As the AI market continues to balloon, experts are warning that its VC-driven rise is eerily similar to that of the dot com bubble.
As the AI market continues to balloon, experts are warning that its VC-driven rise is eerily similar to that of the dot com bubble.
The slow transaction speed is a valid criticism, but it doesn’t make this technology a scam. Different cryptocurrencies have different speeds. With Litecoin I think it takes me 40 minutes to pay for something. I still prefer that over being tracked by my bank or having to use PayPal. I think you can pay instantly with Dash, but I haven’t used it.
I don’t sell anything online, so what are you talking about?
I don’t think you’ll find most people have such a vendetta against PayPal or venmo that they’ll use some other alternative banking system to avoid using it.
You might be right about that, but why would it matter what most people do?
It offers better privacy than PayPal and that’s what matters to me. Oh and nobody can lock me out of my account.
Bitcoin does not provide privacy. There are transactional logs from the beginning of Bitcoin until now with every transaction you’ve ever done on them.
Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency. You can use Monero.
Or I can just not buy drugs on the Internet.
Ah so you think only criminals deserve privacy.
Nah, I’m speaking in practical terms. I frankly don’t have enough illicit online purchases to navigate all of the bullshit around coins and wallets and vendors to bother with “privacy coins”.
I also wonder why someone would subpoena your PayPal account if you weren’t doing illegal things.
If you want to make anonymous transactions, cash is still king.
EDIT: And it’s also not a matter of whether I think “only criminals deserve privacy” but a legitimate question of who, other than criminals, needs absolute, unsubpoenable privacy in online financial transactions? I’d say privacy for everyone is paramount when it comes to communications, but who needs to exchange money illicitly other than those breaking the law?
Additionally, with crypto (unlike PayPal) there is no mediator to act on behalf of one of the parties when they don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Unless you are purely exchanging currencies or NFTs or something, there’s no way to dispute a transaction. That capability is far more necessary for people conducting normal online transactions than privacy, and is largely why PayPal was created in the first place.
There are a few problems when it comes to privacy. First is the bank or PayPal tracking your every transaction. If the government needs a subpoena to access that data, that’s good, because they probably won’t be tracking everybody in an automated way. But I suspect that’s not the case in every country. The second problem is random stores knowing who you are. When you buy digital stuff like music or a game, why should the website know your identity? I don’t want my private information to leak to random people when the website gets hacked. The less they know about me, the better.
This probably depends on a country.
True, but not for online payments.
Your transactions can say a lot about you. It doesn’t matter if it’s just something you buy or you want to support a political cause. In some countries it might be dangerous to reveal certain information about yourself. Everyone deserves privacy though.
There is no mediator, but I think there can be. You can see it in some decentralized exchanges. I don’t know much about it, but you can read how Bisq handles it here: https://bisq.wiki/Frequently_asked_questions#Is_Bisq_safe.3F
I think people are using the word scam not in it’s strictest sense - that is to say, I don’t think Satoshi personally invented BTC to defraud everyone who bought it so in that sense, no, it is not a scam technically. A better way to describe it would be via the greater fool theory: the only way to make money is to find someone even more foolish than yourself to buy it.
Crypto as it is currently implemented is inefficient, riddled with problems, and is deflationary which you can argue about but most economists would say deflationary currencies are bad as they lead to shrinking economies and do not encourage investment.
There also aren’t that many problems that it ‘solves’ that aren’t already solvable by existing tech. And even in the case of things it’s useful for, if it were to be widely adopted the ‘benefits’ would be overshadowed by the massive new problems that would be created.
I think crypto will always have a niche, especially for black markers. I don’t think anything similar to currently existing crypto currencies will ever be adopted for widespread use as legal tender.
And as the other commenter pointed out, the tax situation is a nightmare. Even if you don’t sell online yourself, that’s a big hurdle to crypto achieving what many supporters claim it can do.
Cryptocurrency is not about making money. It’s a distributed ledger. Technology like that could maybe be a scam if it didn’t do what its creators claim it does. But it’s been around for a long time and we know exactly how it works.
It has problems, but like every technology it keeps improving. I choose to use it despite its flaws and will probably use it even more in the future.
It gives me privacy and anonymity when paying online. No other online payment technology does. It also doesn’t require trust, since it’s decentralized. I’m not aware of any other technology that solves those problems.
That’s possible, but over time it is accepted by more and more stores. So it keeps growing. But even if it didn’t, you can use crypto to buy gift cards for any store. It doesn’t have to be popular.
When someone wants to invest in crypto, I can see how that could be a problem. I just use it to pay for things online.
I would venture that the majority of people see it as an investment of one sort or another. I think the insane market cap, and the devestating effect the recent crash had on its reputation and use, are evidence of that.
Most cryptos have fundamental problems that I don’t see being fixed, eg it’s deflationary properties, BTC’s wasteful PoW, ETH skirting/crossing the boundary of being a security, etc.
This is like the one thing they are good for, and Monero is the best at it. This is an arguable point though, others may say that this is a negative due to the implications and governments have cracked down on privacy enhancing tools like Tornado Cash for this reason. I personally value privacy to an extent, but do not see the need in my life to use Monero. I certainly wouldn’t fault you for using it, though.
I think adoption has stagnated. And look at El Salvador, they basically had to force crypto on the populace and they use their own proprietary wallet, nullifying privacy benefits. And again, it is treated as an investment by the government there who are buying BTC to speculate.
Yeh this is dependant on your country. Here in Australia every crypto transaction is a capital gains event 🙄
You are right, but it doesn’t matter what most people think. I mean we should educate them about it, but their opinion is irrelevant.
Etherum has already switched from proof of work algorithm to less wasteful proof of stake. So it seems that at least that problem can be solved.
You should be able to buy any of the popular cryptocurrencies anonymously. They won’t make your payment history private like Monero does, but you will still be anonymous when paying.
I don’t know exact stats, but it’s bigger than I expected before I started looking into it. There are a lot of crypto ATMs now in cities, which you can see at https://coinatmradar.com. There are also some stores and restaurants that accept crypto, especially in the US (https://coinmap.org/view). You can also find some online services on https://cryptwerk.com. El Salvador is certainly messed up. Bitcoin probably isn’t even a good choice, because of its big transaction fees. Other cryptocurrencies are faster, can handle more transactions and have smaller fees.
Damn, that’s crazy. So you can’t even buy something without paying an extra tax?