Shocking to see how out of touch hacker news is with crypto. I guess not much has changed since coinbase was launched on HN and faced a bunch of naysayers then also.
And when they do those “issues” are almost all out of date and ignore current technology. Crypto uses too much energy ignores Ethereum converting to PoS in six months. Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today. Crypto is too slow and expensive to transfer ignores super high capacity L2s and rollups that are processing tens of billions in transactions today with essentially zero costs.
If it doesn't get delayed yet again. And if it works. Also, right now it's BTC the one with the biggest market cap and name recognition, and I don't think that one is going to change anytime soon.
> Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today
Can I get a loan without 100%+ collateral yet?
> Crypto is too slow and expensive to transfer ignores super high capacity L2s
Tens of billions? Zero costs? Where is that?
You also forget the following issues:
- Irreversible transactions mean that scams, bugs and fraud are much more difficult to fight and revert. If someone steals my card I can cancel it and be safe. What if I lose my crypto wallet?
- DeFi does not actually bring anything new to the table other than "decentralized". It will still have to deal with all the problems of financing and loans, from scratch. Default risk, collection of collateral, predatory loans...
- The current economic system doesn't work too well with deflationary currency.
- Volatility. As long as crypto is more of an investment than a currency, people will prefer to have their actual money in something more stable. And as long as supply is limited, speculation will always be present.
- A big one: governments! It's pretty naive to think that governments are just going to give up monetary policy to an algorithm and a bunch of nodes in the blockchain.
- The main new thing from the blockchain is decentralization and authenticated record of transactions. Claiming that it's going to solve problem that have nothing to do with those two features is wishful thinking, usually from ignorance of the problem space.
Uncollaterized loans:
https://medium.com/goldfinch-fi/introducing-goldfinch-crypto...
Fast, feeles, higher tx troughput crypto, NANO:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/lxbhh5/nano_c...
> https://medium.com/goldfinch-fi/introducing-goldfinch-crypto...
Both of these sound like they made a regular bank, or a p2p lending platform. You could make exactly the same thing they're proposing without crypto. The goldfinch one is weird, as it completely glosses over the part of borrower defaults.
> Fast, feeles, higher tx troughput crypto, NANO:
This looks interesting, but the problem is the same as with Ethereum: too many coins, each with different technologies and protocols. Meanwhile, BTC still is the best-known one and the one with the highest market cap. The energy usage problem is not going away anytime soon.
This is quite common in trust less scenarios. We call them pawn shops or "empeños' in México. They are one of the most important lending instruments over here given the high default rates and lack of legal means to get money back for a non-collateralized loan.
These DeFi loans are less useful than pawn shops. That's the point they're at right now.
Where do you get this number from?
> are processing tens of billions in transactions today with essentially zero costs.
Source please?
Do you know anyway to send something pegged 1:1 against gold across the world pseudo-anonymously and near instantaneously?
It is similar to what happens in the mainstream: I'm 40 years old. I see chatroulette, snapchat, ticktock and dont understand them. I could dismiss them as stupid, unnecessary and fads. But the truth is that they are new takes on old subjects that maybe I dont understand; whereas 20 years ago I was on top of what was new or yet to come.
I should say, I think Coinbase is relatively well situated to capitalize on crypto, and it's a real business. I also think it's pretty well situated to shrink and deleverage if there's a decline in the crypto market. I don't think they're a scam.
I just mean that using market approval as evidence that the market is real, not a scam, not a trend, or does something useful is foolish. The point-in-time correlation of market success and fundamental success is nearly 0, even if the long-term correlation is very high.
Recently see also: NFT mania. Surely you'd rather be the artist that gets paid $50 million for selling some bits even as the process is widely derided, since you the artist aren't the bag-holder later on when it turns out the bits aren't worth $50 million.
I thought it was funny and an actual tax on stupidity, but now i understand that it was targeted at poor and/or young people who did not really had to money to loose in these schemes.