There are great uses for crypto, just like there were great uses for Ithica_hours. A place holder for goods and services without physical constraint is a useful idea.
But it wont work. Because people want to leverage that to make fiat. They don’t care about usefulness, actually earning it, or trading for it.
They want to get some, hold it, and sell it back for their fiat. Because of that exchanges came into being so they could capture some of the wealth in the process. And from then on it was never going to be useful. Just a way to hope the next sucker would buy what you had.
traxex@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I’d wager even the 1% is the stereotypical “solution in search of a problem”. Seems to be a reoccurring theme as of late in the tech industry.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Having a currency not backed by a government or different currency is actually something the world could benefit from. Iranian currency was backed by USD, the US caused a shortage of USD there, and their currency value dropped to under 3% of it’s former value. 90 Million people.
That said, I think most of us have only ever used crypto to buy drugs off the internet.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
To preface: I’m not a gold nut and I believe that it’s generally wiser for stable developed nations to use fiat currency to enable them to operate in a generally Keynesian approach with controlled inflation.
That said while I agree it’s unwise for nations unable to do that themselves to back their currency with a stable fiat currency from a different country, I don’t think crypto is the solution. Coinage is. And I’m talking old school coinage where the government isn’t backing it with metals, they’re making it out of them. Probably something like silver.
A backed currency is because a government can’t be trusted not to overinflate. If you want to bypass trust, the answer isn’t another currency in which all value is theoretical, it’s currency in which the value is in your hand and verifiable, with the government acting as the one setting units, assuring proper valuation, punishing devaluation, and publishing means for institutions and people to confirm valuation, such as physical properties, alloy percentages, and the easiest tests.
HK65@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
Yeah, but a currency practically needs a military and an economy to back it.
Who is going to stop me from fucking with the bitcoin supply if I own the US economy?
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Yeah, it also needs to derive its value from somewhere. Any stable nation’s fiat derives its value from the fact that the government is believed trustworthy in matters of printing money and that in order to deal with that government you have to use that currency. An Australian could do all their financial life in etherium assuming everyone takes and offers it, right up until tax time where they have to convert a lot of ETH values into AUD, then trade some ETH for AUD in order to pay taxes. And if they receive any money from their government you bet your ass they aren’t being given ETH. If they trust the Australian government even a little they’re probably not jumping through those hoops.
mattyroses@lemmy.today 12 hours ago
That’s the point of crypto - unless you can alter 51% of the blockchain, you can’t.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
the 1% is the one the people who say “well, sure, 99% is a scam, but theres a legit 1% thats totally real!”
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
Thre might be a recognizable item of food in a turd, but I’m still not going to eat it.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 21 hours ago
In case anybody sees this and doesn’t know the context, this is the note that was published in the Genesis block of the Bitcoin blockchain, Satoshi wanted to engrave forever the fact that at this time the chancellor was on the brink of second bailout for banks. It was a call-out against the fiat system, and it’s one of the best call-outs in history. and will be there forever more.
If you happen to have an original copy of this newspaper, it is a genuine artifact, and you can make absolute tons of money on it. No bullshit.
Based on this headline and the fact that Satoshi mentioned digital cash in the white paper as much as he did, you can clearly tell that he was frustrated with the fiat system and all the excesses that came with it and wanted to create a whole different system that was out of the hands of governments and corporations. He came close to succeeding but didn’t quite finish the job because he couldn’t figure out a way to add privacy into his ledger, which makes the entire thing completely transparent to law enforcement and government crooks.
However, on April 13th, 2014, the final puzzle piece was added with the launch of Monero, which has a fully private blockchain that does not have sender, receiver, or amounts being shown.
If you ever happen to read this comment, Satoshi, thank you for your great work. We will be forever in debt to you.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
The fact that there is corruption in the financial system doesn’t automatically mean that every other system is honest.
Sunflier@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Ethereum has the potential to carry real world assets on its chain. Why does an share of stock have to go through a clearing house when it could be an L2 on ethereum? A company having a total of 1 million shares is no different from a L2 coin having a total number of 1 million coins. They can even be fractional too.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
There is no provable way to show that any claim of ownership on Ethereum is legitimate, unless that person has some real-world proof of ownership, in which case the Ethereum link adds no value.
shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
In today’s world, we are moving from analog systems to digital systems, and therefore, physical proof of ownership supersedes electronic proof of ownership.
If a company is digital native and issues their shares on a blockchain without ever issuing any kind of analog shares, then the electronic proof would supersede the physical proof, no matter what happened.
Say Alice has a hair salon that’s called Alice’s hair salon, and she issues one million tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, and each token represents one one millionth of the company, Alice’s hair salon. Well, since she never issued any stock on the analog systems, the Ethereum system would be the final arbiter of who does and does not own any of those Alice’s hair salon tokens.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
Literally every cryptocurrency supports this. But if the real world assets can be seized with a court order, then what’s the point of a blockchain and not just a legally compliant database?
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
but like, man, like… its totally new, like, and like, totally amazing man. you just, like, cant comprehend, man!
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
Blcokchains aren’t even worth a shit as implementations of a distributed ledger.
shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 21 hours ago
The true libertarians and anarchists in the room would call out the fact that they are attempting to build a world where governments don’t run courts because governments don’t exist and that all courts would be arbitration courts and decentralized and run by the community. If I have a problem with you, I tell my arbitrator about it, and my arbitrator tells you that I have a problem with you. If you don’t like my arbitrator, then you choose your own arbitrator, and if I don’t like the arbitrator you choose, then the arbitrators choose a third party arbitrator that they both agree on, and we agree to be bound by what that arbitrator says.
Sunflier@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Bitcoin doesn’t support this. It’s what is being mirrored, yes. But, Ethereum is kinda like the operating system that could/would allow 24 hour trading without having a clearing-house middleman.