I have responded to a thousand versions of your comment on HN. No matter what I write the haters never change their minds. HN is not an enthusiastic place for blockchain devs.
The most successful actual applications thus far, as far as I can tell, have been silk road and paying ransoms.
I know people that send money home and they don’t use cryptocoins. These remittances communities are savvy and price sensitive, if there was a superior product it would be spreading like wildfire.
On a true decentralized gambling app, email would not be needed, just wallet. It would also be difficult to regulate (the team behind it could be anonymous).
And I'm not saying this is great or anything, but it shows how you can build something with a blockchain that you could not otherwise.
But again, to those reading this thread, HN is not a place where you will find a lot of people who patiently defend crypto and blockchain. It garners a lot of downvotes.
Blockchain is a wonderful piece of technology. IMHO I do not think anyone really has personal beef with the technology. I think majority really want to understand, and if they're asking and posing questions it is because do not understand. There might be some that have their skin in it going south but I doubt that's the situation of many.
People really want to understand its use case as money.
some links to complement the comment:
https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange.
https://yearn.finance/ - a platform where anyone can code and deploy an investment strategy, provided it is voted on by people who hold the platform's governance tokens. Already has over $3B in assets locked in. Good idea to look at their governance platform as well: https://snapshot.org/#/yearn
https://aave.com/ - a platform to borrow or lend your tokenized assets. Already has over $9B in assets invested
I'm confused. How do you get EURO currency in your hand with this? i.e. either physical paper or in my bank account?
2. Turn it into cold hard cash or a bank transfer via P2P (no KYC )
3. Withdraw cash directly from a Bitcoin ATM (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the card)
4. Transfer to a crypto debit card and buy from stores directly (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the debit card)
5. Pay directly with your crypto at relevant stores (projects like AMP - https://amptoken.org/ - US only for now)
2. Again, still need a bank account on the end.
3. How pervasive are these? Can I find one on the street while traveling Munich for example? How do I get a card?
4/5. No one wants to use crypto because they get FOMO on price fluctuations. Until then it's basically useless.
Until crypto becomes pervasive as a medium of exchange it's as useless as a bar of gold.
2. Bitcoin is barely a decade old. Ethereum was launched in 2015. Most of the DeFi core projects were launched in 2019-2020. This is extremely early stage and comparing it to the ease and convenience of legacy financial systems is a little disingenuous. It might be complicated currently, but it works.
I give up. All I see on HN are people who’ve somehow dismissed an entire new tech sector without even being curious about it. The arguments are trite and shallow.
At the very least, if you are on HN, I expect you to be curious about the technology and make up your mind after satiating that curiosity.
If I found a new animal species that walked and talked but lived using photosynthesis, I'd be asking all sorts of questions. "Does it breathe? Does it need water? Why does it need sun to live?"
So here we are now asking a bunch of questions and seeking clarifications.
> At the very least, if you are on HN, I expect you to be curious about the technology and make up your mind after satiating that curiosity.
"No true scotsman"...People are being critical because they ARE curious about crypto. How do you expect people to "make up their mind" when "Most of the DeFi core projects were launched in 2019-2020". That's exactly the issue.
The only real difference that blockchain solutions bring is decentralisation. I have to yet hear one single argument about why decentralisation is good. So far I have only heard the typical libertarianesque arguments about states, banks and inflation. As as I'm concerned, decentralisation is unnecessary and so are blockchain.
The power of decentralization is to reduce the power of centralized entities. Even within decentralized networks, centralized nodes (companies) gain power. But in decentralized networks you can choose alternatives. In state-run networks, your only option is the state as guns prevent competitors. I like free markers / free minds / private wealth / private power.
https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange.
https://yearn.finance/ - a platform where anyone can code and deploy an investment strategy, provided it is voted on by people who hold the platform's governance tokens. Already has over $3B in assets locked in. Good idea to look at their governance platform as well: https://snapshot.org/#/yearn
https://aave.com/ - a platform to borrow or lend your tokenized assets. Already has over $9B in assets invested
Please see this with an open mind. And please see this from the perspective of someone not from privilege, from a third world country, or from someone facing an oppressive regime.
Money is freedom. And making that freely accessible to anyone from anywhere is important.