[HN Gopher] What will happen to cryptocurrency in the 2020s
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What will happen to cryptocurrency in the 2020s
Author : openmosix
Score : 32 points
Date : 2020-01-03 21:33 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.coinbase.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.coinbase.com)
| jimhi wrote:
| "Just like the dot com craze kicked off the idea of an internet
| startup (and a decade later, just about every tech startup uses
| the internet in some way), I believe that by the end of the
| 2020's almost every tech startup will have some sort of
| cryptocurrency component."
|
| This literally already happened for a hot second, did you not
| notice the everyone doing their own ICO when bitcoin was 20k? Are
| you saying it will happen again?
| companyhen wrote:
| DeFi (Decentralized Finance) is the new ICO
|
| https://defipulse.com - 3m ETH locked so far as of today (1
| year ago = 1.9m ETH, 2 years ago = 63k ETH)
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| I think it's much more likely that every tech startup will have
| some sort of AI component instead.
| zeroxfe wrote:
| > ... did you not notice the everyone doing their own ICO when
| bitcoin was 20k? Are you saying it will happen again?
|
| I don't think that's what they're saying. I suspect it'll be
| more like support for existing major cryptocurrencies like
| Ethereum and Bitcoin. Either for payments or smart contracts,
| or other decentralized book-keeping.
|
| I'm not convinced about "almost every tech startup", but I do
| think it'll become more mainstream.
| jimhi wrote:
| There is like ~5 million people using crypto right. I could
| see this being possible if that number was closer to 500+
| million
| DennisP wrote:
| They're talking about _using_ cryptocurrency as part of their
| products, not just throwing hyped-up fundraising events.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Consider the source, right? How many people without a large
| vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency
| consider further growth likely?
|
| My guess is that governments will more and more realize that the
| main utility of blockchains is money laundering and speculation.
| As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve any
| above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense than
| existing technologies. I predict we'll see growing regulation
| increased amounts of crackdowns on cryptocurrency and its
| applications going forward.
| v64 wrote:
| I honestly don't understand where the perception comes from
| that this technology is only useful for laundering and
| speculation. Certainly it is currently being used for those
| purposes. But to say there is no imaginable use outside of that
| seems unwarranted.
|
| I've commented in the past here that the use of public
| blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and
| escrow services will be a huge cost reduction for many
| industries such as finance. The technology as of today is not
| ready to handle that use case, but with the developments
| currently in the pipeline for Ethereum v2, progress is being
| made in that direction.
|
| If you look at what MakerDAO is doing with the Dai stablecoin,
| they've proven that it's possible to create a synthetic asset
| closely pegged to the dollar purely through financial
| incentives, and they did it all just using Ethereum v1. A
| holder of Dai can earn 4% APY through a Dai Savings Account,
| and a vote is currently in place to raise the rate to 6%.
|
| I personally find it incredible that an asset exists on the
| blockchain that's equivalent in value to USD, with a higher APY
| than you can get from any US bank. And because everything is on
| the blockchain, there's a public ledger of exactly how much is
| being collected in interest from those who are collateralizing
| their Ether for a Dai loan, how much of that interest is being
| paid to savings account holders, and how much is being
| collected by the system as surplus. It's the closest thing we
| have right now to a decentralized bank.
|
| Whether or not you buy into the technology, it's improving by
| the day and more and more use cases and applications are being
| tried out and built. If all you see in blockchain is money
| laundering and speculation, you haven't been paying attention.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > If you look at what MakerDAO is doing with the Dai
| stablecoin, they've proven that it's possible to create a
| synthetic asset closely pegged to the dollar purely through
| financial incentives, and they did it all just using Ethereum
| v1. A holder of Dai can earn 4% APY through a Dai Savings
| Account, and a vote is currently in place to raise the rate
| to 6%. >I personally find it incredible that an asset exists
| on the blockchain that's equivalent in value to USD, with a
| higher APY than you can get from any US bank.
|
| I also find this "incredible", but in the old sense of the
| meaning as "not believable".
| nordsieck wrote:
| > As has been remarked over and over again, they don't solve
| any above board problem more efficiently or with lower expense
| than existing technologies.
|
| If you mean by that, it's possible to have a fiat currency with
| no dilution, that is true.
|
| Crypto currencies are fundamentally a political innovation; it
| is much more politically expensive to force dilution onto a
| crypto-currency than a fiat one. Whether that's valuable
| enough, I suppose we'll see.
| dcow wrote:
| I'd much rather see a practical and modern replacement for
| physical cash that doesn't impose a multiple percentage point
| revenue hit on businesses than a $200k bitcoin.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Consider the source, right? How many people without a large
| vested interest in the propagation and uptake of cryptocurrency
| consider further growth likely?
|
| I agree with you in general, but also: The reason it's not that
| many is because the ones who see further growth, gets a
| interest into it, maybe even vested interest. So, not a good
| argument.
| wpietri wrote:
| Exactly. It has been 10+ years since the Bitcoin paper. No
| cryptocurrency has significant consumer adoption. [1], [2]
| Except for light financial crime (ransomware, money laundering,
| gambling, theft, etc), it has no demonstrated advantage over
| alternative technologies. I don't think it will go away, any
| more than Ponzi and Make Money Fast schemes have gone away. But
| like you, I expect it will fade into the background as "that
| weird old thing" as governmental KYC and AML efforts make it
| ever harder to convert it into real money.
|
| I also expect that the fashion for it in VC investment, already
| waning, will totally fade by the end of the 2020s. And that
| regulators like the SEC will have ended the various its-not-
| equity equity investments, cutting off the other major source
| of funds.
|
| [1] E.g.: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/nyregion/new-york-
| today-l...
|
| [2] For "significant" contrast it with M-PESA, which is also
| digital money and launched around the same time:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa
| sosuke wrote:
| That was very optimistic. And $200k Bitcoin? Might as well
| suggest $2m Bitcoin and the odds will be about the same.
|
| I've become very pessimistic around cryptocurrency after a year
| of chasing coins.
|
| Wake me up when Turtlecoin hits $10.
| drcross wrote:
| I remember people scoffing at the concept of 100 dollars per
| bitcoin like it couldn't possibly happen.
| nobleach wrote:
| I remember people scoffing at the internet like there no
| legitimate use-cases for it. "Yeah, we have places for
| information, it's called Grolier's Encyclopedia on CD-ROM,
| and it's cheap!". "I already have yellow pages delivered for
| free by C&P Bell". While cryptocurrency may be quite a bit
| more narrow, blockchain is most likely a far more interesting
| technology.
| vehementi wrote:
| It is, but approximately 100% of startups (ICOs) formed
| around it have failed right?
|
| That's not to say there are none, but a fuck ton of people
| have tried to come up with cool ideas and approximately
| zero worked out, like at all.
| mrlala wrote:
| I remember people assuming bitcoin will just keep doubling in
| price forever. Oh wait, they are still right here.
| Geee wrote:
| Bitcoin's price seems to follow stock-to-flow pretty well, so
| if it holds, $200k is an underestimation.
|
| https://digitalik.net/btc/
| debt wrote:
| Cryptocurrency does not have anything close to widespread
| consumer adoption. If the Coinbase's of the world don't fix this,
| cryptocurrency will be massively devalued.
| DennisP wrote:
| Cryptocurrency can't have widespread adoption right now,
| because it's not scalable enough. Various projects are working
| hard on fixing that.
| 4AoZqrH2fsk5UB wrote:
| I'm pretty new to crypto in general, but it seems to me that the
| primary value of it in coming years would be anonymity/privacy.
|
| As I understand it Bitcoin has some problems in this regard, but
| others have solved it.
|
| I just can't find it hard to believe we get to 2030 without a way
| to buy things anonymously online.
| djsumdog wrote:
| > anonymity/privacy
|
| Nope. Bitcoin and others don't solve this at all. They're a
| literal permanent ledger of every single transaction you've
| ever made. Other coins might be better at anonymity, but BTC
| and its derivatives are certainly not.
| jrimbault wrote:
| I was thinking with some friends recently (new year's eve) :
| considering a bitcoin model with a fixed finite amount of
| currency, won't every coin be lost at some point due to storage
| failure/lost keys/etc ? Statistically ? And rather sooner than
| later, if my thinking is right ? Like the birthday problem ?
|
| There is a maximum of 21x10^6 bitcoins, imagining a 0.01 chance
| of losing 1 bitcoin/day ?
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| As the scarcity increase would they become more valuable or
| less valuable?
| carleverett wrote:
| The most important challenge cryptocurrencies face is capturing
| real world value. The ICO craze turned out to create basically 0
| value on any crypto platform, and the more recent wave of
| tokenized securities will be very slow because there are lots and
| lots of regulations that need to be addressed by token issuers
| (for good reason).
|
| The value of our public goods however is not being captured by
| any financial asset, and is a huge market that can be addressed
| by cryptocurrencies. This is something I'm quite passionate about
| and have put a lot of time into thinking through how they might
| work (see link below). As an example, AirCarbon
| (https://www.aircarbon.co) is a Singapore exchange being built on
| an Ethereum token and will tokenize CORSIA-certified carbon
| credits for the airline industry. This is a fantastic example of
| a huge market ($100+ billion) that is right now extremely
| inefficient, and will benefit greatly from moving onto a globally
| accessible and permissionless ledger. It'll provide everyone in
| the world the ability to invest in the reduction of carbon
| dioxide emissions, and even better, since the tokens also work as
| stores of value, investors can sell their tokens in the future.
|
| This type of financial asset has enormous potential.
|
| "Tokenized Goods - A New Store of Value":
| https://medium.com/@tpgwhitepaper/tokenized-public-goods-a-n...
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