It doesn’t work as a currency. It “works” as a speculative investment in that the bubble hasn’t yet popped.
But, what if the bubble doesn’t actually pop, and the prices remain at the current levels, more or less, for another couple of decades. If that happens, will cryptocurrencies be seen to “work”?
I think i made a mistake by using the market cap as evidence that it works, because this just shows people believe it is valuable. Not that it works.
What I mean is that the technology is mature and adopted by a large number of independent users. However, it doesn’t yet have mass adoption because the user experience is not yet seamlessly integrated into legacy systems.
Stablecoins? The best that you can hope for is that they keep their promise not to crash. And sometimes they do crash and people lose all their value. They’re like having cash, but much, much worse.
The price of a particular token has nothing to with how blockchain works. It works.
Blockchain is just an incredibly inefficient distributed database. Of course the price of a token has nothing to do with an incredibly inefficient distributed database. So what?
Blockchain is just an incredibly inefficient distributed database.
Agreed. Most of the time a traditional database is far cheaper and better performing.
The key innovation of blockchain is that write access is algorithmic, not centrally controlled. This feature is not possible with any other technology.
I own crypto because I believe in idea of decentralised money, but I acknowledge that current solutions are just all bad in one way or another. If fiat disappeared tomorrow and everyone would be forced to use crypto daily, it would be a shitshow.
There is no central entity, so it is decentralized in the original definition. I gave Canton as the example because it could be immediately substituted for Swift. It’s permissioned access by design, because banks don’t want to risk their monopoly position.
For speed and cheapest, go for solana.
For reliability go for Ethereum. For reliability, speed and cheapness choose an L2 on Ethereum.
For illegal stuff use monero.
There are trade offs between them, but I wouldn’t call them flaws. Blockchain as a technology definitely “works”.
The market cap of crypto is currently at all time highs.
Riiight, and how much of that is due to things being in actual “real-world” use, and how much of that is due to speculation?
Oh yes. A huge amount of speculation. Just like NVDA.
My point is that you can say a lot of negative things about crypto, but you can’t say it doesn’t work. It definitely works.
It doesn’t work as a currency. It “works” as a speculative investment in that the bubble hasn’t yet popped.
But, what if the bubble doesn’t actually pop, and the prices remain at the current levels, more or less, for another couple of decades. If that happens, will cryptocurrencies be seen to “work”?
I think i made a mistake by using the market cap as evidence that it works, because this just shows people believe it is valuable. Not that it works.
What I mean is that the technology is mature and adopted by a large number of independent users. However, it doesn’t yet have mass adoption because the user experience is not yet seamlessly integrated into legacy systems.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t a speculative bubble.
Or it doesn’t have mass adoption for the same reason that legacy systems don’t accept payment in tulip bulbs.
If you are hung up on value, let’s just consider stablecoins.
The price of a particular token has nothing to with how blockchain works. It works.
Stablecoins? The best that you can hope for is that they keep their promise not to crash. And sometimes they do crash and people lose all their value. They’re like having cash, but much, much worse.
Blockchain is just an incredibly inefficient distributed database. Of course the price of a token has nothing to do with an incredibly inefficient distributed database. So what?
Agreed. Most of the time a traditional database is far cheaper and better performing.
The key innovation of blockchain is that write access is algorithmic, not centrally controlled. This feature is not possible with any other technology.
Works, as in what exactly?
Works as a publicly shared, immutable, secure database (and small calculation) engine.
Oh I see. It still consumes a lot of resources, doesn’t It?
Yes, Bitcoin uses the electricity of Belgium.
No, Ethereum uses the electricity of a single wind turbine.
Modern blockchains are much less resource intensive.
I own crypto because I believe in idea of decentralised money, but I acknowledge that current solutions are just all bad in one way or another. If fiat disappeared tomorrow and everyone would be forced to use crypto daily, it would be a shitshow.
From an end UI perspective, certainly.
But if SWIFT was suddenly replaced by a blockchain technology then the world wouldn’t even blink.
You kidding? How many transactions per second bitcoin blockchain can do?
Lightning can, in theory, do one million transactions per second. But Bitcoin networks aren’t really a drop in replacement for Swift.
Banks like J.P. Morgan prefer chains like Canton that are privacy enabled and have no upper limit on transaction.
First time hearing about Canton. Is it properly decentralised?
You’ve not heard of it because it is banking focused. It’s the newer option made to compete with Quorum and Corda.
It is decentralized, but it is not open write access. It a public permissioned network of private ledgers.
You and I could validate that the network is cryptographicly consistent, but we don’t have decentralized permission to interact.
So, not decentralised in it’s original sense, if a pack of people decide which operations are allowed. Decentralised as in “not a single bank”.
See, this is what I mean when I say they all have flaws.
There is no central entity, so it is decentralized in the original definition. I gave Canton as the example because it could be immediately substituted for Swift. It’s permissioned access by design, because banks don’t want to risk their monopoly position.
For speed and cheapest, go for solana.
For reliability go for Ethereum. For reliability, speed and cheapness choose an L2 on Ethereum.
For illegal stuff use monero.
There are trade offs between them, but I wouldn’t call them flaws. Blockchain as a technology definitely “works”.