it Tulips? maybe not, but it's already Beanie Babies.

Artificial scarcity, a get-rich-quick mentality, and a well-worn application of the bigger fool theory is at play here.

Most people don't understand this, but in many ways this is nearly the same thing that happened with the housing bubble. It really is.

>>7159883
He's talking about how cryptos are going to change society and its hierarchical structure into a more democratic one.

You're thinking of technological change, which changes the means of society, and its effects, but not the underlying structure behind it where you have special interests manipulating things behind the shadows. That was what crypto was supposed to solve, and it seems that it's just business as usual just like thousands of years ago.

Hippies thought that free love was going to change the world until reality set in and they became corporate yuppies.

The internet changed how, where and when the world communicates but not the why and what. Clickbait and echo chambers limit people's perspectives for the most part, trapping them from a library of knowledge that can be used to better their lives. 4chan is no different. I could read wikipedia and order history books online, but I choose to shitpost instead.

I may not completely agree with that thought process. We are changing the world slowly, for better or for worse. Crypto isn't the killer app. It might be the keystone for an intellectual revolution though. People are already talking about finances a lot more than normal. It might be a trend, but at least we are shedding light on the shadows, my friend.

>>7160169

This is a great point. It's why coins like Siacoin and FUN will succeed while others will fail.

>>7160397
>transactional currencies that remove the need for banks = tulips
>smart contracts that self regulate = beanie babies
Uh.... yeah... If you were talking about cryptokitties I would agree with you... but these are actually legitimately useful. I get that you're arguing that they aren't useful, but that's just because you're a lazy entitled boomer that thinks "big mommy government" should protect everyone rather than letting the laws of nature sort the strong to the top and let the weak die off.

>>7160458
Crypto won't make the world "more democratic" as if that was a good thing. Crypto, in the ideal, lets the wolves eat the sheep while the goverment sits buy helpless.

"Free Love" did change the world. Reddit has anti-evil teams. Gays run around on the streets in giant corporate sponsored parades. Of course not all hippies agree with these changes but the overall arch of the movement succeeded.

The world has been changing more and more rapidly for 100,000 years. More happened in 10,000 years than the previous 90,000, and more in the last 100 years than the previous 900. What the change is, and what direction it takes, is the question.

>>7160347

I freely admit that you know more about the technology behind cryptos. But this reply is meant for both you and >>7160393

1, What both of you are talking about will work great if the transactions/sales involve things that are digital.

But it goes back to a point I made earlier. What about buying something online, or buying a loaf of bread.

Where is the protection when you pay for a product and it isn't delivered. At least now, with a credit card, you can have the charge written off. With a decentralized system, one that is almost entirely based on and for electronic transactions, how does it translate into the real world?

2. And here's a more important question, though it will take a bit to get it out right....

Why is Bitcoin worth more than Ether? Why is Either worth more than some new coin being shilled for the first time tonight?

If the answer is that the code is better, or faster, or more secure, then fine. The question then becomes....

If you have 2 coin with matching technology, why is one worth something and the other is worth nothing?

If one were widely in use, and widely usable at stores around the country (like credit cards, or dollars), then the value would be in it's usability and convenience.

But right now, I see dozens of coins coming out every year. I thin there are something like 1500 coins out there.

And if they essentially do the same thing, then they are all valueless because there is nothing that one does that the others can't.

>>7160347
>>7160393
>>7160347
>>7160393

And for the rest of my question/comment, let's talk about bitcoin.

(and believe me, I'm not bashing coin because I'm bashing YOU, I'm bashing coin because I've seen this sort of thing happen so many times before)

Right now, 1 bitcoin = $10,222.18. Why?

It doesn't have real utility, you can't spend it at enough places to be of any real value to most people.

It's not widely distributed. Right now 40% of all bitcoin are in the hand of 1000 people.

So why does it have value? I would argue that it only has this high value because speculation is screwing with the bid/ask. This is also why it can't hold a steady value, but instead jumps up and down large amounts every day.

Now... I'm all for people making money. I like to make money myself.

But this has all the traits of both a bubble and a ponzi/pyramid scheme.

1. The first people in are the ones who make all the money. As time goes on fewer and fewer people can make money (this especially applies to miners)

2. The value is in the speculation, and not in a utility value.

3. No one can put a handle on WHY it has value where it is.

4. The value balloons as more people enter in order to make money on the price increase, and not for the purpose of using it.

Again, this is your generation's version of the housing bubble.

Back during the bubble, a house that sold 20 years earlier for $40k would sell for 1.5 million.

Why? Because people thought they would be able to sell it later for more.

So they didn't look at what the real value of the home was, they looked at what they thought it would be worth when they sold it.

And that worked for a lot of years. Until it didn't. And as soon as homes stopped selling for more than people paid for them, you suddenly had a collapse in price that wreaked the whole country.

So make money speculating in cryptos. But make sure to cash out a certain amount. Because no bubble lasts forever.

>>7160651
>Where is the protection
Thats the point. There isnt any. The people who are actually productive will use it, the rest will either starve or follow. And the USD that you boomers expect to be paid in for social security will be worthless.
>Why is bitcoin worth more than ether?
The sheep are buying into the worthless tech while the wolves profit. Most of us have sold all our btc holdings already. Only the idiots are buying btc - its the same crowd that bought bitconnect.
>usability and convenience
Only thing you said that makes sense. The tech is still immature and needs further development so that the every day person can use it for real transactions.
>dozens of coins coming out that do the same thing
You obviously haven't read a whitepaper, ever. Sure most of the project coming out are scams (wolves eating stupid sheep) but a lot are very real. One of the biggest advantages of ERC20 tokens is that anyone can raise funds to start a company - without having to register with the SEC - and sell directly to the public. All those "protections" you trust so much? Gone!

At least you're better than the average boomer. You seem to have the energy to attempt to think for yourself instead of letting the TV think for you... albeit it is a bit painful to watch, like a baby taking its first steps.

>>7160793
>housing bubble
Check out this chart. If you bought at the peak of the last bubble, and didnt sell, you'd be in the black. And remember LA is the place where the bubble broke the worst and recovered relatively slowly.

>>7158418
Ah Georgian banking tokens one of my favourite topics and how the British funded wellingtons armies

>>7159000
Hahahahahha #4 is the dumbest fucking shit I've ever seen in my life. Thank you for that. You fucking retard.

>>7160547
>letting the laws of nature sort the strong to the top and let the weak die off.
The Matthew effect of accumulated advantage would like to have a talk with you, edgelord.

>>7159000
>>7159000
>So the question becomes.... if the tech can be used by anyone (including the big bank), why do they need Bitcoin (or others) for?

Smartcontracts
Go read up. They are game changing. See chainlink - massive lead in this area. No the banks will not try and copy it, they use IMB and Microsoft products and they will use smartcontracts based on chainlink.

>>7159000

You really don't get it, do you?

>>7160651
>Where is the protection when you pay for a product and it isn't delivered.
Escrow. There are already escrowized contracts which fetch real-world delivery data and it works fine. Many markets run purely on escrow and feedback/ratings systems without any outside regulation.

>Why is Bitcoin worth more than Ether? Why is Either worth more than some new coin being shilled for the first time tonight?

A number of reasons, one of which being that Bitcoin is the de-facto 'reserve currency' for all crypto, something which the market as a whole has been slowly moving away from. There's also a lot larger supply of ETH than BTC.

>If you have 2 coin with matching technology, why is one worth something and the other is worth nothing?

It really comes down to supply and demand, here. ETH costs as much as it does because that's how much people are willing to pay (in GAS fees) to run their contracts on the network. If people set up their computers to run nodes for these other blockchains in exchange for financial compensation, then supply and demand would eventually lead to it costing about the same to run a transaction on either network. These other coins aren't going to magically supply you with free computational resources.

There's also the fact that a large network with millions of users is more decentralized (and thereby reliable and trustless) than something that came out a day ago.

>>7160547

Hey, I'm a Nixon Republican. My attitude toward government has always been... fuck em.

But in my lifetime I've seen an amazing amount of fads and bubbles, and I've studied many more.

Tulips... at one point you could buy 4 acres of land for a single flower bulb.

Pet Rocks... people waiting in line to spend money on a fucking rock in a box.

Beanie Babies... people buying for speculation. Paying $500 for a $2 toy because they thought that they would be able to sell it for more later. People cashing out their retirement accounts to buy fucking stuffed animals, only to have them go back to $2 once they had rooms stuffed with them.

Every christmas hit toy for the last 20 years.... people paying premium and waiting in line because they fear that wont be able to buy one for 1/2 off after christmas.

The Silver rush of the late 70's. Two men in texas decide to corner the silver market, and America melts down grandmas silver set for cash.

The tech stock bubble.... because adding "dot com" to the name of a company means it will make a shitload of money no matter what the lack of profit tells you.

Enron... where future potential sales were treated as real sales, and the boom lasted until it crashed overnight.

The housing bubble. already mentioned.

Now, you can say fuck all us baby boomers all you want, but we have long memories.

We've been down this road enough times for us old folks to recognize the plot. This is your generations first rodeo.

>>7160939
>Matthew effect of accumulated advantage
The so called "Matthew effect" only exists because scientists aren't allowed to consider genetics. Back in reality, most people who get lucky rich end up poor again. Look at rates of people moving into and out of the top quintile and you'll see what I mean. But the anceint aristocracy still consolidates wealth because of good genetics, and when they lose a few generations later they are back up. I've seen it in families of chinese immigrants who were wealthy before they lost everything to the communists, came to the USA, and reestablish wealth in 2-3 generations.

>>7160347
Financial incentives do work to power the network.

But if no one wants to use the network, it's all for naught.

If the network has value being decentralized, ENOUGH that people will choose it over a centralized alternative, then most likely, running a node is enough incentive in itself just to keep powering the network.

Like how people still seed torrents of old movies. If you're gonna be part of the network because of the network's value, that is usually incentive enough.

_These kind of projects don't NEED a coin._

But for "blockchain projects" where there is really no incentive for end-users to move from whatever centralized service they are using now to that network, the coin is merely a speculative vehicle, and miners are ONLY powering the network for financial incentives.

But the network itself has no value.
i.e. the coin is the only reason why there are people there.

> Why? Bitcoin was a good first iteration, but it has a lot of problems that were solved by later technology.

This proves that marketwise, coins that are decentralized via blockchain, have NO PRICE FLOOR.

While they can work as "currency", they will never be viable as "store-of-value", since the price has no floor. It can eventually go to zero if something bigger and better comes along, or if sentiment turns enough against it.

Big money will NEVER place huge percentages of their net worth in it as it does not have that reliability. The best you can expect from them is a small percentage they will use for speculation.

"Technology/scaling" is only one metric of progress. "Stability/store-of-value" is also another metric of progress.

If something achieves gold's $8T marketcap, it will be huge enough that it cannot be easily manipulated by even the biggest whales, making it a proper store-of-value.

If the largest marketcap coin can be taken down, it means all the progress in proving crypto can become a "store-of-value" is lost.

>>7160870

That's because we're already in another bubble. The American memory is very short.

When the first crash happened, the fed dropped rates to zero and dumped a shitload of cash into the system.

But then they kept the rates artificially low, which fed a new bubble.

When the next crash happens, we're screwed because they can't lower rates as much as last time, and I don't know if there will be another trillion to throw into the pot.

The bubble is already shaky, and wall street is holding their breath wondering when it will crash.

Hint... look to canada. Their housing market collapse will start it all.

>>7158771
>reddit spacing
get out

>>7161006
Triple entry accounting is the greatest invention of the last 500 years
Single entry accounting took us out of mud huts. Double entry accounting enabled international trade on mass scale. Triple entry accounting, a revolution never seen before. Sorry not sorry you are too old and senile to grasp the magnitude of such an advance in human civilization.

>>7160336
I think if bitcoin achieves a marketcap similar to gold's ($8T), even the largest whales will have trouble manipulating it.

It will make it an attractive store-of-value, enough that big money will willingly store large amounts of their net worth in it.

It will become "self-sustaining" in a way.

But right now, the marketcap is so small that big money has to be insane to store any significant amount of their wealth in it. It's not yet a proper store of value when it can go from $18k to $10k. The most we can expect is a small percentage from them being used for speculative purposes.

I think this is basically an "experiment", whether crypto can succeed in being established as a store-of-value, and success is when we reach a marketcap high enough that big money start seeing it as sustainable due to having a marketcap high enough that manipulation is extremely difficult.

If that experiment fails, then yes, this is all a greater-fool bubble.

But bitcoin's offer of an uncensorable, unfreezable, unseizable store-of-value might be enough to entice big money to push it up.

That's a big market after all, just check out the Panama papers.

>>7161006
>tech bubble
Tech bubble is exactly like what is happening now in crypto. Most of the stocks that were booming shit (pet food delivery?). The companies that had an actual product went on to quickly regain their stock prices. If you bought Apple or PayPal back then, even at the peak, you'd be doing pretty well.

If you were to say 90% of the market is the new beanie babies and Pets.com, I'd agree with you. It's the 10% that makes the difference. Bitcoin isn't one of them, its mostly a collectors item (the store of wealth lie same idea as tulips). Ethereum -might- become a part of the post crash. For actual transactions, I don't see a coin out there yet that would work for daily transactions.

I will say this though, I think we have a ways to go before this bubble pops. It hasn't reached the financial wealth size that the tech bubble reached, and theres enough real diamonds in the garbage to keep prices for crap inflated for a while.

>>7161159

But again, you're talking about a non-proprietary tech.

If triple-entry accounting is that great, and it sounds pretty good, then everyone will eventually use it.

But correct me if I'm wrong... it isn't owned by anyone? I mean, anyone can use it if they want, right?

Which takes us back to where we started.

Given that blockchain is a great idea. Given that it gives you the ability to securely transfer funds, etc. But also given that NONE of it is proprietary....

... why does anyone really need any of the cryptos?

I'm telling you that if the big banks decide to implement all of the tech you're talking about, their existing infrastructure will crush the cryptos almost immediately.

Because it's easier for the end-use to keep using their bank, and their debit card, and the existing credit cards. And they don't care what the tech is that runs it, all they care about is that it works and it's convenient.

It would be like starting a company that makes a new flavor of pie. And everything is fine until you wake up and hear that Amazon is going to start selling the same flavor pie.

Since you don't own the exclusive rights to the flavor, there's nothing to stop them. And you will never be able to compete against their sheer scale and their existing infrastructure.

That's what I'm talking about with cryptos.

>>7161057
>Like how people still seed torrents of old movies. If you're gonna be part of the network because of the network's value, that is usually incentive enough.

Old torrents get lost to time every day. Files go down with no seeders, lost to the void to never return. Anyone who's torrented for a while knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Someone running a node for a decentralized storage system needs to be incentivized not to delete or corrupt data. Look at how SIA handles this problem, for instance. There also needs to be a mechanism to stop people from overloading the network with spam transactions - which is why almost all networks require fees.

>But the network itself has no value.
>i.e. the coin is the only reason why there are people there.

You could say the same thing about Facebook, YouTube and 4chan. There are thousands of *chans and the technology itself has no value, so why do millions of people use this one instead of the thousands of other ones? Why would someone want to use the undeveloped and unpopular ecosystem, instead of the one with the biggest market, the one that everyone's using and consolidated on? All else being equal, that is?

Eventually these networks will be used to build data-rich services and communities. Uprooting all that to move to something else won't be trivial.

>While they can work as "currency", they will never be viable as "store-of-value", since the price has no floor. It can eventually go to zero if something bigger and better comes along, or if sentiment turns enough against it.

I don't see why people wouldn't simply consolidate on something which suited their needs. While the technology is still young and maturing now, eventually it will plateau and reach a point where we've solved all the problems and there's no room for anything bigger and better, and no incentive for people to switch from what is already ubiquitous and convenient. This would lead to stabilization too.

>>7161462
Holy shit you are so fucking braindead I am actually struggling to understand what the fuck you were even trying to say. You literally contradict yourself twice in your own paragraph. What the fuck is wrong with you dude.

>>7161598

Maybe you're just missing the forest for the trees.

>>7161462
You are thinking too small if youre still stuck on "someone else will just do it".
Civilization may enter a small dark age. Satellites may be shut down, the international optical fibre cables may be severed, pwoer plants around the world stop running.. Blockchain cannot function during this scenario obviously. And neither will banks, or government, or any other industry. But only blockchain will remain when its over.

>>7161090

I've chewed through all this myself, and have come to the opposite conclusions

>Why is Bitcoin worth more than Ether? Why is Either worth more than some new coin being shilled for the first time tonight?

One is inflationary, one is deflationary as designed.

>If the answer is that the code is better, or faster, or more secure, then fine. The question then becomes....
>If you have 2 coin with matching technology, why is one worth something and the other is worth nothing?

Ultimately, supply and demand. VHS beat betamax for reasons unrelated to quality or capability.

>If one were widely in use, and widely usable at stores around the country (like credit cards, or dollars), then the value would be in it's usability and convenience.

Its value just isn't determined by transactions per second, usability, who accepts it, and so forth. I think most normies think along these lines "Would I accept a bitcoin for a car?" They equate its value with what it can buy forgetting that it is essentially fungible into various currencies which can buy anything. Its another kind of money, is all it is.


>I thin there are something like 1500 coins out there. And if they essentially do the same thing, then they are all valueless because there is nothing that one does that the others can't.

One of them is a better store of value, a "Reserve currency".... the "longest chain", the biggest hash rate, etc. They are all competing for the speculative profit/loss, which is typically just realized as more reserve currency.

Yes! it is a speculative asset. No! unlike real estate it is "un" real estate and cannot burn down, get a termite infestation or have renters try and see how many cats they can stuff in it.

>When the next crash happens, we're screwed because they can't lower rates as much as last time, and I don't know if there will be another trillion to throw into the pot.

Sure they can and will, just announced. Inflation incoming.

>>7161598

OK... let me try to make it simpler so you can understand...

1. Everyone seems to be arguing that the value in the cryptos is the technology: the block chain, the smart contracts, the accounting, etc.

2. But they also admit that these are open-source technologies. No one owns the rights to them, no one has to be paid before others can use it themselves.

3. So, if you have a handful of small people doing something, and then a large group of people with unlimited money decide to get into the same business, who is going to win?

Now... I agree that there is a small segment of anti-government anarchist types who want to "stick it to the man", but there aren't enough to build a new society, or even a new currency on.

So in the end, if the tech really has value, the big boys will get into it, and every single coin you see being hyped in /biz/ will be worthless; because the only thing they have to offer is a tech they don't own and 1/100th the convenience that the big boys could offer

>>7161462
Banks can implement blockchain technology, but it will come without any of the core benefits that come from this technology, namely trustlessness and decentralization - thus there will be hardly any advantage over using a regular database instead of a blockchain. If anything, it would just be slower and more expensive for them to do so, and it would make rolling back transactions more cumbersome.

>>7161654
>bitcoin is the reserve currency
...
I think maybe you need to chew something a bit different, bud. Reserve currency is just a fancy way to say "buy it because others buy it" which is just a ponzi scam.

And before you say USD is a "Reserve Currency" realize that it is backed by two things - first all taxes must be paid with USD, creating domestic demand and second, the US military invades countries that try to get off the USD for international transactions.

>>7161648

You've got to be kidding me.

Meanwhile, while electronic tech is waiting for the electricity to come back on, people will still have paper cash in their pocket, and a certain level of trade will continue.

The closest comparison would be 2003 when a large portion of the east coast lost power.

While the power was down, you couldn't get gas (pumps wouldn't work), you couldn't use credit cards, banks were closed.

But if you had cash in your pocket you could still buy a loaf of bread at the corner party store, and if you were holding cash you could still function.

The idea that blockchain is the only thing that will survive is.... hell, I don't even know WHAT to call an idea that crazy.

>>7161835
>he thinks his U.S. dollar would still be valuable in the event of a civilization-scale collapse

comparing a banking boom to a blockchain revolution is retarded. gtfo nocoiner

>>7161890

If you're talking about a civilization-scale crash, we're screwed no matter if we hold dollars or cryptos.

In that event, you're talking no electricity for years, the grocery stores empty, no money in the ATM's, and no running water.

In cases like that we will revert back to barter.

And when society finally DOES rebuild itself, they may decide that dollars are worthless. But the only thing worth less will be electrons stored on a USB drive.

In may ways, this is like the gold-bugs who buy gold as a protection against collapse, but then have their gold held by some out-of-state company. If the shit hits the fan, their gold will do them no good out of their reach. (and barely any good within their reach)

>>7161506
> Old torrents get lost to time every day.

Check out old classics. Torrents of Robin WIlliams or Jim Carrey films. Or anime like Naruto.

There are torrents that NEVER die.

These are the kind of networks I am talking about. Being part of it is incentive enough.

> mechanism to stop ... spam transactions

Fees work, yes. But there are also other solutions. Like how torrents can ban peers.

Coins are not the only solution against spam.

Blockchains can work without a coin, and most of these projects using coins where they are not needed are just money grabs (and are probably throwing onto a blockchain something that does not need to be decentralized anyway).

> You could say the same thing about Facebook, YouTube and 4chan.

Um... no? The "value" I am talking about in a network is it's users. The same way I said a classic movie torrent will never run out of seeders, because of the users.

Same for the examples you mentioned.

You basically proved my point. The system is valuable enough in itself, being a part of the system is enough reward on it's own.

No need for a coin.

> consolidate on something which suited their needs.
> This would lead to stabilization too.

As someone who has a decently sized stack of money, I'd say my BIGGEST NEED right now is an unfreezable, unseizable store-of-value.

I've gotten calls from my bank about AML alerts after $10,000 wires, requiring "proof of income" documents, and getting threats to freeze my account.

I've had Paypal freeze an account after several $500 transfers within a week for a few weeks, saying it's "money laundering behavior".

This is a large market as I said, check the Panama papers.

And the ONLY thing that matters to make something a stable store-of-value, is MARKETCAP.

That is the ONLY thing that can counter volatility. And the largest marketcap coin going down will prove that crypto marketcap doesn't matter, forever destroying the "store-of-value" viability of crypto for the BIG money.

>>7161937

Those who can't remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

>>7161747
Institutions use a technique called "embrace, enfold, extinguish" to manage new threats. That's your argument in one sentence, if I understand it right.

In which case, sure, you're right. The problem is that the institutions are old and slow even though they are also powerful. It's an asymmetric fight, similar to Trump vs Hillary. If the crypto anarchists can outrun the institutions, which they've been able to do so so far, the institutions won't be able to just copy the technology because it will be the international standard already. Some of the institutions, seeing the writing on the wall, will buy in, and the rest will collapse.

It's a race. It's not just the technology, it's the ecosystem that develops around that technology.

Example: Ethereum. If Ethereum becomes the global standard for smart contracts, there's no reason to use a bank's smart contract system as opposed to any other of the 100's of knockoffs that already exist. To be more specific, smart contract exchanges all support Ethereum, many people already hold Ethereum, so new tokens are placed on the Ethereum smart contract chain as ERC-20/23 tokens rather than some alternative. Furthermore, alternatives face the problem of lack of qualified developers - smart contracts are hard to build, and institutions can't just magically train people to use their new systems. A great example here is Bancor... remember that project? Backed by huge global institutions, right? Heard about any new tokens on Bancor? I sure haven't. Every person I've talked to who is launching an ICO goes straight to Ethereum because of the ecosystem.

>>7162015

> old classics. like Robin WIlliams or Jim Carrey

Oh Jesus

>>7161057
>While they can work as "currency", they will never be viable as "store-of-value", since the price has no floor.

I think you are getting tripped up by the definitions.

A currency by definition is viable, is a store of value. Nothing has a price floor. Anything can lose these attributes. Its all culturally relative. Even gold.

>Big money will NEVER place huge percentages of their net worth in it as it does not have that reliability.

You don't need a hundred millionaires- you need a million hundredaires to achieve the network effects.

I think you need to play your own devils advocate here.

When we humans encounter something we don't understand the first and most reliable reaction is to try to understand it using known and prior frames of reference. That works 99.9999% of the time in life because there is "nothing new under the sun". While your original point is a good one- Scam coins are essentially like primitive unregulated banknotes- you misinterpret bitcoin.

Bitcoin quacks like a duck, but its not a duck. It has a price, and so should obey what we expect in terms of a security. It acts like a currency, so it must obey the laws of use cases. It holds a value, so it must demonstrate how it can be reliable. But it does none of these things and in frustration, people call it a scam, a fraud, a bubble, or whatever else. Assume the opposite. Assume it does derive value from its unique attributes.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, that I've read- and I read widely- tries to fit a frame around it that explains it in terms of something that predated it, usually in line with what that particular expert's body of work would qualify him or her to say. Combine that with the desire to be right about something, with minimal risk... you got this month's FUD storm. People who were wrong about it going up a year ago are hoping to be right about it going down today. Zero risk calls by people who didn't recognize the VALUE a year ago.

>>7162054
Wanna feel old?

I just realized a lot of teenagers nowadays have no idea who these guys are, especially after talking with them about the new Jumanji movie.

>>7162016
That quote is completely meaningless here and you're still retarded

>>7162015
>There are torrents that NEVER die.
Nobody argued otherwise. But if you need a network to act as a RELIABLE storage mechanism - in cases other than just the most popular classics - then you need incentives. Otherwise, people relying on this infrastructure to build REAL SHIT will have their files lost due to lack of seeding. That wouldn't work at all. Imagine if your application was constantly losing access to storage records because the people hosting it didn't give a fuck to keep seeding anymore.

>And the largest marketcap coin going down will prove that crypto marketcap doesn't matter, forever destroying the "store-of-value" viability of crypto for the BIG money.
So you're saying because the first iteration of cryptocurrency didn't work because of fundamental flaws in its technological design, that one which irons out these technological flaws will never be able to succeed in the future? Sorry, but that makes no sense. Bitcoin will fail because it is too slow and too expensive to meet people's needs, as well as for a number of other technological problems. But these are problems specific to BITCOIN, and not to cryptocurrency in general.

>>7158418
I'd quite forgotten about this (and they teach about the Pony Express in grade school instead lol -- maybe like twice do I recall its mention there); thanks!

Also relevant: the brief "bucket shop" era described in the beginning of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator.

>>7162134
Youth is wasted on the young.

>>7162119
Wow. It's like me running across people who aren't old enough to remember 9/11.

Or more toward today... people who don't understand that the democrats are using the same technique on Trump as they did on Nixon.

It's one thing to read about it, but living memory is far better in cases like this, or trying to explain bubbles to crypto hounds

>>7162118
>A currency by definition is viable, is a store of value. Nothing has a price floor. Anything can lose these attributes. Its all culturally relative. Even gold.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
>The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, sometimes, a standard of deferred payment.[4][5] Any item or verifiable record that fulfills these functions can be considered as money.
Money is useful because it is used for exchange and accounting first. The store of value folows from its use. Real Estate may be a store of value, but it isn't money. That's the problem with Bitcoin; it's supposed to be used as a medium of exchange but it is too slow and costs to much to transact. So people fall back on "store of value" which is just like beanie babies - beanie babies are a store of value with no real world use, just like Bitcoin.

>>7162119
Shit man, I work as a manager for a well known fast food joint as well as a carer at an assisted living facility. It's crazy the viewpoint these young kids have of the world vs my vievpoint of the world the same with the old people in the assisted living facility. Generations are wildly different from each other but there is so much that we can learn from each other too.

>>7162118
The problem is right now, you are trying to force bitcoin's only use important case is to become a currency.

I personally believe blockchain has been PROVEN to be non-scalable to global adoption.

Not only with the $20 bitcoin fees back in December. Even ETH had problems with digital kitties, and the network freezes under in-demand ICOs.

Imagine global scaling: everything is a transaction, even a parent giving their kid their daily allowance. Or people chipping in to pay a bill when eating out, each person will make a transaction. Also online use cases, like each ad view/click could be paid as a crypto transaction, or each tip a streamer/camgirl receives could be a transaction.

It's going to be billions of transactions per day.

It CANNOT be all saved on-chain.

Blockchain as a technology has FAILED us in this respect.

Not even instant/free coins (like Raiblocks/Nano and IOTA) can feasibly do this permanently.

It needs to be done off-chain.

> Bitcoin quacks like a duck, but its not a duck.

Bitcoin is NOT digital currency.
NONE of the blockchain based coins can achieve this at a GLOBAL scale, in my belief.

All it is now is "digital gold".

If it fails even in this respect, then it has lost it's purpose.

As for the issue of being "currency", I believe only a solution like Lightning Network can achieve global scaling.

If even that fails...... then crypto is doomed. This is nothing more than just a speculation market, and we are all just playing a giant game of musical chairs.

>>7161638

This is my first rodeo. I understand this is a bubble, and eventually it will pop. But after that destruction, this market will still be here, and through that destruction, a new technology will be born.

Creative destruction is how Apple and Microsoft were born. The speculation drove the technology, and something great was achieved and given to the world.

Smartcontracts and blockchain are the future of transactions. These combined will reinvent the way we do business and make much of the central financial institutions obsolete.

You're an oldfag, so you understand that if there is an option to save money, a corporate entity will exploit it.

While all this may come crashing down in the future, the future isn't now, and when it finally crashes, the crash will not kill it.

Crypto is more than tulips, beanie babies, and rocks with faces on them. The comparison is insulting. Cryptocurrencies have a fixed supply; they cannot be devalued. Cryptocurrencies have a distributed ledger; they are nearly immutable. Cryptocurrencies do not rely on third party institutions to verify transactions; they don't need them. And the true applications for these technologies are just now being realized.

You don't see the potential because you haven't tried to understand the technology. Adoption of crypto will make the central banking system obsolete, and with technology advancing at its current pace, the problem issues with crypto will be resolved before you can downvote it.

This is the best gift we can give to our children; a shot a living in a world outside the claws of the old money that rules over our lives today. A currency that isn't national, cannot be devalued, and is not manipulated by the hands of the few. And maybe if this actually works, we'll see it transition to the hands of the few. But it's a restart button, and it will give us all another chance.

>>7161747
>3. So, if you have a handful of small people doing something, and then a large group of people with unlimited money decide to get into the same business, who is going to win?

How many coins does bitcoin have to beat? How many FUD storms? How many hacking attempts? There are literally thousands of developers attempting with large amounts of capital to steal all of bitcoin's value.

Bitcoin is the champ, you can fight bitcoin, but you have to start at the bottom and work your way up the CMC list like everybody else

> the big boys will get into it, and every single coin you see being hyped in /biz/ will be worthless; because the only thing they have to offer is a tech they don't own and 1/100th the convenience that the big boys could offer

To be sure, in their various niches. Truecoin will destroy tether, Stellar will destroy Ripple, etc. But you're facing an enemy in bitcoin that is like the terminator. It can be upgraded to kick your ass. Its hard to imagine the industrial corporate coin that is going to kill bitcoin though, all the prototypes are not quite managing to do it. Maduro and his Petro dollar? A gold-backed securitized coin? Visa/Mastercard, something like maybe Airline frequent flier miles on steroids, perhaps a platinum edition food stamp card? Best of luck!

>>7162251

> Bucket shop

also known as /biz/ , as far as I can tell these days

I would love to have one day about talking about finance that doesn't involve cryptos.

>>7158771
What a retard, if you think someone can run off with your eth or brc you din’t understand shit about crypto, kys after reading about it brainlet

>>7162203
I believe blockchain (as a technology) has already proven it CANNOT scale globally.

Even other techs (like IOTA's tangle or Raiblocks/Nano's block-lattice), cannot scale globally.

Imagine global scaling: everything is a transaction, even a parent giving their kid their daily allowance. Or people chipping in to pay a bill when eating out, each person will make a transaction. Also online use cases, like each ad view/click could be paid as a crypto transaction, or each tip a streamer/camgirl receives could be a transaction.

It's going to be billions of transactions per day.

It CANNOT be all saved on-chain.
Blockchain as a technology has FAILED us in this respect.

I believe only an off-chain solution like Lightning Network can achieve global scaling.

Any other "solution" that claims "better technology" still cannot scale globally, so it offers no incentive to me.

So right now, the store-of-value purpose is all it has going for it, so it cannot fail that or the entire "crypto experiment" has failed in my eyes (as blockchain technology has already failed the "global scaling" test).

>>7161772
>I think maybe you need to chew something a bit different, bud. Reserve currency is just a fancy way to say "buy it because others buy it" which is just a ponzi scam.

Lets be specific: a ponzi scam is a fraudulent activity of a specific type (new investors are promised returns on investment. Older investors are paid out with newer investor's capital). That is not bitcoin or a reserve currency. Ponzis typically promise high return on investment, but it is fraudulent because it is lying about how that is accomplished.

By reserve currency in crypto, it is the common unit of value. In crypto, a trading pair in which profit and loss are realized in the "reserved" currency. For example, I buy Ripple, hoping it doubles, it does, I sell it for the opposing trading pair- where I realize profit/loss in that currency. In the main, that is bitcoin, and to a lesser extent, other cryptos or fiat.

>>7161050
Only 5% of families manage to preserve their wealth beyond 3 generations. But hey, if you can prove that genetics play a part in wealth retention, I'm listening. I don't mind giving an ear to things I don't necessarily agree with.

If you have any sources, let me know. Google isn't giving me fuck all.

>>7162203
> if you need a network to act as a RELIABLE storage mechanism - in cases other than just the most popular classics - then you need incentives.

If it's not a large enough network to be self-sustaining without incentives (like these torrents) then I believe that the network itself does not have enough value to be a separate decentralized network.

Otherwise it WILL be self-sustaining, like these "classics".

That's my argument, and yes it is an opinion.

If you think there is value in networks that cannot sustain themselves without an incentive, then I cannot argue against that, as the only way to find out is to wait it out and see if these "projects" survive the test of time.

A network with an incentive to "earn" by running nodes is a brand new concept with crypto, and so these are uncharted territories.

As I said, I believe networks that are not valuable enough to be self-sustaining without an incentive have no real value, you believe they have value because of the incentive.

Let's just agree to disagree about that then.

>>7162381
>implying the PoWCoin and derivatives didn't just do exactly that to roughly 1,900,000 ETH.

>>7162344

Ya. The dog shit in my yard has a limited supply, but people aren't rushing out to use it as a currency.

Since you admit that it is a bubble and that it will crash eventually, I will simply advise you this way....

1. When the crash comes, it will come quicker than you think.

2. When the crash comes, one of the first symptoms is that you will no longer be able to transact. So you will be locked into positions as they become worthless.

3. There is a lot of money to be made in bubbles, as long as you are smart. Let it ride up, but occasionally pull out real cash so that when the crash finally happens you still have a pile of cash left over in your hands.

Again, I don't argue that the tech has value. And the tech will survive. But what WON'T survive is all of the money people have in the current cryptos.

There will come a day when every last dollar of every current crypto will be wiped out,. If you know this ahead of time, you can still play their market, still book some profits in real cash.

But if you don't know this and you never pull out cash (keeping it all in the same or other coins), you will be wiped out with the rest of them.

It's like the old /pol/ joke when the market crashes and someone larps that they are OK because they have a stop-loss order.

Stop losses don't get filled when it gaps down.

>>7158418
So OP what investments do you own?

>>7161835

>Meanwhile, while electronic tech is waiting for the electricity to come back on, people will still have paper cash in their pocket, and a certain level of trade will continue.
>The closest comparison would be 2003 when a large portion of the east coast lost power.

The internet was invented by the Department of Defense to create a computer network that could survive and function in the event of large scale nuclear war or similar levels of disruption.

If no internet, then of course, your cryptos will not be accessible, depending on your situation. But the blockchain is immortal as long as there are two copies. And as long as the internet connects two computers running the blockchain every single record is safe and preserved.

>While the power was down, you couldn't get gas (pumps wouldn't work), you couldn't use credit cards, banks were closed.

Yep, yep.

>But if you had cash in your pocket you could still buy a loaf of bread at the corner party store, and if you were holding cash you could still function.

Cash is king, bitcoin is bitcoin. Everyone should have a reasonable amount of liquidity in their portfolios.

>The idea that blockchain is the only thing that will survive is.... hell, I don't even know WHAT to call an idea that crazy.

Electronic records can survive. Of course in TEOTWAWKI situation every set of considerations will have to be adjusted to new prerogatives. Not even cash has much value in a world where everyone is starving.

>>7162476
>I believe blockchain (as a technology) has already proven it CANNOT scale globally.
It doesn't matter what your personal belief is - such a thing has never been proven. Look at how sharding and Plasma work as a viable solution to the scalability problem without sacrificing the cryptographic security that comes with blockchain technology. Not everything will have to be processed entirely on the main network.

>>7162638

I have 2 parts... my investments, and my trades.

The investments are buy and hold forever, with automatic dividend reinvestment. They include...

Waste Management
Lockheed Martin
ATT
American Electric Power
Comcast
CSX

and a handful of others.

My trading account is for quick ins and outs. Those are mostly options.

>>7162281
>Money is useful because it is used for exchange and accounting first. The store of value follows from its use.

It does not. Like I said its a cultural construct. No floor necessary.

Real Estate may be a store of value, but it isn't money. That's the problem with Bitcoin; it's supposed to be used as a medium of exchange but it is too slow and costs to much to transact.

It is a medium of exchange, I'm on exchanges all the time exchanging things with it. Those transactions are on hot wallets and are instantaneous. As for cold wallet transfers, I paid $4.16 yesterday and it took less than 10 minutes. Did you know you can make a paper wallet and give it to your friend? Voila, a zero energy, private, instant bitcoin transaction.

>So people fall back on "store of value" which is just like beanie babies - beanie babies are a store of value with no real world use, just like Bitcoin.

Hold up partner. The truth is a lot of people are trying to figure out what bitcoin is. Some of us know, okay? You're confused and they're confused, but give it some time and read up some primary literature... not a bunch of talking heads in the media.

For me it really comes down to this... go try and buy a bitcoin for less than $10,000 if you think its worth less than that. Good luck to ya.

>>7162579
>If it's not a large enough network to be self-sustaining without incentives (like these torrents) then I believe that the network itself does not have enough value to be a separate decentralized network.

Why do you think your belief matters, here? If people are willing to sustain the network in exchange for money, and people are wiling to pay to have things stored on this network, then it has value. Your personal belief about how much value it ought to have is irrelevant.

Someone looking to store arbitrary data on a network without incentives, basically has to rely on the goodwill of volunteers for access to their files. For serious applications which require reliable access to data, this simply won't cut it. Such a network would never be able to provide the type of reliability that these applications would need.

Torrent networks are not self-sustaining in the way that I'm describing. Only the most popular and widely-seeded files remain on the network with any reliability. Anything more obscure than that, and you're basically at the mercy of the one or two seeders who might be available sometimes. That's not what I would call self-sustaining or reliable.

>>7159000
>check'd
So what happens when the big banks decide to adopt blockchain?

1. They get together and devise a standard they can agree on.
>chainlink reference

2. They devise the system to transfer money back and forth between themselves and individuals that can be regulated enough to protect both the buyer and seller.
>chainlink reference

3. They agree that they will only work with THEIR system, and not the other coins.
>chainlink reference

>777

>(4 & 5 in your scenario won't happen like that)

>>7158418
lurkers approve of this thread

>>7162641

DARPA designed the internet to survive, but it still needs electricity.

So, you may have a hand crank to charge your phone, but when the backup power of the cell tower goes down you're in trouble.

That was one of the advantages of the old style landlines. Ma Bell had their own generator, so your phones sill worked when the power was out.

>>7159451
The paradise papers showed they are already doing this

>>7159253

>>7162338
>I personally believe blockchain has been PROVEN to be non-scalable to global adoption.

Everything that is technological will scale like Moores Law. I have no doubt. Internet, everywhere. Internet of "Thangs". super cheap smartphones. Wireless internet everywhere.

Oh yeah. Its coming. Scaling is not really that difficult to achieve. And for some things, not the most important or salient characteristic.

These things are software and hardware. Programmable. Upgradable. Extensible. Interoperable.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves to declare things impossible while people are in the process of making it happen

>>7159365
>lithocurrency

>>7162627

See you in a few years old man, after the stock market pops and you're bag holding. We'll be making gains on your losses.

>>7158418
>I wonder how many of you crypto junkies have ever heard of the wildcat bank boom of the 1800's; why they came about, why they failed, and what it means for all your coins.

Yes, I have heard about them. That's why I only hold XRP.

>>7162354
>Its hard to imagine the industrial corporate coin that is going to kill bitcoin though, all the prototypes are not quite managing to do it.

Come on. Stop lying. You know it's XRP.

>>7162725
Are you implying Lightning Network sacrifices "the cryptographic security that comes with blockchain technology"?

Because from what I've seen so far, it is still cryptographically trustless.

As I said, I believe only off-chain solutions can achieve GLOBAL scaling as it will be BILLIONS of transactions per day, and since you are mentioning ETH, does that mean you think Raiden also has "security sacrifices"?

>>7162935
>That was one of the advantages of the old style landlines. Ma Bell had their own generator, so your phones sill worked when the power was out.

5V as I recall. My smartphone runs on less than that.

>>7162899
>If people are willing to sustain the network in exchange for money, and people are wiling to pay to have things stored on this network, then it has value. Your personal belief about how much value it ought to have is irrelevant.

As I said, that is your opinion that it has value.

e.g. there are a lot of altcoins right now that want to serve as "Game Credits". People are running these nodes, and it has "value" in your definition.

But there are barely any games using these as tokens, if there are, there are barely any players on it, and even if there are, they are using normal in-app purchase and not buying the token just to buy in-game stuff.

To me, that just makes the actual token "worthless", sure it has value in the market, but in the end of it all, it is unnecessary.

But in your definition, you say "it has value", which is nothing but an opinion as I said, so I'd rather not argue it.

>>7163254

Its not just an opinion. A price implies a value, does it not?

If the market says its worth $1000, in what way it is a matter of interpretation?

>>7162476
Isn't this what iExec is attempting to solve?

>>7163254

Reminds me of another thing in the economic world: fine art. Say for instance, a DaVinci painting that recently sold for (some ridiculous sum)

What attributes does it have that give it value? Price is one. But also, scarcity. Other qualities, maybe relative to other objects like it.

But market price is a pretty unequivocal quantification of value.

Since it is a historical data point, it is only suggestive of future value. Thats why crypto is so fun! Nobody knows the future and the past isn't a reliable guide all the time.

>>7163329
I guess that statement needs more context.

My original post is here: >>7160169

The relevant part is:
> "Blockchain", the technology itself, does not need a token or a coin to work.

> All it is, is a decentralized database, a database no one controls.

> BUT you can implement blockchain WITHOUT a token or coin.

> This is why a LOT of the current altcoin projects will eventually fail. Not only is decentralizing everything not really necessary or wanted by many (when did mass adoption of Tor over the normal internet happen? Right, never), many of these projects can work as decentralized networks WITHOUT a coin.

So yes, they have market value now, but what I'm saying is that they will eventually fail, the network has no real value in it (i.e. users don't really need it).

I guess I'm using the word "value" wrong.

>>7162869
>make a paper wallet and give it to friend
You do realize how private keys work, right?

>>7162493
>reserve currency
Literally its only value is that others accept it as having value. That puts it in the same category as beanie babies and tulips.

>>7162543
>5% of families preserve wealth beyond 3 genearts
Wow commie your Matthews effect is really powerful then, ain't it? Thats exactly what I'd expect - a few families with good genes are able to preserve wealth for multiple generations while those who just got lucky quickly find themselves back where they came from. Good luck finding any scientific research on this, it's basically banned by the institutions alongside any other research that's considered problematic. I'm speaking from past experience in the lab, not that it matters to you and there's no way I can prove it. Go work in science and learn for yourself what happens when you study phenomena and get results that aren't socially sanctioned - or even just invalidate the research of some big name that brings in a lot of money to the institution.

> I'm on exchanges all the time exchanging things with it
Have you noticed like I have that a lot of exchanges have been experimenting with base currencies other than BTC? It costs a lot when you try to arbitrage or buy currency on a different exchange and you got to get old dinosaur to lumber across the yard.

>>7163016
Apparently you have never studied CS at all. If your algorithim is bad, it doesn't matter how powerful moore's law is; it can become physically impossible to scale because of the physical laws of the universe. Bitcoin is one of those examples. It simply cannot handle the number of transactions as Visa or Swift.

>>7159194
HSBC cares

>>7163016
Moore's Law is dead.

Moore's Law just referred to the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubling approximately every two years. It doesn't refer to scaling as a whole.

And now it seems they can't shrink them further.

Either way, storing all of the world's transactions, billions of them if not more, PERMANENTLY, seems unsustainable in the long run.

>>7163201
I haven't read the whitepapers for Lightning or Raiden, so I'm not sure. But if they allow for billions of transactions per day without sacrificing any of the benefits that come with this technology, then what's the problem with them? Doesn't it only prove the point that all of this is, in fact, viable and globally scalable?

>>7163254
The concept of "value" is in itself subjective and based on people's opinions.

In the case of DApps, financial incentives are needed to guarantee the reliability of the network. Otherwise you would have something like the torrent situation where shit goes offline randomly and without warning - making it untenable for any serious application. Why would I want to store [random DApp]'s persistant data and make it available for free?

With torrents, it makes a lot more sense because we're talking about movies and games and books that people are specifically making the choice to share and seek out. But most software applications need to store/use a lot of boring data that aren't used anywhere other than the application itself, data which nobody is going to (in itself) derive any entertainment value from.

Look at 4chan for instance. Every post, the timestamp, etc. is stored in a SQL database. Images are stored on image servers. It needs reliable access to this data in order to function properly.

If decentralized applications were to be built on top of a decentralized, p2p infrastructure, it would need a mechanism for guaranteeing the reliability of access to its persistent data. This is what would allow real applications to be built. You would need to incentivize people to power your application, as well as penalize them for unreliability/maliciousness.

If you could build something like this that didn't involve any financial incentives at all, then you'd have something where literally any application could be deployed and scale limitlessly FOR FREE! Why would anyone ever pay for a VPS or storage ever again?

>>7159100
You are a wise boomer, you can stay.
Bitcoin was probably made by a boomer kiddos.

>>7158418
I am econ grad student and I had not heard of them thanks op.

Not the same thing at all. The tokenized smart economy is in it's formative stages.

>>7163836
> Doesn't it only prove the point that all of this is, in fact, viable and globally scalable?

EXACTLY. I'm just saying to people who are saying "bitcoin has technological flaws" etc. that Lightning is the best solution they've come up so far.

It's so good that even Litecoin is going to implement it, and even ETH via Raiden, and a few other altcoins as well (mostly ones that have implemented Segwit).

So don't be too quick to write off Bitcoin as "ancient flawed tech", as Lightning is coming, and it will address all the "slow and expensive" issues with using bitcoin as a currency.

There are 2 metrics for progress of a "currency coin" imo: scalability and store-of-value

Bitcoin has gone the farthest store-of-value wise (by having the biggest marketcap).

And it is implementing what I think is the BEST solution scaling-wise: Lightning. I suggest you check it out.

> In the case of DApps, financial incentives are needed to guarantee the reliability of the network

Yes, but how many of these networks are actually needed, or will see actual use? That's what I mean when I said most of these have no real value and will eventually die.

As for guaranteeing reliability, with enough demand, it will be self-sustaining. As with the torrents I mentioned, and also like Tor where you can get anonimity for free.

If it's not in-demand enough that it cannot be self-sustaining, it's like a business at that point. You have people pay to maintain the network, and you can risk going out of business if there are not enough people paying. This is why I said "let's wait and see", as only time will tell whether this is a sustainable business model.

>>7163666
>wow commie
>muh lab experience
Yeah, that was really convincing. I turn the cheek and this is what I get? Conspiracy assumptions? Thanks a bunch anon.

I hope you at least got some smug self satisfaction from this.

>>7164199
>As for guaranteeing reliability, with enough demand, it will be self-sustaining. As with the torrents I mentioned, and also like Tor where you can get anonimity for free.

These sorts of applications are not really comparable to torrents or a Tor node. Neither of these things needs to be particularly reliable in order for the network to function properly.

With torrents, we've already established that less popular torrents go down all the time. It is NOT self-sustaining - millions of torrents fail to sustain themselves! It's only sustainable in the case of (a relatively small amount of) popular files. This sort of model is not viable for general applications.

The Tor network is somewhat reliable, but it's slow, and it works on a fundamentally different model from what I'm talking about. If a Tor node goes down, then there's no reason why everyone can't switch to another one. But in the case of a network that stores data, each node would only store bits and pieces of data shared across the entire network. So if one node goes down, it would be a lot bigger deal than if a Tor node goes down. You need a mechanism to prevent this from happening often, so that you can have RELIABLE access to data.

>>7164487
> With torrents, we've already established that less popular torrents go down all the time. It is NOT self-sustaining - millions of torrents fail to sustain themselves! It's only sustainable in the case of (a relatively small amount of) popular files.

And that is what I was exactly referring to. I already mentioned it earlier so I did not feel the need to explain it again, but as I said, popular files are the model of what I am saying

"If it is popular enough, that is incentive enough"

And regarding reliability, not all use cases of these coins require reliability, and if they do, as I said:

> If it's not in-demand enough that it cannot be self-sustaining, it's like a business at that point. You have people pay to maintain the network, and you can risk going out of business if there are not enough people paying. This is why I said "let's wait and see", as only time will tell whether this is a sustainable business model.

Your opinion seems to be that it's a sustainable business model, mine is that it's all a house of cards that will eventually fall apart at some point in the future.

Which is why I said "only time will tell".

>>7161286
>>7161462
fuck off and never come back.

>>7165022
If something can't sustain itself based on the goodwill of volunteers, that doesn't mean it's not sustainable. This is because we're not limited to the goodwill of volunteers in building a model that will sustain itself.

If you have something that will sustain itself through volunteer efforts, then great. You don't need a token or any sort of financial incentive in that case. But this technology doesn't make that assumption.

There's a reason why software developers don't rely on BitTorrent for their persistent data storage.

> Iamverysmart
29 posts by this ID.

>>7162850
if your such a student of the history of finance and bubbles OP you should clearly be able to see the western world is dying along with all its financial institutions

I don't think you understand at all the implications of crypto and blockchain. We haven't evolved as individuals for 10,000 years. We now evolve solely as populations and have been evolving at an ever increasing rate, proportional to the information flow of societies. What blockchain and PUBLIC blockchains especially do for digital information flow is nothing short of an evolutionary breakthrough. These tech bubbles are mankind trying hard to overcome its physical and psychological flaws by means of machinery and AI and you compare them to ponzi schemes.

I'm sorry, you won't make it anon. And I don't mean it in the memey way people say around here. I mean your genes won't make it through the evolutionary process of the digital age. Stay sapiens.

>>7165215
You're not addressing this part though:
> it's like a business at that point. You have people pay to maintain the network, and you can risk going out of business if there are not enough people paying. This is why I said "let's wait and see", as only time will tell whether this is a sustainable business model.

As I said, I see a lot of these as unsustainable, throwing something onto a blockchain that does not need to be decentralized.

Holding ICOs to build a casino that runs on their custom token, or their gaming token that will somehow be used by users to buy in-game items....

I see it all as unsustainable business models, but as I said, there's no way to know right now, and "only time will tell", which is why these are all opinions.

>>7159000
The op is only true if the only thing you use the "coin" for is currency, but new coins like Eth are much more so your thesis is moot good day.

>>7165684
Nobody's arguing against that point, though. Of course people will be able to build businesses on top of such infrastructure. That's kind of one of the main points, is it not?

Like you said, people are already building businesses on top of blockchains. In the case of an online casino, it especially makes sense, since all of the game logic can be audited for fairness. An online casino where cheating is literally impossible seems like a perfectly valid use case for smart contract technology. This is vastly preferable to a closed-source, centralized online gambling platform which could be completely rigged for all anyone knows.

And it doesn't have to use its own token. There are plenty of such applications which just use plain Ether.

posting in an epic thread

>>7159947
>exchanges verify smartcontracts
brainlet, kys

>>7165250
Its always dying. It's called entropy. Hence, we keep the show going as long as we can, and have children so they continue the good fight.

>>7162359
Finance is dead, and cryptos killed it. You will never again have another meaningful conversation about money that does not involve crypto in some way.

It is a virus that will bring honesty to a corrupt system, and it will win. It has, in fact, won — the dust just hasn’t settled.

Crypto is not a tulip or a Beanie Baby or a bank in much the same way that Ebola is not a hammer, and cancer is not Alaska. You are dealing with the death of the economic religion, and you just can’t see it yet.

Is Bitcoin just a version of Always Sunny "self sustaining economy?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyxxE1AcUSM

>>7167490
No, glib Jewish comedy is not a trustless cryptographic blockchain protocol.