> technology looking for a use case
Did someone say blockchain?
Did someone say blockchain?
The current number of transactions is not constantly rising. The current short term trend (https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.ht...) is downwards. It's now about the same or less than it was in peaks of 2017 and early 2018, and whatever the growth in 2018-early 2019 was made of, it doesn't seem to be in consumer purchases of goods and services (i.e. being used as a currency).
I wonder what percentage of those transactions are generated by people trading in cryptocurrencies vs them actually being used as a 'currency'.
This actually is a currency use case. It's an illegal one, but it's a really useful one.
It's not clear to me that it's a use case that requires a blockchain, but i don't think there are currently any viable competitors.
You know what I have seen being used, that surprised the hell out of me at first? Venmo.
Turns out people buy their friends a lot of sushi.
Apparently nobody cares because only a small fraction of gold is used for that purpose. Most is used to sit on it.
Stable... hard to tell, let's see after a millenium or two. Gold had a pretty good run till now, but hauling one asteroid towards earth or figuring out how to cheaply filter it out of ocean water will drop its value to dirt cheap.
More liquid... probably. Market for gold is still larger for now. Let's check that after a decade or two. Trends don't look too optimistic for gold when compared to btc.
It's better for electronics than copper, so there's that.
> but hauling one asteroid towards earth
Seems impractical, expensive, and the yield isn't clear.
> or figuring out how to cheaply filter it out of ocean water will drop its value to dirt cheap.
You should check your math on this.
342,600,000 pounds of gold have been mined[1], but the oceans hold 20,000,000 pounds[2].
1: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21969100 2: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/gold-ocean-sea-hoax-sc...