Is there a reason for the fervent crypto bashing on HN?<p>Posting an article from 2018 with many rehashed arguments is fine, I guess, but there are many interesting (if not useful) things coming out of the cryptocurrency space. Of these, the standardization and development of cryptographic standards and libraries is perhaps the most applicable for the rest of the computing world.
Here's the final paragraph for those who want to know if this is worth reading:<p>> The real solution, as I have argued elsewhere (and as many people have argued, back to Keynes at least) is for central banks to intervene at many more points in financial system. They have to set prices of many assets, not just one overnight interest rate, and they have to direct credit to specific classes of borrowers. They have to accept their role as central planner. It is the need for much more conscious planning of finance, and not crypto currencies, that, I think, is the great challenge and opportunity for central banks today.
When it comes to Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies HN community seems to become the church of central bankers, where the same old (debunked millions of times) BSs are repeated over and over as a mantra.<p>You may not agree with a sound money economy, and you may like the idea of a central bank that manipulate the market to encourage spending and discourage savings.<p>But thankfully nobody is forcing you to use Bitcoin, and that's alone one of the main interesting point of it, it's completely and absolutely an open and voluntary economy.
leaving the ponzis, illegal markets aside I think there is some interesting stuff happening in crypto right now.<p>Publicly traded companies[1] are starting to consider BTC as a reserve asset. MSTR converted 85% of cash reserves to Bitcoin(38,250 BTC).<p>AMMs[2], a novel idea in market making is growing popular.<p>[1] <a href="https://bitcointreasuries.org/" rel="nofollow">https://bitcointreasuries.org/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://medium.com/dragonfly-research/what-explains-the-rise-of-amms-7d008af1c399" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/dragonfly-research/what-explains-the-rise...</a>
The chairman of the CFTC, Heath P. Tarbert, praised Ethereum this week, saying:<p>"Let me just say how impressed I am with Ethereum...If Bitcoin is email ––a one-trick pony, so to speak, but obviously revolutionary–– Ethereum goes far beyond that; it's more like the internet."
It's not a bubble because bubbles need a reason to pop. People who bought Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies have no misconceptions about what they bought. It's a scarcity-driven store of value just like gold or silver.<p>Crypto feeds on opportunity asymmetries and financial asymmetries in society. There are people in our society who can earn millions of dollars without lifting a finger, while others have to struggle the extreme just to make ends meet. Is a dollar worth the same to both of these people? No.<p>A dollar is worth much more to someone who has to struggle to earn it. If you get a passive fiat income for free, then your dollar is worth hardly anything because it didn't cost you anything to get it... If there was once a struggle, then it is likely far behind you.<p>If a human gets a lot of anything for free and they can't figure out a good use for it, then it's basically trash to them. They may as well put it into crypto, gold, silver or other scarce assets which are known to soak up other people's surplus fiat currency.<p>The fact that crypto is a store of surplus currency is what makes it much more valuable and resilient than stocks.
Has anyone done an economic analysis on how much electricity may ultimately be used by crypto mining? What are the factors that lead to and limit crypto mining? (Before anyone chimes in to say that traditional finance is also wasteful, let's hypothetically imagine crypto took up 70% of the earth's energy production. It is at least a somewhat plausible problem.) Why, or why not, can this happen?<p>It would be nice to put together a strong argument with numbers behind it.
This was true in 2018, but the cryptocurrency world has moved beyond bitcoin being an easy way to make transactions. That was just the beginning and Bitcoin doesn't do a good job compared to the newer Blockchains.<p>Right now you can buy Bitcoin via bank transfers which the fee for it can be easily low as you as 5 USD depending on the provider, I buy with fee of 0.1% normally. So the transaction fee in the article is not true anymore.<p>You can also use bitcoin as a collateral for a loan. If you have bitcoin savings and suddenly you need to cash out temporary you can already do that.<p>And if you look into news you can see banks and trust funds holding bitcoin as an asset.<p>The cryptocurrency and decentralised market has to grow, it has a lot of problems, but there's a crazy amount of investments on it so problems are being solved and new things come out every week.
Could everybody commenting on this article please first read it and then provide some actual arguments? The noise level with pure ideology, "crypto" promotion or just pure rambling is shockingly high.<p>The article presented a well-structured argument. You may not agree, but then please at least try to respond properly. You are better than that.