Cryptocurrencies are used for financial speculation, fraud and illegal trade. With only tiny fractions of the cryptocurrency-using fraction of society using them for other purposes. I would not call that nonsense the embrace of a generation.
You mean like cash?
> With only tiny fractions of the cryptocurrency-using fraction of society using them for other purposes.
Well, tiny datapoint from tiny fraction: I've only used bitcoin for totally legit stuff. But I concede that all the other transactions might have been financial speculation, fraud and illegal trade. But I can't prove it either way, and I suspect neither can you.
> I would not call that nonsense the embrace of a generation.
Well, I would not call it nonsense either. And it probably isn't the embrace of a generation. But it is moving the needle.
I would guess that the OP means 'yes like cash, but cash is also used for other things whereas crypto currencies are not practically used for anything else.'
Again and again: no data demonstrates this claim.
The burden of proof is on the claim that non-speculation uses are greater than the speculation uses.
Says who? I agree speculators are a big fraction of crypto users, but you are making the even bolder claim that "crypto currencies are not practically used". Consider that lots of hard & anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15094514
Says the burden of proof. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
- I live in a US city with a population over 1M. - I have about 0.5 BTC - I have never - ever - seen a place in the Real World where I can spend it. - I cannot be sure of this assertion, but it's worth saying anyway: The only place online I can recall seeing that accepts BTC as payment is PIA vpn service. I cannot recall any other place (this certainly doesn't mean there aren't any!).
If a reasonably tech-savvy person cannot spend it in the real world, it does not meet my standards for something being 'practical'. Period.
Also you fail to realize it but Bitcoin's practicality extends to more than just payments: it's great for informal person-to-person transactions. I gift bitcoins to my family overseas, I pay back lunch money to coworkers in bitcoins, etc. In fact I think person-to-person transactions is one of Bitcoin's most promising use case...
They have only made a lot of dollars when they sell their crypto currency. Until then it is all fantasy, which is something a lot of .com millionaires would agree with, especially the ones that sold their solid companies for stock in less solid companies.
Citation needed. You have no data to back up your claims.
In my circles, cryptos seem to be primarily used either for person-to-person transactions (housing rent, beer money, small loans between friends) or--interestingly--B2B payments (US company paying their Chinese suppliers; Bitcoin excels at fast international payments.)
I would be pretty miffed if someone as paying me their share of rent in crypto. No merchant I interact with accepts them, so it would be more than a hassle to convert into USD (fees, rapid valuation changes, etc).
Can you give details about those B2B payments?
LOL, maybe not the best source to post when we are talking about legitimate uses.
I would love to go to any country without needing to buy foreign currencies, and do conversion calculations on the spot. I would love to own a currency that is not controlled by governments and banks. I would love to wire transfer money on Friday evening and let it clear on Friday evening instead of Monday or Tuesday.
I'm sure it's also more convenient for a European airline to buy a Boeing without needing to time it right for their European bank to transfer the money first to a New York bank and then to Boeing, because of the time difference and bank opening hours. That's crazy, and reality.
What a retarded system are we living in? Time for some disruption! Then we will really find out which currencies are in a bubble.
* gold, diamond, stocks, paper money, etc. would also fit the bill
As I said elsewhere in this thread: you have provided no data to back up your "facts".
I am annoyed at people who constantly claim to know how are cryptocurrencies used, but... it's just what they think and have no data to show it.
I agree value appears to be driven a lot by speculation, but you are changing subject. We were talking about usage. It's pretty obvious from payment processors, from people in the industry (have you ever attended a Bitcoin conference and talked to users? I have), from usage metrics (increasing tx rate, which is normally not related to speculators, as buying and leaving coins on exchange doesn't create a tx), and from other sources, that usage of cryptos is growing.
So, no, you can't say you "just know" cryptocurrencies aren't used by anyone.
PS: I am a crypto dev, wrote miners, founded TAV (mining ASIC integrator), and have been in the Bitcoin industry for 7 years. I know a thing or two.
(Withdrawing and depositing BTC creates transactions, however most speculators do not do this, as most people leave BTC on exchanges.)
If the market cap of the top 500 companies is 17.4 trillion then that averages out to 17400/500 which is a bit under 35 billion each. Which makes bitcoin as large or larger than a good chunk of those F500 companies.
I'm sure you could have picked a better example to illustrate just how tiny bitcoin is.
Agreed. But think of it as my expectations of what Bitcoin would become being rather lower than where it is already. I'm absolutely amazed at how far it has come.
Who else would want to send censorship resistant transactions other than people who are at risk of being censored?
The modern era is still relatively free of censorship, and thus the people using cryto are pretty far on the shady end of the spectrum.
But trend toward censorship in the modern era, is worrisome. Perhaps a whole lot more people are going to have to protect themselves against censorship in the future. And by censorship, I mean censorship done by ANYONE, including both the government, AND ultra powerful corporations that may as well be the government.
Don't take this as an insult but what an ignorant comment... Financial, political & journalistic censorship (all inter-related) is rampant. Start by reading: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press
Perhaps I just have a bleaker imagination of how bad things COULD be.
I worry that as bad as things are today, we will look back on this era as a comparative golden age of freedom.