Crypto currency

[HanoiVillan]

23 hours ago, PieFacE said:

There's a lot of things that back crypto and decentalisation in general, the whole "it's only used by criminals" argument is just a lazy one.

It's not only used by criminals, it's also useful for traders like the posters on this thread.

But if we're being honest, it doesn't actually have any real world uses, and isn't going to get any, because it is not a reliable store of value, or sufficiently liquid or easy to use.

[ender4]

23 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

 

But if we're being honest, it doesn't actually have any real world uses, and isn't going to get any, because it is not a reliable store of value, or sufficiently liquid or easy to use.

Bitcoin doesn't have any use, but a lot of other cryptos do have real-world uses. 

For example, XRP (Ripple) is being looked at to making banking transactions quicker and more secure. 

Etherium is being looked at to securely store healthcare and legal documents.  

There are lots of others, i'm only aware of these two as i've invested in them.

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, ender4 said:

Bitcoin doesn't have any use, but a lot of other cryptos do have real-world uses. 

For example, XRP (Ripple) is being looked at to making banking transactions quicker and more secure. 

Etherium is being looked at to securely store healthcare and legal documents.  

There are lots of others, i'm only aware of these two as i've invested in them.

But here you're not talking about currencies being currencies, but the technology supporting a particular currency being able to be used in a different way.

I don't know enough about these uses to say whether I think they will be taken up widely, though I start from a position of skepticism that something as environmentally destructive as ethereum is a good way to solve a problem that is frankly as thoroughly solved as 'how to store a document safely'.

[PieFacE]

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

But here you're not talking about currencies being currencies, but the technology supporting a particular currency being able to be used in a different way.

I don't know enough about these uses to say whether I think they will be taken up widely, though I start from a position of skepticism that something as environmentally destructive as ethereum is a good way to solve a problem that is frankly as thoroughly solved as 'how to store a document safely'.

I used to think very differently about crypto in general but by and large, I agree with the points you make.

A lot of the ideas that companies come up with crypto use-cases are just big cash grabs and would be better served in a traditional database which impacts the environment a lot less. Bitcoin is pretty much now the only crypto currency "token" that I care about holding a store of value and there's some interesting things that will probably happen over the next 10-20 years on different "Layers" for Bitcoin. 

Whilst there are some genuine use-cases out there, when you weigh it up against the environmental impact crypto has in general, i'm not sure it's worth it. 

I very much think crypto in general is still trying to figure out what it wants to be. There's something "there" definitely, but it's still very early.

Crypto will be in a multi-year bear market soon enough and people won't give a shit about it for a few years whilst they can't make money from it. Which kinda sums up the whole space tbh.

[ender4]

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

But here you're not talking about currencies being currencies, but the technology supporting a particular currency being able to be used in a different way.

I don't know enough about these uses to say whether I think they will be taken up widely, though I start from a position of skepticism that something as environmentally destructive as ethereum is a good way to solve a problem that is frankly as thoroughly solved as 'how to store a document safely'.

I'm not talking about it being a currency though. Only Bitcoin bulls and the media discuss that.   No-one discusses the other cryptos as being currency.  By buying crypto (excluding Bitcoin), you are buying a share in the technology.  You are gambling on the technology for that particular crypto to take off.  Like buying shares in Apple or Microsoft in their very early days.

Ethereum has been preparing for a while in a shift in the way it is created, so it won't be 'mined' anymore. This will make it environmentally sound. This shift is planned in the next 6-12 months.  

Some people are taking the issues with Bitcoin and applying it to the rest of cryptos.  It doesn't apply to the rest, the issues are with Bitcoin only which is useless because Bitcoin doesn't do anything and is environmentally destructive.   One of the reasons i've ignored Bitcoin when buying other cryptos.

[HanoiVillan]

30 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Ethereum has been preparing for a while in a shift in the way it is created, so it won't be 'mined' anymore. This will make it environmentally sound. This shift is planned in the next 6-12 months. 

You're right, they have been planning it for a while; such a move was first being planned for in 2014, and has been 'six months away' for several years. Maybe this time will be different, and they will actually move to proof-of-stake, but I'm skeptical about some of the claims being made about environmental impact reduction (to put it mildly).

33 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Some people are taking the issues with Bitcoin and applying it to the rest of cryptos.  It doesn't apply to the rest, the issues are with Bitcoin only which is useless because Bitcoin doesn't do anything and is environmentally destructive.   One of the reasons i've ignored Bitcoin when buying other cryptos.

Environmental destructiveness is baked into all cryptocurrencies, not just Bitcoin. Proof-of-work is hugely damaging in its energy consumption, but other systems are just destructive in different ways. Ethereum mining has led to an overproduction and destruction of high-end graphics cards, and now Chia mining (growing at an extremely rapid rate) is leading to an overproduction and destruction of solid-state hard drives. Graphics cards and hard drives are made with rare metals, and when burned out (an average hard drive can survive roughly 6 weeks of Chia mining) they contribute to the toxic e-waste problem, which is going to get exponentially worse.

*Nobody* has found a way to do a 'green' cryptocurrency, and nobody will either, because the entire idea rests on 'doing things with computers' which otherwise would not be done, and that can only be done using power and hardware resources.

[Swerbs]

Coinbase offering some MATIC on their earn program.

[maqroll]

Novice here and interested in maybe plopping a couple of grand into crypto before it goes busto. Is Coin Base considered to be a good platform? Any suggestions/warning/advice?

 

[Vive_La_Villa]

10 hours ago, maqroll said:

Novice here and interested in maybe plopping a couple of grand into crypto before it goes busto. Is Coin Base considered to be a good platform? Any suggestions/warning/advice?

 

Exchange wise I’ve started using Binance and it’s pretty easy to use and a decent platform. Holdings wise I’ve gone with XRP and VET. Crazy gamble make me rich punt I’ve gone with Safemoon but it’s a little more complex to buy. 

 

Warning wise - only invest/gamble what you can afford to lose.

Edited May 29, 2021 by Vive_La_Villa

[Tayls]

13 hours ago, maqroll said:

Novice here and interested in maybe plopping a couple of grand into crypto before it goes busto. Is Coin Base considered to be a good platform? Any suggestions/warning/advice?

 

I started only a couple of months back. Put a few quid on Coinbase and had a good think about what I wanted to spend it on. I’ve put most of it into Cardano. 

I find Coinbase really easy to use, it’s nice and clean. Can’t do too much wrong.

I’ve registered on Liquid also as wanted to have a go at buying some Flixx, but haven’t got round to it yet. Looks a lot more complicated though. 

As @Vive_La_Villa says, put on what you don’t mind losing - ‘fun coupons’, if you will. (Quote borrowed from Wolf of Wall Street). 
It’s quite fun seeing your portfolio fly up and then immediately come back down again. 

Edited May 29, 2021 by Tayls

[Beastmix]

Some of you are acting like the SEC 

The real world applications for alt-coins are vast. You need only look at what Cardano is doing in Africa right now as an example.

Also, a lot of financial institutions are teaming up with the coins which have actual uses (XRP, Cardano, Vechain, Zilliqa, etc) because, amongst other things, they provide the safest way to conduct large monetary trades.

The elephant in the room is Bitcoin. Sure, you can buy things with Bitcoin, but this is just about its only real world use and, as such, has no long term value. Shops are starting to drop out from accepting them too (for example, my sister works at Lush and there's serious talk of them cutting ties with it. Tesla is another recent example). Nobody wants to work with it and it's bad for the environment. It's just not designed for anything else (nor can it be adapted), transaction rates are super slow, and it has an extremely shifty history. Of the major alt-coins, it's only a matter of time until it meets its Hindenburg moment.

[HanoiVillan]

Here's what's happening at Binance:

43.29% APY! Zero risk!

Maybe more people should sound like the SEC.

[HanoiVillan]

Very generous:

Cryptoasset businesses need to comply with Money Laundering Regulations (MLRs), because it is obvious how comically easy they make money laundering, terrorist and criminal financing etc. However the FCA seem to be full of generosity about this, and though cryptoasset businesses were supposed to be compliant by 10th Jan 2020, the actual deadline has been extended again to the 31st March 2022.

The FCA maintain three list of cryptoasset businesses on their website:

• Firms that have become MLR compliant are listed here (there are currently 5 of them): https://register.fca.org.uk/s/search?predefined=CA
• Firms that have a temporary registration are listed here: https://register.fca.org.uk/servlet/servlet.FileDownload?file=0154G0000062BtF
• Firms that appear to be completely unregistered cryptoasset businesses are listed here: https://register.fca.org.uk/s/search?predefined=U

I can't stress how wild it is that they keep the latter list on their website. Imagine if West Midlands Police had a list of the contact details of all the drug dealers on the Birmingham area on their website.

Some of the locations of some of these unregistered cryptoasset businesses provide another suggestion of what a wild west this all is, eg:

 

 

[KenjiOgiwara]

Can someone explain to me the attractiveness of buying crypto?
 

Might be that block chain at some point in the future will be used frequently as a transaction based currency. But right now it's just like buying tulips if I'm correct? It's a gold rush of casino addicts.

I must be missing something unless people are blinded by the speculative nature of it all.

[PieFacE]

11 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Can someone explain to me the attractiveness of buying crypto?
 

Might be that block chain at some point in the future will be used frequently as a transaction based currency. But right now it's just like buying tulips if I'm correct? It's a gold rush of casino addicts.

I must be missing something unless people are blinded by the speculative nature of it all.

'Cos it's a speculative market and is currently in a bull run so number ($$) goes up. It's not tulips, there are usecases and logic to it, but it's mostly largely useless whilst it's all in it's infancy. That's just my thoughts anyways. 

[KenjiOgiwara]

3 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

'Cos it's a speculative market and is currently in a bull run so number ($$) goes up. It's not tulips, there are usecases and logic to it, but it's mostly largely useless whilst it's all in it's infancy. That's just my thoughts anyways. 

You see, to me there's more uses to tulips than crypto, but I'm intrigued. What's the uses I'm unaware of?

[PieFacE]

29 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

You see, to me there's more uses to tulips than crypto, but I'm intrigued. What's the uses I'm unaware of?

I mean the most obvious one when you look at Bitcoin alone is the various phases Bitcoin has been through over the past 10 years. 

- Post proof of concept, it became a currency that required no middle man and is essentially a payment platform. Essentially a way of banking the unbanked.
- Then it became 'E-Gold' where due to it's scarcity it gets viewed similarly to gold
- And now it's a whole different beast where it's a financial asset used to hedge against inflation which is why more and more institutions are buying it and holding it 

Then if you look at other things outside of bitcoin alone, you've got aspects of crypto such as DeFi, IoT and NFT's which are genuine usecases for crypto. The whole Ethereum network is full of application ideas and use-cases to solve issues with real world problems using smart contracts that bring them to life, there's literally thousands of them, maybe even 10's of thousands of different ideas and applications. Are most of them good? Imo no, but that's subjective I guess to what is important to you as an individual. 

I look at something like GET Protocol which is as an events ticketing platform that runs on Ethereum and essentially removes the whole secondary/scalping market and I think it's **** brilliant (very simplified summary of what GET is). But others might not care so much about it. Which is fine. 

And then there's like hundreds of other platforms that are similar but slightly different to Ethereum that all specialize in things in their own ways.

I honestly don't think crypto as a whole knows what it is yet. But I suspect there's more to it than tulips  . 

 

Edited June 3, 2021 by PieFacE

[KenjiOgiwara]

I dunno. I read a lot of that and it's no different than tulips, or any other speculative asset. Not a hedge against inflation either.

Through times people have always tried to create stories as to why the current speculative bubble is different. This is no different from what I can see.

Ofc. I've read some blockchains are getting smaller and smaller, like Mina. And I assume that means they are more practical and transaction friendly. But ultimately I don't see why crypto is the solution or what separates it from alternative holdings.

NFT's will never catch on methinks. I know there's been some traction on it lately from the stupid rich, but generally I can't see it. It defeats the very purpose of art, and is just another way of hiding illegally obtained cash and money laundering. Just like crypto in general is big for. Which is why it will be harder and harder regulated.

DeFI's is pretty much the same story.

IoT's and such is interesting I guess, but it's unclear to me why this wouldn't be done through a regulated block chain, i.e. a block chain which is project/company spesific to integrate products and services.

[sne]

Anonymous are setting their sights on Elon Musk due to his dealings with Bitcoin and crypto currency. 

[AVTuco]

On 03/06/2021 at 16:50, PieFacE said:

I mean the most obvious one when you look at Bitcoin alone is the various phases Bitcoin has been through over the past 10 years. 

- Post proof of concept, it became a currency that required no middle man and is essentially a payment platform. Essentially a way of banking the unbanked.
- Then it became 'E-Gold' where due to it's scarcity it gets viewed similarly to gold
- And now it's a whole different beast where it's a financial asset used to hedge against inflation which is why more and more institutions are buying it and holding it 

Then if you look at other things outside of bitcoin alone, you've got aspects of crypto such as DeFi, IoT and NFT's which are genuine usecases for crypto. The whole Ethereum network is full of application ideas and use-cases to solve issues with real world problems using smart contracts that bring them to life, there's literally thousands of them, maybe even 10's of thousands of different ideas and applications. Are most of them good? Imo no, but that's subjective I guess to what is important to you as an individual. 

I look at something like GET Protocol which is as an events ticketing platform that runs on Ethereum and essentially removes the whole secondary/scalping market and I think it's **** brilliant (very simplified summary of what GET is). But others might not care so much about it. Which is fine. 

And then there's like hundreds of other platforms that are similar but slightly different to Ethereum that all specialize in things in their own ways.

I honestly don't think crypto as a whole knows what it is yet. But I suspect there's more to it than tulips  . 

 

Well EIB has issued a 100 million euro bond using Ethereum blockchain tech.