It seems like that for any problem that you could conceivably use a cryptocurrency to fix, we can easily find other solutions that are actually much cheaper and much more efficient.
That's not to say there aren't any problems that cryptocurrencies are better at, there could be, but so far no one has discovered them.
Or the ERC721 token interface for representing in-game assets that can move across gaming worlds.
Adoption of these open standards means a large number of applications can be accessed from the same wallets.
Once the blockchain tiramisu becomes less like a delicately constructed interaction of tech and more like a modular/mature stack, perhaps the UX barrier to entry will be low enough to reap the network effect.
Stop using that “early days” cop out. It still has the same fundamental issues.
Ethereum is 4 years old, and the vast majority of "tokens" even younger. Crypto is very much still early. I don't mean this as a "cop out" but rather a sober reality of how much further the tech has to go.
Would it not be more fair to compare crypto progress to that of the early internet? It took most of a decade of development before the modern internet was born, another decade before the bubble burst and a few more years before pundits stopped calling it a fad, and recognized the business value.
We should all be skeptical of those who would over promise and under deliver on new technology, but I can't imagine why we wouldn't assume an optimistic stance towards it.
The Internet was always growing in capacity, size, population and applicability. At no point was there anyone ever saying anywhere "gee, we have so much Internet, what shall we ever do with it". Even during and just after the dot com bubble the Internet itself still continued growing.
Comparing cryptocoins to the Internet, the thing that massively changed virtually all aspects of human life in the past few decades, is...
I wouldn’t expect to be taken seriously after leading with that...
Meh, it's far more volatile than gold. What it has done is proven it's value as the cash-equivalent of the internet for illicit trade.
It is hard to say how much bitcoin (and other cryptos) are used for illicit trade but one simply has to log onto a darknet market and look at the number of reviews for specific product listings, or for entire seller accounts to see that likely tens of millions of dollars a day in exchanges are occurring across 'publicly known' darknet markets, the bulk of that for drugs although still a decent amount for digital services like credit card dumps as well as fake identification/documents/coupons, weapons etc.
I even found human remains for sale on a darknet market while attempting to get a rough idea of how much commerce is taking place on them early last year. Multiple sellers had basically every major bone in the human body for sell including dozens and dozens of skulls . Now, you can buy skulls on the clear net but they're often well-handled medical specimens. I got the very distinct impression these were absolutely grave-robbed remains.
Buying drugs is a great use case
1. At some point you want to get fiat back out, thus associating your identity to transactions. While there are some exchanges that are less stringent on verification requirements, the tie is pretty simple to see via the surveilled central banking system in most countries that tends to maintain the strict-ish verifications.
2. Exchange for goods. Unless this is off-chain, it’s again pairing a physical good back out somehow in an exchange of things.
According to the article, many real people who likely consider themselves experts in this "field" were at least initially fooled.
I don't think your comparison to real money is wrong at all. Look, we can mostly all understand what real government issued money is. If people into crypto were first forced to understand what it is - the entire system would disappear in an instant.
I've said it before, there are geniuses in the cryptocommodity game. But they aren't the ones trying to buy low and sell high and concerned about forks. They're the ones pumping out SEO-invested ICOs, running exchanges, selling newsletters and books (or whatever the current version of that is). War is profitable if you're the arms dealer, not the solider.
Not really, the vast majority of people have no real idea of how it works, beyond the simple cash transfer. In fact, the term "government issued money" is evidence of that - almost all money is created by commercial banks, not government.
We know money in the same way that people in ancient times knew the Sun - its workings are just regular enough that we can predict its effects on our lives tomorrow, without having to actually understand nuclear fusion or radiation.
A lot of people who thought they were bitcoin "experts" lost all or most of their coins to MtGox.
And for all anyone know, they could have stolen it all from their own customers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2018/11/26/ohi...
Of course, the theory may well be wrong, as evidenced by e.g. Somali shilling still being in use, even though there's no government backing it in any practical sense for decades.
According to what I read the "stability" prior to the central bank was a result of an equilibrium between the value of a note and the value of the paper it was printed on. Since there wasn't a central government printing money, it didn't decline further, but tying up $100 in paper to represent $100 seems pretty suboptimal.
I followed cryptocurrency just casually out of curiosity for awhile but the association between that and scams and crime and such are just so high I have to wonder if I'm alone or if there really eventually is a perception problem.
Obviously you could argue "hey just money has that problem" maybe, but for some reason I don't make that association.