The same for the web.
There were and are scams, but there was value.
The cryptocurrency space, 15 years in, has failed to do that.
Bitcoin got speculated up to 60k USD, that means literally nothing - I can still buy tulip bulbs and eBay still has beanie babies.
It has made paper millionaires and billionaires with money that doesn’t exist. Warren Buffet could buy my old shoe for $1 billion tomorrow, it doesn’t make it worth that amount. Know what is real? The money people chased it up to that value with, meaning that so far it can only be proven that billions have been lost, but nothing has been gained yet except the money converted back to fiat (or a tangible asset) by those shilling the tokens.
Ethereum has not replaced a lot of middleman banking, as its smart contracts don’t have any legal basis, because it fundamentally isn’t trustworthy (it’s already been hacked to the ground once). It also can’t interact with any component that isn’t ultimately part of a digital contract as it has no way to enforce it. (I.e. want to contract someone to do a job? It offers no value beyond risky off-the-books-but-not-really escrow. Want to bet that Tyson Fury clobbers his opponent in the next fight in the first round? Cool. You may or may not get your money if you win as the fight didn’t happen in the form of a Solidity script, so it ultimately still relies on someone being willing to pay out, except without any regulation).
Not wanting to rant so will stop there, but people on HN will probably stop saying cryptocurrency has failed to provide value when it provides value.
I have a contract that Brad Pitt wins the Oscar in the next 3 years how is that validated ? Is there some widely accepted source of truth ? Couldn’t the provider be hacked or be tempted to be fraudulent.
I’m assuming the source of truth isn’t the Oscar academy cause web scraping could break easily. Still it’s a lot of faith in human honesty and site security for automatic execution worth millions
Smart contracts keep having bugs. And all I hear from DAOs is that they're cornered by the agents with the most tokens - how is that an innovation over the current state of affairs in society?
> value is provably false.
None of what you said would suggest anything like. What you're talking about is redistribution. People buying tokens using real money from those who bought them cheaper creating:
> tons of crypto million and billionaires
in the process. Could you explain at what point this actual value is created?
This news is about Binance being increasingly isolated. Mastercard’s deals with others (e.g. Gemini) are going strong.
Crypto is a currency.
It is laughably not a currency.
Something that has sporadic price fluctuations, is used as a gambling token for speculation, and cannot send value instantly to another person (crypto waiting times are over 9 hours) is not a currency.
Little to nobody in the world uses crypto at all.
Nonsensical cope. If that were true, HN would not love solar, wind, fission, fusion, room temperature superconductors, etc. HN is hype about potential/new technologies that might make sense and have real applications. Cryptocurrencies aren't that.
My theory is that HN (like people in general) simply hates change.