Is anyone else starting to become a bit excited?

cnocbui wrote: »

A little bit? currently has €27.4 billion in bitcoin. The Irish government's 2019 revenues amounted to €61 billion.

I think you and I differ in our definition of small.

The Irish government should have invested some of that €61 billion into bitcoin in 2019. Just think how much extra money they'd have today to squander

cnocbui wrote: »

A little bit? Grayscale currently has €27.4 billion in bitcoin. The Irish government's 2019 revenues amounted to €61 billion.

I think you and I differ in our definition of small.

A hedge fund that calls itself "A trusted authority on digital currency investing, Grayscale provides secure access and diversified exposure to the digital currency asset class." It's hardly surprising. I'm pro bitcoin but it currently exists for speculation

They also have a load off Ethereum by the way

OEP wrote: »

A hedge fund that calls itself "A trusted authority on digital currency investing, Grayscale provides secure access and diversified exposure to the digital currency asset class." It's hardly surprising. I'm pro bitcoin but it currently exists for speculation

Welcome to every financial market there has ever been.

cnocbui wrote: »

It's the ripple situation all over again. These countries look at digital currency tech and then roll their own, just like all those businesses Ripple touted as partners did; came, looked, bought into the blockchain tech itself and ignored the ripple tokens.

Ripple was always a cash grab, forked off the Stellar Charitable foundations Lumen tech - originally designed as a trustless and minimal fuss/fee way of providing a remittance currency for the 3rd world and allowing the huge chunks of the 'unbanked' to afford themselves some financial security.

With its ground-up tech, provisionment of smart contracts, and squeaky clean profile I think Stellar/Lumen has a ways to go yet. The DeFi plays have already been in place via SMS credit transactions in Africa for over a decade at this point. Throw in the huge scope for microfinancing and P2P lending that this would facilitate, and you can see why I'm slightly less cynical than most about it.

cnocbui wrote: »

Two shifty guys meeting in a parking lot, wondering if the other has a knife or some mates parked around the corner who might soon show up, facing off with their phones waiting for a trade to go through so one of them can get real fiat cash off the other or pharmaceuticals, just isn't a legitimate basis for a crypto ecosystem.

This has always been the reductio ad absurdum of cryptocurrency arguments, you just left out the contract killers and pornographers

I appreciate that its not a completely unfathomable position, but that's just not the reality of how black market economies work in 2021 - drugs and fiat included.

Not sure your age range/demographic, but I've a feeling you may be shocked at how prevalent the likes of Signal/Instagram+Revolut transfers are in contemporary Irish society as regards exactly the sort of scenario you're outlining above. Without the mass gangland shootouts of course.

OEP wrote: »

So back to your original point, Bitcoin doesn't have a use beyond speculation

Over the past few years Bitcoin has had a use for me in that it stored my value far better than my bank did.

cnocbui wrote: »

Well it does for some people, such as Africans and Venezuelans. There are unbanked across the world who have had their lives changed by the combination of bitcoin + mobile phone, but that goes against the common perception that bitcoin isn't used for transactions, so you probably don't want to acknowledge that reality or even hear about it.

Bitcoin really isn't that suitable for this. It was the brandname, so it was used, and saved a lot of peoples asses in terms of DeFi capital flight during a complete economic system collapse. Can't argue with that. But Stellar Lumen, which I've outlined above, was literally designed to address this use case and mitigate all of the technological shortcomings of BTC.

cnocbui wrote: »

Well it does for some people, such as Africans and Venezuelans. There are unbanked across the world who have had their lives changed by the combination of bitcoin + mobile phone, but that goes against the common perception that bitcoin isn't used for transactions, so you probably don't want to acknowledge that reality or even hear about it.

So Ethereum hasn't done this also? My argument was against your point that Bitcoin is where it is based on its own merits and people see its uses where as Ethereum is only there on hope. You have now brought up use cases for bitcoin that ethereum also has

pioneerpro wrote: »

To writ, trustless architecture is the way contract and auditing based stuff has been pivoting to - particularly in developing economies.

I don't believe you. In legitimate business activities, there is always going to be a mutually trusted entity, which means decentralisation is totally unecessary.

pioneerpro wrote: »

And huge cost? Not sure what you're citing.

POW. The thing that actually makes decentralised consensus possible.

pioneerpro wrote: »

Harvard Business Review from last year
https://hbr.org/2020/05/building-a-transparent-supply-chain

It's just a bunch of buzzwords. Every benefit mentioned within it gained from a blockchain would be more cheaply and easily gained by from a database. Bonus points to the writer for coming up with the idea that it's too difficult to get 17 ERP systems to communicate with one another, but somehow simple to make them all communicate via a blockchain.

I don't mean to come off curt. If someone can identify a worthwhile use for a blockchain other than a censorship/inflation-resistant currency/SOV, I'm genuinely interested to see it. But we've had a decade. They're not appearing.

OEP wrote: »

So Ethereum hasn't done this also? My argument was against your point that Bitcoin is where it is based on its own merits and people see its uses where as Ethereum is only there on hope. You have now brought up use cases for bitcoin that ethereum also has

I don't know, I would welcome you providing links showing etherium use among the world's unbanked.

cnocbui wrote: »

But was stellar lumen used by illegal Africans in Paris to send their promised land earnings back their relatives back home, or by Venezuelans as a way of getting their capital 'out' of the country while they themselves tried to get across the border?

It's great to get all technical and nerdy and preach the counsel of perfection, but what actually got used by people? I have only ever seen articles telling such stories in terms of Bitcoin, never once any other token.

Here's a recent one: "Miss Aurra, Zimbabwe: Bitcoin Changed My Whole Life" on the podcast here: https://bitcoinundco.com/en/zimbabwe-donate/

It was the lowest barrier to entry one, with the most familiarity and routes to access. Of course it was used. No denying that.

Going forward, and its not about being technical and nerdy - it's literally about a charitable foundation - you'll be seeing an increasing pivot to lumen for banking the unbanked, P2P and microfinancing, and hedging against hyperinflation. The Stellar Compliance Protocol and their reputation has a lot to do with that outside of the tech-stack.

https://akoin-io.medium.com/why-akoin-chose-stellar-40c0a986ef91

pioneerpro wrote: »

I think your mind has been well made up, and no amount of evidence or citations I could provide is about to change that.

You're right, my mind is made up - but I've explained why, and like I say, it has been a decade. We should be beyond pilots, partnerships. Where's the mass adoption?

That Deloitte study, really... Why would we need a blockchain to store details of cattle? We literally already have centrally maintained databases of them.

Having been to Deloitte's blockchain lab myself - I'll retract my earlier statement. I can give one additional use-case for a blockchain in addition to what Bitcoin provides: extracting consulting fees from the clueless.

OEP wrote: »

I don't have enough in depth knowledge to get into an over and back about this but, similar things were said about the internet when it first appeared. Took quite a while for mass adoption too.

TBH I make my money from resistance to change. It comes with time, but the tech sector has always been notorious for early adopters vs. legacy positions battling it out on the social, economic and technological factors. Nothing has changed since 1991 in that regard.

No use trying to argue a point in bad faith, only leads to driving people away from open and frank discussion and we're all here to make money - I've had to accept that disagreement is healthy in that context. Otherwise you end up with a mad echo chamber like Wall Street Bets or some crypto pumping facebook group lol

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

Federal Reserve system is down, this is a good reminder that bitcoin been working nonstop for dozen years now against constant attacks

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2AO2I1

Laughing stock

Im not a believer in technical analysis for crypto over all but every YouTube crypto guru is calling rhe bottom of the drop at 41k.
I feel its a self fulfilling prophecy, all their followers dont buy until it hits there and it creates the stop. Its also spread far and wide by people on forums that its gonna be the bottom.
What do you reckon, as good a spot as any to try catch the bottom of the dip