
Are cryptocurrencies about to go mainstream? - MurdocTannen
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/01/cryptocurrencies-mainstream-finance-bitcoin-ethereum
======
CM30
Not until they can really explain to the average Joe why cryptocurrencies are
such a good thing.

Because at the end of the day, privacy is nowhere near as important to many
people are it arguably should be, and trying to market cryptocurrencies as
'independent from government control' is likely a losing proposition.

Same with most of the reasons involved I've seen invoked for why to use
Bitcoin or the likes online. They're logical, but they're also likely to fly
straight over the heads of most of the population.

Add the deliberate way that governments and the media try and portray
cryptocurrencies as being used for 'criminal' purposes (which has given these
currencies a bit of an image problem), and you've got something that seems
very unlikely to ever truly go mainstream.

~~~
diogenescynic
Cash is still more anonymous than cryptocurrencies.

~~~
wickawic
The anonymity is overrated anyway. At some point you want to turn your
currency into tangible benefit like food or a car or drugs or whatever. At
that point it isn't hard to connect the anonymous wallet with the guy who
bought the new Ferrari out of thin air.

~~~
thesmallestcat
If you spent it all on drugs it would be anonymous.

------
twothamendment
Yes, and 2017 is the year of the Linux Desktop. We can barely get stores to
use EMV/chip card readers, so I'd have to say no.

~~~
daxorid
A little aside, I've been using Linux as primary workstation for seven years
now. It works great, so I've never understood this "year of the desktop" meme.

Now, OpenBSD is another matter entirely...

~~~
bradleyjg
On the slashdot back in the late 90s there were breathless articles all the
time about how this was going to be the year that the Linux Desktop was going
to sweep across the world and surely M$ was doomed.

Two decades later Microsoft is doing quite well and Linux still accounts for a
small percent of personal computers.

~~~
fooker
>small percent of personal computers.

I certainly consider my phone to be a personal computer nowadays.

It has a few orders or magnitude more powerful hardware and can do things my
first few PCs could not do.

Linux is certainly doing very well there. ;) GNU/Linux might not be, but
that's a different story.

~~~
notahacker
A phone OS marketed by Google that happens to be derived from Linux code is to
"GNU/Linux is going to kill Microsoft and big corporations flexing their power
in the software industry" what a hypothetical cardless payment technology run
by Paypal that uses a blockchain somewhere on the backend is to "Bitcoin is
going to kill fiat currency and the banking oligarchy"

------
hackermailman
This article can be summed up by the bottom page quote “Prices right now
aren’t being driven by network usage, they’re being driven by speculation that
tokens are going to appreciate. It’s a gold-rush mentality.”

Also everytime I see yet another Ethereum story I think of
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
toufka
Apparently GPU prices are being distorted by this gold rush. Gamer forums are
learning what Etherium is these days.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
And then Ethereum is going to go POS and there won't be mining anymore.
They'll move on to other GPU-mineable coins and the ecosystem will continue to
grow :).

BTW: Asus is making mining specific graphic cards to try and relieve the
pressure on gaming cards - 10k minimum order.

~~~
hossbeast
Believe it when I see it. PoW is the only consensus mechanism with a track
record right now.

------
shp0ngle
The bitcoin community is now arguing to the point of death threats whether
it's better to scale by adding data outside of the blocks and then making
slightly larger blocks, or by adding data outside of the blocks and then
adding more data outside of the blocks.

And both sides are accusing the other side of being authoritarian, for
centralization, and basically being even a worst enemy than The State, which
is like the worst thing ever. In the meantime, no scaling solution is being
implemented, because they are too busy blocking the other side from
implementing their solutions.

~~~
bhaak
If you only look at Bitcoin now then you are missing out on a lot of what is
going on with cryptocurrencies.

But I agree, Bitcoin had a standstill for 3 years because of nitpicking over a
simple factor two scaling solution. This could end badly for Bitcoin if they
don't get their act together.

------
andy_ppp
This is the exact article that starts appearing about 6 to 12 months before a
huge bust within a particular market. I’d be hugely surprised if there isn’t a
huge rise over the next 4 months followed by a collapse. You should be looking
for where you think the bottom of the market is because it’s too useful not to
go up again (it’ll be around $800, I’m a time traveller). The top could be as
high at $6000 though before everyone realises how absurd and manipulative this
all is...

~~~
remotehack
> I’d be hugely surprised if there isn’t a huge rise over the next 4 months
> followed by a collapse.

It's because bitcoin is a pyramid scheme.

~~~
jdormit
> Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme

Why do you say this? I am certainly not a cryptocurrency expert, but it seems
to me that BTC provides real value, in that it is an accepted currency and
also in that it distributes the means of control over a far greater area than
traditional government-backed currency.

Pyramid scheme reward members for recruiting new members without providing any
value. Like all commodities and currencies, BTC increases in value the more
people think it is valuable, but if that is how you define a pyramid scheme
then gold futures, stocks, and the US dollar are pyramid scheme as well.

------
jondubois
I was very sceptical when I first heard about Bitcoin but now I do believe
that cryptocurrencies have some intrinsic value as a payment system.

The Bitcoin brand itself has intrinsic value which is related to its
popularity. Consumers have always been willing to pay a premium to deal with
specific brands which they know and trust.

When people buy Coca-Cola, they're not paying for brown sugar-water.

I do think that a lot of Bitcoin's current value is driven by the black market
for money laundering but its distributed nature puts the government in a
difficult position when it comes to regulation.

If the government tried to delegitimize Bitcoin and shut down all big miners
and exchanges, it would just fragment the Bitcoin network further and shift
its control into the hands of smaller, shadier players who would be much
harder to regulate.

There has always been a market for virtual currencies but because they used to
be centralized, the government was always able to step in and shut them down
(e.g. Flooz, e-gold...) Cryptocurrencies might actually solve that problem.

------
RayVR
The extremely simple answer is: No.

Cryptocurrencies require significantly more power to verify a single
transaction[1]. The ability to scale to a meaningful size does not exist now.
They need to improve efficiency by 3-4 orders of magnitude to be competitive.

[1] [http://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-
consumption](http://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption)

~~~
clarkmoody
The article is misleading, as it compares Bitcoin power consumption to VISA,
which is a payment processor.

Bitcoin is a sound money system, so the proper comparison is all the people,
buildings, vehicles, weapons, etc used in the creation and protection of the
global fiat currency system.

I don't know for sure, but I bet fiat costs dwarf the $640M or so that Bitcoin
costs.

~~~
deepvibrations
Also worth mentioning that other crypto-currencies do not require mining
(proof-of-work). They instead use "proof of stake" or "Proof of burn" systems
which would use less power. Things are still evolving very fast in this space,
so you never know what's around the corner!

------
thehardsphere
If a headline is a question, the answer is always no. Otherwise, the headline
would not be stated as a question, but as an assertion of fact.

~~~
fredley
This is known as Betteridge's Law:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

------
michalu
We will see some major drama in this space.

Take EOS for example... it's a company that's basically a Bitshares fork and
it's raising possibly a half to one billion dollars on the promise to deliver
something different in one year.

Their purchase agreement promises nothing and is highly concerning:
[https://eos.io/purchaseagreement/EOS%20Token%20Purchase%20Ag...](https://eos.io/purchaseagreement/EOS%20Token%20Purchase%20Agreement%20-%20June%2022,%202017.pdf)

What investor would give a startup half billion dollars in seed money without
even an MVP?

In the end it all comes down to: will the team deliver or not? The startups
fail at 95% + money corrupt teams.

If the team members done 0% work so far and are rich already, what's their
motivation like? Why push through the hard times and drama that will
inevitably happen if you can just bail out right now and take the money

~~~
quantdev
As someone who believes in cryptocurrencies, let me just say, wow, this ICO is
just absurd. From that purchase agreement,

“EOS TOKENS HAVE NO RIGHTS, USES OR ATTRIBUTES. The EOS Tokens do not have any
rights, uses, purpose, attributes, functionalities or features, express or
implied, including, without limitation, any uses, purpose, attributes,
functionalities or features on the EOS Platform. The company does not
guarantee and is not representing in any way to Buyer that the EOS Tokens have
any rights, uses, purpose, attributes, functionalities or features."

------
tuxidomasx
No. My dad still calls them "bitcorns." He heard about them on NPR.

It's anecdotal, but cryptocurrencies practically don't exist in my non tech-
related social circles.

~~~
romanovcode
Can confirm. Regular people who are not interested in technology has no idea
what they are, or even that they exist.

~~~
eternalban
Email. 1990. Conversation in some college.

~~~
hudon
Email is a drastic improvement on the way people communicate. It is orders of
magnitude faster, for example, cheaper for the user and more convenient.

Bitcoin is slower, more expensive and harder to use than the existing
financial instruments. It is censorship resistant though so you can use it to
pay people online when the government does not want you to pay these people.

~~~
eternalban
> It is censorship resistant though so you can use it to pay people online
> when the government does not want you to pay these people.

Only cash is "censorship resistant". As a technologist, this is either an
embarassing statement, or, a hopeful data point on the durability of 'hits-it-
on-the-nail' technology, such as cash, or paper and ink. (Yes, I'm getting
bullish on paper pamphlets ..)

~~~
hudon
> Only cash is "censorship resistant"

Still not perfect, though. Look at how India swiftly and broadly
decommissioned some of the bank notes. It is not too crazy to imagine some
nations going a step further and decommissioning all bank notes.

Similarly, the blockchain is not perfectly censorship resistant. You need:

1- decentralized transaction validators

2- privacy

For #1, the jury is still out on if mining will remain decentralized. I tend
to believe that there are guardians of this property in Bitcoin-land, and if
it ever gets too bad, the blockchain can fork to retain this property.

For #2, Bitcoin does poorly here, and hopefully advances in the tech like ring
signatures, confidential transactions, MimbleWimble, TumbleBit, zk-SNARKs,
etc. will prove to be practical enough for use.

------
atemerev
If The Guardian is writing about it — no. The hype is over.

~~~
polotics
The Guardian is a very small corner of the internet, the hype is over when
it's all over Facebook walls.

~~~
lghh
Isn't the point of 'about to go mainstream' that they are passed hype and all
over Facebook? Mainstream = normalized in this instance.

------
swsieber
Yes - just like California gold mining went mainstream. I overheard one of my
non-tech friends recommended investing in Etherium to another non-tech friend
- it made me worry.

At least the recommender actually called it a crypto currency and the other,
the recommendee, asked what made it useful.

------
Taylor_OD
If it was easier to buy and sell them they might. I know people who are
interested but due to the difficulty and complexity of buying/storing/selling
they havnt yet.

~~~
joshaidan
To me, obtaining bitcoin (or whatever crypto-currency) has been one of the
most challenging aspects of using the currency. It's too hard to obtain.
Mining these days isn't that feasible, but even if I could mine bitcoin, I
probably wouldn't be able to do it at a rate to fund whatever venture I wanted
to pursue. The only alternative is to purchase a crypto-currency with another
real world currency, which to me seems to defeat the purpose of not having to
depend on central banks or real world currency.

If there was a way for crypto-currencies to handle credit, I think that would
greatly increase it's likelihood of replacing real world currencies and
central banks--going mainstream. The money we use nowadays is transferable
credit and central banks can produce enough to meet the demands of the
economy. Crypto-currencies on the other hand are more like gold: there's a
limited supply that doesn't meet the needs or demands of the economy.

~~~
hossbeast
Seems like something that could be at least partially resolved by the
lightning network [https://lightning.network](https://lightning.network)

------
krrrh
Is 2017 the year of widespread PGP adoption?

~~~
romanovcode
No, you dummy - it's the year of Linux Desktop!

------
bitxbitxbitcoin
I'd say that cryptocurrencies are going mainstream... Bit by bit. /s

------
Eerie
Call me back when Bitcoin can process as many transactions per second as Visa.
Or, heck, even 10% as many transactions.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
It could be soon!

~~~
Eerie
It couldn't, because it's theoretically impossible. That's the joke.

