[Grim-444]

As a thought experiment, replace crypto in this situation for beanie babies. You managed to buy a bunch of beanie babies before a beanie baby craze started, and sold them at exorbitant prices to other people coming in that were convinced that beanie baby prices would only keep skyrocketing. You took their money, and now I guess as long as they're the bag holders still holding beanie babies when it all falls apart and they become worthless, and not you, it's all good. As long as you managed to make a profit and get out in time it wasn't a scam.

[suikadayo]

I’ve seen people say what you’ve said for almost 10 years now. I wonder when the crypto beanie baby fad is going to die down. Maybe 100 years later?

[samarama]

Except beanie babies have no inherent value, but ETH has vast inherent value in numerous ways

1. Immutability

2. Decentralization

3. Cheap, fast, secure cross-country money transfers

4. Protection against inflation

5. Independence of banks or arbitrary freezes of your funds

6. Access to a vast variety of financials services

7. Is quite likely the replacement of money

The fact that people still don’t get that in 2022 is astonishing.

[djur]

1 is questionably valuable and arguably harmful, 2 is increasingly untrue, 3 and 6 aren't inherent benefits of Ethereum, 4 and 5 aren't true, and 7 is speculative and begs the question.

[samarama]

> 1 is questionably valuable and arguably harmful If it’s mutable, it’s centralized, so you’re wrong.

>2 is increasingly untrue

That’s also incorrect, Ethereum has become more decentralized every year

> 3 and 6 aren't inherent benefits of Ethereum and 5 aren't true Yes they are. Ethereum is deflationary and will became three times more inflationary later this year.

> 7 is speculative and begs the question.

No speculation here, check here yourself for just a small overview https://www.defipulse.com/

[suikadayo]

Decentralization increasingly untrue? Ethereum consensus and execution layer nodes are at about 6k, under Bitcoin, and way above other projects.

[donmcronald]

If the network grows [1] at 2MB/14s that's:

    2/14*3600 = 514MB per hour
    514*24 = 12.3GB per day
    12.3*30 = 369GB per month

Even if the underlying blockchain is decentralized, I have no practical way of participating without doing it via some centralized exchange.

How many nodes will there be if ETH hits $0? What will happen to the services like ENS?

1. https://www.bitrates.com/guides/ethereum/how-many-ethereum-a...

Is the above accurate? Wikipedia says the whole network is 1TB, so that doesn't quite add up for me.

[suikadayo]

It’s about 1.1TB for full sync geth nodes, and growing. Ethereum researchers are looking into statelessness and state expiry which aim to make it even easier to run nodes with little need for space.

People will continue to run nodes regardless of the price of ETH, just like Bitcoin.

ENS is a smart contract protocol, so I don’t see how it’s related.

[secabeen]

YMMV. I don't put any value on most of the above.

[samarama]

Probably because you are rich, but 99% of humanity aren’t.

[donmcronald]

1. Maybe. It's not so great if you publish something confidential.

2. No one is responsible for anything, you'll never get any support, and one day the decentralized consensus might be to abandon the whole system.

3. It takes 16 seconds for a transaction to post and the average transaction fee [a] is over $2. Cross-country money transfers (assuming you mean international) benefit money launderers and criminals a lot more than me.

4. I never understand this sentiment. Thousands of tokens have been invented to create hundreds of billions of dollars. If the federal reserve told everyone they could print their own fiat and have it accepted at the bank, what do you think would happen? Inflation, right? Think of it another way. If the liquidity for the market is fixed in the sense of the amount of fiat people are willing to bring in, then every token mined or minted is diluting the value of anything you're holding.

5. This is at the risk of losing your keys and your life savings. No thanks. Also, banks act as a backstop for a lot of things people don't even think about. They won't let you wire your life savings to Nigeria without trying to make sure you won't get scammed. The indemnify you from the risk of fraud if you're using a credit card. Money you give them is backed by FDIC (or similar) insurance, so if the bank fails your money is still there.

6. Like?

7. Yeah. I'm sure the super elite that control almost all of the money and assets on the planet are going to sit by and watch as the crypto community anoints themselves as the new rulers of the wealth.

And what happens in this utopia where everything can be anonymous and governments have lost control of the money supply? Does everyone stop paying taxes? Who funds the schools, hospitals, and all other infrastructure? Do you think the rich are going to suddenly become charitable and start funding everything? They already contribute as little as possible, so it's difficult to imagine a world where they'd contribute $1 if they aren't forced to do it?

> The fact that people still don’t get that in 2022 is astonishing.

We don't get it because it doesn't make sense. It might make perfect sense for those of you that mined millions of (on paper) dollars of crypto currency, but it's not a good deal for anyone else. It's objectively worse in terms of stability and predictability and the best outcome for us is to get a different set of wealthy elite that control everything.

a. https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_average_transaction_...

[samarama]

Your arguments are mostly usability. However, there are already many services that gives you additional utility such as insurance, backups etc.

Crypto already has replaced money in several countries, especially third world countries where it has replaced money for 30% of the population that have protected their funds against inflation thanks to the inherent scarcity of respective cryptos.