[te_chris]

I’ve reacently read the Burnskie book about crypto assets in the hope that I might come away more enlightened about the market and how to assess it. The opposite was the case. After reading the book and looking into it more, it’s very hard to see these things as assets at the moment, or to see much utility in the technology. Don’t get me wrong, there certainly is some and it is certainly ‘cool’, but right now blockhain feels like a solution looking for a problem.

[cocktailpeanuts]

The problem is not because cryptoassets are bad, it's because you read an investment book instead of technology book. (I read the cryptoassets book too and I think it's a great book, it's just that it's not a book to solve the specific problem you're talking about)

I can confirm from my own experience that reading pop-sci books about blockchains--although they sound really cool and do provide motivation to look further into the tech--doesn't give you any confidence about the technology itself.

There's no shortcut, if you want to be more "enlightened", you should stop reading medium blog posts or pop-sci books and start looking into the protocol itself, run a node yourself, and try stuff out. When you do so, you'll get the "enlightment" you were looking for.

[spookthesunset]

> When you do so, you'll get the "enlightment" you were looking for.

Which is what? That the blockchain is a solution in search of a problem? There is very, very little reason to use a cumbersome data structure when better ones exist (eg: just a regular database, or something like git). Worse, the only way the blockchain gets all it's supposed valuable attributes is when you provide a financial incentive to mine. Aka -- bolt a "currency" on top of it and then go market it to tons of rubes so you can convert all of the generated tokens into cold, hard fiat to pay your bills. Without the "currency", who will pay miners to trustlessly verify all the transactions? The parties running the service? If so... since you seem to trust all them to pay the bills.... why not just use a database instead and save some substantial fiat?

The whole bitcoin/blockchain "movement" is just pure hype. It's people at the top of the pyramid hyping a worthless technology in order to cash out their tokens before the whole thing collapses in on itself...

[plokiju]

> There is very, very little reason to use a cumbersome data structure when better ones exist

Do you not see any value in decentralization? In theory with blockchains, you could replace giant companies with open-source programs that pay for their own server costs with transaction fees, without taking any profit margin off the top. That would be very interesting for stuff like cloud storage and social networks. You can argue it's overly idealistic and may not work out, but you can't pretend there's no value in decentralization

[JumpCrisscross]

> In theory with blockchains, you could replace giant companies with open-source programs that pay for their own server costs with transaction fees, without taking any profit margin off the top

Do you think these applications are viable if the token has significant monetary/speculative value attached to it?

[plokiju]

Absolutely - in some cases the monetary value is what makes the applications viable in the first place. It's just like any other market; in theory the price of the token should reach equilibrium to reflect the value it provides, even if there's some speculation along the way

[cocktailpeanuts]

Internet was a "solution in search of a problem" too.

That said, you're free to believe what you want to believe.

Just one thing though, everything you said above I heard hundreds of times before, and there are good explanations for them. I just don't have time to argue here because these are things you can find out on your own if you put your mind into it. (To be honest I don't think I can convince you no matter how I try unless you open up your mind, so I won't try)

Anyway, if you don't care, that's fine too. It's not like not believing in cryptocurrency will doom your future. You'll do fine. And even if the whole thing fails, I'll do fine too. But it's always good to have an open mind about things you don't yet completely understand and try to learn. ("Thinking that you understand completely" doesn't count as actually completely understanding)

[JumpCrisscross]

> Internet was a "solution in search of a problem" too

Eh, the history of ARPANET involved practical use cases (i.e. communication between specific institutions and ballistic missile defense coordination) from the start [1]. If one includes circuit switches, i.e. the telegraph/telephone system, as a blueprint Internet then the practical application reaches back earlier.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#Creation

[cocktailpeanuts]

And Bitcoin doesn't have a practical use case?

[te_chris]

Please elaborate?

[mrep]

> Internet was a "solution in search of a problem" too.

No, no it wasn't. Close to light speed communication provided about 10 orders of magnitude faster/cheaper communication than before. I cannot even fathom how someone would not immediately realize how that massive increase in communication would not be useful.

Contrast this with blockchains which are practically 10 orders of magnitude more COSTLY since every node has to process every transaction when you could just do that on one server (hence why bitcoin transactions cost 2.5 Billion dollars a year to process a fraction of what Visa can process).

[cocktailpeanuts]

> I cannot even fathom how someone would not immediately realize how that massive increase in communication would not be useful.

Just like you cannot fathom how Bitcoin can be useful in February of 2018, 99.9% of the world population couldn't fathom how Internet would take off back then when it launched. That was why it was not mainstream for a long time until it took off.

[mrep]

> 99.9% of the world population couldn't fathom how Internet would take off back then when it launched.

The dotcom bubble was fueled by speculation in how useful the internet would be. Granted, it busted but many companies survived it and some are now the biggest companies in the world.

> That was why it was not mainstream for a long time until it took off.

Internet growth has been incredibly fast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage

I can see some utility in blockchains. However, my main point is that the economics of them make them terrible for 99.99% of problems.

Internet: 10 orders of magnitude faster/cheaper communication than before.

blockchains: 10 orders of magnitude more COSTLY.

[te_chris]

Lol, appreciate the patronising explanation, as if I'm some sort of idiot just waiting to find the road to Damascus.

I understand the technology perfectly well. I read the Cryptoassets book to try and undsetand exactly that: the value of them as 'assets'. I came away exceedingly underwhelmed.

[cocktailpeanuts]

If LOL'ing and making snarky comments about how you understand but it's still underwhelming makes you feel better, good for you.

But I have never seen a single person who truly "understand the technology perfectly well" say it's underwhelming.

Most of those who actually dug deep enough to "truly understand" do see the limitations, but because by that point they understand the potential, they see the limitations as problems to solve and opportunities to take.

It is those who only scraped the surface that say it's "uninteresting", "underwhelming", etc.

Ancient people thought they "understood the world perfectly well" and thought it was flat. Suit yourself.

[tim333]

>never seen a single person who truly "understand the technology perfectly well" say it's underwhelming

I'd say I've noticed an inverse correlation - people who don't understand the technology see it as this amazing thing, the kind of people who know their hash functions are a bit skeptical.

[prepend]

“But I have never seen a single person who truly "understand the technology perfectly well" say it's underwhelming.”

This is tautological, so i hope you’re aware of how logically useless it is. Either you haven’t seen much, or you define away any disagreers as people who don’t understand.

[consz]

In what way is your comment different from 'No True Scotsman'?

[te_chris]

It isn’t. Apparently I’m just not devout enough for crypto....

[rokhayakebe]

Money transfer is still very difficult. As in right now, short of paypal, I cannot send you money easily without leaving my chair in under 1 minute regardless of where you are in the world. Send me your bitcoin address and the problem is solved.

The biggest problems with Bitcoin (specifically) are: 1) it is not necessarily a store of value and 2) it fluctuates too much.

If someone can solve these two problems then we will have an extremely powerful cryptocurrency.

[tim333]

You'll be doing well to get a bitcoin payment through in less than a minute. Half an hour plus is typical. There are faster cryptos though.

[JumpCrisscross]

> As in right now, short of paypal, I cannot send you money easily without leaving my chair in under 1 minute regardless of where you are in the world

Venmo. Zelle. During banking hours: e-mail my banker, wire transferred within minutes.

[detaro]

> Venmo. Zelle.

If you accept the limitation that the receiver can be anywhere in the world, but must be from the US or have an US bank account...

[te_chris]

Transferwise

[bsder]

> Don’t get me wrong, there certainly is some and it is certainly ‘cool’, but right now blockhain feels like a solution looking for a problem.

"Blockchain" is probably fine. I suspect that it will eventually get some nice implementations where you want to be able to attest to integrity over time/space where multiple trusted parties evolve and change. A "distributed digital notary" if you will.

Cryptocurrencies as currently implemented (bitcoin and ilk) are eventually going to die for lack of a use case.

Problem 1: Most people like centralized authority of money. Most people like being able to get back their money when things get "stolen", for example. And people like reputation systems so that they don't get scammed (ie. illegal drug market).

Problem 2: Fees suck, but they're invisible to most people. Merchants hate fees, but you need users before that gets moving. We're also seeing that cryptocurrencies have non-trivial fees, as well. Funny that.

To be fair, traditional fees keep falling and some of that is probably due to cryptocurrencies. But some of that is simply trying to ward off the rise of a single digital purchase standard which would disrupt all of the incumbents. The payments space is a no-holds barred fight to the death and the incumbents would rather die than let anybody else get a foothold.

Problem 3: Cryptocurrencies aren't sufficiently anonymous. There is a use case for genuine anonymity. However, the current cryptocurrencies fail to be truly anonymous at blockchain as well as reality. Keeping your operational security sufficient to stay truly anonymous is damn difficult and having to go through an exchange doesn't help. Cryptocurrencies really need a decentralized exchange, but I'm not sure how that would even work. And, even if it did, since nobody could charge fees, nobody would have any incentive.

So, cryptocurrencies are mostly useful for people who fear central authority, are possibly concerned about fees, and only need to remain "semi"-anonymous. That pretty much describes petty criminals and mid-tier corrupt party bosses and ... not much else.

[morgancmartin]

Nano (ticker: XRB) has no-fee transactions. Send 3 XRB, receive 3 XRB. I'd say it's biggest wart yet is the volatility, but there are already half-way solutions like instant fiat resolution. These kinds of services take their own fees unfortunately, but I am sure some sort of peer-to-peer crypto<->fiat will pop up eventually.

Monero is the go-to privacy coin. Unfortunately, I am not as experienced with privacy/security, but it appears to be good enough for many. Perhaps someone else can speak to its efficacy?

Finally, there are decentralized crypto exchanges. None that take fiat in (AFAIK) but there are definitely decentralized exchanges. Don't know of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure they're just a quick google search away.

Those are the things that stuck out to me about your post.

[curuinor]

"Attack of the Fifty Foot Blockchain" and the associated blog is worth a read

[cocktailpeanuts]

I read that book too, and while it does provide some good insights, it's too much biased the other way around to the point that I couldn't stand the amount of snark.

I think it's good to take a look at both sides of the story but the only way to find the truth is going deeper and learning the protocol yourself and form your own "sovereign" opinion, which is what I did after getting frustrated with tons of conflicting opinions online, which by the way turned out to be mostly propaganda to preserve their own crypto-wealth as I started learning more about the landscape.

[tonyjstark]

It was an eye opener for me. Since then I approach the whole field with more caution and skepticism.

[eosophos]

How is trustless digital programmable peer-to-peer monetary transaction not a great solution to the antiquated, corrupt status quo?

[te_chris]

Just because you put the words antiquated and corrupt in the question doesn’t make those two things true.

Based on my somewhat brief experience as a crypto investor it hasn’t given me great hope of it solving corruption...

[whataretensors]

It's democratizing corruption.

Immune systems will develop I believe.