Funny that the article talks about Bitcoin jumping on the news. While the chain on which this settlement takes place is Ethereum.
Bitcoin has shown it is uninterested in being anything but digital gold.
Etherium is more oriented towards transactions than Bitcoin.
In the longer term, the value of Blockchain will be in facilitating transactions. In this, it's 100% analogous to the Internet. The current crop of blockchain is dot.com, where we're still figuring things out. People will look back on it and think it quaint for analogous reasons. I think Harry Dent has a section in a book about this idea.
An even bigger explosion of value will be created with the next wave analogous to "Web 2.0." No more multi-day dead tree transactions for settling checks, equities, real estate transactions, etc...
Maybe Bitcoin is so much horrendously worse that makes what you said true but Ethereum is pretty terrible. Unless I’m missing something?
If I want to send .001 ETH (i.e. $1.81) from my MEW wallet to my Coinbase wallet, I am charged $7.388 in fees if I want it confirmed in three minutes. If I’m not in a hurry and pick the slowest option that goes down to the low low price of $6.133. To send $1.81 from me to myself. These are network fees, not Coinbase (who will then charges me fees again to either sell or transfer the money).
I love that there’s a link right on the transfer page of MEW that says, “Why are the fees so high?” that basically tells you it might get better someday but for now it’s how it is.
I’ve been using Crypto since you could mine BTC with a GPU but I still don’t get what the use case is outside of illicit purchases and “buy it because it goes up.” Maybe I’m stupid.
In my opinion bitcoin, by not taking scaling seriously, has declared it's self as only good for store of value, L1 bitcoin seems like it won't really become any more efficient and essentially all L2 systems require 2 tx on L1. Etherum will scale L1 a bit more with allows overfull blocks and then much more when PoS rolls out.
True. But once an L2 channel is anchored on L1 using those 2 L1 transactions it can support an unlimited number of L2 transactions, they take milliseconds to do, and an unlimited number can happen in parallel - all without any more L1 transactions.
L1's main use is to become the place L2 channels are created. Creating 7 entire channels per second sounds like it should be more than enough.
Those things don't really exist right now, though.
The US is moving from ACH to RTP for instant settlements, so the multi-day thing is gone.
Checks aren't processed in paper terms, they're scanned and converted to ACH transactions - and soon RTP.
Equities are instant and electronic.
Real estate transactions are legal transactions, and for the once every 5 years you need to get a title company to record the deed is that really a big deal? The real burden isn't the title recording.
There's absolutely no reason any of these things have to be achieved with a blockchain. There's absolutely no reason to think any of these things would even be better achieved with a blockchain. It's not analogous to the internet because the internet was fundamentally more efficient than what came before it, not less.
You can agree on a transaction instantly on a web page. But the actual confirmed trade comes the day after.
Real estate transactions are legal transactions, and for the once every 5 years you need to get a title company to record the deed is that really a big deal?
My wife works in banking, and yes, the cumbersome and primitive nature of this stuff introduces delays and opportunities for miscommunication that make it kinda a big deal.
There's absolutely no reason any of these things have to be achieved with a blockchain. There's absolutely no reason to think any of these things would even be better achieved with a blockchain. It's not analogous to the internet because the internet was fundamentally more efficient than what came before it, not less.
Dude, you clearly don't have any clue about how primitive lots of transactions still are. I'm glad that progress has been made in checking, but it seems like you only know about that, and have no clue what happens with title companies, and what banks have to go through to deal with them.
Blockchain could clearly be better for that.
Does that matter? That's why we have loans.
> My wife works in banking, and yes, the cumbersome and primitive nature of this stuff introduces delays and opportunities for miscommunication that make it kinda a big deal.
Lucky thanks to trust and centralization it can be resolved instead of lost forever.
> Blockchain could clearly be better for that.
Lots of non-blockchain things could clearly be better for that, too. Since centralization and trust represents a massive optimization, a non-blockchain solution by definition can be more efficient.
Tremendously. Just as the Robinhood CEO and watch videos on the mechanics of why they did what they did. Then come back here and hang your head in shame.
Lucky thanks to trust and centralization it can be resolved instead of lost forever.
It's the centralized systems of disparate parties which causes this. You clearly don't know what you're talking about here.
I'm very familiar with that situation, lol, no need to get hyperbolic. A small tweak to liquidity requirements is all that's needed to rectify that. Not burning the whole system down.
This reads a lot like the engineering preoccupation with rewriting instead of refactoring because reading code is hard and writing it is easy.
> It's the centralized systems of disparate parties which causes this. You clearly don't know what you're talking about here.
No, I'm saying that decentralized systems leave no recourse to correct errors. SFYL. Centralized systems do.
When you speak with such hyperbole and unbridled, untempered enthusiasm it raises questions about your answers. Especially when the system you espouse has had no end of issues, of bigger magnitude, constantly. Robinhood just taking that opportunity to exit scam or shut down would have been "just another day" in crypto. At least Vlad didn't fly off to India to open an orphanage, fake his own death and tell everyone to get stuffed. The entire space is one step from collapse at all times haha.
None of that changes what I said: a non-blockchain solution that's new, clean and modern would do just as much good as a new blockchain solution. Possibly more. And definitely more efficiently. Why approach this from the solution domain instead of the problem domain?
That still makes it very relevant here. Bitcoin is the reserve, while Eth is the settlement layer.
Etherum is so much more than a settlement layer. In my opinion the biggest potential for bitcoin is to displace gold. It's only ~6x away from eclipsing gold's market cap. After that I think the growth story of it growing faster than index funds starts to get kind of tenuous.
I think that's a Bitcoin holder's fantasy. If you're already using one chain for settlements, why use an entirely separate and unrelated one as well? Ethereum can be both. Actually, almost any other cryptocurrency can be both. It's only (original, core) Bitcoin that is so badly crippled.
Many other things than Bitcoin also have finite supply.
Bitcoin's fees are currently worse than eth and their development direction is ... toxic ...
Bitcoin cash is currently what I expect to take the lead....though that could be quite a long time. 25-140 years....give or take.
This differs from other blockchains such as Ethereum, that try to build everything on L1. This is a problem, because it introduces a lot of risk and uncertainty on the base layer. Even on Ethereum, the most promising solutions seem to arrive on L2, making the premise of Ethereum rather pointless.
A lot of us that are deep into this space already see all the nuances, but there's a fat tail of people out there who are only just warming up to the idea that Bitcoin is not a scam. They're not quite ready to make the jump to Ethereum and smart contracts. Admittedly, most of these folks are the older generation that are not "digitally native" (i.e. millennials and younger).
"Bitcoin" conjures a physical, visual image. That golden coin image with the "B" logo. Ethereum has chosen, for better or worse, a more ethereal representation for itself that I think is tougher for people to grasp.
Remember when the internet was such a new concept that no one knew how to describe it? What did they call it? An information superhighway. Bitcoin achieves this in its brand name. At any rate, that's my theory for why it sticks so much better than Ethereum, and it's harder for people to remember ETH the first time they hear it than Bitcoin.
Or maybe the new answer is to call ETH "Eeth-coin". What do you think?
> Remember when the internet was such a new concept that no one knew how to describe it? What did they call it? An information superhighway.
This is exactly the thought I have had recently. In my humble opinion in 20 years we may consider a phrase like “crypto” to be antiquated. This time is exciting because we don’t know what happens next.
Or said another way, blockchain is to Millennials what the internet was to Boomers.
My dad is a boomer and eagerly adopted technology into his business at that time. I can think of many examples of this. How many boomer parents of millennials provided us with computers and Internet access?
Maybe I’m just sensitive to the ageism but I don’t buy in to these generational stereotypes.
For boomers, network television and radio were the primary forms of entertainment in their formulative years. Because PCs either didn't exist or were so expensive and hard to use, very few boomers grew up with this stuff. It's like being a native speaker of a language. You master the language in a way that is very difficult for non-native speakers to achieve. That's nothing on "non-native" speakers of a language, but it's just that your earliest years shape how you think and use these tools and that's hard to overcome.
@mulmen - can't reply to your thread below, but understand that these generational differences are broadly recognized and apparent in consumer behavior and well-documented. I'm not making up the generation gap with regards to digital technology. The fact that people close to you happened to be savvy with tech (were they mining BTC in 2011? were they crowdfunding Oculus in 2012? were they on Instagram in 2010? did they do a startup during the mobile boom?) doesn't discount broad demographic trends.
Like the example I used above, the existence of non-native speakers that speak perfect English does not discount that fact that vast majority of people that learn a language past childhood struggle to develop that mastery. PCs did not reach mainstream adoption until the 90s. For boomers, they were already in their late 30s to 50s by the time this happened. You can even see this example in the cryptocurrency space. How many bloggers, podcasters, developers, etc in the blockchain space are boomers? Relatively few compared to their representation of the world population. This space has been largely driven by younger generations. That's a fair statement.
My entire family eagerly and reasonably adopted technology. The first computer I owned was an old model given to me by one of my dad’s coworkers when he upgraded. He demanded I use it to learn something. He completely understood the benefit.
All of our family friends adopted technology in their own ways. All my classmates had access to technology on par with my own. It was widespread. Millennials were not in a financial position to bankroll the internet revolution. Boomers did that just because they were the right age at the right time.
btw, my work has nothing to do with networking. this is just my workflow for diagnosing connection problems for counterstrike.
But still, germane to the parent post, at my workplace almost everybody has heard of things like the blockchain, machine learning, and so forth. And people talk at lunch about the wonders of the blockchain, and the wonders of machine learning, as if those things are magic. The colleagues who dug into how those things actually work, beyond superficial explanations in blogs, are all older than 55. We are also the ones who deeply understand how our own products work. Maybe this is good or bad. Needing to understand how something works in order to believe it may be a mental block in some situations.
At home, I'm still the only person who can diagnose IT problems, the only fluent programmer, and can fix a toilet. The young generation is more comfortable as users of technology, but haven't experienced having to dig deep into the innards of something to make it work. This is something that can't be forced. There has to be an interest.
Naturally these are generalizations, and not everybody in my generation was a techie, but I don't know if a larger percentage are techies today.
But surely the folks that learned tech before it was as user friendly as it is today have an advantage over even younger people who aren't curious enough to learn.
I doubt there’ll be any significant value locked in RSK/Sovyrn, when most of the liquidity is on Ethereum. Plus, it’ll take time for BTC developers to learn Solidity, and most of the DeFi network effect will be on Ethereum and other EVM compatible chains.
ICO is just a way for startups to raise money (though lately, it seems to be more about governance tokens once they have their project up), DeFi is a way for people to lend and get loans, trade margin, synthetic stocks, and NFTs empower creatives to make money off of their work and people buy them because they enjoy it and also see them as long term investments just like in the traditional art world.
Are the prices ridiculous? Sure, but so is Bitcoin during bull runs. Things will settle during the next bear run and tokens will likely reflect more realistic prices.
Yes, USDC is by definition DeFi. This is VISA plugging into it, providing ON-RAMPS and OFF-RAMPS into the whole DeFi and Ethereum ecosystem.
Take it from Circle's CEO Jeremy Allaire (the organization behind USDC):
"Major USDC news today - @Visa has become the first major payments network to support USDC as a native currency and settlement system on its network. This is massive news, and marks a major turning point in mainstream adoption of crypto.
With USDC being the fastest growing dollar digital currency in the world, connecting its use to existing global networks will accelerate its adoption as both a store of value and medium of exchange. Crypto dollars FTW!
What does this really mean? A customer who has USDC in a wallet, and a card attached to their wallet (there are now dozens of these) can spend at any Visa accepting merchant, and the USDC is used to settle the transaction with Visa instead of the legacy banking system.
For Visa, this means they get the money as fast as a blockchain moves funds, without reversal risk, without the time delays and costs of SWIFT, ACH, etc. Huge!
This is "Over-the-Top" (OTT) money, and a major step in our mission to build a new global economic system on a more open, global, safe and inclusive foundation built on crypto and blockchain tech.
Huge congrats to @cuysheffield and the team at @Visa for really putting your money where your mouth is and embracing the future, we welcome you with open arms in the movement towards an open internet of value!"
I didn't ask how much DeFi has grown, you said 1 to 40B I can divide 40 by 1. Im curious why you think no other sector has grown by $39B.
For instance the S&P 500 is $33.4T in market cap and it's up 75% year over year, or an increase of 20T. That's a substantially larger sector growth. Or are you measuring it by percentages? It's really easy to grow peanuts into 40 peanuts, and I'm sure I can find you another sector. Point is you haven't provided any explanation or citations for your claim.
USDC isn't the definition of DeFi, it's a stablecoin. It's a literal pile of tokenized money. That's a centralized system. It's not like Visa is allowing settlement via DAI.
> With USDC being the fastest growing dollar digital currency in the world, connecting its use to existing global networks will accelerate its adoption as both a store of value and medium of exchange. Crypto dollars FTW!
Paolo would obviously disagree with that lol.
> What does this really mean? A customer who has USDC in a wallet, and a card attached to their wallet (there are now dozens of these) can spend at any Visa accepting merchant, and the USDC is used to settle the transaction with Visa instead of the legacy banking system.
I didn't see that in the article. Given that it's on Ethereum, and gas prices are staggering, it's very unlikely that's what's happening, so exactly what is? And why? Merchant's don't want USDC they want dollars, who's on the other end of the settlements? Ok they'll accept digital currency to net up once a month but then what? Will they be the ones to liquidate it?
> For Visa, this means they get the money as fast as a blockchain moves funds, without reversal risk, without the time delays and costs of SWIFT, ACH, etc. Huge!
Uh... buddy?
The blockchain is slow, you know that right? Visa can move money way, way faster through a network known as Visa. And they can do it far less expensively. And yeah, they're the ones who get to dictate reversal risk because they're Visa. If people didn't want reversal risk Visa wouldn't have it. But they do want it. And for them ACHs cost about 1/10th of a penny each, and wires are roughly free, too. RTP is going to be free and instant - rollout is going well in the US.
Visa is also way cheaper, they take a few basis points on Visanet transfers.
> This is "Over-the-Top" (OTT) money, and a major step in our mission to build a new global economic system on a more open, global, safe and inclusive foundation built on crypto and blockchain tech.
Why does one centralized organization moving a centralized representation of a centralized currency (the USD dollar in a big ol' bank account at Circle HQ) -- roughly speaking company scrip -- fit that definition at all?
> Huge congrats to @cuysheffield and the team at @Visa for really putting your money where your mouth is and embracing the future, we welcome you with open arms in the movement towards an open internet of value!"
At this point I'm actually not sure if you're a bot. Say potato!
Hey, fastest growing, means RATE OF GROWTH. 40x is how life-changing gains are made. That's the number that VCs are hoping to hit when they poor several million into a startup. Right, the finance world works off of ROR, it's called Rate of Return. Look up that up sometime.
> The blockchain is slow, you know that right?
No, it's not. It has 100% uptime and you can execute ANY transaction within 15 seconds on Ethereum layer 1. Depending on congestion, you may have to pay a higher fee ($20-$40 as mentioned above). Paying $20 to settle millions of dollars in 15 seconds is a no-brainer for a company like VISA. It's trivial compared to what they currently pay to interact with the legacy system.
Anyways, you're obviously close-minded and anti-crypto, and you're going to get left in the stone age. Your ignorance is my alpha. Stay curious!
Fastest relative to? Do you have a chart or some numbers? Or are you just saying that because the number seems big? You know a 40X increase in locked-up value doesn't translate to 40X returns for anyone right?
> No, it's not. It has 100% uptime and you can execute ANY transaction within 15 seconds on Ethereum layer 1.
I believe Visa settles in 15 milliseconds lol.
> Anyways, you're obviously close-minded and anti-crypto, and you're going to get left in the stone age. Your ignorance is my alpha. Stay curious!
That's a very Crypto position to take, i.e. a zero-sum position. My "ignorance" (in spite of the fact I understand the space very well, I just haven't drank nearly as much koolaid as you have) has nothing to do with your "alpha." Trust me, I spend a lot of time researching this space. There's just nothing there.
Crypto.com had Visa debit cards where you get CRO "cashback" for quite a while.