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by ilaksh
1507 days ago
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Bitcoin is the digital equivalent of gold. (As long as people continue to use it as such). Advanced cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Algorand are more suitable for commerce. The basic concept of cryptocurrency, which sadly is generally missed because many people have turned it into a get-rich-scheme like everything else, is to *use math and computer science to reduce or eliminate cheating in databases that record monetary balances*. The techniques are far superior to the legacy (secret) databases used by banks. |
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Gold and paper money solves it in the physical world. Gold because it’s dense and easy to check for forgeries (although gold is not used everyday now, is it). Paper money obviously has counterfeiting and serial numbers. But neither of these can be exchanged online.
If we agree that blockchain currencies are a way to exchange value online, then the question is: are they better than credit cards and banks?
Right now, it’s not clear to me that they are, because of the emissions from mining, and the relatively slow transaction rate. Time will tell if the digital currencies will scale better than they are now.
By the way, when comparing emissions of digital currencies with banks, do analysts include the physical bank infrastructure, such as all the bank’s retail branches, and associated employees and other overhead?