Is it really? Is there anyone that can say that a company has suffered because it didn't adopt crypto? It seems like it's perfectly safe to ignore crypto completely. You could gain a bit of advantage. You can use it as a marketing tool, or to attract certain kinds of investors, by cashing in on the blockchain hype. But I haven't seen that there's any advantage yet in using the technology itself.

Regarding the use-cases you mention:

> 1 store of value akin to gold (bitcoin)

Bitcoin is not a store of value. It's a destructor or sink of value. A store of value should have some reserves behind them or some physical asset. Something that has value to others that have not invested in it. Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrency only has value to those that hold them. The value of Bitcoin could crash to 0 tomorrow, and nobody except the investors would care at all. If the gold price crashed I'd be very interested. Would be cool to buy some gold just to play with. Maybe make my own jewelry. But WAY before that there'd be plenty of others buying it for a higher price, for jewelry or manufacturing.

> 2 decentralised privacy money (monero etc)

Aka a gift to crime. I mean, in an ideal world it'd be amazing to have a currency like this. But in practice it does more damage to good. Yes, IMO it's a bad thing even in corrupt countries where you might have legitimate reasons to hide from the state. Because having currency like that doesn't solve all the other problems with having a corrupt government, so it's really just a distraction from solving real problems.

> 3 a platform on which to build decentralised technologies

This is the only legitimate use-case IMO. But it has yet to be proven that using a platform like this has a real advantage.

I think the issue is that problems that you can solve with trustless decentralized algorithms are mostly very trivial. Who has ever had issues with a bank money transfer itself? Meanwhile, the problems we'd really like to solve around currencies, payment and financial services, are basically impossible to solve with trustless. The real problem in payment is to ensure that the seller delivers the product. The real problem in lending is to ensure that the borrower can afford the loan and uses the money on what he says he will.

So you really can't get rid of the human component in most of these applications, if you want a solution that's as good as what you're trying to replace. And in that case, the blockchain is just a fancy and expensive implementation detail that serves little to no practical purpose.

There may be some crossover point where these technologies provide some value. But I suspect it's a much smaller niche than most blockchain proponents would like to admit. I think settling international transactions between banks is one of the very few use-cases where it may be valuable.

Because they are interesting in a theoretical way and because real world implementations are even more interesting, they show us what the future might look like.

> It's bad enough that those with sufficient computing speed/power can already rip off the stock market; why does the world need another way for people to rip each other off?

That's not the intent.

> Since we've determined over history that some people will take advantage of weaknesses for their own gain, we should assume that as a given until proven otherwise.

Agreed.

> No matter what system you create to transfer goods, resources, services or value representing those, it will be exploited.

That remains to be seen. There is an outside chance that it is possible to create something solid, my guess is that it will have to be something extremely simple.

> So- why even spend time on it?

Just like it took a while to map the globe, mapping this 'space' takes time - and effort - and funds. I'm fine with it, it isn't my time, my effort or my funds and I end up learning just as much as those that put forward their resources. Think of it as free education on someone else's dime. That's a pretty cynical view but to date I have not seen any system that appears to be solid enough to warrant backing.

> If everyone who cares to maintains their own accounting data does so, regardless of what technologies we are using, we really could just trade in goods, services, and coin and completely get rid of all virtual currency.

That would severely limit the amount and kinds of trade possible. On the other hand, a really strong cryptocurrency has risks all its own and it is worthwhile to consider the downsides with the upsides.

I would say no. It's a technology that serves no practical purpose, since the problems it addresses are ones purely created by certain peculiar ideologies. If you're not indulging in one of those ideologies, there's no point. And, like you mentioned, it doesn't even succeed at addressing those problems. A virtual technology can't free you from real-world power, because it's dependent on the real world and can be attacked there, where it's weak.

From outside those peculiar ideologies, something like Bitcoin is like an application written so badly that it's like 486 PC that requires as much energy as Argentina to run. Why should anyone want something like that?

It allows people to bypass laws and regulations around currency exchange. This can be a good thing -- bypassing repressive regimes, making it easier to send funds over national borders, etc. It can also be a bad thing -- evading consumer protections, reducing the ability of nations to manage their economies, etc.

There are some solid ideas behind cryptocurrency and perhaps your example is an illustration of how those good ideas could work. Many of the proponents of cryptocurrency describe such use-cases and it seems perfectly sound and air-tight on the surface.

But the current reality is that the OVERWHELMING use-cases of crypto-currency are wild get-rich-quick shell-games, illicit trade and tax-avoidance schemes. This is showing no signs of sobering up, in fact it has become worse. People keep saying that it will "settle down" but there is NO EVIDENCE for that.

The truly disturbing thing about cryptocurrency is that it reveals the possibility that "money", as a concept, is NOT necessarily a medium to exchange goods and services. It is something much more complex and fluid. Cryptocurrency, as a currency, takes all the awful and volatile hidden features of money, accelerates them and makes them overt and central to it's operation.

I think many of us find that idea repulsive. If crypto (as it currently exists) becomes the money of the future, it will mean that the vast majority of the population who earn money by exchanging their labor will find themselves at the mercy of wild and random fluctuations in the value of their labor. Their labor will mean less or more not because of what they actually do, but because of completely unrelated fluctuations caused by "millionaires" and institutions acting on whims, or even joking around. You could argue that it happens now with dollar money, but that kind of fluctuation has been almost always slow. Crypto promises to make crazy fluctuations the norm.

Vitalik Buterin, for example, famously donated ~1 billion "dollars" towards India COVID relief. Except that it wasn't really dollars, it was some cryptocoin that he was gifted ("shiba-shitto" or something like that). That value plummeted almost immediately. I don't know what it is now, it seems the news orgs have lost interest in the story. I do hope that India COVID relief got something out of it, but would have been better if they didn't have to hire crypto people to process that "money" into something useable when they're dealing with a pandemic.

For the moment, that appears to be a good bet.

I'm not aware of any current practical use case for cryptocurrency, that government-backed currencies don't provide, other than purchasing illegal goods and services.

That said, government-backed currencies are also used for doing so as well, except cash transactions require physical proximity while cryptocurrencies do not.

Or they see benefits in the technology?

> People want to spend currencies, why would you ever spend bitcoin when it's designed to always increase in value?

It's possible some of the other cryptos are more suited for currencies. Bitcoin may be more of a store of value like gold, or maybe it's volatility will decrease over time and it would be more suited for a currency. Right now we don't know, but I'm not going to write off the whole sector due to that.

> Governments are their citizens, they're just people we picked. If you hate the people that are running, there's a built in solution, get someone better to run. That's the fundamental part of democracy, anyone can run for office.

I think the normal citizen is so far removed at this point. At least in the US, it's essentially a two party system, and they are both rather full of shit. I still vote though, because why not? But I don't think the system is working well.

> Why is a central control over money supply bad? Lets you attempt to control the boom/bust cycle.

I hold USD. I'd like for it to stay valuable. I have a government that seems to value equities more, and wants people to spend their USD. They print and borrow money like there's no tomorrow. I think this is a bad option, and I'd like there to be alternatives.

I guess that depends on whether you consider the 2+ billion people worldwide without access to payment networks like Visa or MasterCard "normal"...

I think the better question is whether cryptocurrencies are a better fit than existing options for those people.

> In my eyes, having an alternative to high-inflation currencies around South America and Africa is one hell of a use case.

No it isn't. Why? US dollars and gold work far better for that use case than cryptocurrency.

The frequently cited money transmission benefits of a cryptocurrency, without value instability of playing games with monetary policy.

Cryptocurrency has been largely unregulated since its inception and it's almost exclusively used for speculation and criminal activity. The barrier to use of cryptocurrency is that it provides nothing of value outside of those use cases, not regulation.

All true, but the same also applies to chickens, screwdrivers, oranges, dogs, cats etc. Just because you can barter with something doesn’t make it a currency.

Currencies are better identified by their fungibility (which crypto has), their value stability (which crypto currently doesn’t), and their wide acceptance for use in everyday transaction (also not true of crypto in the vast majority of the world).

> It's only from the perspective of someone that thinks like a loser, always trying to find something wrong, that you can find zero uses where using crypto is more energy efficient than other financial options. And not all cryptos use the same energy or transaction cost as others.

I’ll remind you of the guidelines, as you’ve clearly forgotten them.

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Ad hominem attacks undermine your arguments and suggest that you don’t actually have very strong argument, instead you’re forced to attack the character of the person your discussing with, due to an inability to attack their argument. Try harder.

I used be a fan of crypto, did plenty of trading, bought plenty of pizza etc with it. When to meetups, evangelised crypto to friends and family. Back then it looked realistic that crypto could be a genuine currency, and the concept of DAG was incredibly.

Unfortunately crypto has descended into little more than get rich quick schemes that take advantage of naïve investors, or produce profit by externalising all of the negative consequences of crypto mining (such as CO2 emissions). Forcing the rest of us to bear that long term cost, for a grifters short term profit.

I admit there are coins out there that potential address these issues, and still possibly have a future as a genuinely useful currency. One not manipulated by a small number of extremely large coin holders. But unfortunately that doesn’t change the damage caused by other coins.

> For an example of transaction efficiency, I can buy a bar of gold from some established bullion vendors in litecoin much cheaper than with a visa card due to lower transaction risks for the merchant and lower transaction fees. If you can't wait multiple days for an ACH transaction and have to buy precious metals online, crypto is actually the cheapest way in the US.

This is just an example of how slow and backwards the US financial system is. Most other countries have far quicker and cheaper payment rails. Here in the U.K. I can send an instant Faster Payment for free from my bank account, and the money moves faster than the app UI (I get a push notification from the receiving bank, before the UI in my banks app has had time to display the confirmation). The whole of Europe has similar payment systems that also work cross border.

The money moves so fast that when trading crypto the slowest part of buying or selling was always the confirmations. The fiat part was instant.

That isn't true.

You can use it anywhere that irreversibility matters. Suppose you're going to commit significant resources to the customer's request, so you charge them, commit the resources, deliver the goods, and then discover that they gave you a stolen credit card and you get a chargeback. Cryptocurrency avoids that.

You can use it to accept payments from all over the world. Someone in Asia or Africa may not be able to open a US bank account or get a US credit card, but if they can find a Bitcoin ATM to put their local currency into, they can pay you, or vice versa.

It allows you to pay for something over the internet without giving your name. There are situations where this is important.

The main impediment to using it is, ironically, regulatory. The IRS decided that it's an investment and not money so every time you want to use it for what it's actually supposed to be for, they treat it like a securities transaction where you have to fill out paperwork, even if you're just buying a pack of gum. Which makes it much less convenient for ordinary people to use than cash or credit cards which don't require this -- presumably on purpose in order to destroy its utility in the US.

But it can still be useful for people in countries that don't do this, or in the US if a less explicitly antagonistic regulatory environment could be established.

It's not clear to me that this is meaningfully different than our current financial system.

> Granted, it defeats some of the benefits, but not all. E.g. most crypto has low inflation compared to USD. Even though CPI inflation is ~2%, the money supply inflates around ~10% per year, whereas most crypto will inflate <1% long term.

It's really not clear to me that this is a benefit, and even if it is was, there is nothing stopping the Bitcoin network, for instance, from deciding it wants to inflate after it has mined all the coins. The fact that the vast majority of mining is controlled by a handful of Chinese companies and that this is seen as preferable to The Fed for deciding whether or not to inflate seems crazy to me. But it's possible, even probable, that the people who make real money selling bitcoins will vote to make more bitcoins after they run out of bitcoins to sell, ie: squeeze blood from the stone.

> With something like Cardano, I don't see what governments could do, apart from banning its use within their own jurisdiction.

You're talking about a government that reads literally every single piece of internet traffic and likely has backdoors into many encryption products.

> That's a fair criticism of Bitcoin etc., but future iterations of cryptocurrencies will surely include ZeroCash-style privacy at least as an optional feature, if not for every transaction.

No, because anyone who wants to make a serious business out of these will be required to become a Money Services Business, and have a Know Your Customer (KYC) process. As I mentioned in my previous posts: we've thought about this problem before, we don't want money floating around that isn't easily traceable, and so we already have laws governing this stuff. It's not a matter of "design the right mathematical system to create anonymity." The Dudes With the Guns do not want that so it will not happen. These systems cannot meaningfully exist outside of the current political system without a real, guns and explosions, revolution.

> I'm not saying it's a sure thing at all, but it seems somewhat plausible, no?

There is literally no upside for the vast majority of the actors in your proposal. If a currency is truly deflationary consumers wont want to spend it, if it's not it's not meaningfully different. Consumers also want a layer of protection, which credit cards offer them. Big vendors (Microsoft, Valve/Steam, Overstock etc.) who accepted crypto have already decided to stop, and transaction volume is plummeting so I think your proposed series of events is extremely unlikely.

The market is surely irrational, and there are a ton of things that exist that shouldn't, so who knows. But this stuff is not a good idea, there isn't any "mystery" left to it. We understand what's being proposed, it's basically all been proposed before, and it's an idea filled with huge problems that have only begun to surface because it is a nascent system.

For the same reason some people line to use linux when windows works everywhere. Actual technical use cases, ideology, and 'tinker-friendliness'

1) there are some use cases where it is better (typically when you want to do something that the state doesn't want you to do)

2) there are ideological reasons to prefer decentralized ownership of the financial system rather than assuming the state can be responsible with the dials and levers of that system

3) There are neat properties of crypto that are fun for tinkerers - money is programmable and you can do neat tinker-toy things with it like micropayments, fintech like collateralize loans and decentralized derivatives trading, dumb things and experiments like the old peepeth, etc.

I think eventually if adoption is wide enough there will be society-altering implications inherent to crypto but for now I think it's those 3 things.

While cryptocurrency was used to donate to Ukraine, a bank transfer or Western Union would have done the trick too -- since no one (except maybe the Russians) would consider such donations criminally actionable.

Which was my point. Sure, foreign remittances, sending money to friends/family and other mechanisms allowing money to be transmitted around the world is certainly a use case for cryptocurrency.

The rub is that for the vast majority of legal transactions (i.e., those that won't raise government hackles), cryptocurrency is currently riskier and less reliable than using a government-backed currency.

That's not a dig at cryptocurrencies. Rather, it's an assessment of the current financial ecosystem. Cryptocurrencies have lots of potential but, like most immature technologies, it's not quite ready for prime time.

As such, the vast majority of folks who choose to use cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange are those who either don't want their transactions detected by the government (the vast majority of which are those things that raise government hackles) and/or those who are risk tolerant.

Which is why cryptocurrencies are mostly used as a medium of exchange on the fringes of society/legality.

As the technology matures, you'll see cryptocurrencies become more and more mainstream -- even government-backed currencies. Because, in the end, cryptocurrencies are just another form of money.

For now, the primary use case for cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange is avoidance of government knowledge/involvement. Eventually that will change, but I'll probably be dead[0] before that happens.

[0] If I'm still alive in 2050, I'll be surprised.

Edit: Clarified my estimate for when cryptocurrencies will be pretty mainstream.

When "anyone will be able to launch their own cryptocurrency" it will become completely useless. This is what many technical folks who don't understand economics don't see. The utility of fiat is twofold - first of all, real guns, missiles, tanks, and planes are protecting your fiat dollars. Technical cryptobulls (and non-technical crypto mega-bulls) seem to miss this point entirely.

A corollary to this is a world with only cryptocurrency invites chaos. If we're all being paid in crypto, and crypto is anonymous, what incentive does one have to pay taxes to the government? No one will pay. Or some might, but others won't, and it will be the burden of the few taxpayers to subsidize the taxes of the many who skip out.

>chance to free ourselves from the coercive influences of debt, venture capital and corporations.

Yes, you'll also be freeing yourself from the influences of public roads, highways, and public schools. You'll free yourselves from the coercive influence of venture capital and corporations and governments/banks (latter is implied) and we'll free ourselves straight into an anarchic/chaotic society.

Second, a central entity (or a few entities) determining an agreed-upon exchange rate between various fiat currencies keeps the system running without severe loss of efficiency. We already see highly illiquid, inefficient markets in cryptospace. Sure, people should be able to launch their own toy cryptocurrencies for fun purposes, but it will have zero utility.

This will not be fixed by adding MORE cryptocurrencies - it will only exacerbate the problem. This will be fixed by adding more users to a basket of existing cryptocurrencies. Crypto/blockchain certainly have powerful use cases but to decry fiat as some extraordinary evil which should be 100% supplanted by cryptocurrency is, quite frankly, a display of a lack of understandings of economics, sociology, civics, and what have you.

No; I am genuinely undecided. On the one hand, I hear the arguments of bitcoin advocates from 5-10 years ago (Andreas Antonopoulos; authors of college-level courses on cryptocurrencies and bitcoin; as well as random podcasters); and they still make sense to me — which I tried to inject into the question, and which, you say, made it convoluted. On the other hand, I don't yet have a dog in the fight; I am just observing the space with some curiosity.

> Has any crypto ever actually been successfully used as a currency for something other than the black/grey market?

Genuine question: why is the use on a black or a grey market a put-down for a currency? Isn't it, on the contrary, a true testament to the value of a currency, if it is sought after, as a means of exchange, on a black market?

I disagree. Cryptocurrency is de facto being used as a currency quite successfully by lots of people. Sure, there are technical hurdles that prevent people who don't really have any need for a decentralized currency from using it. But none of those hurdles are so challenging that people can't use it if they really need it. Plenty of people have used cryptocurrency to move money across borders, make purchases that are illegal under oppressive regimes, etc., and not all of those were technical users. There aren't technical hurdles so high that someone who wants to buy drugs online can't do it with enough effort, for example.

Hacker News types will point to the failure of cryptocurrency to emerge as a competitor to traditional currencies within the regulated market, but that's precisely what you'd expect: cryptocurrencies hamper regulation, so of course there will be resistance from the regulated market. But don't mistake that for failure: cryptocurrencies have created whole markets and flows of value effectively didn't exist before.

To be clear, here's what I'm NOT saying:

1. I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement in the user experience. There is.

2. I'm also not saying that the effects of cryptocurrency are necessarily positive. That remains to be seen.