News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by seibelj on Sunday May 12, 2019 @10:24AM (#19892071)
Ethereum and Cosmos did ICOs and they have been quite successful, delivering on their promises. Maybe 99/100 ICOs fail but the same can be said about VC-backed startups.
Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by aurelius12 on Sunday May 12, 2019 @10:35AM (#19892115)
No, 99/100 VC-backed startsup don't fail, and the rate of actual scams in them is FAR lower than in crypto.
Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by pavlov on Sunday May 12, 2019 @10:36AM (#19892127)
Ethereum is basically an ICO pyramid scam, since the only use case for it has been to enable more ICOs.

Anything else has failed miserably because the network can't handle the traffic. Of course they're promising a scaling fix Real Soon Now (see above for "plausible deniability R&D mode").

Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by seibelj on Sunday May 12, 2019 @10:44AM (#19892173)
USDC is a stablecoin backed one-for-one with US dollars, audited by Grant Thornton and operated by Circle and Coinbase, which are regulated and above-board legal cryptocurrency exchanges. As of this writing, $327 million has been converted into it, and any amount of money can be transferred globally within seconds. Over 250,000 transactions have occurred since September 2018 when it launched. This is a legitimate use-case that has been enabled by Ethereum. Wiring money or using ACH is more expensive, slower, and more cumbersome than USDC.

https://www.circle.com/en/usdc

https://etherscan.io/token/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0c...

Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by JumpCrisscross on Sunday May 12, 2019 @10:46AM (#19892194)
> Wiring money or using ACH is more expensive, slower, and more cumbersome that USDC

Wiring is free and instantaneous for anyone sending moderate sums. Fidelity, for example, does this.

Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by xur17 on Sunday May 12, 2019 @04:09PM (#19894232)
> Wiring is free and instantaneous for anyone sending moderate sums. Fidelity, for example, does this.

What counts as a "moderate sum"? Last time I tried to wire money, every option I could find charged a $XX fee no matter how much I sent.

Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by seibelj on Sunday May 12, 2019 @11:00AM (#19892291)
How long and how expensive is it to wire $10,000,000 from Nigeria to South Korea? With USDC, it takes seconds and costs about 2 cents.
Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by pavlov on Sunday May 12, 2019 @11:42AM (#19892564)
How does one convert $10M dollars in a Nigerian bank account into USDC? That seems like a necessary first step.
Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by seibelj on Sunday May 12, 2019 @01:04PM (#19893051)
I show a legitimate use case other than “ICO pyramid scams” and you move the goal posts. It shows that you have an opinion about cryptocurrency that cannot be changed by logic, and are essentially a troll.
Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by pavlov on Sunday May 12, 2019 @02:41PM (#19893657)
You claim that one can wire 10 million dollars from Nigeria in two seconds. If you’re not even going to answer the most obvious question about how someone could do this, it’s hardly a real world use case.

I’m not sure if you understand how the boring old SWIFT-addressed wire competes here. I haven’t sent 10 million, but hundreds of thousands anyway. It costs no more than $25, is settled within hours, and has all sorts of safeguards that don’t exist in crypto. The funds are immediately available for use rather than USDC which AFAIK isn’t accepted for payment on anything, anywhere.

Re:Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High by ricardobeat on Sunday May 12, 2019 @10:48AM (#19892203)
Define successful.