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I am amused that the libertarians that want freedom from government do not see how this is obviously just dictators and would be dictators trying to get back control of their country’s currency. As I have recently posted about El Salvador, they are going from USD (not controlled by their government) to centralized banking run by the president’s cronies, from the NYT article I previously linked to: “Mr. Bukele has treated the bitcoin policy as a state secret. He has classified all information related to Chivo Wallet, which was created with taxpayer funds, but is run as a private enterprise by undisclosed individuals”. And as the other article I linked to several days ago showed, not only is it done at a 17x loss (because energy is actually not that cheap in El Salvador), it is increasing the price of energy for regular consumers (who have replied to Bukele’s tweet about this by posting their electricity bill). Bitcoin proponents shouldn’t use El Salvador as an example of adoption, even Vitalik (co-founder of Etherium) has condemned what is going on.

Regarding El Salvador, from a piece in NYT: Remember my hypothesis that this is just a way for Bukele to either get a cut of remittence dollars and/or issue unbacked virtual dollars? There is also a post in r/CryptoCurrency from an El Salvadorian who gives his impression from being on the ground, he mentions there have been two protests, and a third is scheduled for the 17th of October.

When the internet was introduced, people didn’t buy IPv4 addresses, leaned back, and waited for these to increase in price, because there are only about 3.7M non-reserved addresses. The internet is a tool that can enable services that weren’t possible before the internet, but when Google introduced Maps, it didn’t make data packets on the internet or IPv4 addresses more expensive. Nobody bought virtual tokens in anticipation of selling these at a profit, once GMail was launched, because any monetary value that Google creates by introducing a service, goes to Google’s shareholders, not people who bought IPv4 addresses… And once the internet became popular, it only got cheaper to use. When we started to realize that 3.7M addresses weren’t enough, we invented NAT and IPv6 to solve that problem, rather than increase the price of an address to $55,000. You are correct that Etherium *can* be used to create a value adding business on top of it, but this is just a gimmick, as technically, something like Axie Infinity can just as easily be done without Etherium (and it would use less resources). Many games already have market places, and based on the recent Facebook outage, entire countries seems to be running on top of Facebook. Citizens of these countries don’t have to buy volatile Facebook tokens to participate in the Facebook marketplace, nor is Facebook using any blockchain to enable sellers and merchants to connect with each other. One thing blockchain does enable is that it is censorship resilient, but this has a high price. But why would any legal business need to be censorship resilient? And if they do not need it, why would they pay for it? There are some businesses that *do* need to be censorship resilient, but majority of people do not interact with these, so it’s a niche. Also remember, blockchain is almost as old as the iPhone, so it’s not exactly because we are in the early stages. And the successful businesses are really just the offshore and unregulated exchanges and yield farms, which benefit from the censorship resiliency, but where a lot of money has also been lost by regular people, so value is not created, it is just moved from the losers to the winners (although on paper, a lot of people are winners). Though let me ask you, say I agree with you that Etherium does create value because of Axie Infinity, do you then agree that bitcoin is worthless? If you follow our discussion, I am asking how value is created (by buying a token, and then later selling it for a profit), you tell me we can assign a value to interest paying assets/tokens, I say this can only be done in the same currency, but we want to assign a USD value to the asset/coin, and now you tell me that the USD value is set by the market. I mean no offense, but your answers come across as shallow. E.g. demand is creating the value, the market is assigning the price. Yes, that is superficially how it works, but why is there demand? How does the market determine a fair price? These things can be answered for regular assets, they don’t have good answers for most crypto coins. I wonder if you agree that speculation is driving majority of the demand, and majority of activity on the Etherium blockchain is pump and dumps of the probably more than ten thousand alt coins? But I don’t think we are getting much further in this thread, as said earlier, I appreciate your contribution, and the opportunity to express my views without being met by condescending responses (not mentioning names), like you, I do also find that articulating my view is a good way to make sure I actually understand what I am talking about, think things through, etc., and if I am ever in Bangkok, I am game for a meetup. One last remark, you have avoided answering my direct question about whether or not you think it is a zero-sum game. Take a simple coin like bitcoin and consider this carefully. If you do agree that it is a zero-sum game then consider the mining rewards, every 10th minute, 6.25 new coins are given to a miner, who did not pay for these coins. How does that affect the game? It actually makes it a negative-sum game. As long as there isn’t a massive sell off, the price can hold. But Tesla bought bitcoins for more than a billion, MicroStrategy is closer to 3 billion, bitcoin minors in North America has not been selling any bitcoins this year and is sitting on more than a billion (and has corresponding liabilities), the Mt.Gox estate is sitting on 11 billion worth of bitcoins, all this money is just parked on some entity’s balance sheet, it’s hard to believe that sooner or later, these entities won’t sell out of their bitcoins, I mean, what are they waiting for? The collapse of the U.S. dollar?

We pass a budget each year. If committee or co-owners want something done, that doesn’t fall under regular maintenance or other fixed expenses, it should be in this budget / proposed at the AGM. The budget is basically fixed for a year, and my personal view is that the committee is obligated to do everything they can to follow this budget.

No, because we have an exchange rate based on import/export of the European union, and we are trading a money generating asset. It is closer to a government issuing state bonds in their own currency, that they print themselves (without any backing), and expect to sell them for USD. You are throwing good money after bad, it doesn’t matter that the issuer will give you more worthless currency as compensation for your risk. Although even in this high risk scenario, at least there is a chance that the money earned from selling government bonds will go into helping the local economy and create growth (e.g. invest in education for the population that makes their labour worth more, which then brings in higher taxes, etc.).

> Here are some quick thoughts re: crypto valuation. Valuation, and value creation are two different things. For example, I may have a car that I want to sell you, we can agree on a model to valuate this car, and it is certainly not worthless, but if you buy this car, and sell it again in a year, no value has been created from you holding the car. My question has been very simple: How is value *created* (in the crypto/blockchain space)? But maybe instead you can give me a simple yes or no: Is bitcoin a zero sum game? > For instance Bitcoin isn't very 'useful' but claims its value proposition as a fixed-supply source of digital gold. You may or may not agree with that demand driver, but gold has traded on a similar proposition for thousands of years. At the time of writing an ounce of gold costs $1,760/oz, a price detached from the real world 'usefulness' of gold. Gold does have some fundamentals. The all-in sustaining cost of mining gold is $1,048/oz (2021'Q2). People are willing to pay 3 times that for jewelry made out of gold, so there is a little profit for the jeweler and there is a little profit for the mining company (value creation). It is true that a lot of gold is bought as a hedge against inflation, but if that demand disappeared, I don’t think price of gold would go down much, because the profit from mining gold is within reason, and there is demand for jewelry and electronics. Also, looking at inflation adjusted price of gold, there have been bubbles, but the trend seems to be downward since leaving the gold standard, which is rational, if gold is useless (but it is not entirely useless, as said, it is used in both electronics and jewelry). And as for bitcoin as digital gold; you are right. I may not agree with this proposition, as it’s effectively just numbers in a spreadsheet, of which there are multiple forks (quadrupling the supply), but I digress. But if we do go by this proposition, I am surprised that you would not use the all-in price of mining bitcoins as an indicator of where the price of a bitcoin should be. But of course, this is a bit of a moving target, because if the price gets too low, miners will go offline, making it cheaper to mine coins, and if the profit gets too high, more miners should go online (if we have an efficient market), which just makes it more expensive to mine coins. And then you have to add in the transfer fees, which are also variable, and could offset a low bitcoin price. > Some crypto protocols, like AAVE actually do generate cash flow and can be valued by traditional DCF techniques and valuation multiple techniques. But they are not generating U.S. dollars, so I don’t see how you can value them in U.S. dollars. For example, I have my AmpCoin, and if you buy 100 of these coins, and then transfer them to me, I will give you 15 additional AmpCoins each year the coins are in my possession. How much in U.S. dollars is that worth to you? > Other 'useful' cryptos, like Ethereum need to be spent in order to perform transactions and activities on the network (gas fees), or are are often locked (removed from supply) in order to perform a function. When a network sees an explosion in use like Ethereum has this year, demand for tokens spikes as more users need to access the network and need to bid for Eth to do so. This I can sort of agree with. However, price of ETH should not depend on “how many wants to do transactions on the chain”, it should depend on “how much value is created by doing transactions on the chain”. For example, let’s say this forum adopts blockchain technology, so if you want to react to my post, you have to do a transaction on the blockchain, so that we have verifiable proof that you were the one reacting to my post. If it turns out, that gas fees for this is $10, will you pay it? No, you will just not react to my post, because it is too expensive. I realize that this is not what we are currently seeing, e.g. people are paying hundreds of dollars worth of ETH to effectively store the checksum of a JPEG on the chain. Many do this because they think that they can “sell” it to someone else for more than what they paid in minting fees. Is this rational? > Have said this elsewhere, but a lot of crypto protocols can be thought of as akin to venture capital portfolio companies that trade in real time from seed through to maturity (or death), rather than buried in the private closed-end fund structure of traditional venture capital. Hopefully someone understands the profundity of this. It's one of the cleverer things I've written lately. This explains why you see so many famous VC firms (and VC firms in general) as major operators in the space now. Do you mean like an ICO? I understand why people will initially buy a coin from an ICO, because, as you say, it is basically an investment in a startup. But if that startup does not produce anything of value, the coin becomes worthless, right? So again, value creation has nothing to do with blockchain or coins, it could just as well have been a kickstarter project. You can argue that blockchain creates value in that it allows crowdfunding without having to go through something like kickstarter, and thereby avoid the 5% fee, but kickstarter will argue that those 5% is providing a platform to communicate with your backers, exposure, and maybe some security for the backers (I think majority of ICOs just made the founders rich without producing anything for the backers, where kickstarter has a pretty high success rate). Blockchain proponents often bring up “we can remove the middleman and thereby make things cheaper” as an argument in favor of a decentralized system, but then when you bring up the extreme risk in this space, the answer is “a third party can just do escrow (via a smart contract on the chain)”, but this is just re-inventing the existing system, because anyone doing escrow in crypto space would want a fee for their services, especially if they also have to act as oracle to verify if goals have been met by the counter-party. > Speculation in the space, as well as leverage, pushes up a lot of assets to very high multiples when compared to more mature companies. The resulting high volatility makes the a dream for certain types of traders. This partly explains why you see so many famous Hedge Funds in the space now. Yes, speculation can give you crazy returns. But if no value is actually being created, it is at best a zero sum game, and you just move a lot of money from one group of people to another. Is that good for society? > Some investors are making intelligent bets on growth based on research, but others are just aping around and a few tokens have valuations are nonsensical (no, this doesn't mean they all are). I would be curious to learn what projects you think have value. > That concludes my thoughts on valuation methodologies for crypto and its related valuation quirks. I won't be covering the second part of your post, ie 'what problem does crypto solve and why would anyone want it?'. No worries, I appreciate the time you take to engage in civil and informed discussion.

Hic et nunc runs on the Tezos Blockchain because the minting fees are so high on Etherium. Not NFT-specific, but it does invite the question: What does verifiable ownership even mean? I can download a photo from Instagram and then sell “ownership” on multiple blockchains. What did people actually buy? Best case, they bought a falsified receipt. And this does actually happen, and unlike in the real world, there is no legal recourse. E.g. if I sell you a fake title deed to a house, and it turns out, I didn’t own the house, you can file criminal charges¹. But that is “meatspace” (NFT doesn’t even apply to physical things, even though that is where most ownership conflicts happen, and if you look at past cases about digital ownership right cases, this is often things like a newspaper using a photo without paying the photographer: How exactly will NFT solve that? newspaper can still use the photo as they please). ¹ This is of course hypothetical, as property rights are registered centrally by the government, so in Thailand, you have to visit the Land Office to transfer your property rights, but in many European countries, you can actually transfer your property right via your national digital identity, I did for the last condo I sold about 8 years ago, all without having to use a blockchain.

I appreciate your comment and humoring me in explaining where value is coming from. But I interpret your explanation as “because there is demand, the price will go up”. Demand for real estate and stocks is not based on this This is (one) definition of a bubble, i.e. someone buying an asset, not for its intrinsic value, but because they think they can sell it later at a higher value. Stocks and real estate do go through such bubbles, but that is not how it normally works. You mention Apple: They had profit of $142.4 billions over the last 12 months. This means that for each share you own in Apple, you are technically earning $5.11, although they only paid $0.88 in dividend, but they also use some of the profit to buy back shares, which increase your earnings per share (which should increase share price, it is basically a way to avoid the dividend tax), and they are on a trajectory to increase dividend further (it has been steadily growing over the last decade). Based on these numbers, we can make a quite qualified argument for an upper and lower price of the share. There is uncertainty about the future, and that is why you will see some volatility, e.g. right now, it seems there is a looming real estate crisis in China, this could affect people’s ability to buy new iPhones and other Apple products and services, therefore there is a risk that future profit will be lower, but there is also historic data showing that Apple fares quite well through a crisis, although investor sentiment in the past has always been negative about Apple, which for a long time traded at a price to earnings of about 15. That means, the entire value of the company was only valued at 15 times their yearly earnings, which was bonkers. Anyway, for value creation with stocks: If it turns out Apple sells less iPhones in China over the next 12 months, and thereby decrease their total earnings, there has been no value creation (for the company) and the stock should go down in price. If on the other hand, Apple increase their earnings with 8% over the next 12 months, then that means more profit for the shareholders, and stock should go up in price. So value is very much coupled to how much profit the company is making. Put in much simpler terms: If you start a business, and I pay you $10,000 to own half of that business (half the shares), and two years later, your business has yearly earnings of $20,000, do you think I can sell my shares for more than $10,000? That is because your business did something to create value, be it sell noodles or provide software solutions to companies. If on the other hand, two years later, you are still running the business at a loss, do you think I can get anywhere near $10,000 for my shares? Going back to Apple, they are earning $5.11 per share, and their shares are currently trading at $142. That is a yield of 3-4%. Is that reasonable? Maybe that is on the low side, so it probably is a little overvalued, but this is likely because people think that in a year, Apple will make closer to $8 per share, making the yield (jn a year) closer to 5-6%, and of course because we have the zero-interest policy, a yield of 3-4% which might increase to 5-6% (based on initial investment), looks more attractive than depositing money in the bank at a zero or even negative yield. One can argue that zero-interest is pumping up the stock market, and I wouldn’t disagree, but as long as we don’t expect significant interest hikes in the near future, it is still rational for money managers to put money in stocks, even at their current valuations, because it is better than the alternative, and the risk is still reasonable low based on the fundamentals (there’s a few stocks I would warn against though, e.g. TSLA in my opinion is hugely overvalued). - - - You also mention real estate: This is different mechanisms of course, and here, value is not being created per se. But there are a couple of things that makes prices go up. Everybody needs a place to live, so there is a lower floor for demand. Furthermore, more and more jobs/activity are in the cities, so over the last many decades, we have seen migration from rural areas and into cities. This increase demand on real estate in cities but decrease demand in rural areas. So in that way, it is a zero sum game, but of course, we also have population growth, so that adds to the demand, and square meter per person is increasing, e.g. long ago, we lived 3 generations under the same roof, but as many (but not all!) get richer, they don’t want to share their residence with their parents, and when they get even richer, they want a vacation home. So those are some of the reasons that a lot of real estate has gone up in price. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, a lot of people also wanted to spend more of their monthly budget on real estate, because they wanted to improve their quality of life. So that again, contributed to price increases. But you are correct, that if everyone wanted to liquidate, prices would drop to zero. But this doesn’t make sense, because where would people then live? Though if people revisit their COVID-19 decision of spending more on real estate, and go back to pre-COVID-19 living standards, all the paper value created during COVID-19 will disappear. - - - So to boil it all down: If everybody sold their real estate, they would have no place to live. If everybody sold their stocks, profitable companies would be free, e.g. I could be the owner of Apple and keep the entire profit for myself. But based on what you write, I think you do understand these simple mechanisms, and that it crypto coins are a zero sum game, and price will only go up, if demand increase, it will only remain stable, if current demand levels continue, and if demand decrease, the price will decrease. If you do agree here, the next logical question is then: Why is there demand? Why will there continue to be demand? My hypothesis is regulatory arbitrage (minority of demand), people who wants to get rich quick (majority), and downright fake demand created by wash trades and unbacked stable coins¹. If there is another reason for the demand, then we are back to: What problem is being solved? I.e. if we go back to the business you start, where I put in $10,000 to buy half the shares. Your business will only be profitable (and increase in value) if you actually solve a problem for customers. It can be as simple as feeding hungry tourists, or it can be doing complex logistics software that optimizes the yield on transportation. But the company needs to solve a problem for people, to have profit, and it needs to grow its profit, for its share price to go up. ¹ There are about $130 billion worth of stable coins issued by companies where majority of them are unregulated and refuse to submit to any audits.

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Adding to the above, the “solving problems in Africa” actually started with this bold claim: “Cardano are working with African countries and internet is not needed”. I see a pattern where bold claims are made, then when digging a little, and it turns out there is nothing, we are back at the insults. But then later, we get a repeat of these bold claims. For example, the entire remittance thing we already went over, with quotes from Ripple CEO saying blockchains are not what the banks want. Give me just one problem that is actually being solved by blockchain now, not possibly in the future, and not just some company adding blockchain to their press release to be vogue. And tell me how it is possible for all of us to invest $100 in buying coins, and then all of us end up with more than $100 worth of value. And don’t just brush it off as “you wouldn’t understand” or “do your own research” — I did the math, it does not compute.

That page does not say what problem is being solved. What it says is that they have partnered with Ethiopia's Ministry of Education to create a blockchain-based digital identity for 5 million students. But why does the Ministry of Education need a blockchain to run their identity system? Most countries in Europe have a national identity system used to sign official documents, log in to your bank, etc., and none of this needs blockchain. In fact, a public blockchain would probably leak information that should not be leaked, and you could have some issues if people lose their private key / identity (which, with 5 million students, is definitely going to happen).

In other words: You can’t answer the simple question of what problem they are solving. You could have used the chance to enlighten us, instead you just hurl more insults and again a vague claim with no supporting evidence.

What problem are they working with African countries to solve? You actually think that African farmers, with a low literacy rate, wants to buy a battery operated electronic device to exchange digital tokens instead of cash? This is not solving any problems, this is just some spoiled kid’s misguided idea of helping the poor.

Wow! Talk about wearing blinders! Take e.g. El Salvador, it was previously brought up as “see, countries are adopting it” and I linked to an article about their current energy usage, which shows they are mining at a loss, and even if they could use geothermal energy, consumers in El Salvador will indirectly pay via higher energy prices, because they are a net importer of energy, so it’s not like Iceland, which has enough energy to spend on e.g. aluminium smelting. I also pointed out that if we are to believe Nayib Bukele’s numbers, it seems very much like he is seeding unbacked virtual dollars into his economy. So it starts to look more and more like the government trying to print their own money, which they currently can’t, because their economy is based on USD, rather than the anarcho-capitalistic system that many bitcoin proponents want. I further raised the point that half the population is without internet, so this is useless for the poor. But comments like that get zero engagement, and a few posts later, we are back to “you just don’t get it”, “do your own research, I don’t have time to explain why it is great”, or “but price is going up, so it must have value”.

And you have made it painfully obvious that you can’t argue facts or answer simple questions like how value is created in a zero sum game, so instead you try to discredit your opponent with derogatory statements.

Banks were also bullish on subprime mortgages. If there is profit to be made, they will be there! And with this much interest, there is money to be made on trading fees and custodial services. Just look at how much of RobinHood’s profit comes from crypto trading (60% of their accounts trade crypto), or how many billions CoinBase are extracting from their users. Yes, the banks want in on this! But go back and read the interview with the Ripple CEO that I posted. Ripple is a self-proclaimed “enterprise blockchain company” (and pushing their own token), nonetheless, their CEO said in very unambiguously terms that banks do not want blockchains because there are scalability and privacy problems. Blockchain does not solve a technical problem that the financial industry have, but it is currently a new source of revenue for banks, it’s gambling camouflages as investment.

Yes, it’s fascinating. But are you familiar with OneCoin? That was a ponzi scheme posing as crypto, it’s estimated that people paid $4 billion until it got shut down by the authorities. Wonder how much they could have gotten, had the authorities not stepped in. Before it was shut down, it was also a very well performing asset. And so was BitConnect for that matter… Are you familiar with Tether? They have issued $70 billion worth of USDT tokens, which have been used to buy up coins. The idea is that you can always redeem one USDT for one USD, the problem is, Tether itself will not redeem these, so you can only redeem it for USD if someone is willing to pay you. Fortunately for Tether, for now, people are holding on to their USDT, and allowing Tether to “print money” as they like. Are you familiar with HEX? This is so obviously a scam to make Richard Heart rich, but it has a market cap of $70 billion. Why are people putting money into this? Because those $70 billion are just not there, a lot of the HEX tokens were just an air drop to existing bitcoin holders. Are you familiar with the thousands of coins that went through a pump and dump, and are now worthless, but made their founders rich? Why did anyone buy these coins in the first place? And why do people continue to buy coins that are created to make the found rich. Take Million Token coin by TechLead. See the YouTube video where he introduces it, the coin had no purpose other than make people millionaires by buying the coin, because there will only be one million coins, so when people buy, it will increase demand, and the price will go up. That is, until people wanted to cash out, and now it’s worth only a fraction of when many bought it, and TechLead increased his fortune… There are just so many scams out there, but people continue to put money into this, because of FOMO. People are still investing in SafeMoon for God’s sake… Binance is an unregulated offshore exchange that is under scrutiny (and banned) by many jurisdictions (incl. the U.S.). You cannot withdraw money from Binance and into your bank account, and yet, they have a daily volume of around $30 billion. All these numbers are crazy when you consider that this is just people buying and selling tokens that have no underlying value, in the hope of getting rich. This is not like the stock market. When you buy stocks, you actually buy a share in an actual company that is hopefully profitable (or you expect it will be), and your share effectively entitles you to future profit from this company. I am fascinated by how people are throwing money after crypto, even though no-one can actually explain what it is good for, and nobody uses it in real life. It’s all based on FOMO. You are completely right that it has been the best performing asset, but Madoff also beat the market for twenty years, until it turned out to be based on fictitious numbers. Often people just need some vague explanation of why a scheme works to make them rich, and they are all in. We have seen people fall for “get rich quick” schemes all through history. Crypto is new though in the sense that this was never planned as a pyramid scheme, and there are no central entity behind it, but today it very much works like a pyramid scheme, and some players (like Binance and Tether) do what they can to keep it going (i.e. wash trades and unbacked USDT to keep the price going up). Crypto is also new in the way that this can basically reach the entire world, this means the pool of “greater fools” is surprisingly large, so while regulators are very slow to act, I almost think that regulation is what will eventually cause the market to crash, but I am very hesitant to make any bets on the future of crypto.

What examples? It is always the same BS — this isn’t even the first post that claims to have already explained what it is useful for, but not linking back to *any* comments that actually explains anything. It’s is always just “if you don’t get it by now, you will never get it”. There has of course been the false claims, like how RippleNet improves cross-border transactions, where I have provided interview with Ripple CEO that refutes that, or how El Salvador is adopting bitcoin, but it actually more looks like a money grab from their “president”, etc.

We have Beanie Babies, baseball cards, comic books, even retro video games are now speculative assets: I am just asking what inefficiencies it removes from the existing financial system or what it can actually be used for, as I would like to understand why you guys are so hyped up about it. And then I provide some context about the misunderstandings, like how El Salvador is banking the unbanked, or Ripple improving cross-border transactions with blockchain technology… but I can see how this can come across as very impolite to someone who just wants to hear “number goes up” and 100+% by the end of the year… I mean, if it turns out that blockchain technology is actually useless, then you guys will feel rather foolish, when your paper wealth goes up in smoke. But don’t worry, bitcoin is only 10+ years old. It also took more than a decade before people realized the internet could be used for communication and stuff… or maybe I remember that wrong, I think it was actually useful from day one, but I am sure there has been other technologies with a market cap of more than a trillion, which took a few decades to mature to the point of actually being useful for something…

Nobody pays thousands of dollars for copies of art, but people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their name associated with a jpeg that anyone can just right click and save to their computer.

If you read what I replied to, it was a prediction that BTC would go up 100+% by the end of the year, and take altcoins with it, hence why I included that. But let us just discuss altcoins, so can you answer my questions? Right, so it is valuable, because why else would people pay the prices? Ever heard about speculative bubbles? Here we go again… after five pages and proponents still can’t explain what problem it solves, anyone who doesn’t get it, is just a dinosaur who would also pooh-pooh the internet, if it was invented today, that never gets old. But I know full well what value people get from coins, it is effectively a casino / lottery ticket / get rich quick scheme, but the only value being created is in the regulatory arbitrage field, but that is not enough to repay all the suckers who have put money into this scheme.

It was specifically about BTC, but do tell me, what value can I derive (in the physical world) from doing a transaction on the Etherium blockchain or “owning” an NFT (you of course know that there are multiple chains selling ownership to the same NFTs, and that some people are selling NFTs of art they do not themselves own, i.e. it’s no different than selling you a certificate stating you own a star)?

I’ve only sat on the floor at “picnic style” restaurants, e.g. bamboo huts near a river or lake. But in Japan it is not unusual to sit on the floor at a restaurant. As someone who has frequently sat on the floor (with Thai people), it really does feel more natural. There is both the communal feel, but also the flexibility, you can be 3 people or 10 people, no need to move around furniture, and if you are 10 people, there is still room for one more. Many meals are also eaten away from home, e.g. construction workers, or after ceremony in the temple — the logistics involved in having foldable tables and chairs in these situations would be absurd. As for the communal feel, also note that at Thai restaurants, you order food together and share it, nobody sits with just their own plate — I think that is somewhat connected to their concept of eating and sitting on the floor, i.e. most meals for them is more of a picnic, and food is just an excuse to socialize (even though they really like food). Edit: To elaborate on the “always room for one more”, this also makes it less formal to invite people to join you. E.g. if me and my girlfriend is eating on the floor, we can ask the cleaner if she wants to join us, and she can just sit down, maybe eat something, maybe not, maybe just talk, and she can easily leave without it being awkward. Imagine if we are sitting at a table, and we ask her to join us, of course it could work, but it’s an entirely different dynamic.

Who needs partners when we have trustless blockchain technology? Oh… maybe because Ripple likes to pretend to be an enterprise blockchain company, but this is not what they are selling to the banks: Banks are unlikely to use distributed ledgers to process cross-border payments for now because of scalability and privacy issues, according to Ripple, one of the most prominent startups developing the technology […] Several banks have tested or deployed a system Ripple developed for international payments that uses a “bi-directional messaging” that can eventually plug them into distributed ledgers, but xCurrent’s technology itself “is not a distributed ledger,” Schwartz said. […] While xCurrent uses cryptography, each party using the system does not have access to a shared ledger, as is the case with distributed ledgers like ethereum or Hyperledger Fabric. Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-ripple-idUSKBN1J92JG

Why are bitcoin and altcoins destined to go up in value? Do we agree that price for these coins is based on demand? If so, what is causing this demand? Do we agree that demand is solely because people think that if they buy today, they make a good investment, as in a year, they will be able to sell at a profit? As someone who studied pure math, do you think this can go on forever? Footnote: A lot indicates that demand is not organic. Price is in large part set by a lot of wash trading and unbacked stable coins. Just add up the market caps of the largest five crypto coins, and you get more than 1.5 trillion dollars. Do you really think there is even a fraction of that amount available in fiat, if people wish to cash out (when they realize that their dentist will not accept their DentaCoin)? Most exchanges don’t even let you trade fiat, instead they use things like USDT ($70 billion market cap) and pretends it’s the same as real U.S. dollars, but it is not!