Really? No rebuttal to the multiple responses people gave about inflation?
The one UNC joke is the path out?
Really? No rebuttal to the multiple responses people gave about inflation?
The one UNC joke is the path out?
You know me, I'm not a fan, but I think y'all are being overly harsh on him. IIRC, he's been put on a very strict notice by the moderators of this site for previous transgressions. He has good reasons for reacting this way and I for one will not judge him because of that.
I agree in principle. Wheat has been a very interesting sounding board for this particular issue.
But, being an outlier on this thread as a crypto advocate AND an outlier for his fandom means he's going to take a little flak from the peanut gallery.
I'm not generally a fan of picking on a particular poster, but I'm also not a fan of picking up your ball and heading home because of a joke.
I've learned a lot from this thread. Wheat makes his pro-crypto arguments, other posters challenge those arguments. Learning happens at the intersection.
I agree, he framed the pro-crypto arguments and responded as others pushed some of the arguments deeper.
That said, I am finding the ‘libertarian utopia Uber Alles’ as wanting. I understand the desire to remove politics from finance, but it doesn’t seem to withstand scrutiny as being better.
I would love a financially sound pro-argument to help me understand what I am missing.
Wheat's participation in this thread has educated me considerably as to the subject of cryptocurrency. Perhaps that's not such a big hill to climb when starting from scratch but I really do appreciate his contribution.
I think Wheat is right that large financial institutions will soon be able to place bets in this space. I also agree with him that this will bid up some crypto like BTC. It will probably also cause quite a few to try to issue their own coin.
All of that said I do really struggle to see a value presented by these digital currencies outside of the value it presents to criminal organizations as a digital alternative to paper money.
Without a strong value proposition, the need for cold wallets and the like is just too tall a hurdle for me to jump at this point.
I am also put off by the "scammy" / ponzi scheme feel of almost every pro-crypto article I read and video I watch. It is possible this visceral response is preventing me from objectively viewing the value proposition in the material presented.
Maybe this is digital gold. I may well be missing out. If so, it won't be the first time or the last.
On the other hand, if it is indeed a big series of ponzi schemes, the scale is extremely troubling.
Ponzi schemes never last forever and so much "money" is in these vehicles that a loss of confidence could have systemic effect.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/26/inves...ing/index.html
a view disparate views
My summary of crypto messaging over the last decade-ish (also seen here in this thread):
"Crypto is the ultimate new currency to replace government issued currency."
"Ok, crypto isn't going to replace currency but it is a great way to store value like gold but better."
"Ok, it isn't stable or intrinsically valuable like gold, but it can be used to replace payment processors if we can convince people they should adopt it for some reason."
This deal is getting worse all the time.
This is a likely outcome, but as others have said a governing body that can manage technology evolution is required. Just because it is a good idea doesn’t make it a good idea. Or something.
I often get frustrated that banks think my money is actually theirs. There are a lot of attributes of open banking that blockchain can simplify. We will see what comes to fruition.
Let me know if you find anything investable (the company, not the coin). 🤩
History repeats and I expect most of the profits will be made by the major payment processors and financial institutions (using blockchain technology). Press rewind 15-20 years ago, when check payments were converted to debit card transactions. Check processing was very expensive and relatively inefficient (such as lost Federal Reserve cash letters) for financial institutions. Buying stock in the major debit card payment processors (Visa and MasterCard) was our first move (15-20 years ago). Then, we bought stock (unfortunately, during the same time period) in retail based financial institutions. Instead of checking accounts being an intentional loss leader (for primary financial institution purposes), they became a major profit generator from shared payment processing fees and substantially less expenses. In addition, the retail financial institutions immediately had the ability to reject any NSF debit payment requests (unlike check payments) and chose instead to make billions off of NSF fees. Only now are those financial institutions rejecting the NSF debit payment requests and no longer exploiting customers for completely unnecessary NSF fees.
Last edited by Jeffrey; 05-27-2022 at 02:56 AM.
Interesting article describing use cases for blockchain identified in patents by major credit card companies:
https://www.signifytechnology.com/bl...urce=google.it
Easy to see why this would have appeal to financial institutions. Anything that can effectively lower business transaction costs (and maybe much further down the line - fees) is welcome.
FWIW, that article was written 4 years ago by a startup company that seems to now focus on a Bitcoin casino.
I'd be curious what the current state of those blockchain projects, because in my experience, I saw a ton of hype as companies rushed out to make announcements in this space 4-5 years ago, only to not have anything tangible really come from it. Often they realized the problems either couldn't be solved by public blockchain, or could be solved more efficiently via more traditional means. But hey, calling it "blockchain" gets more press/buzz, right?
Anyway, maybe Visa and Mastercard have something disruptive that's come out of it, but I'm fairly skeptical of anything announced four years ago.
A text without a context is a pretext.
parenthetical aside: There is some evidence that Duke's massive endowment growth this past year (55%) was at least partially due to an early investment in Coinbase. I wonder if DUMAC has sold off much of those (declining) holdings or not. We'll know in the Fall.
I agree with this. I’m continuing to look at startups like Acorn or Square that bring the power of mobile/user experience that solves problems the existing players were/are happy to not solve.
The key is going to be solving identity, how ‘virtual me’ is actually me. Interesting stuff going on.