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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

How is crypto a passing fad? ETH is $2k and BTC $30k. Shouldn’t this be 0 by now?

Btc is a genuine intranational and international currency in the developing world. It is more trustworthy than many sovereign currencies. The fx applications of btc alone are enough to grant it legitimacy and fx is a the biggest of all the markets. In a de-dollarizing world btc is a genuine factor.

The stable coins are an issue but stable coins aren't a necessity for btc transactions, they're a utility for traders. Btc's biggest danger is its price volatility. As it increases in value and market cap it will become more valuable to large players who will in turn be motivated to protect its integrity.

> In a de-dollarizing world btc is a genuine factor.

In practice, dedollarisarion has been about shifting to other major national currencies, like the yuan. Bitcoin doesn’t really feature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedollarisation

It doesn't need to handle much to be a large market because international trade and foreign exchange are so huge.

If btc replaces 1% of fx it's doing $50B/day of transactions. Market cap of btc is only about $600M, so 100x btc is not crazy.

Is a p2p transaction system with an auditable record attractive to 1% of fx transaction parties? Seems reasonable, especially when corrupt states are a counterparty.

> especially when corrupt states are a counterparty

how does the integrity of your counterparty to a transaction affect the currency or medium of exchange you agree to?

>make agreement with company in developing world >how do we get the payment?

> a) accept their local currency? where? what then? what will it be worth by the time we exchange it? > b) take btc. transaction registers publicly on the blockchain. smart contracts can execute if desired, e.g. when payment x is received to address y initiate a sequence that starts delivery. currency risk is now in btc and that can be instantly mitigated by converting to your chosen currency, as the btc market is liquid. > c) require counterparty to pay in your currency, which means they pay exchange fees, increasing their costs.

> Market cap of btc is only about $600M

Isn't it $600000M ?

If your nation's currency is so mismanaged that Btc looks like an appealing alternative that says more about your nation's monetary policy than it says about Btc.

There are plenty of developing countries where people don't trust the government currency and use alternatives. It's quite common in Africa where many transactions were done in USD.

>There are plenty of developing countries where people don't trust the government currency.

Same for developed countries, though on a small scale.

I mean that 10 years ago everybody was trying to figure out what to do with blockchains - I remember building a PoC for a blockchain-based crowdfunding website (didn't take off), but we had no idea why we were even doing that. It's like there had to be a blockchain-based killer app somewhere. It didn't materialize in the end, and indeed what's left is Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Last time I checked, Dutch Tulip prices are not $0

True. But they also aren't $30,000.00.

Anymore. At the top of bubble they were way more than bitcoin has ever been

>e best of tulips cost upwards of $1 million in today’s money (but with many bulbs trading in the $50,000–$150,000 range

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market...

right, but now a great tulip is $15

What's a satoshi of Bitcoin worth?

It would be, but crypto sits outside the real economy, and can only be traded by passing around stablecoins, which can be printed out of thin air. It won't reach zero if there are always enough stablecoin-denominated purchases to prop it up.

"Outside the real economy" reminds me of that Australian comedy sketch about the oil tanker ("the front fell off"), where the company representative said there would be no environmental impact because the ship was towed "outside the environment".

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