I like the gambling analogy here - same with any share. Anyone with a hand in the game essentially has a cash out offer which means fuck all until they’ve taken the money. Anyone thinking they’ve made a penny until they’ve taken their money is fooling themselves.
A very few people will make fortunes.
Quite a few will do well.
The vast majority will lose everything to the two groups above.
Same as it ever was
That’s one use for it sure and admittedly a lot of the ‘dapps’ center around financial transactions at present but it’s not the only one. Anything programmable with a turing complete language can be used for a lot more and will be in time. As I said above, the tech has only really just started the maturation phase. There will be a killer app soon enough that drives mass adoption (maybe with people not even realising it’s blockchain powered). A lot of the arguments being deployed that frame blockchain tech in terms of existing tech is exactly the same thing that happened with the internet at first. ’Oh email, it’s just a computer letter then’ etc.
The tech is over a decade old and has been through several ‘could have been the end of it’ moments and still come through. It’s here to stay imo.
It’s good to be cautious but in other news, Etherium has hit seven all time highs in the last month or so. I think I’m bailing on stocks once gamestop is done. The returns are just too good and from looking at planned updates, it’s only going one way from here. Imo.
You are conflating 2 things. The perceived value of a the magic beans as an investment strategy. Which I think is a very bad investment in the long run, with the concepts of blockchain and ledgers, which I think will be hugely useful.
The transaction costs still seem to be eye watering. And the energy use solving piuzzles for the magic beans cannot be a good thing. Even if you say it is renewable, you are taking wind power and converting it into heat. On a massive scale. For what?
Nah. The two are inseperable. You cannot have the Bitcoin (capital B) blockchain tech without bitcoin currency. You cannot have Etherium without ether. It’s digital currency. That’s how they work. Sure, some companies are setting up private blockchains using the tech (much like intranets) so the tech is clearly useful in itself but for this thread, private chains we can’t access or invest in are irrelevant no?
Transaction costs are coming down every day on Etherium and they are moving to a '‘proof of stake’ system (you pay 32 coins to become a validator which gives you a vested interest in it working as it should) in return for ether coins rather than the current '‘proof of work’ (which are the math problems you mention that are responsible for the energy usage concerns) so for Etherium (which I want to be clear is the only one I’m investing in and understand the future plans) that’s not a concern.
A blockchain is just a ledger. You do not need a currency to go with that. It is a neat and clever way of securing the transaction history. But a transaction could be an entry in your medical notes rather than a record of a solved puzzle changing hands. It is secure because of the distributed ledger meaning you cannot go back and change all of them.
All these currencies are is a solved puzzle which is passed around as a token of worth. Each movement is recorded using the blockchain.
You can have a blockchain without the currency. But not the currency without the blockchain.
You can have a private blockchain without the currency.
You cannot have a public one without a currency.
Fwiw, you can change the ledger too. You just need 51% of the network nodes to agree with you.
Etherium classic (which is NOT etherium and should be avoided) has been 51% compromised 3 times.
Does anyone actually use Bitcoin to, you know, buy shit with?
Seems like it would be a real ball ache to price goods in, considering how volatile it’s been over the years.
mono-stereo Any place can choose to allow purchases via bitcoin and it’s as quick as a visa transaction. The reason it’s not in use all over the place is because of scepticism of the tech and the phase of the tech maturation it’s in. Also the volatility of the value. No one wants to pay 1 bitcoin for something and then find out they could have paid half a bitcoin the next day.
Visa have stated (see earlier posts) that they are looking to add bitcoin and other crypto currencies to their company in a big way. I would imagine it will explode overnight if they allow it which, while driving up the coin price for investors would also be antithetical to it’s designed purpose of cutting out Visa and other middle men completely.
Volatility will come down as the tech matures. Already bitcoin seems to be levelling out a bit (although what happens when it hits the 21 billion coin limit for artificial scarcity in a few years is anyones guess).
Wally No one wants to pay 1 bitcoin for something and then find out they could have paid half a bitcoin the next day.
Yeah that’s what I was getting at.
mono-stereo No doubt in my mind that’s why Tesla are happy to accept bitcoins. Didn’t most of their Q1 profit come from bitcoin investing?
mono-stereo I think it’s used a lot on the dark net at the mo for buying powder and hitmen.
I think the main reason bitcoin won’t take off is because most people haven’t got a fucking clue how it works.
Smallman1 Give us a quick run down on how TCP/IP protocols work please Smallman? It powers the internet which doesn’t seem to have had a problem with people not knowing how it works under the hood.
Convenience and functionality wins every time - as soon as there’s an app that makes a difference to convenience to people’s lives or offers something new, it’ll get mass adopted and people won’t give a shit about how it works.
Wally Give us a quick run down on how TCP/IP protocols work please Smallman? It powers the internet which doesn’t seem to have had a problem with people not knowing how it works under the hood.
Convenience and functionality wins every time - as soon as there’s an app that makes a difference to convenience to people’s lives or offers something new, it’ll get mass adopted and people won’t give a shit about how it works.
Lol.
Wal’s in a right old echo chamber.
