
Ask HN: Whats stopping Crypto widespread adoption? - eternalcode
What are the concerns related to the adoption? security? stability? infancy?
======
UncleMeat
Surely it is applications. When I think about my tech friends and family I can
think of few applications of cryptocurrencies that appeal to their needs. When
I think of my non-tech friends and family the existing applications are far
far inferior to centralized applications that already exist.

Why would my grandmother use bitcoin or any of the other applications built on
blockchains? Stability doesn't matter to her. What matters is that there is
something that it can do that she wants and current solutions cannot do well.
All bitcoin does for her is instantly destroy her money when she inevitably
loses her private key.

------
drivingmenuts
Because cryptocurrency sounds like a scam?

Seriously, from the outside, a bunch of people with no standing whatsoever
created a bunch of numbers on their graphics cards and call it currency.

Now, compared to fiat currency, which in most cases is backed by a government
with a long history, cryptocurrency sounds like a scam.

There is a vast difference between a government saying something has value vs.
a bunch of random people and an obscure Japanese guy (who may or may not even
exist) saying something has value.

Fiat currency has some measure of stability. If a gallon of milk costs around
$4 today, it will probably cost around the same tomorrow. Can you say the same
with cryptocurrencies? And which one?

------
juancampa
Just to clarify, what do you mean by "Crypto"? Is it Cryptocurrencies?

------
sharemywin
Why would the average person trust a bunch of cyber-criminals versus a bank?

How do I know the crap I download isn't loaded with keyboard loggers, trojans,
etc.

And before you say well, you just compile .... you lost the average person
at....

~~~
sharemywin
BTW, I think crypto-tech will over take p2p movies as it's first killer app.

------
isubkhankulov
the best use case in the united states is as an alternative to gold, as in
store of value. that is crypto's killer app. the payment system cannot compete
with centralized ones, unless you're looking to buy black market goods.

financial products like ATM's, credit cards were very slow to achieve
widespread adoption. like a decade each.

its possible consumers will start buying a bit of crypto instead of lottery
tickets. thats the only way i see half the population using bitcoin/ether/etc.

------
gpm
It is widely adopted. HTTPS, whatsapp, password hashing, etc.

There's a lot more crypto that could also be widely adopted, e.g. pgp,
encrypted dropbox-like-things, encrypted filesystems, etc. Generally I think
it's a combination of poor user interface, crypto sometimes results in
undesirable tradeoffs (e.g. worse data deduplication for dropbox), and not
enough perceived benefit.

~~~
stephanerangaya
I think s·he's talking about cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ethereum,
etc...

------
0x4f3759df
What's stopping cryptocurrency's widespread adoption is what they call first-
world problems.

1) Government that doesn't confiscate your wealth (more or less) 2) Dollar
bills that don't go to zero 3) Banks that don't steal your money

Take away these and you'll see capital flight all over the place and some of
it will end up in Bitcoin

------
onion2k
Usability. It's hard to use and even harder to use well.

------
eternalcode
Sorry for the ambiguity, I meant Crypto currencies

------
sp527
I think the present culture of indulging in nearly unmitigated crypto-
Utopianism is the more interesting concern. It's becoming difficult to argue
against cryptocurrency in the tech industry without some form of rebuke
enumerating the various potential applications (none of which are in dispute,
generally) and/or incoherently equating cryptocurreny to the internet or other
such developments (in this story, the future will render skeptics little more
than 21st Century Luddites). For an industry so predicated on logic, it's kind
of alarming to hear such blatantly shallow reasoning. The militant
proselytization of cryptocurrencies often verges on absurd. We should be
actively challenging and questioning our beliefs about something that has
attracted so much attention and money.

All that said: cryptocurrencies might succeed. No one can outrightly deny the
possibility. We should stick to arguing as to the likelihood or the extent of
'capture' it might achieve.

The forest for the trees that the more devoted crypto-Utopianists are missing
is that cryptocurrencies, and perhaps the blockchain concept more generally,
are at present an inferior or nearly inferior mechanism on almost all of the
dimensions we should care about: speed, convenience, stability, cost. Put in
short, a commercially-motivated centralized actor, backed and regulated by one
or more government authorities, will always be able to perform as well or
better on most of these dimensions than cryptocurrencies, no matter how many
improvements are made to the system. We usually then end up asking if that
system is problematic or should be challenged. In the first world, there
aren't presently enough people of a subversive mindset to prefer
cryptocurrencies to a centrally-regulated system solely on the basis of
anonymity, complete transaction transparency, and decentralization (the
principal advantages of cryptocurrencies). That could change, but it seems
fairly unlikely. Importantly, I'm not taking a political stance here. I'm
instead trying to account for human behavior.

Cryptocurriencies are nevertheless valid stores of value. People have relied
upon all sorts of things throughout history to store value, because achieving
the designation is as simple as getting some people to trust in a particular
system. But the thing about stores of value is that they inevitably offer
variable degrees of reliability and trustworthiness over sufficiently long
time horizons. It would be foolish to argue, for instance, that the US dollar
will remain the predominant global reserve currency in perpetuity. What we can
argue with a higher degree of certainty is that the US dollar is unlikely to
experience a catastrophic, abrupt decline in its trustworthiness. I would
posit that the same cannot be said for cryptocurrencies and the primary reason
for this is that some substantial proportion of their value is likely baked on
purely speculative behavior (the volatility suggests as much). A secondary
reason is, ironically, that there is no central authority to intervene in the
event of a panic-induced selloff. And the real problem is that there will
always be stores of value that are relatively more trustworthy, according to
the public at large. The average person can see and feel gold. They understand
that it's a store of value and history reaffirms their conviction. They don't
have to comprehend very complicated technical and economic dynamics to believe
in gold. Now you might argue that cryptocurrencies can remain stores of value
without realizing broad adoption and I wouldn't contest that. But the risk
exposure they present, relative to other available stores of value, seems at
the very least problematic.

