Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Are most altcoins in the process of dying?
-
12-09-2018 8:20am#1There’s been a serious bloodbath with altcoins in the last couples of weeks/days. Bitcoin is having ups and downs but most altcoins seem to only have downs (or small ups and large downs). For exemple bitcoin is more or less the same price today is it was 3 month ago whereas Ether is less then half and getting close to a third, and Litecoin is more or less half.
Do people think most altcoins in the process of losing support/interest and dying out? (I think they are but interested in other views - I assume some people will say there was too much speculation and it is just a normalisation phase, but while it might be true for very small number of them I think most of them were just hype to surf the bitcoin wave and have no future).0
Comments
-
They're the most risky assets to hold in an already-risky market, they're the most likely to bleed.
Some have still brought great returns even with the way things are but everybody should have been aware that if a coin or token isn't being utilised it's price would deflate. That doesn't necessarily mean whatever coin it is is dead in the water despite that being the recurring meme from maximalist BTC retards0 -
They are all crashing pretty much with no exception though (and have very clearly separated from bitcoin which is volatile but going up and down within a range rather than simply dropping as altcoins are).
So isn’t saying that value depends on usefulness to some extent saying none of them is currently recognised as useful as opposed to bitcoin?
Not crypto bashing here, but this is what the picture looks like.0 -
So isn’t saying that value depends on usefulness to some extent saying none of them is currently recognised as useful as opposed to bitcoin?
Not crypto bashing here, but this is what the picture looks like.
That is correct - cryptos were speculated out the wazoo based on what people thought it might become in a few years and very few are being utilised at all. When I bought ETH I would have been delighted if it had reached $100 within a few of years, but last year was insane.
I disagree with you on Bitcoin and it's "usefulness" - Core and their sycophants don't want it to be useful any more, price-wise it's getting by on brand name and literally fúck all else.0 -
I disagree with you on Bitcoin and it's "usefulness" - Core and their sycophants don't want it to be useful any more, price-wise it's getting by on brand name and literally fúck all else.
Mind you, what I was saying that it is receognised as more useful by crypto investors in general (not by me) as it is where they put their money (which keeps bitcoin afloat while alcoin are all collapsing).
As for what I think, well it’s clearly failing at its original goal of becoming a practical digital currency. But as long as trust remains and prices don’t crash it is somewhat succeeding at being a decent enough digital store of value which is hard for government to control. Whether it can maintain that capability and whether that is a sufficient justification for its existence are questions which can be asked, but for now that seems to be a real world use case.0 -
None of us might like what Blockstream have been playing at but there seems to be some traction on Lightning Network. If it continues to progress, maybe it could be back in the game as a transactional currency? Not exclusive to Bitcoin (equally relevant to ETH or any PoW coin) but the likes of BloXroute as a solution may help ease the scalability issue also...well it’s clearly failing at its original goal of becoming a practical digital currency.0 -
Advertisement
-
makeorbrake wrote: »None of us might like what Blockstream have been playing at but there seems to be some traction on Lightning Network. If it continues to progress, maybe it could be back in the game as a transactional currency? Not exclusive to Bitcoin (equally relevant to ETH or any PoW coin) but the likes of BloXroute as a solution may help ease the scalability issue also...
Oh yes I’m saying it has failed until now but it could evolve and be back in the game. It’s very hard to know though as it is not just a technological problem, but also a matter of psychology, regulation, economics, etc.
For exemple if I make a far fetched assumption that bitcoin was to become the dominant currency in a country. In terms of economics pretty much no major country in the world would be in a position to survive if it was to completely lose control over its monetary policy and if the main currency in use there was not able to appreciate and depreciate to compensate for the economic performance of that country relative to others (which is why the gold standard didn’t survive and bitcoin would exactly replicate what let to the collapse of that system). So I suspect that the for the forseable future if there was what looks like a risk of bitcoin dominating the national currency in a country, the government of that country would probably make it illegal and introduce very cohercive measures to prevent its use (and again, they would do the same with gold - which is something that has already happened in history).0 -
I agree - it's not just technological. If we were to start today and Bitcoin had NO network effect - all current crypto's were lined up at the starting line, I guess the outcome would be different. Hard to gauge how strong network effect is at a given time or if it can be turned over...I guess yes if it falls far enough behind.Oh yes I’m saying it has failed until now but it could evolve and be back in the game. It’s very hard to know though as it is not just a technological problem, but also a matter of psychology, regulation, economics, etc.
Hmm...I guess it's related although we might be heading off topic - I'll apologise if we are but it's a very interesting line of thought. There's been a lot of criticism as regards what crypto would mean if it reached such a dominant position. I find it hard to get my head around as I'm not an economist.For exemple if I make a far fetched assumption that bitcoin was to become the dominant currency in a country. In terms of economics pretty much no major country in the world would be in a position to survive if it was to completely lose control over its monetary policy and if the main currency in use there was not able to appreciate and devaluate to compensate for the economic performance of that country relative to others (which is why the gold standard didn’t survive and bitcoin would exactly replicate what let to the collapse of that system). So I suspect that the for the forseable future if there was what looks like a risk of bitcoin dominating the national currency in a country, the government of that country would probably make it illegal and introduce very cohercivd measures to prevent its use (and again, they would do the same with gold - which is something that has already happened).
With crypto, they may not be able to tinker with interest rates, devalue, etc - but not all of that tinkering is good - some of it leads to the problems in the first place. IF it is necessary (and I'm unsure if it is), crypto's can be set up with an inflationary mechanism (as some of them currently are)....albeit not sure if there's any that allows for adjustment (probably not, as it kind of goes against the basis of crypto...unless achieved with some form of consensus). Additionally, do we want societies where citizens are slaves to debt - which is the case for many in the western world. Crypto doesn't feed into that dynamic.
Some say that it would damage the economy and others say that's nonsense - I don't have the economics insight to figure out who's right or wrong. However, there is no doubt that certain circles are hungry to maintain 'control' at all costs...and not necessarily for the benefit of all.
We're seeing that with regulation in the blockchain space also. I can see how reg. can be good - but it can also completely destroy the innovation that blockchain brings with it...0 -
Hehe ... I just meant to illustrate it's not only technological and there are many other aspects but yes while off topic on this thread it is probably a more interesting subject for discussion! (sorry for the long answer but it's barely enough to scratch the surface of a huge question)
Actually I'd go as far as saying technology is now a minor point when discussing future success of a crypto currency as they are basically just distributed ledgers with a consensus mechanism, which is not rocket science and they will probably all converge to similar optimised implementations of the concept in the medium term (things are different if one is not just looking at crypto currencies but more generally at all potential blockchain uses as things can get more complex and specialised).
And this monetary discussion we are having is in my opinion much more important as essentially there would be a strong impact globally in the way economies function.
I am no economist either but in your argument I would separate debt and monetary adjustments.
I also feel large public debt owed to private entities are not a good thing as in the long term it somewhat means transferring the burden of today's lifestyle to future generations, and even in the short term it also reduces national sovereignty as any debtor is to some extend constrained by its creditors. But while losing levers in terms of monetary policies which could make debt harder to repay, we could have a currency pegged to gold or use bitcoin as a national currency and still contract debt - so using crypto wouldn't mean the the end of public debt.
Using a non nationally backed cryptocurrency like bitcoin though would (to my knowledge) completely remove the capability for currencies to adjust depending on the relative productivity of their respective economies. I think it is a massive issue. Different countries having different productivity levels is something very normal and unavoidable. And close to us the eurozone is an example of the issues you start having when you don’t have adaptable national currencies to compensate for those differences (luckily for us most studies I have seen say the current value of the euro is rather optimal for Ireland, but several countries for which it is overvalued are struggling because of this and losing their industry like never before - Italy comes to mind). That is with a currency which still allows for some level of adjustment and with a scope limited to a geographical area of mostly similar developed countries. It would be way more challenging with no capability for adjustment at all and a global scope.0 -
nd close to us the eurozone is an example of the issues you start having when you don’t have adaptable national currencies to compensate for those differences (luckily for us most studies I have seen say the current value of the euro is rather optimal for Ireland, but a lot of countries for which it is overvalued are struggling because of this and losing their industry like never before - Italy comes to mind). That is with a currency which still allows for some level of adjustment and with a scope limited to a geographical area of mostly similar developed countries.
If the tweaking of the euro works for us right now, isn't it nothing more than a happy coincidence? Euro is set with the German economy in mind. It wasn't set in our favour back in 2008/9, etc.
That said, I may have participated in taking the discussion down this direction but I simply don't know enough about economics to understand if there can't be any other solution. Perhaps we build a better crypto with a form of governance that would provide some flexibility. No governance model has worked thus far. The most recent version was EOS and their 21 delegates. It looks like they moved to address the governance issues in other crypto's - but if we are to believe Vitalik, they've failed. i.e. undue influence in terms of the more well healed getting into the 21 delegate pool and ordinary 'voters' not really acting (or really being able to act effectively) as the policeman.
No doubt, someone is going to go back to the drawing board and keep trying until they find a model that works. A crypto can have inflation built in - and IF a functional, dynamic, equitable governance model can be found, perhaps certain instruments can be added to adjust for economic performance. Then again, we would be talking about a variety of crypto's again - and if the governance model is not better than what we have, there may be no point in taking it to that level anyway....0 -
makeorbrake wrote: »If the tweaking of the euro works for us right now, isn't it nothing more than a happy coincidence? Euro is set with the German economy in mind. It wasn't set in our favour back in 2008/9, etc.
Yes absolutely agree. This is why I said we’re lucky. It just happens that today Ireland’s economy is rather close to matching the complex and messy compromise which the euro value is. But it is a pure coincidence - it could change in the future (in the past years we have been entering undervalued territory which is probably good if it doesn’t go too far) and there is very little we could do about it. As per Germany the euro value is not really matching its economy but rather undervalued for it. Which as you said is actually serving the country well enough as it boosts exports and destroys competition from other EZ industries for which be euro is overvalued and which are therefore losing competitiveness.
I’ll stop here as it’s really off topic but for reference here is one of those studies I was talking about (see figure 2 - for some reasons Ireland is with souther European countries): http://www.cepii.fr/PDF_PUB/lettre/2012/let319ang.pdf
I don’t think it is a matter of better crypto governance though. It is a matter of whether that currency is tight to a specific country / economic area and can therefore adjust to it, or has a global scope and and by definition can’t be optimal for every country regardless of its governance.0 -
Advertisement
-
I guess the thing about governance is that IF they can achieve a governance model which is equitable and agile/dynamic (and that's a big IF as it's a very difficult problem to overcome), then that would lay the foundation for a more agile/dynamic crypto that could be amended to meet the needs of economic circumstances on the fly. Of course, there's NO point in going there unless the model improves upon the current CB decision making.I don’t think it is a matter of better crypto governance though. It is a matter of whether that currency is tight to a specific country / economic area and can therefore adjust to it, or has a global scope and and by definition can’t be optimal for every country regardless of its governance.0 -
makeorbrake wrote: »I guess the thing about governance is that IF they can achieve a governance model which is equitable and agile/dynamic (and that's a big IF as it's a very difficult problem to overcome), then that would lay the foundation for a more agile/dynamic crypto that could be amended to meet the needs of economic circumstances on the fly. Of course, there's NO point in going there unless the model improves upon the current CB decision making.
I am not getting you sorry? A currency can only have one value at a given time. If that value is too high for some economies and too low for others, how can the currency meet the economic circumstance of all these countries?
For exemple today the euro would probably need to drop by 30-40% to match Greek circumpstances and to rise by 20-30% to meet German ones. How would a crypto currency shared by both countries and in the same situation solve that equation? (Without fragmenting that currency and having a German version and a Greek version, which would solve the problem but then the 2 versions would start diverging in value and really becoming 2 different currencies)
The only system I can think of and that a crypto might facilitate would be that the currency implements a system to allocate funds holders to a specific country, and that on a regular bases a rebalancing mechanism force-transfers funds to reassign wealth similarly to what a devaluation would do (in this case by taking funds away from Greek holders and crediting additional funds to German holders). I.e. after the rebalancing process the value of the currency wouldn’t have changed, but the Germans would have more of it and the Greeks would have less (which is not exactly the same as a German currency appreciating and a Greek one depreciation, but is as close a mechanism as I can think of).
But in practise I think it would be unworkable both for practical and political reasons, and it is completely against the original idea of bitcoin.0 -
Absolutely. I'm referring to governance as a governance model that's dynamic/agile may create the conditions for a crypto to be able to adapt to economic circumstances. I'm NOT presenting a direct solution - more talking about the conditions in which one *may* (or may not) be able to implemented.I am not getting you sorry? A currency can only have one value at a given time.
That's true too. All depends on how the future pans out. By all accounts, we're not going to be left with just one crypto. It's really difficult to look that far ahead.(Without fragmenting that currency and having a German version and a Greek version, which would solve the problem but then the 2 versions would start diverging in value and really becoming 2 different currencies)
Yes, and that's why governance is such a hard thing to get right and still not vere too far from the original idea. That said, I'm not a BTC maximalist - human nature is always to tweak and improve things. It may be a certain governance model could act as a compromise between a protocol that can only be changed is damn slowly by a very rigid consensus mechanism (bitcoin) to something along the delegate line (EOS) - but needs to be more equitable than what EOS have come up with.But in practise I think it would be unworkable both for practical and political reasons, and it is completely against the original idea of bitcoin.
IF that was achieved, perhaps decisions could be taken in real time to respond to economic needs. Of course, they'd also have to design in mechanisms to achieve that.0 -
the strong alts won't die, those related to eth are suffering because eth is suffering, if you think the end is nigh for eth you would be a lunatic, it will bounce back stronger than ever. The whole market is suffering, Bitcoin is the daddy and no, xrp will not displace it!0
Advertisement