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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

> Glad to see this silly crypto fad fade away.

This is like the 900th time I have seen this. Crypto doesn't seem to be able to 'fade away 100% completely' does it? So I think that it is here to stay on the condition that there are a compliant few cryptocurrencies and projects after clearer regulations, indicating that not all of them will survive.

But the whole point of this is that Mailchimp and Intuit are responsible for this data breach and suspending a wave of accounts without warning doesn't solve anything.

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9 months ago people were saying NFTs are “here to stay”, how did that work out?.

Considering they still make up a significant portion of Ethereum’s daily activity, I would say pretty well! The NFTs are “here to stay” as long as Ethereum continues to fill blocks, which might be years or decades.

FWIW, “a significant portion of Ethereum’s daily activity” doesn’t sound nearly as impressive to people outside the crypto bubble as you seem to think it does, especially those who are aware of the extent to which unregulated wash trading dominates NFT markets, rendering most of this activity imaginary at best and fraudulent at worst.

This is a very common trend I see when speaking with cryptocurrency advocates. When asked to point to success stories or real world use cases, 9/10 times the answer is related to some other cryptocurrency scheme: a swaps smart contract or a decentralized market maker, wallet software, etc. It seems like most of the use cases for cryptocurrencies are just more examples of the snake eating its own tail.

If you view all crypto activity as only imaginary or fraudulent, I doubt either of us will be able to change each other’s minds.

The NFTs that artists minted in the boom in early 2021 are still being traded across different platforms, curated in physical exhibitions, indexed and hosted by multiple competing companies, and talked about in online magazines and podcasts. Sales on OpenSea and other platforms continue to pay royalties back to creators and sometimes non profit charities that they set in splits. Hundred-year-old art auction houses are now in competition with open source platforms that take nearly a hundred percent less commission on sales, have a lower barrier to entry, and provide higher artist royalties.

Blockchain hasn’t given us flying cars or replaced corporations or whatever boosters say, but it has given us some new tools to imagine transactions and ownership differently than just whatever Stripe is doing.

>>>especially those who are aware of the extent to which unregulated wash trading dominates NFT markets, rendering most of this activity imaginary at best and fraudulent at worst.

NFTs are basically a digital variation of the physical art market....with all that that implies, such as money laundering and wash trading: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/29/business/art-money-launde...

While some view the art world with scorn on HN, I don't think it attracts anywhere near as much derision as crypto and NFTs.

>>>When asked to point to success stories or real world use cases

I use crypto to make micro-loans to a friend in the Philippines, who occasionally runs into cashflow problems with her small used goods business.

Thank you for your response. I agree that the art market deserves much more scorn than it receives.

Regarding your friend, I’m curious to know how competitive crypto is for your use case. Western union charges about 2% to transfer $5000 from the US to the Philippines and can deposit directly in a bank account. I understand that international wire transfers are comparable. Services like remitly appear to be even cheaper. How does crypto compare in price and convenience?

>>>Western union charges about 2% to transfer $5000

That is absolute extortion. I sent ~0.05 BTC in May and the transaction fee was 0.067%. Eyeballing the transaction screenshot she sent, she wasn't getting hammered on the exchange rate to pesos either (via coins.ph). There was some KYC involved (sender name/address required to release the funds on her end) that slowed us down a little. It wasn't a requirement several years ago. I bet we could have fed the form fake info but didn't want to risk the funds being frozen, she needed cash in hand in less than 24hrs to purchase new inventory.

Pretty good, according to my own suggestions and predictions on crypto and NFTs months ago [0] [1].

I have already said that 90% of NFTs will fail and not all of them will survive many times before [2], and only a certain few crypto projects will survive, even past regulations.

The 'people' you are referring to were expecting all 20,000+ crypto or NFT projects to survive this crash which is just delusional as expecting all internet startups created during the dotcom boom to survive after the collapse in 2000. As you can see what I said months before in [0], [1] and [2] tells you that I am not part of the 'people' you speak of.

As always, I expect only a few crypto projects to survive this crash and regulatory clarity.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28912714

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29752372

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29875658

> 9 months ago people were saying NFTs are “here to stay”, how did that work out?.

They are still here and doing fine? I'm afraid dubious media reporting and wishful thinking has given you the wrong idea of what is going on.

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