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Question: How many idiots does it take to make a cryptocurrency succeed?
Answer: One extremely loud and charismatic mouthpiece.
I couldn't think of a good joke answer, maybe one of you can do better. Let me try again...
Answer: Two. One to make it, and a second person to share it with.
Hmm don't really know about that either...
Answer: Zero. Trick question. How can something worthless be successful?
The official answer of choice of the FUDsters.
Answer: It takes a nation.
My serious answer. It can be a country choosing to throw out their existing currency for it (cough looking at you, hyperinflation). Or simply the currency of the internet.
And what does it mean to be successful anyway? At what point can we say Bitcoin is a success? People buying houses with Bitcoin directly not enough? But yeah, one can't be declared a success until it is near-universally accepted. And by accepted, I mean that its existence is accepted and not ridiculed. Perhaps a suitable metric is the proportion of people that are adamantly dismissive of it.
Just for fun I've been keeping a locally tally of positions of the people around me. A great deal of them are dismissive, and very few of them are as enthusiastic as I am. But let's see my local tally... (This one is about general crypto sentiment)
Against: 1111111
Neutral: 111111
Pro: 1111
Just a rough idea, not meant to say anything other than what the people in my circles think. I'm thinking it's probably similar elsewhere but that's just a hunch.
And navigating around real life, people don't want to hear about cryptocurrency in general, and in a room with a bear and a bull, it's never productive, and I've been pondering why. I think at the end of the day, it's simply that we just don't know how it will pan out. But the reason it's so divisive is because in general each party thinks the other party is idiotic.
When I try to talk about these things, I have really one goal: plant the seed of doubt. And there are many stages of this to pass through.
"Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value."
Well, if the person is not willing to accept the parallel that the US dollar has no intrinsic value, there's no point in continuing. But if they talk about it being backed by laws and violence, kindly point them to a country where this obviously doesn't work / isn't working. And to its inevitable conclusion from historical cases of hyperinflation."Okay, Blockchains are cool, but they don't need a token."
This is an interesting one. In the absence of centralization, incentives are the mechanism for maintaining the infrastructure. And a token gives exactly that."Why decentralization?" This refers to points that centralized services work very well and already serve our needs. Also this refers to the slowness of IPFS, or lack of a use case that is "actually valuable". I think monetary systems are already pretty valuable, but they have not passed the test of time yet. At the end of the day, the value proposition of the blockchain is in its trustless nature, as well as an unprecedented level of transparency. This bears emphasizing because people tend to go off the rails about the potential of blockchains. (An aside: people say STEEM is centralized in many ways, and I won't dispute that. But the core protocol still satisfies a useful level of trustlessness and transparency)
"Okay fine, but it shouldn't be worth anything." I actually don't care what it's eventually worth. I'm waiting for it all to stabilize. But I definitely think it will be worth quite a bit, whichever one(s) "succeed". At least a fraction of the value of what each token hopes to replace, anyway.
Okay, I'm done talking with myself but these points above address a whole slew of items that I've heard from others over the past few months.
At the end of the day, I don't care if they are on board or not. I only care they get off their smug high horse and admit to the possibility that cryptocurrencies may survive. (Again: from "no way!" to "maybe...")
And to those that blindly yell "Moon!" "Lambo!" Maybe you need a reality check too. The advice continues to be not to invest more than you are afraid to lose, because who knows? Personally I think the reality is more likely to be "Mountain..." "BMW..."
If you got this far, cheers to you. Let me know what you think and if you got a better variant of the joke at the beginning. I'm feeling like giving some SBIs.
Great thought-provoking article!
Cryptocurrencies will succeed because of past idiotic choices (we are looking for a new solution) and hopefully in spite of our future idiotic choices (always following the latest shiny object).
I believe that blockchain technology will impact our future. Some people will take the high road and seek positive change. Unfortunately, others will see an opportunity to come out on top while pushing others deeper into despair.
Answer: About 310 million. Pick the shittiest altcoin you can imagine, with the worst infrastructure and slowest block time. If Amazon suddenly announced you could pay with it, you'd see it rocketing to the moon. Of Pluto.
Ha I like that. Amazon so far has been pretty silent about it, huh. I remember when there were murmurings about their movement into crypto. Wonder if anything happened there.
I concur with eagle cause head full if flowers and songs , and also, i'd be happy with a large hill and a volkswagen...
Alright alright. I'll go get Opal. I like the visual is the Volkswagen over the hill. Buggy?
Yeah bug or maybe a golf? Def gold though. Im classy like that lawl.
The Answer - - - 42 - - -that's the answer to everything.
There is really only one problem with crypto, and one that will make it difficult to be accepted by some, and that is in order to use it as a currency, you need a card, and a card needs an ID, and thus you lose that invisible metric of it being anonymous. Once people give up on the anonymous part it will likely be more acceptable.
naw man icos are. You have a problem do an ico. Have back problems do an backpain remover ico. ICO are our savior
Absolutely. 42 is the best!
I'm not even sure about the anonymous part. Why do you need a card to use a currency?
Have you ever tried to get a bank account with out an ID? How do you get your money out of a computer and into a fiat computer? Even if you just left it on the computer, how many places can you spend that money online? Where/how are you going to have your purchases shipped to you? UPS/FedeX need a physical address to ship to. Most liquor stores want an ID to buy anything, you can't buy a car without a drivers license, I know a lot of people keep saying "papers we don't need no stinkin papers"..facts of life if you want anything other than the extreme bare needs for survival, you need a card (ID).
Well my comparison is just that cash doesn't need it. The promise is that you will eventually be able to use it in more places. ID laws are a parallel issue IMO. Sure, some things you won't be able to buy without an ID. But plenty of places just take cash, and that could as well be crypto.
One example or two-to buy a beer even if you use cash you need an ID. To receive any medical treatment you need an ID, even if you pay in advance with cash.
With the improving speed of transactions crypto should be easy to use, but there is no current price stability, so it is still going to be a fiat based transaction. Yes you can use your phone to pay for a lot of things in various stores, but the prices are all based in fiat. Right now to much volatility in crypto to be a useful everyday currency. How long ago was it that bitcoin or what ever was almost $20-,000 what is it now $6,000?
Oh sure, but now you are talking about a separate point, which I agree with.
I'm merely saying that the ID bit isn't strictly necessary to function as a currency. They can still check your ID and then request payment in crypto in your examples.
That's true.
Basically, i understood (not much), but i came for the dog dress and got 1111 ... :(
I'll settle for Mountain / BMW -- 8 days a week.
Roger Ver is the answer! Along with icos!!!!
But yeah what you said is true but i still want an ico :)
I stink at thinking up jokes, but I like the post and the points you brought up.
♥
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