[simias]

I'm not as negative as you are, I think this is all very interesting, from the outside looking in. It really helps understanding the pros and cons of our monetary system, the good and the bad. It's pretty educational I think.

Of course it's sad for people who invest money they can't afford to lose, but really "investing" in cryptocurrencies is more like playing roulette than anything else and they should've known better.

I really wonder what cryptocurrencies will look like 10 years from now. Will they still exist? Will they have taken over the world as some predict?

Given how easy it is to irrevocably lose your coins I really have a hard time imagining how this could become mainstream. At best I could imagine using bitcoin through some third party that would take care of your wallet for you. We'd call it a bank or something.

[albertgoeswoof]

I don't really know why this is being downvoted, BTC and cryptocurrencies are really interesting economically. Even if they have no direct impact on society as a whole it's valuable to see proposed alternatives to our banking and financial systems put forward and discussed in detail (e.g. it really exposes what a bank / government actually provides)

[simias]

I'm guessing that my snide remark about reinventing the banking system didn't really help my case but I couldn't resist.

But yeah, technically and economically it's pretty fascinating I think. The only downside is that the very high valuation makes it hard to have a reasonable discussion with people on either side of the fence. It's not longer a fun classroom experiment when billion of dollars are involved.