Yes.
>Go back and check a computer from 1950. I'm sure plenty of people back then were laughing at how ridiculous the concept was of owning a PC.
Computers in 1950 were being used for useful work that could not have been done before them. They had a track record of successes which has continued uninterrupted until today.
Cryptocurrency has yet to show a legal success story of any kind. The story on what cryptocurrency is "for" has swung wildly over the years as each attempted use case proves either inferior to existing solutions or impossible to achieve.
Bitcoin is digital cash. Bitcoin isn't digital cash, but it is for micropayments. Bitcoin isn't for micropayments, it's a settlement system. Bitcoin isn't a settlement system, it's borderless transactions for the unbanked. Bitcoin isn't for the unbanked, it's a settlement system again for different layers. Segregated witness will fix everything. Segregated witness wasn't meant to fix anything, it's the lightning network that will fix everything. The lightning network isn't meant to fix everything, it's designed to lock in vast amounts of currency and work only for those use cases that makes sense.
It's just endless. Cryptocurrency has no success stories, just a constant stream of "hope" that never goes anywhere in order to keep people hooked on a system that transfers a lot of money to a handful of centralised large-scale mining corporations and increasingly shady exchanges.
Even on a slow day, hundreds of millions in USD are transacted through Bitcoin alone. And plenty more through Ethereum. There are tons of use cases for crypto-currency as a transfer of value.
Eventually, there will be more stable coins, there will be instant (or virtually instant) transactions, and the cost to send a transaction will be virtually 0. That's the future of crypto-currency, and you'd be insane to think that once these basic milestones are achieved, that it won't serve any purpose.
It's a work in progress, but there are definitely people using the service as is right now for considerable amounts of money.
If nobody is buying anything, nobody is transferring money cross-borders, and no previously-unbanked people are being banked, then what are these transactions for? Nobody seems to _know_.
How do I know this? I run a business which buys and sells digital items for online games. Every single seller from Venezuela is looking for BTC. Most sellers from Kosovo as well. And tons of people are asking for BTC in general. The majority of $500+ transactions in the industry (often B2B) are done in crypto.
I can't pay my rent with it, I can't pay for groceries with it, I can't pay my taxes with it.
Those are things I want.
Can you name one thing that's come out of crypto that has seen any significant usage in the market it's trying to break into which isn't just using "we have a blockchain!" as a marketing tool?
This is made possible through increased liquidity in crypto markets. Specifically, the movement towards decentralized exchanges for crypto to crypto transactions. As this continues to progress, interesting financial innovations like MakerDAO will be become more and more sustainable. One of the primary caveats of doing business in crypto-currency is the fluctuating value.
Imagine holding a real decentralized crypto-currency that is pegged to the USD. That will open many doors for commerce, and decrease transaction costs. The ability to swap this token back and forth using atomic swaps will allow people to remain in crypto longer, without exposure to crypto price swings.
Once this happens, people will be able to keep a portion of their net worth within crypto currency indefinitely. A stable coin is what the market needs to move forward, and it will happen within the next few years.
>most interesting
not most successful
>the first implementations of smart contracts
the latest in the long line of "no, _this_ is what cryptocurrency was always for! All the previous examples were wrong!"
>Imagine holding a real decentralized crypto-currency that is pegged to the USD. That will open many doors for commerce, and decrease transaction costs. The ability to swap this token back and forth using atomic swaps will allow people to remain in crypto longer, without exposure to crypto price swings.
Imagination is not a successful project. This is literally talking about things which _don't even exist yet_.
>Once this happens
And here we reach the crux of the issue.
_If_ this happens, not once. Just like all the previous things that would have "changed the world", if only a long series of long-unsolved problems in cryptography and distributed computing were solved.
That was literally my argument, well that and it seems like it never will be because of the fundamental design of the thing.
Not sure why you felt the need to write the rest of that, it's nothing to do with what I posted. It appears to be a lot of wishful thinking and idealism.
If you "want strong blockchain with 100.000 TPS" I can connect you over InMail.
I already get enough cryptocurrency related recruitment mail, ta. Some of it is very scammy - I particularly like the ones that want you to make them a new currency, and propose that they will then use it to pay you!
Crypto-currency technology received billions of dollars in funding in 2017. Yes, plenty of that went to bullshit projects which have no chance at success, and probably have no intention to develop anything substantial. However, plenty of it also went towards hiring talented developers and creating projects focused on the next generation of crypto-currency.
Up until 2017, the actual investment into blockchain projects was minimal. And yet, even when the market was chopping around between 2014 and 2016, and barely any money was invested, very important milestones were reached. Most notably, Ethereum was launched, and has set the foundation for putting applications on the blockchain.
I don't think anyone argues that having full scale, working applications on the blockchain is a bad idea. They simply argue that the current applications are limited, and aren't working very well. As if the current state of crypto currency is static and will not improve in the next 10-20 years.
The reality is that crypto-currency and blockchain never got any serious attention until 2013-14. And even then it was short-lived. Today every single person in tech knows about blockchain and crypto-currency. They all have their own opinion on it, but compared to just 5 years ago, it has come an incredibly long way.
The technology will improve. It will improve at a much faster rate now, thanks to the bubble in 2017. These projects don't need to post quarterly earnings improvements. The developers don't need to follow a corporate timeline. You can't kill these projects. They will always improve incrementally, until at some point the technology is truly unrecognizable from what it is today.
Go back and check a computer from 1950. I'm sure plenty of people back then were laughing at how ridiculous the concept was of owning a PC. Technology moves in a straight line, forward. And unless a competitor outpaces the improvement, then every day crypto currency gains on other forms of currency.