[uncletammy]

> It can't be a functional currency, at least as it's designed.

Citation needed

> And the notion that it consumes gigantic amounts of energy for no net value gained should have everyone up in arms.

For what it's worth, bitcoin aims to deprecate every single brick-and-morter bank as well as all the armored trucks driving paper currency to and from them.

When you start to add up all of the energy that would be saved if bitcoin succeeds, the energy costs associated with mining start looking quite a bit smaller.

[imtringued]

>For what it's worth, bitcoin aims to deprecate every single brick-and-morter bank as well as all the armored trucks driving paper currency to and from them.

Is this supposed to be some joke? No it doesn't. Someone had to create a fork of Bitcoin called Bitcoin Cash just to increase the block size. You've had your chance and you blew it.

What's going to happen from now on is that Bitcoin will be absorbed by Visa, Mastercard and Paypal who build an actual payment layer on top of Bitcoin and then people will use Visa, Mastercard and Paypal as their bank. It's the Bitcoin you know and love that is going to die.

[jariel]

"Citation needed"

I literally just explained it to you.

The price of BTC has always been highly unstable. There is absolutely no evidence it will ever be stable, to the contrary in fact, all evidence points to the fact that it will remain unstable.

Every single commodity or currency extant to an economy is unstable relative to the currency of that economy. The only thing 'stable' in terms of USD are things closely tied to the managed USD.

Just the mere fact that it's highly unstable - all other things notwithstanding - make it impossible to be a currency.

"For what it's worth, bitcoin aims to deprecate every single brick-and-morter bank as well as all the armored trucks driving paper currency to and from them."

It's really bizarre that anyone would believe this.

Starting with the fact that 'digitization of currency' is already well under way and so there are no 'truck rolls' in the future.

But of course, the implication that banks only provide a 'place to store' money is completely false. Financial Services are an entire industry. Lending, transactions, authorizations, contracts, accounting, risk management, asset allocation, it's a gigantic industry.

But it's moot, BTC will be the same in 20 years that it is one, something to talk about.

[trophycase]

"Financial Services are an entire industry. Lending, transactions, authorizations, contracts, accounting, risk management, asset allocation, it's a gigantic industry."

Right, this is all on ethereum

[rspeele]

Yeah, using the magic of DeFi I can easily get a loan for $100K with no bank approval and no wasteful bank employees checking my credit.

All I need is more than $100K worth of crypto assets I can tie up as collateral for my loan. So I'll be able to buy a car or a house, as long as I have more than enough money to do so already. Banks don't know about this one weird trick that makes them obsolete!

[jariel]

So Etherium will do credit checks? Evaluate the legitimacy and valuation of major assets? Validate small business plans? Check creditor references? Do due legal and IP due dilligence? Foreclose? Evaluate the credibility of executive teams? Evaluate contracts? Resolve commercial disputes? Do risk assessment of various kinds?

Etc, etc. etc?

The complete lack of understanding of anything financial postulated by the crypto crowd is really painful.

The notion of 'crypto' is actually interesting, and large swaths of the financial world would actually buy into it, but most of it makes no sense unfortunately.

[hulahoof]

Can't reply directly to the sibling comment on DeFi, but that solves the issue raised above e.g.: I have 100k worth of BTC, I want to spend that on something but I expect the value of my BTC to rise, so I use it as collateral for a pegged coin (say USDC or DAI) and make a purchase.

I am protected from losses of spending my BTC. As with all finance yes I also carry the risk of BTC falling and liquidating my loan - but assuming I have not also lost my loan I am protected from a major fall, as my collateral will be taken and I still have my loaned coins.

[imtringued]

I dont know much about Ethereum but the mere existence of it threatens Bitcoin's "world domination" aspirations and who knows, maybe something will come out that will threaten Ethereum.

[jki275]

Bitcoin and Ethereum are both legacy blockchains.

There are many contenders. XTZ and ADA are both technologically far beyond what BTC or ETH can ever be.