So I'm late to the digital currency game. What are the regular use cases for digital currency? Who accepts it? Is it mostly for person-to-person trading?
https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/08/10/ultimate-2000...
It seems to me a lot of it is tied up in speculative investment. But there are some vendors who accept it and some countries (eg: Japan) where it's more popular and widely accepted.
Bitpay allows you to use bitcoin with a VISA card https://bitpay.com/
Some merchants accept it, Overstock being a famous one.
Also I think your missing the biggest use case, abet one that isn't frequently discussed, and it is that crypto currencies are by far the best digital payment solution when it comes to the time it takes for transactions to clear. There is no dispute process, and there is no waiting on the fed for their ACA system to clear your transactions. However, I think a lot of people prefer credit cards for cash back and to have the option to charge back, but certainly cryptos are better for sellers (and potentially will give discounts to those who use them in the future).
Isn't paypal much faster than crypto currencies at doing the same? The normal banking system is quite slow (in part for good reasons) but the digital currencies that came before the crypto currencies are much better at this already, and better than bitcoin will ever be.
PayPal transactions never really clear. You can probably reverse a 3 year old PayPal transaction...
But Bitcoin payments are irreversible after only 1 hour. There are no other systems that accomplish that online.
You're correct: if crypto currencies were digital currencies there would be no advantage. However, crypto assets are decentralised & resistant to censorship. The power shifts away from the nation state (& Trump), & toward individuals.
Monero (https://getmonero.org/) is a good example of a cryptocurrency which focuses on getting these things right.
How would a non-digital cryptocurrency work? While signal scramblers, an analog equivalent to digital cryptography, did exist, I have a hard time imagining an analog blockchain.
It being digital is just its encoding. An analog cryptocurrency could be carved into trees or anything.
Just to be clear. I do agree with the argument above that "cryptocurrency" is a much more fitting term than "digital currency".
I suspect there are chemical compounds that when reacted can perform analog arithmetic. If you used that to create signing, hashing and propagation logic I dare say analog cryptocurrencies could exist.
I have also used it to transfer money to friends, because being able to do that in-browser without involving Paypal seemed pretty great. I would like to get my family using it for this reason too, but most of them are not tech savvy enough to handle it (and some probably would have trouble with Coinbase's verification).
If you don't want such a verbose story, Ars Techica follwed it well too[2]
[1]: https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/ https://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/07/20/alpha...
Silk Road was the first to bring forward the notion of how cryptocurrencies can be used for something much more malicious than coffee. The news it made, and with a face to the organization made it a bigger story, and with Federal Officers involved in a related crime, I will maintain it is a much more important story than AlphaBay.
On a sidenote, AlphaBay isn't the all secure operation you think it was, the 'admin' used a clearnet personal email address for some sort of welcome message, and several other stupid mistakes (check out the document posted a couple days ago in detail and a link to a forum in the comments).
There will be another market which will be bigger than AlphaBay. Currencies with more privacy oriented features are coming baked in, so it will be harder to catch them too.
I did not say that at all. Though since you brought it up, the FBI and Dutch Police's explanation for how they busted the site is very suspect. It does not sound legitimate at all, it's much more likely they cracked the site in another (more illegal/unethical) way and used parallel construction to hide what they did.
>I did not say that at all.
You didn't, but I said that to show that it didn't earn it's place as the bigger competitor, it was just bound to happen no matter who braved it.
>Though since you brought it up, the FBI and Dutch Police's explanation for how they busted the site is very suspect. It does not sound legitimate at all, it's much more likely they cracked the site in another (more illegal/unethical) way and used parallel construction to hide what they did.
Mostly agree. But I don't think there's anything illegal about cracking the tor network, AlphaBay's servers or one of its admins' computers. There was probably a warrant for whatever they did, especially since it was at the international level involving multiple agencies. It might also be a vulnerability in the tor network, but I bet we would most likely never know.
Why exactly is downvoting my statement warranted? It's factual.
Many of us haven't even started !
If you don't understand what it is, you may buy the wrong crypto asset. I think it's fair to say it's a good idea to know what you're investing in!