They have KYC'd their exchanges and will/do use traditional diplomatic routes to make it difficult for chinese citizens to use exchanges abroad.

And then of course if you ban one VC you have to ban them all. You do the chinese a great disservice to consider them so backwards.

Source please

Incorrect. As are all the others counterpoints, but I'll just leave the one quote as an example. Source

WTF are you talking about??? None of these inventions, as incredible and paradigm changing as they are, made us go vertical in the way that OP is suggesting a public ledger will do. Did you read the numbers suggested in the OP? Slow down and read them.

The point is sailing right over your head. Growth has always been exponential but even these incredible inventions haven't done 1/10th of the ramp up that OP is suggesting fantasy coins will do.

Nonsense. The banks are a trusted third party in the sense of "Bitcoin doesn't require a trusted third party".

And even taking it at your point, banks aren't used because they're insured. In countries without bank insurance, or before bank insurance, or for dollar amounts beyond the FDIC amounts, banks were & are used without insurance just like they are used when insurance is there. Insurance is largely irrelevant.
Did you read your link? Any one controlling entity getting sustainable majority hashing power has the power to make Bitcoin unusable.

Why would anyone use the internet? So much fake information there, better to rely on the yellow pages, encyclopaedias and text-tv where this is less fraud.

Imo just try to use it. See what's it all about. You might like it, you might think it was a waste of time. But at least you will have experienced it, which is worth a lot more than a bunch of letters by some stranger-

I wasn't agreeing with the OPs hyperbole, just disagreeing with your points about some of mankinds most useful inventions not having made us go vertical for tens years. Without splitting hairs about 'vertical' and 'ten years' I think the evidence is against you there

Well yeah, its a discussion of the future not progress to date

Yes I'm with you there.

There are banks and there are banks. Yes, your man keeping desert shekels buried under a palm tree does not have reinsurance. Many cultures use community banking and so forth, the bonds of which are held by family and friendship.

Post Glass-Steagall trading banks bound only by contract and not human bonds beyond PR requirements are the kind of banks we are talking about here, and I suspect you know this fully well.

I would ask you to imagine how the latest banking crisis would have played out without the taxpayer stepping in as reinsurer of last resort. I see brutal bank runs, panic and despair and many many millions with savings wiped out. How is banking trust looking now?

Paradoxically one outcome of such a thing would likely have been a trend towards community owned banks in the first world which would have increased trust in banks.

Of course. The way you talk about it sounds like you think bitcoin would collapse under such an attack but that is simply not the case, as informed by that info I linked.

I've yet to hear a compelling argument/example of the utility difference between crytpocurrency and my credit card.

Listen, you can be the smartest guy in the world and understand the software of cryptocurrency down to the tiniest line of code, and you can be well versed in Austrian Economics and all of that, but if you can't explain to me simply why bitcoin or any other currency is has more utility than my credit card, then you're blowing smoke.

You can call me a financial dinosaur, or give me all kinds of gruff about being behind the times and all that stuff, but without a clear explanation in lehmans terms of why I should use bitcoin instead of my CC, you're still blowing smoke. Normies don't get it, they don't want it, they don't even want to learn about it, which is the reason why it hasn't seem widespread adoption in 8 years and won't until the explanations I asked for become immediate and apparent to everyone.

'Compelling' is a personal thing so not seeking to that. Here are a few use case you might not be aware of.

- With crypto you can own your data and allow trusted others to access pieces of it. This means you could verify you are 21+ and go gambling without the gambling site or bank needing to know your actual identity

- As a merchant you can accept transactions with minimal fees (sub 0.1%), savings of up to 2.5% per transaction. Now you may not be a merchant but it stands to reason that some price deflation results from this for consumers. ~2% discounts for non cash / credit transactions could become commonplace.

- If you are using credit, your credit could come from the community rather than a bank. You could define some parameters around that community and negotiate rates and payment terms.

- If you are using it as a debit card you could define your asset allocation as a basket of any group of currencies or stocks. So that when you pay $1000 for something you are spending $100 worth of apple stock and $900 worth of brazilian real, or whatever.

- Again, if using as a debit card your balance could be out working for you in loan projects you can control.

- You could request a payment or make a payment to a friend or associate by text message, since your messaging account(s) is/are intrinsically linked to your crypto accounts

- You can convert loyalty points into $ with minimal slippage on anything you want instead of just for coffee / flights etc



There is absolutely no reason to try to ditch your credit card in the near future. Revisit the question in 24 months, and if a lot of the above is becoming mainstream like many think it will, you might have a different perspective.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Bitcoin is.

It is definitely not a CC alternative.

A CC is a way to spend money.

Bitcoin is money.

[QUOTE=SaveTheWhales;52419604]'Compelling' is a personal thing so not seeking to that. Here are a few use case you might not be aware of.

I already do this rapidly and easily with email, or my ID. What utility does cryto have OVER the real world is my question.

This is just silly nonsense. Acquiring bitcoin as a purchaser means paying 5-10% (PERCENT) in fees and exchange rates, depending on your country. Also it is untenable for small transactions because without a large fee attached, the transaction will either never be verified or will take too long to be practical. Not only that, but since you can't buy much with bitcoin, you have to convert it back into actual money (before it crashes) in order to actually get paid for your product you are selling.

Again, why not just do this with my current cards/ID/etc? Crypto is nothing but a hassle.



They've been saying it will be mainstream around the corner for 5+ years. No one is using the thing for anything but speculative asset.


Every bitcoiner reverts to this when challenged

I fully understand what it isn't, and that is a currency. Right now its a bunch of bagholders who believe the price will continue to rise in the hopes that ONE DAY it will be used widely as a currency. No one has ever given me a good reason WHY bitcoin will overtake 'fiat', because there aren't any. The state of the world might miraculously change to make bitcoin the currency of the future, but until then it will continue to act the way a speculative asset does (which at this point is actually all that it is).

100 Trillion isn't cool. You know what is cool? 1 quadrillion

You wouldn't actually need to provide your ID. You only need to prove you own a profile of a person who is older than 21. It's different.

Being over 21 is one use of this feature. Think also medical data or other private data you don't necessarily want within the big data catchment area.


Currently yes. Within a year, no. Like I said, we are talking future state. No one but libertards are defending current state as better than status quo yet.


Overenthusiasm of the crypto-youth, what can I say. There hasn't been any reasonable roadmap to mass scale use prior to the last 18 months imo.

That was a reply to another poster and I agree with you. There will continue to be many currencies. These will generally be tied to nations or be baskets like SDR for the world bank and so on. Crypto will generally be in the background.

Yeah this is what it all comes down to. I'm tech and crypto and Internet savvy (I can program and have a math degree), not risk averse (I trade derivatives) I travel, yet I couldn't give two ****s about Bitcoin and would never buy it for anything other than speculation. It's less useful than a tissue. It does nothing that I want in any way that I want better than the alternatives. The only interest cases I can see:

- Tech nerds where it gets their juices flowing and they get so high on the FREEDOM of it all that they buy into the whole ecosystem and it becomes their religion. A bit like the silver bulls.
- Speculators
- A subset of gamblers
- Illegal activity

Perhaps you can add remittance in dodgy second world countries as a use case. Perhaps. I don't know how happy they'll be when they see their very hard earned cash evaporate in the next correction.

There is absolutely zero reason for anyone not in the above categories to buy into bitcoin. Gambling and illegal activity have been increasing steadily, and the recent ranks have been swelled by an army of speculators, but I can't see much else going on.

An alternate currency for people living in Venezuela, Argentina, and others is a pretty good use case too.

I've shorted many many pump and dumps and this is always what the bulls fall back on. The bears don't understand the tech, they haven't done their due diligence, or they are bitter because they missed out on the huge run. This is no different. Many of us have watched this kind of trade play out hundreds of times before, while most people involved in cryptos are brand new to trading/speculation/bubbles

This is accurate. Most people don't remember but back in 2009~2012 the vision of Bitcoin wasn't to just become what it has (a coin that has properties only useful for the above) Arguably that 'cap' on its ability, was brought on by miners/blockstream/core putting their interests ahead of the coins capability and long-term interests. The innovators/developers who were pushing Bitcoin more towards its true potential have mostly been driven away/fed up and have left Bitcoin towards greener pastures for these reasons.

Ethereum even, there are now Ethereum debit cards, etc. I should be the target market for someone like those (understands some tech, travels) and make no mistake right now the value proposition of using my Mastercard is infinitely better than Ethereum credit and will be for quite awhile (assuming you're a tax abiding citizen). If you're looking at Bitcoin or Ethereum and wondering why anyone would use it for purchases? It's fair, but also the wrong question to ask, at least for the vision of Ethereum. I can answer that for you regardless: Like Toothsayer said, nerds/enthusiasts/etc and people who like the novelty of doing so (those 4 groups above he mentioned) will use it for those reasons and no one else should bother cause it's useless. I don't understand why some people are hating on him when he points this out, because it's true. A better question to ask is: In a few years, will people outside of those groups be wanting to use Ethereum, Bitcoin, etc, others? In my opinion, Bitcoin no. Ethereum yes. If you own Ethereum IMO that's what you're betting (speculating) on. For any lurkers or non-tech/crypto people I'll try to explain a bit further:

The vision of 2017 Ethereum isn't to build a coin that just has value to those 4 groups. Right now, arguably, that's all it does. The platform being built by the Ethereum foundation in the end will provide a blank technological 'canvas' for those who can innovate, create use-cases and utilities that stretch vastly beyond illegal activity/gambling/etc. That's what the promise is, and this 'canvas' has nothing comparable today online. You can think of it as an online architecture where people (developers right now) can come and create applications. In time, it will become easier as Ethereum's online architecture upgrades, as it's still very early (it's been out active for roughly 2 years) and not all the upgrades have been done. Some of these upgrades are theoretical and never been done before, and the truth is we'll only know if it works by when it comes out, but they're basically making looking to make an amazing canvas. Can they pull it off? That's also a good question to ask - from everything I understand, I personally think they can but I'm not a programmer or one of the pioneers designing the platform. The bottom line is it's an experiment, and there are a ton of uncertainties along the way, but network affects are starting to happen and products that could provide utility are being designed and built (design/beta/prototype stage right now - these will take time to develop) as the debate goes on.

But how much time? I would say a few years for Ethereum. Right now it's showing promise, but if in a few years from now I'm sitting with Ethereum and have no real reason (beyond those 4 groups) to burn 'Ether' (think of this as spending/using Eth) by using applications on the now more mature platform architecture & the Dapps (applications that were in Design/Prototypes/Beta in ~2017) and the only reason I'm holding it is so other people might pay me a higher price for it down the road, than I agree it's use case stops at speculation/etc and it's a joke. I personally will have been wrong (and disappointed) that it failed, no matter how high the price of Eth is at the time.

I can potentially see a secure cryptocurrency having or maintaining the niche value it has now, namely, those transactions which for one reason or another trigger ears at banks and government insurance bureaucracies, but I think in general cryptocurrency will prove itself to be the furbie doll of the 2010s.

It will be highly amusing to me to see how the now centralized power structures within 'decentralized' bitcoin react to the soft fork coming on August 1. I predict the abrupt end of bitcoin, you heard it here first.

From a big crypto enthusiast/supporter for several years:

I agree that for the most part smart contracts, blockchain, and crypto technological benefits are being way overhyped and the market is full of projects that will amount to nothing and in general is in a giant bubble. I think blockchain has a decent amount of uses and benefits and smart contracts have some long-term potential, but it's getting attached to all kinds of businesses that don't necessarily benefit a great deal from it. A bad company with a blockchain is still a bad company.

Cryptos have some benefits in terms of speed of transactions and costs, which is useful now to some extent, but it can be replicated by banks and governments. USA coin can be backed by 1:1 with the U.S. dollar and provide the same transaction system with any benefits that crypto has in terms of speed and cost.

IMO the big question to ask yourself before investing in the space is do you think cryptocurrency is, or has the potential to be the best form of currency and/or store of value in the history of the world. If your answer to that is no then my advice would be that you should cash out everything you have in crypto and run, or at least recognize you're in a bubble and playing with fire.

I still think a strong case can be made that crypto is the best form of currency/store of value:
-Decentralized, no government playing god with the currency
-Capped supply, everyone knows how much of it will be there today and 10 years from now
-Impossible to counterfeit
-Potential to be accepted worldwide
-More easily transported than Gold/Fiat
-No third party has access to your money while using a modernized storage/transport system

In it's current state crypto is not great as a currency because it's failing to solve scalability, but I think it's making progress on it at least. Whether or not it can get from point A, of being a highly volatile, speculative asset to point B, a true currency adopted and used by many, will obviously be a difficult journey but one I could see happening over time.

It's not decentralized. At least bitcoin isn't. There might be no government behind it, but there are centralized power structures within in that control it. The group that makes the decisions, as well as the miners, are powerful forces.

This is actually a horrible characteristic for a money to have.

Not impossible, 51% attack could double spend. And some of the larger mining guilds could easily gain 51% control whenever they wanted, they just voluntarily choose not to. Not only that, the number of stories Ive heard about bitcoin being lost forever, or stolen from exchanges, means the inability to print one off your printer is sort of moot.

I can think of a dozen places in the United States that don't have internet access, how much of the rest of the world do you think can relate?

I agree with this one. Once you have bitcoin it is ridiculously easy to send. It's just expensive to get the transaction confirmed

Lol there are like 10 billion smartphones in the world. Basically everyone in the world regardless of wealth has one.

You sound like an old man yelling at clouds that would have dismissed email 20 years ago.

"Why send email when not everyone has an email address but all have a postal address!"

"Why send email when everyone doesn't have internet access!"

This is probably the most thoughtless and naive thing I've ever seen written in text.

about half the world, around 4 billion people still do not have internet access. Do you expect them to somehow learn to securely store and transfer bitcoin, even if it would be a more preferable option than their local currency?

When the internet (and email) were new, there were obvious benefits that everyone could see to using it from day 1, even if they were not ready to be an early adapter. My grandparents might not have signed up for email but they could still understand how it improved things. Their letters that took 3 days to send could now be instantaneous, an obvious improvement. The same cannot be said for cryptocurrencies, even among tech-savvy young people. There is not a single legal activity I can do today that fiat currency does not hold an advantage over.

Other than funding illicit activities, the current banking system is by far superior in every regard.

Also close to 80% of bitcoins have been mined and approximately 70% of them are dormant. Whether that be speculators that are holding, or people who lost access to their coins, it's obvious bitcoin does not have much use other than speculation. It could have a much smaller market cap and still serve whatever remittance value it has just fine.