Bitcoin has rallied. What are crypto’s true believers still smoking? | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin has rallied. What are crypto’s true believers still smoking?

theguardian.com

2 pointsedward19 comments

# There are a bunch of metrics that are very positive for bitcoin:

1. With the fall of FTX/Alameda, and previously 3AC and Celsius, more users are realizing that an old rallying cry for bitcoin still holds true: not your keys, not your coins. Every new 'generation' of users (bitcoin is in its eternal September) has to learn the same lessons as others learned before. So, you would expect to see more self custody of coins, and that is precisely what the on-chain metrics show. See also https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/mt-gox-hack/

2. Real-world adoption is growing with great products like Strike build on top of the fast and cheap Lightning network (one of the various second layers build on top of L1 Bitcoin). See https://bitcoinist.com/watch-jack-mallers-send-free-instant-...

3. More people realize the long view, and buy and hold for multiple years. See also https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/the-hodl-model

The speculative adventure of this industry full of scams has been hilarious to watch, and once hard regulations kick in all of it will go to zero.

There is no legitimate real world use case for all of this. Full stop.

Good luck safely store your money being Russian or Iranian (or other citizen of any fascist regime who is considered not a human by both his own country and westerns). Not a legitimate case, I suppose.

I use bitcoin to buy things all the time. Full stop. I've made a bunch of money from that investment too. Full stop. Having a currency that is not bound to a state can very possibly be a good thing. Full stop. Scams exist in many industries and in crypto it is rampant due to its lax regulations but that doesn't mean the industry is a scam by definition. Full stop.

I wonder if this is what telegrams read like.

What about instantly sending money to Africa very cheaply?

Why do you need crypto to send money to Africa when Wise and Wave exists for this for less fees?

Using the lightning network is faster and cheaper

The lightning network doesn't work at all and is known to be centralised anyway, it's only cheap because nobody is using it.

There isn't any point in the lightning network when the current financial system works better without people losing their life savings.

Mpesa, UPI and Pix work way better than whatever broken system the bitcoin / lightning network has.

There are many avenues to transact moneys. Crypto is one of them. It has a handful of really good use cases. I agree that there are often (usually?) better ways, but cryptographic blockchains that house value to the tune of billions of USD and never goes down or breaks is quite powerful and should be respected as such rather than being seen as purely inferior.

> nobody is using it

87M in liquidity on network, 15k active channels, mmmkay

https://1ml.com/

2. Real-world adoption is growing.

Real-world adoption is shrinking.

Do you have stats for that?

People don't get it. Bitcoin is equivalent to a religion. The believers will always believe. It's here to stay no matter what. It might fall to a fraction of its current value but people will hold on to it and buy more.

The gold believers are the say way.

All currency ultimately comes down to an act of faith. But in the case of fiat money, that faith is in a government that is already providing you a bunch of infrastructure, paid for in fiat currency and demanding the same fiat currency in return (taxes, tariffs, etc.)

It's still a kind of faith, but it's like faith in a deity that at least intermittently actually shows up to do something. Not the kind who "works in mysterious ways" that seem indistinguishable from random chance.

Cryptocurrencies rely on individuals to provide that intermittent evidence for faith. You're trusting that people will pay you for your goods and services in the currency, and will accept your currency for the goods and services they offer. (Or at least, trade it easily for a different currency that people will accept.)

In theory, that could work. In practice, those people are crypto enthusiasts, who aren't really the kind of people you have a lot of faith in. Some of them are criminals, trying to take advantage of circumventing regular channels. That is, at least, a real thing -- unlike the other enthusiasts, who are in only because "line goes up" and don't have goods or services to offer for your currency. That latter faith is easily fractured -- and exists at all only because there are a lot of such people.

In my opinion, it's like a MLM scheme. Once you buy in, you enrich the ones before you. Now you must shill and do marketing for the next buyer.

It's dangerous.

There is literally zero functionality in bitcoin that states one gets richer from getting more people in. That's called supply and demand. I'm a big fan of crypto but I also see these huge peaks and valleys in valuation as a sign that it is treated as a get-rich-quick scheme by many, but bitcoin exists as a means of transacting value outside of state-owned currency. It's pretty rad, but unhinged speculation paints it as a casino. 40x valuations of the next photo sharing app is speculative and outright bullshit too but we don't say photo sharing is an MLM.

>That's called supply and demand.

What do you think causes the demand for BTC?

I'll give you a hint: FOMO. Which is perpetuated by existing Bitcoin holders. Basically like MLM.

Since crypto doesn't have any intrinsic value to base its prices on, it essentially follows US interest rate news and Nasdaq.

Also, the occasional pump by Tether other shady stable coins.

Now that it follows stonks and other traditional investments makes crypto less interesting to me, but that's just my gambling side. Its intrinsic value is that it is an avenue of transacting value outside of the reach of the exact governments and their policies (see: 2008) that caused Satoshi to create it in the first place. And Tether is a joke.

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