Same as their past: Get-rich-quick schemes, outright scams, massive wastes of electricity, criminal funding tools, investment instruments that aren’t backed by actual companies making anything (and are therefore 100% speculation)… and sometimes some interesting technology.
Awwww I wrote my essay and here I come back to your comment saying everything better in one tenth of my words.
Aside from the electricity, that sounds a lot like traditional currency.
So no improvements, but a bigger ecological cost. So we should dump crypto, got it!
I’d actually be curious to see the comparison between the power consumption/ecological impact of physical money and digital banking systems vs crypto. I assume the latter is way worse because the proof-of-work model is painfully inefficient and literally just a waste of energy (proof-of-stake is better but still wasteful), but I’d be interested to see actual numbers for comparison. Is crypto twice as bad? Or ten times? Or even worse?
Just thinking of all the things traditional money and banks require (just for the US):
- Growing and harvesting cotton and flax for paper bills (and manufacturing linen from the flax plant)
- Physical buildings need to be constructed to hold money, so all the materials required to build a bank need to be manufactured and then constructed in many places all over the country
- Mining and then refining and forging gold and silver bars for places like Fort Knox
- Power consumption from all the banks’ servers that handle all of the digital wiring of money all over the world
- Mining copper/nickel/zinc/manganese for minting coins, and then the manufacturing process to mint them
- Fuel consumption moving physical money from place to place
Prolly more stuff I’m not thinking of. I wonder if any studies have been done to add it all up. At least a lot of the stuff traditional money requires creates jobs, too. Farmers, construction workers, miners, etc.
I’m not necessarily a fan of physical, paper/coin currency, and I think finding better ways to move to digital currency are worth it! I just don’t think crypto, in its current state, is that solution. Both systems have loads of room for improvement.
You can’t compare crypto with physical currency, that is like compring apples with pears, instead compare the energy use of the transactions on BTC and those made in the VISA network, that is far more accurate.
Making a direct apples to apples comparison doesn’t work because it’s too theoretical and impractical. Cash isn’t going away any time soon.
It’s like <1% for fiat versus prob at least half of crypto tho
investment instruments that aren’t backed by actual companies making anything (and are therefore 100% speculation)
Yep, only the evil bad crypto has ever done this! Our revered financial institutions would never sanction such filt-
2008 enters the room
SHIT
Who claimed that only applies to crypto? Don’t attribute to me things I never said.
Well technically, (s)he never claimed you said that either…
That’s the sad state of things right now, but I hope things will change for the better, and crypto will become an acceptable way to keep and spend money (rather than ponzi ICO schemes, or sorry, “investment”). I also hope that more crypto switch to proof-of-stake to avoid the huge waste of energy, though that has its own problems as well (fears of more centralization, though this didn’t happen with ETH, or at least not yet).
They will continue to be a ponzi scam that hopeful idiots will keep losing money on.
You seem to think about cryptocurrencies like gold as well; an investment. My question was about the future of them as a normal currency that you can use to pay with online. I personally use XMR when I can to pay services.
you seem to think about cryptocurrencies like gold as well; an investment.
because that is what it actually is used for.
My question was about the future of them as a normal currency
That is dead and burred.
The one thing a currency needs is a relatively stable value, otherwise it is useless as a medium of exchange…ie: money.
While crypto is as stable as that bear that ate a couple of kg of cocaine.
I think of it as a ponzi scheme because that us what it has become.
From the perspective of the developed world, crypto is unstable. It many countries, though, their home currency could be less stable.
People who downvoted never heard of Argentina, for example, where their currency is so bad that individual provinces have started creating their own local currencies instead.
They don’t need to know anything, as exalted first world white men, it’s their burden to enlighten the brown people’s from their ignorance
Yes, unfortunately that’s the state of things currently, but I won’t call the prospect of using cryptocurrencies as actual currencies “dead and buried”, yet. Eventually the hype will subside and people who thought they could “make money quick” will leave the game, and those who wanted a decentralized way to keep their money, aware of all the pros and cons, will stay. Hopefully that will lead to a more stable value, and maybe, just maybe they’ll come back mainstream as an actual currency.
This is really more what I hope than what I see likely to happen, but one can hope ;)
I doubt any crypto will ever be stable. There was one coin that was tethered to another and would buy/sell/burn automatically to maintain the main coin at 1 usd, and some dudes took advantage of the reaction time to automate flooding the market and tanking the price of the stablecoin then buying a shitload under 1 usd and making free money when it stabilized itself.
Also as others have pointed out, the fact that crypto is (generally) decentralized and unregulated (which is the WHOLE POINT) is its biggest flaw and makes it a hotbed for speculation and scams.
Just look at how many coins have a spike shortly after creation, then crash to basically nothing. That’s the “investors” getting suckered in while the coins are cheap hoping for another bitcoin boom, then the creators selling out and walking away while the idiots hold the bag while the coin dies.
My question was about the future of them as a normal currency…
There is none, crypto has never been nor will ever be a normal currency, at best it will keep being a fringe currency with dubious reputation and stabillity.
I personally use XMR when I can to pay for services
If XMR is anything like BTC in terms of it’s energy use per transaction then you are causing massive wastes of energy on a transaction comapred to a normal VISA transaction.
This will happen as long as people keep treating crypto as an investment instead of what it was actually designed to be; a currency.
It can never be a currency as the values fluctuate so wildly it is useless as one.
It’s “useless” now because prices are set in dollars, euro, yen or whatever fiat currency you use. Once somebody starts setting prices in bitcoin, monero, etc, then it won’t matter how it fluctuates, cause if you have 1 XMR and something costs 1 XMR, then your crypto money keeps the same buying power no matter what its value to the dollar is.
Of course, we’re pretty far from that happening mainstream, and it’s actually pretty likely it will never happen (sadly, inho, but your opinion might differ).
Agree in general, but I just learned that the word “idiot” is considered ableist language. I was unaware of it’s historic meaning/roots, so this surprised me too.
Some people are desperate for economic or social reasons. That maybe doesn’t give them the same status as other scam victims, but I’ve seen smart and educated people fall for this gambling.Removed by mod
Brings to mind things like the Nigerian 419 letters where they skip proofreading and flood inboxes with fantasy tales of political intrigue in (for their target demographic) far-away lands. Might get a dozen of your average idiots to reply before most people have made it through the first sentence. It’s a way to select victims who aren’t as likely to question what they’re being told but even then, you still hear about people falling for it when, due to their education or business background, they really should know better.
My most positive but realistic prediction: Bitcoin is gonna stay around as a pump-and-dump scheme to make the rich richer. Other cryptocurrencies will slowly fade away including (as one of the latest) ETH. They are not suitable as a currency and are more of a
gamblinginvestment opportunity. Per default, most cryptocurrencies are a privacy nightmare, especially Bitcoin.
There are exceptions. XMR is fairly stable in value and is actually really close to what many people want: cash but digital. If GNU Taler takes off, there’s will be a more comfortable option for paying while retaining privacy, making XMR more obscure.
I assume laws and the state will also have an influence, especially with the climate catastrophe questioning the immense amount of energy necessary to run all of this. Even if crypto were more efficient if it replaced fiat, it’s not gonna happen. There’s hard power preventing it. Both at the same time is reckless when there are people dying.
Also money sucks in general so best case scenario it gets thrown onto the trash of history.inb4 crypto shills: Remember that there are people whose income and investments depend on people believing bitcoin is more than gambling.
It has its fans and niche uses, but I think it has too many problems to be viable as a real currently. It’s volatile, is prone to hacks, lacks consumer protection, doesn’t scale well, and has a huge carbon footprint. If the global banking system had things like gas wars and a “possession is ownership” philosophy then society would collapse.
Yeah like isn’t there a guy sitting on millions and millions of dollars but he forgot his password and only has one attempt left before his account is wiped? Or another that lost his HDD with the details etc. I think it’s pretty stupid to invest in something with such little security or recovery.
What are gas wars here?
Periods of high transaction volume cause transaction fees to skyrocket. If there’s a rush to buy something, then transaction fees will easily go 10x for an hour or so. It’s like if Taylor Swift tickets went on sale, then the entire global economy stopped until they were sold out.
As long as it’s treated as an investment rather than an actual currency, it will never be taken seriously by the general public and will never become mainstream. It’s also too volatile without regulation, so people will naturally be apprehensive with their money being at risk of completely losing value any time.
I’m not really opposed to the idea of cryptocurrencies. I think being able to exchange value without having to go through any middle-men (i.e. banks) could be valuable. It’s kind of like cash in that sense but digital.
I am however very opposed to the execution so far:
- Wasteful proof-of-work algorithms that spend way too much electricity.
- Treating them more as
stocks/investmentsgambling instead of as an actual currency. - New cryptocurrencies seem to crop up every day. This is more of a pyramid scheme than actual innovation at this point.
If those three improve, then maybe it will actually be okay. It’s unclear whether (1) will happen ever, as anyone leaving the proof-of-work cryptocurrencies behind for other less wasteful ones just make mining more valuable for the ones that are still mining the proof-of-work currency (as far as I understand). But maybe it will eventually be better, though it doesn’t seem that way right now.
(2) happening is a little more likely - it would likely slowly happen if people started using it for actual payments and goods. If goods had a price based on a cryptocurrency, the value of the cryptocurrency would be more stable (I would guess; disclaimer I am not an economist or anything like that). But still, this is not too likely to happen, at least it hasn’t happened yet in any big way.
(3) is also problematic and not likely to change any time soon. It seems like we will never agree on using just one of the cryptocurrencies and if we don’t, I can’t really see it taking off.
So generally, unless something changes with how cryptocurrencies are currently handled (ironically, maybe nations need to step in and “bless” a single one for anything to change), I don’t really see a bright future for cryptocurrencies.
As written in my other comment, “cash but digital” is a valid use case imo. It’s just most cryptocurrencies are terrible for that.
XMR/Monero is the best one I’ve seen, but GNU Taler has the potential to do that without the ecological harm. I hope it comes soon™Seems like GNU Taler is still in heavy development. It probably would be the preferred system over XMR in real life as well due to how its designed.
Thanks, clarified my comment!
Kinda like this: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.html
Getting a 503 with Tor. For others with the same problem, here’s an archive.org snapshot.
I couldn’t find anything about what concrete technology they are looking at. Judging by the dates, it could potentially be GNU Taler! The dates coincide with the NGI Taler project: https://taler.net/en/news/2024-02.htmlIt does seem like it. I’d be glad to be able to use GNU Taler in the EU.
They will continue to be used for shady business, they will eventually consume more energy than all of Europe combined, they will never be a legit currency used for normal stuff.
Fuck banks and fuck the banking system.
Paying for shit through my browser via an almost-immediately settled transaction is great and I wish it was more commonly accepted. Lots of growing pains ahead but the concept isn’t going anywhere. There’s also plenty of valid criticism of current implementations but writing off the entire idea is just foolish.
Fuck banks and fuck the banking system.
I’m sorry to be so blunt about this, but you’re kind of being a willing sucker. Inviting people to hate the banks has been the most underrated, under-the-radar, flawlessly effective political smoke-and-mirrors distraction, for generations. And here you go, just buying right into it.
As a distraction, it’s absolutely perfect, because it works from every possible political angle. If you’re a liberal/progressive/socialist, the banks can be a stand-in for capitalism. You can scream about the evils of the banking system, without actually using the word “capitalism,” and maybe get some people onto your side.
If you’re a libertarian/fiscal-conservative/anti-globalist-right-winger, you can accuse the banks of being covertly or overtly controlled by <insert group that you hate> and you can feature them in all kinds of conspiracy theories about The Libs™ weakening your native nation by coupling it to the monetary systems of other nations that you dislike, etc.
If you’re in the political middle (or claim to be), you can pick and choose from any of the above.
In reality, the banking system is going to be necessary for the next couple of centuries. Period. That’s a fact. Nothing can change that, even if it was a good idea to change it. Which I’m not really sure of, because of all the political distraction that always surrounds the whole thing.
The fact remains: people getting all riled up about “the bankers” is music to the ears of every politician who doesn’t actually have any intention of passing good laws, to help people’s lives. Or repealing shitty laws that are fucking up people’s lives.
If you think getting rid of the banking system would instantly solve all our problems, I’ve got an apparently very low-interest loan I can give you, to buy a bridge in Brooklyn.
I’m sorry to be so blunt about this, but you’re kind of being a willing sucker.
Not really a way to start a discussion so I’ll just assume you aren’t interested.
Fuck X
Not really the way either. You said this like it’s a slogan.
I had a really good fart while reading this, thank you.
I think that frankly, we need them around but solely for transactions. treating them as anything else or positively promoting them under some pump and dump scheme is a big NO. But for example, using something like monero over TOR to buy a VPN to avoid censorship under a dictatorship? yes, we begrudgingly need it around for stuff like that.
What a lot of people forgot is that this was the whole point of cryptocurrency to begin with.
It’s really frustrating watching the furry community flip out every few months or so when a credit card company pulls the rug from under thousands of artists. All the problems that people complain about like power usage are solved by currencies that aren’t bitcoin. But nobody wants that to be true, because being right is the most important thing in the world.
It has potential but everyone is going about it wrong.
I just realized how much cryptobros sound like tankies.
They probably overlap. Digital money is central money. But that’s the oversight I had in mind. What people call “commodity currency” was always the most stable, it didn’t hinge on an unstable ceiling.
What would it mean to go right about it in your opinion? Using proof of stake instead of proof of work seems obvious to me, but I have a hard time thinking of an actual use case for crypto
Crypto currency, as we know it, is mainly analogous to the concept of rai stones. There’s a misconception that it’s “money in a device” like a kind of credit card, but how it works is you have digitally-produced objectively existing entities which can be “dedicated” to its current owner. This combination of modernism and improvisionism also gives crypto inherently authoritative connotations.
And there lies the issue. Trade and trade systems are a universal concept, but government is not, so I can confirm it’s a given that combining them just inherits the instability of the latter.
Sucks what happened with NFTs being applied to literally the lowest hanging fruit for what it could be used for
The best use case for nfts i read was providing a nft for digital purchases like books,songs, or micro transactions/dlcs for video games so you could keep track of what you own digitally by the nft possibly even transferring your purchases to other accounts
But no.
Monkey pictures.
Because $$$$
Get rich quick schemes, gambling (speculation), rug pull and pump and dump fraud, dodging taxes, malware ransoms and other illegal activities. Just like it has always been.
Unfortunately while it has legitimate uses, realistically it is used more often for crime and gray area activities. Which is a shame because the technology that enables it is interesting.
I expect that Elon or some other famous person is going to use Dogecoin again to scam their fans and make a quick buck in the near future.
I like that Ethereum’s system changed to use far less energy and thus emit less carbon.
I guess Monero can be useful if you want to buy drugs online or whatever, which I’m fine with.
I know that some people feel really strongly about crypto, either positively or negatively, but I’m mostly disinterested. It’s not going to become a particularly useful currency any time soon and it’s way too volatile, so if I ever decide to invest in something I’ll pick normal stocks instead.
It’s sad to see XMR being perceived as a currency to buy drugs online.
Because it is
Partly, but there are people like me out there that don’t use XMR to do illegal things. It’s like saying only criminals benefit from privacy.
Ethereum’s new solution makes it more centralized, which makes it less adherent to crypto’s general principles.
Ethereum has always been centralized and has never adhered to general principles of crypto. It’s premined, ico,…
A few years back before Bitcoin crashed, EVERYBODY was making bullshit coins and tokens. Way too much hype. Bitcoin fell and a lot of the bullshit died off. Bitcoin, Etherium, and even little ol Dogecoin is climbing now. When the prices surge up, I sell a little, when the price dips back down, I buy it back.
I take little bits of profit at a time, and I hope the value keeps climbing so it can turn into a significant investment, but if not, it isn’t going to ruin me, it’s not my retirement plan.
They will be the only way to transact without being surveilled or without requiring the permission and approval of banks, payment providers, and governments. They will continue to displace banking systems in parts of the world where those are corrupt and do not have basic functionality. They will continue to enable people to do business and cooperate across borders. If we remain long enough without a unified world government, I believe the credible neutrality of cryptocurrency, which is higher than any fiat currency can have, will likely cause one of them to become the global reserve currency.
Meh
