If/When Ethereum 2.0 does come through with its PoS consensus systems, will you still call it a bubble?
My understanding is that PoS makes the hyperdeflationary problem worse by locking up a lot of currency, and also makes the wealth centralization problem worse. Eventually you'll end up with a few large stakers instead of a few large miners.
The thing that would really change my mind is if I saw cryptocurrencies being used a lot for useful commerce, not just gambling and money laundering. The closest I know is Monero which is used for black market commerce, but at least it's commerce. Trouble is that the bubbles actually chase away useful commerce by making the currency incredibly unstable vs. other currencies and stores of value.
Regarding PoS: Ethereum is not gold. Ethereum is oil. Yes, it has value, but only when it is used to get you something else.
Regarding "commerce" with crypto, I mostly agree, but the reality is that for payments to become a common use case we still need to build A LOT of critical pieces - chiefly: have a reliable/cheap system to get stable currencies [0][1], lower the transaction costs[2], make it easy for people to request[3] and accept payments online [4] and build some permissionless system to settle payment disputes [5] as well as to get insurance and the ability to do chargebacks. These things will take time to get right, but this should not mean that they should be facing eternal and constant unfounded criticism or accusations of fraud/malice. There are lots of people working on crypto who don't care about the price fluctuations and are not doing it just for the quick buck - they should be supported, not discouraged.
[4] https://hub20.io
Coupled with difficulty in scaling transactions, and the sketchiness of Tether (and the affect of a potential collapse of Tether on Bitcoin), Bitcoin definitely is a potential bubble.
But we are talking here about the technical issues regarding crypto.
PoW is just too costly and damaging to the environment, the fact that most of the miners are located in areas where they can get subsidized, cheap and dirty energy makes it all the more concerning. PoS should help here.
The ability of the network to scale is still a problem. ETH2 + layer 2 solutions (combined) should also solve a lot of these issues.
What I'd like to know is what are the technical issues that is still going to be used as an excuse for people to be against it.
In what? It’s a terrible currency. It’s a terrible store of value too since it requires the power of a small developed nation just to keep it online. Gold needs some security but otherwise gold atoms just sit there and gold. Property and widely diversified bags of assets are also better stores or value.
It’s not even really decentralized. Any industrial process is subject to economies of scale. If it sticks around eventually there will be one or two mining conglomerates. Pools already have quite a lot of power and could collude to attack the chain if they could profit by it or if nation states forced them.
It’s a transparent bubble and gambling vehicle with little other utility.