Yes, the current way it is done is not good for normies. Just like the internet wasn't good for normies in 1992. Why would people tie up their phone line to dial up to some internet phone number and remember a username and password and then some weird address with an @ symbol to send someone a message when they could just mail them a letter???

For blockchain to be successful and really take off it will need to be very user friendly and work to the point where normies don't even really know their using the blockchain.

Yes, enterprise loves the blockchain for a variety of uses. They are getting into it.

https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/

The trouble is, there are trillions of blockchains. It is a not a scarce resource. You fire up your computer, tell it to make you a blockchain, that's it. There are more blockchains than grains of sand on Earth.
The only way this is possible is via trusted centralized storage. Which is what a bank is. We're back to where we started. How did it go for the dudes with money in Mt Gox?

The annual transaction volume is already way larger than $100 billion. There were a billion dollars of bitcoin transactions yesterday. The economics of your argument are off by orders of magnitude.

But the short answer is that transaction fees will replace coin rewards. Will that be sufficient to maintain the security of the system? Nobody knows for sure. One benefit of having so many cryptos though is that the same hardware can be used to mine for multiple block chains. Also, if proof of stake proves to be effective for ethereum, bitcoin could transition to that. Or proof of importance. Or another yet to be discovered method for providing security and incentives.

There are a lot of vulnerabilities and only time will tell. But what's important is that the solutions will be derived from distributed consensus. The concept is that this is more robust than any centralized system can be.

1995:*“I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”*— Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com.

This post + your avatar = Great

These type of posts indicate bitcoins in a bubble.

The overall crypto market def seems to be very bubbly. But at a market cap of 40b, a worldwide decentralised currency / store of value secured by computer power greater than 100x that of Google it's hard for me to see Bitcoin as bubbly. It's barely even 2x Snapchat!

You mean "Bitcoin is secured by the centralized dictatorial Chinese government".

60% of all mining hardware resides in China. China could destroy Bitcoin's value overnight if The Party decided to.

a) why would the government of a country with ~ 11 trillion GDP care about the measly 40B market cap of Bitcoin?

b) if mining shuts down in China it simply moves somewhere else with cheap electricity. Mining rewards are currently very high and they'll def be someone ready to pick up the slack.

a) Currency outflows. The Chinese are desperate to stop it. When Bitcoin gets large enough, or China's economic position deteriorates, or debt bubble starts to burst, they will take actions to stop outflows further.

b) I'm not suggesting they'd shut it down. They'd use the superior hashing power to destroy bitcoin's viability.

I don't know if bitcoin is in a bubble right now or not, but it's unlikely that I have the ability to signal it by simply making a post.

When I first developed an interest in Bitcoin in the summer of 2013, the crypto market cap was $1 billion and Bitcoin accounted for over 99% of it. If someone said that in less than 4 years the crypto market cap for all crypto platforms other than bitcoin would exceed $55 billion, and bitcoin's cap would be close to $50 billion by itself... they would be called crazy and stupid.

So, to suggest that the crypto market cap could go from $100 billion to $100 trillion in 10 years is certainly a bit crazy. But it might not be fair to completely dismiss it all together since something similarly crazy literally just happened over the past 5 years and I offered an explanation for what mechanisms could contribute to such a rise simply if global GDP responds to a communications breakthrough in a way similar to what has already occurred a few times in the past.

The latter is impossible. We're near full employment/production/efficiency. A hypothetical perfect instant transfer system would make little difference to the world. The financial world runs just fine and isn't that ripe for improvement in a way that would boost the economy.

Venture capital is getting to startups - in fact far too much, it's a wasteful use of resources now. Larger companies can raise all the cash they want. Trillions are traded daily forex. The global banking system is robust and efficient for any meaningful economic purposes (I can travel anywhere and transact instantly with any business).

There just isn't much juice here. If you want to make the case in the OP, you need better example than ordering lightbulbs, which has nothing to do with BlockChain.

I think, for what other posters are saying, you are reversing your causality...

Perfect counterpoint 1: Electricity. Unarguably more fundamental than the encrypted public ledger - it is the ability to have the power to do work instantly anywhere. One of the greatest revolutions in the history of the planet. Didn't make us suddenly go vertical in 10 years like you're suggesting

Counterpoint 2: Telegraph and telephone. Instant communications anywhere. A communications and knowledge revolution. Didn't make us suddenly go vertical in 10 years like you're suggesting or even 50 years

Counterpoint 3: Computers. One of the greatest revolutions of all time; offloaded work to reliable machines, enabled calculations and simulations and data storage and processing impossible for humans, moving forward everything from medicine to architecture to basic science to manufacturing to flow modeling in pipes. Increased the intelligent computing and data analysis capacity of the human race many times. Didn't make us suddenly go vertical in 10 years like you're suggesting or even 50 years

Counterpoint 4: The Internet...but I think you get the idea.

The idea that BlockChain will be the key to explosive economic growth, after all of these fantastic and fundamental revolutions, and moreover, will do more than any of them in a period of 10 years and multiply GDP, is nonsensical. Maybe a sophisticated troll; if so, bravo.

Can we stop using blockchain to describe ledgers? It makes people who do this look like they have no idea wtf they're talking about (since they don't). Blockchains are a subset of distributed ledgers.

TLDR in the future people will sit around meditating while their cryptocurrency makes millions for them. LOL.

The massive increase in FOMO lately and the eagerness to pay 3-5% vig on skrill/PS/USD wire/etc. for BTC swaps in the high stakes skype group has me feeling like this in a bubble. I was researching some other crypto currencies that people in this world think are smart and have big upside and they're all up huge this year.

I really have no idea of course, but I can't work up the courage atm to take the plunge. But lots of poker players have gotten pretty rich off it these days!

can't help but lol at this statement and the fact that, of all places, it's posted on 2p2, where you can get countless first hand experiences from Americans who can not open bank accounts in most countries due to FATCA. it's not like every bank in the UK didn't just reject me today.. oh wait, they did #nousecaseotherthandrugs

pretty hilarious how they would do it too. for some reason, bank managers didn't want to expressly say they dont offer bank accounts to americans. i knew going in i wasnt getting an account, but it was fun to **** with the staff as they scurried back and forth to the branch managers trying to find new excuses.

Except internet magic token doesn't serve the same function as fiat because no one actually accepts it for things.

if i bring philippines php to anywhere in the world accept philippines it wouldn't be accepted either. i would have to exchange it somewhere first.

same as btc. exchange first.

Circle.com possibly remains the best example of the direction of main stream usage and benefits of crypto

Sounds like the internet version of gold which is totally not owned by a bunch of crazy people continually pretending it has features that are really bugs.

Many of the benefits of cryptos disappear with strongID and exchanges. So if we wanna pretend this is gonna be a standard, we're gonna need to realize the pros/cons that come with it. (Such as potential consensus rollbacks for theft/etc)

Cryptos are perfect for internet transactions. It's LOL how credit cards work. YOU PUT ALL THE INFO ANYBODY NEEDS TO DEFRAUD YOU INTO THE FORM! Who came up with that idea?

Cryptos can't be counterfeited. In today's day and age with increasing technology, it will be virtually impossible to create a bill that someone can't recreate. It's common sense, if it can be created in one way or another, someone else can do it also.

The reason plenty enough for me, is everyone knows what the supply will be. Mr fed can't just pull the trigger whenever the **** they feel like it. That would be reason enough for me to use them even if cryptos were hard to transact in. The fact they actually pretty much do everything better is a bonus.

The banks aren't trusted. They are insured, with reinsurance for deposits coming effectively from the taxpaying public.

If you had enough at stake and were willing to pay the price you could find an insurer right now for your VC held on exchanges against supplier failure. Of course, you'll pay a pretty price for that today, a 'cutting edge' premium. Over time, with standards and regulations this premium will decline.

Geographic/political centralisation of hashrate is a risk for sure. Can you elaborate though on why the consequences as 'destroy it if they wish'? The actual (edit: impact) of a 51% attack is generally overstated imo. Here is some background.