Just one of the many benefits of living that #cryptolife
P.S. Is there anything more 'decentralized' than self-reporting every single transaction you made in a calendar year to a government agency? I can almost taste the freedom afforded by crypto
Cryptocurrency
- Thread starter Playboi Carti
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P.S. Is there anything more 'decentralized' than self-reporting every single transaction you made in a calendar year to a government agency? I can almost taste the freedom afforded by crypto
The gold vs crypto comparison is always a compelling debate. There are real uses for gold in jewelry, electronics and maybe others that crypto does not have. Plus gold is a physical commodity so only the amount that actually exists can trade. It also has physical delivery. And the gold market is heavily regulated with an increased emphasis on surveillance the last 10+ years (e.g. SMARTS is now used everywhere in the regulated financial markets which makes it very hard to do things like washed trades and spoofing).
Mark Cuban has warned about the amount of washed trading in crypto, but the foremost research on manipulative trading is done by John Griffin, a professor at the U of Texas. Crypto/defi is a catch 22, it exists to be unregulated and outside the purview of the traditional banking system but that opens the door for infinite schemes by the participants. With the amount of money at stake crypto will always be subject to lots of fraud, until it is no longer “defi”.
There is certainly some suspect trading going on. I think it's probably more common in the DEX space though.
I do think it's important to differentiate bitcoin from the rest of crypto as many of those will likely be considered securities. I am bullish on ethereum and it's L2s, but for very different reasons from bitcoin. Also, the amount of gold in existance is unknowable. The amount of bitcoin is fixed.
Ethereum is interesting because of the possibilities for the protocol, for instance with smart contracts. I spent some time about a year ago studying an ethereum spec to compare it with a network protocol like IP and a financial application protocol like FIX, but really didn’t do enough to determine where or how ethereum can be used outside of trading ETH. I’m still waiting to see if ethereum is raised by any of the exchanges or institutional trading firms that I work with. Right now all API messaging among counterparties is FIX and low latency binary protocols like OUCH and ITCH.
The Blackrock CEO just commented a few days ago of how tokenizing will make markets far more efficient. Also, JP Morgan recently completed their first public defi trade on Polygon (Ethereum layer 2). It seems pretty clear that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology will propel us forward to the next generation of financial rails.
Unfortunately, the US is lagging behind developing countries in innovation and cost of payments. Naysayers should really reconsider their antagonism towards this technology. Nothing is more capable of delivering worldwide financial inclusion better than the blockchain/crypto space.
Are you seeing any of these developments in your company? Sounds like not yet?
JPMorgan executes first DeFi trade on public blockchain
The trade was facilitated by the MAS as part of a pilot program to “explore potential decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.”
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Crypto is just electronic fiat. The only thing it threatens is one fiat replacing another. All fiats are eventually worthless.
Bitcoin has a limited supply. Clearly not the case with the printing press
The price is whatever someone is willing to pay for it. No different than baseball cards. Its current valuation is based on faith that it will still be valuable in the future. IMO gold is similar. I know it can be used for practical purposes, but most of those purposes are beyond the abilities of your average human. I can't take a bit of gold and turn it into electronics myself. But I can hit it with a hammer until it fits around my finger or wrist or neck to make me look pretty, which is more than I can do with crypto. Crypto is just a bit in memory somewhere, no different than the "money" in my savings account.
Feels like seashells as currency makes more sense than crypto…
The main difference is that the bitcoin bit in memory somewhere has a predictable monetary policy and is protected from centralized authority. Transaction blocks requires consensus, changes to code require consensus, POW protects against attack....etc.
These features may not be valuable to you. That is fair. But the value proposition of baseball cards is hardly the same.
Throughout human history currency has been developed from the outside in. In other words, people come to agreement as to what does or doesn't have value and meets certain conditions like scarcity. No centralized authority needed to manipulate and control. Bitcoin functions this way. It requires a group of people to believe in it. But that is how money has always functions until only recently. Folks here act like it's some odd idea.
I just learned that gold is edible. We can add that as a use case.
Also, I learned that it rains diamonds on Jupiter and Saturn. Diamond owners better hope we never figure out how to take those babies home by the ton!
If only you could invest in a commodity with provable scarcity.
Well sum'bi'ch, that is actually on mine. Hidden away, but it works just like they said.
