[throwaway30yo]

DOGE is a pretty good currency to use for moving money between exchanges. That is why its used. If BTC had low/no transaction fees and was fast, people would have less incentive to use DOGE.

Overvalued? Its possible but I think the entire crypto market is actually insanely undervalued. I was talking to my financial advisor the other day and he said pretty much 100% of people now are asking him about crypto and are considering putting money in. This seems like it is just the start.

The figure for the .com crash was around a 7 trillion dollar market cap. Crypto is 0.7 trillion today and its more of an international market then the .com days. Easily cypto could 10x in size over the next year or two.

In the end its super high risk speculation. You can figure the entire market is overvalued but there is no doubt that there is money to be made in several sub-sectors of the crypto market.

[usrusr]

> I was talking to my financial advisor the other day and he said pretty much 100% of people now are asking him about crypto and are considering putting money in.

100% of those are not interested in cryptocurrency at all, they are interested in anything that goes from bottom left to top right if charted against their local denomination. They don't want crypto, they want fiat and see crypto merely as a possible means to that end. This translates precisely to "Crypto is only backed by greed", which is exactly what people mean when they call it overvalued.

(I call 100% and not 99%, because those few genuinely interested in crypto would not bother asking their financial advisor)

[derimagia]

Honestly though, doesn't this also apply to a lot of people's choice of stocks?

[overcast]

Sure, except Bitcoin wasn't created to be a stock. That's the point here. It's basically just imaginary stock in an imaginary company now.

[CPLX]

Stocks are an investment in productive assets.

Somewhere down the chain stocks invest in actual production value, which creates goods or services that people use, and increases the sum total of wealth in the world.

Buying the stock is buying the rights to a stream of income based on that productivity.

These "investments" in cryptocurrency don't have that aspect whatsoever. There is no claim on productive enterprise involved, and for the more niche offerings that have some element of that the economics are so wildly divorced from the fundamentals of productivity to make the link meaningless.

[asciimo]

> There is no claim on productive enterprise involved

That's not true. Many coins offer practical solutions to real world problems. Whether they are adopted at scale is the gamble. Very similar to betting on companies with stock.

[CPLX]

Theoretically. But it's kind of like betting on a 4 person seed stage company by raising a $3bn Series F round. Except with no actual legal ownership claim on the productive assets of the company. Which means it's actually nothing like buying regular company stock at all.

[tehlike]

Ish. They solve some problems, but they do not intend to solve the hard part - the adoption for real world uses.

[yathern]

Absolutely - many of which can be, and often are, overvalued.

[moretai]

That's incredible. What if they don't know where to start? This is the same mentality as "hackers hack, they don't ask if they are hackers".

[djsumdog]

They should have bought shit tons of DDR4 in 2016 and have it on eBay, new in box, now.

[Permit]

>Overvalued? Its possible but I think the entire crypto market is actually insanely undervalued. I was talking to my financial advisor the other day and he said pretty much 100% of people now are asking him about crypto and are considering putting money in. This seems like it is just the start.

Ask him how many of those same people consider using it as a currency.

I suspect they will remain interested in it so long as they hear about incredible gains and Bitcoin millionaires. I suspect that when the hype dies off (say if cryptocurrency prices were to stabilize) they would not be holders of any cryptocurrency the same way they are not holders of Yen, Euros, CAD, USD etc. for the purpose of investment.

[georgeecollins]

It is very faulty logic to say that because .coms got to 7 trillion market cap (and as an aside, isn't that whole exchanges, not just technology stocks?) we should expect crypto currencies to go much higher than 0.7 trillion valuation. The analogy between the two things makes sense in that they were both popular investments, but otherwise are different in many ways.

[tehlike]

The difference between two bubbles was the float involved in them, and liquidity. Currently a big portion of the market cap is due to "to have 1b dollar market cap, pay 1$ for 1^-10 of the company" phenomenon.

[sremani]

Minting new coin is not difficult, there is CrptoNote project on Github you can fork and in matter of minutes you can have your own "Coin" and start mining on couple of old Linux boxes.

I understand the network and traction, but this is not very different from each bank having its own currency notes back in the day (1800s?). The biggest problem is they are not stable enough to be currencies their volatility makes them more like commodity/asset and their Transaction speed does not make them huge transaction payment systems. They fail at both promises when they gain traction, of course, there will be ultimate winners in this space. Instead of calling them Cryptocurrencies, calling them DLT (distributed ledger tech) is more appropriate for most the coins anyway.

[lmm]

I'd trust Doge more than most cryptocurrencies, honestly. It's relatively established, the community doesn't or at least didn't take itself too seriously (sounds like that may now have changed), and it took the (admittedly mostly symbolic) decision to allow "mining" to continue indefinitely, ensuring there will always be a Doge supply rather than passing all gains to the early adopters. In a sense it's a lot more functional than Bitcoin - people use it for "microtransactions" and "tipping" that would be impossible with Bitcoin's transaction fees.

[ericb]

It hasn't had an update in two years. What about when a vulnerability is discovered?

[HuggableSquare]

Although there hasn't been a release in two years they're currently working on releasing 1.14 this year. In case you're interested the core devs have been doing a pretty good job on keeping people informed on the status of the release on the subreddit. Latest post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/7oxi53/developer_...

[Cyberdog]

> It's relatively established, the community doesn't or at least didn't take itself too seriously (sounds like that may now have changed)

It changed a bit, but not entirely. Check out the subreddit and you'll still see lots of Comic Sans and image macros.

I have Dogecoin to thank (blame?) for getting me initially interested in cryptocurrency precisely because the community was so welcoming and didn't take itself so damned seriously, and even though Dogecoin is more "valuable" now, I'd still recommend it for those looking for a low-risk and relatively simple introduction to the concept.

[jedberg]

If you're invested I wish you the best. But here is why I think all cryptocurrency is worthless: It is backed by nothing.

The USD is backed by the courts of the USA, which in turned are backed by people with guns (law enforcement and the military). The YEN is backed by guns. The GPB is backed by guns.

What is BTC backed by? If someone literally steals your BTC, what recourse do you have? There is no court to go to, no one to back it up.

Even the most hard core Libertarians acknowledge the need of a court system and force to back up contract law.

So I will never invest in cryptocurrency because of that. Maybe I'll be wrong and miss out, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Distributed ledger is a good thing, but it isn't a store of value in and of itself.

[xorcist]

What are you talking about? If someone steals your gold, your recourse is the police force upholding civil law. The situation with Bitcoin would be identical.

When people speak about military backing of currency value, they do not imply that you can expect Her Majesty's Royal Navy to come out in full force should your British Pounds get stolen.

Of all the criticisms about Bitcoin, that was an unusual one. There are no special courts for stolen cars, cattle or currency. There's just the regular ones.

[andrewla]

If someone literally steals your BTC, you have the same recourse as if someone stole your golf clubs. The mechanism of law enforcement and the justice system will try to get your BTC or golf clubs back, and this has happened numerous times already. If they take my golf clubs or BTC or USD through fraud then the rules are slightly different, but all of them will be treated the same way by the justice system.

Now it is backed in the sense that if I say that I will not accept USD in payment of a debt, then I am pretty much out of luck. If someone borrows my car and destroys it, and they offer to make restitution in fair value in USD, I cannot say no to that (except to complain about how fair the value is), or demand that they give me a new car in exchange if they are not willing.

There are more subtle differences; if someone takes my USD then they can return the same number of USD, any old bills will do; whereas for golf clubs or BTC the situation may or may not be different.

All of this is just the justice system, though. I fail to see how the military figures into it, except that if another country decides to start printing dollar bills, then our military will get involved, and the cost of maintaining that threat is part of the cost of maintaining the currency. Fortunately, that's a moot issue with cryptocurrency, which has much better anti-forgery systems that do not require the use of guns.

The whole notion of any currency being "backed" by anything dried up a long time ago -- the closest we have now is casino chips, which are backed by the relevant currency and the faith and credit of casinos.

[jedberg]

> All of this is just the justice system, though.

Only if you're in the USA. USD is subject to the US legal system regardless of where the transaction takes place.

[andrewla]

If someone steals my wallet and the USD inside in Germany, the FBI isn't going to be knocking on anyone's door. I'm not sure what your point is here.

[zodiac]

What precisely do you mean by "The USD is backed by the courts of the USA"? Do you literally mean "if someone takes my USD by force I can sue them"?

[jedberg]

Exactly. There are laws and rules about moving USD from one person to another, and if someone violates those rules, you have recourse in the courts. And if they don't follow the court order, someone with guns will come and force them to follow it.

[zodiac]

If that's your definition, I could say that my Bitcoin is backed by mathematics and proof of work because "violating" the rules (by taking my coins without my consent) requires either guessing my secret key or mounting a 51% attack on the whole network

[jedberg]

Don't be silly. We've already seen multiple examples of stolen coins with no recourse -- exchanges taking the money and going bankrupt, people issuing new coins and then just taking the money, etc.

And I don't have to guess your secret key -- I just have to steal your computer. Even if I get caught stealing your computer and have to give it back, if I've already compromised your wallet and moved the coins, there is nothing you can do to get them back.

[zodiac]

I'm not saying such "extra-protocol" theft of coins is unlikely. I'm saying that it is possible to prevent them (eg I run the key generation algorithm in my head, memorize the secret key, then accept some coins at the public key). I don't place them in an exchange. The only way to get it is to kidnap and torture me, and the US police will try to prevent that from happening, and I can sue you for assaulting me.

The point is not that doing something like this is practical for anyone, it's that in that case, my coins seem to be backed by math and PoW (and the infrastructure that prevents people from getting kidnapped). Basically, it seems weird to argue that the USD is "backed by courts" by your definition because suing someone to get your USD back is only necessary because it's possible to steal USD from someone in ways it's not always possible to steal cryptocurrency from someone.

Also, by your argument, the USD is not fully backed by the courts either; I can steal your wallet, take your USD, sell them for gold, and then abscond to North Korea. Then there is nothing you can do to get them back.

Also I don't completely appreciate the name-calling - I find both cryptocurrencies and "traditional" currencies (monetary policy, how it's linked to state power, metallism vs chartalism, the historical gold standard) fascinating - and I expect we can have an interesting conversation about the latter (specifically, trying to rigorously understand how the USD gets its value) in good faith

[trymas]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Bankruptcy;_stolen_bit...

[zodiac]

Thanks - see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16135718

[yarauuta]

It is backed by its own price in the market and ubiquity.

You completely ignore the service that crypto currencies can provide.

I don't want to have a bank account, or if i really have to, i want banking services to be fast, simple, automated, cheap and lean.

[stale2002]

What if someone comes to your house and steals your gold bars in a vault?

That's the same thing as stealing your Bitcoin.

If my private keys are in cold storage in a vault, it isnt any easier to steal that, than if my Bitcoin was instead gold bars.

[jedberg]

Gold bars in a vault are at least something of value, and not just bits on a drive. The physical gold can be used to make things. What can you do with the bits on a drive?

[astrange]

That's not the reason gold is a popular reserve. It's just hard to inflate, and we've decided to pretend it's valuable because the alternative would be inconvenient. Like Amazon shares and the concept of web advertising.

[sharemywin]

That argument could be made for any intellectual property and it would be wrong.