Cryptocurrency don’t need defense. I think that people outside of cryptocurrency communities don’t realise how accepted the technology is within them. HN is being misled into thinking they are widely hated
The truth is they’re completely irrelevant to 99% of the internet population. Pick the top 20 coins. Look at their respective block explorers and check tx/day, unique address/day, etc. You’ll quickly come to the conclusion that maybe 100M people actually use cryptocurrencies in any meaningful way. The internet has 5B users. Cryptocurrency use is irrelevant.
The cryptocurrency debate in technical circles reminds me of two extremely obscure religious sects screaming at each other while meanwhile the rest of the world doesn’t know either of them exists.
There are huge crypto.com ads plastered over every F1 track, I don't think this is extremely obscure stuff. I've encountered a lot of non tech people who own crypto. I saw some number somewhere that estimated that around 17% of Ukrainians own crypto, with similar numbers for other countries. The idea that it is an extremely obscure thing also seems like a function of being in a HN tech bubble. There are crypto ads and exchanges everywhere
Exchanges run private order books like any other investment org. People trading (gambling?) one ticker symbol (crypto or not) vs another (crypto or not) has absolutely nothing to do with real world use or utility. I can watch the Euro move up and down on forex and buy/sell to make money in my currency of choice while never touching a Euro, using it for anything, or having any real long term confidence, understanding, or belief in anything Euro or European related. I just know it made me X in USD this day/week/month and that's all I care about. Fill in EUR with BTC, ETH, etc. No one on exchanges cares about anything other than what it means for them in their local currency.
The use of exchanges is a get rich quick scheme not unlike penny stocks in the late 80s/early 90s or dot coms in the late 90s. In the late 90s very few in the general population jumping on dot com stocks had any idea what the hell any of it meant. They just heard a story about someone making $100k in a day and wanted in.
Look at the FOMO ads during the SuperBowl... There was zero value or utility demonstrated and 100% of the messaging was "everyone else is getting rich quick at crypto.com so don't miss out". Their fees (in real money) are absolutely bonkers so of course they're doing everything they can to bring people in.
Have you seen Wolf of Wall Street? There's a scene where the main character gets taken to lunch by an experienced broker. Long story short the lesson was this:
"Fuck the clients. Best case scenario let them think they're getting rich on paper while meanwhile we take home cold hard cash every time they trade via commission."
Be careful with surveys you "read somewhere"... The often cited "300 million crypto users worldwide" stat[0] (for example) comes from a blockchain payments company (surely they're unbiased, right?) that for some reason estimated this number from a Central Bank of Canada phone survey extrapolated to the worldwide population...
It's really interesting that whenever I bring up blockchain explorers and the fact that blockchain has the most transparent and reliable adoption metrics ever no one takes me up on an analysis of the data and deflects to virtually anything else instead.
Adoption and use data is there without bias. It requires some interpretation to determine something more akin to MAU/DAU but even very generous measure will show that 13 years after the launch of bitcoin blockchain is the most poorly adopted technology platform in recent history[1].
in January, 10 trillion of debt wolrdwide was negative yield in nominal terms. in real terms - a whole lot more.
Holding assets IS use. that's the root of your misunderstanding. For some reason everyone here is fixated on cheap payments. That's not what it's about.
I'll give you credit, deflecting to bonds is a new one!
I'll quote myself:
"It's really interesting that whenever I bring up blockchain explorers and the fact that blockchain has the most transparent and reliable adoption metrics ever no one takes me up on an analysis of the data and deflects to virtually anything else instead."
Again, trading on crypto exchanges has nothing to do with the technology or use of a blockchain.
I'm not fixated on payments. I don't care what the activity/use is as long as it uses the actual technology and network (which is reflected in blockchain explorers).
Bonds/digital gold/reserve currency angle isn’t new, I certainly didn’t invent it. You just haven’t spoken to very many people!
Notice my comment did not include “trading”.
Specifically only holding. Only demand to hold an asset for long durations gives it value long term. Gold and bonds are the perfect instances of this that most are familiar with.
Bitcoin is an experiment in bootstrapping a new money from scratch.
Before it can serve as a decent medium of exchange, it needs to first prove it can hold value first, as a store of value.
Otherwise, how can you send value with it, if it can’t even store it value? It’s a necessary precursor.
It is however quite volatile for now and only very few committed investors hold it long term.
Who’d use a volatile asset for savings? For now it’s just a spec asset, and sure people are trading it, but as the market capitalisation growth, and fluctuations subside, it may very well become a decent medium of exchange.
Trading is usage as well, as it increases network effects, and availability of the asset across different trading venues, thus increases market penetration.
For the transition from SoV to MoE to occur, a large well dispersed number of holders is required. What difference does it make if they outsource the custody part? It makes sense for some, and regulated entities cannot warehouse it anywhere but a qualified custodian anyway. So sure, holding can occur on exchanges as well.
If you must insist on the blockchain data, look at bitcoins money velocity. It is much closer to M2 than M1, and thus it acts today as a savings vehicle/investment asset: therefore much more similar to bonds than credit cards.
Is this supposed to be a critique of all financial investment or speculation? I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to take from this.
Also talk about moving the goalposts, we've gone from "no one knows about crypto or cares about if its good or bad" to "they don't really use it they just trade it"
It's not a critique of financial investment or speculation. It's calling all of it what it is - financial investment and/or speculation. If someone claimed they were participating in changing the world and building the future of everything by shuffling Euros around on some forex platform and taking it home as USD you would be skeptical, correct? How is trading BTC any different?
You misunderstand me. Many people trade crypto but this doesn't equate to actual use. Crypto exchanges run order books just like a forex exchange or other investment platform with a SQL or whatever backend.
Do you really consider people speculating on insert-random-coin-ticker-on-exchange-here as use? It moves on an internal order book, it doesn't touch the blockchain itself. That is not use. That is people investing or speculating with an asset just like any other asset. It has nothing to do with the underlying technology or use. Nothing.
Looking at the chains themselves you will see that very few people actually transact off exchanges on actual blockchains (real use). This is what I mean when I say cryptocurrency USE is irrelevant. Buying and selling BTC to take it home in USD to buy a Lambo is not USE of BTC. It's financial investment/speculation on some random asset and USE of USD.
I do consider it a use of crypto, in this case it is a highly volatile speculative investment that can be moved into a hardware wallet where it can be kept safe from theft, and also transferred into fiat. Even if crypto never becomes more than that, I still think this is a valuable thing. With DeFi things get more interesting
I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on use. I'm still of the position that trading cryptocurrency on an exchange and never using the underlying technology or touching the network isn't use of that cryptocurrency.
The ironic aspect of this debate is I'm on my second blockchain startup for a reason - I believe there are plenty of use cases where it makes sense. I just don't think the cryptocurrency/blockchain communities are doing themselves a favor operating under the mass delusion that crypto is a big thing (while still being early?) when all available real data says otherwise. Trying to pump the underlying cryptocurrency by shoehorning the tech into anything and everything (and doing so poorly) will backfire as well (and already is).
Blockchain and cryptocurrency advocates need to look inwards to identify blockers to mass adoption and address them while identifying real world use cases where blockchain/cryptocurrency provides real value and utility.
Whether the goalposts have moved depends on whether you consider speculative investment to matter for whether something is "irrelevant".
I think you could reasonably read that post as a critique of speculative investment in assets. With the conclusion that if that's the only meaningful activity with cryptocurrencies then they're not doing very well.
Investing in companies or in future production is a different matter. If cryptocurrencies can actually get that going at some point it'll be interesting!
I think we're in agreement here but I want to be clear.
I'm talking about blockchain explorers. Use of the actual networks and technology. Trading on crypto exchanges does not utilize blockchain in any fashion.
Given that this is HN I would think the focus would lean towards the underlying technology. That said one of the things I appreciate about HN is the wealth of knowledge and conversation about things other than technology.
I suppose there's a valid debate to be had in terms of what constitutes "use" but my focus and emphasis on actual network activity as seen in blockchain explorers refers to use of the network/technology/blockchain for some purpose. I don't care what that use/purpose is as long as it actually uses the technology (which is on network and reflected in explorers).
As we both acknowledge, blockchain explorers representing the reality of blockchain network activity provide an abysmal view of the adoption of that technology relative to historical technology platforms 13 years after release.
Saying that cryptocurrency is widely accepted within cryptocurrency communities seems tautological. Meanwhile many attempts to force NFTs into games have been met with a lot of pushback from the "general" gaming public. I think it's fair to say that there's definitely a group of people for whom cryptocurrency is a "no way, no how" issue. Whether this group is large enough to justify the "widely" in "widely hated" is open to debate.
