mjnaus

And of course Bank of America is just as clueless as everyone else who thinks the industry is here to stay: https://decrypt.co/82573/bank-of-america-bullish-bitcoin-ethereum-defi-nfts

47 minutes ago, Neeranam said:

Indeed, banks are not stupid.

No, they’re not stupid. They’re just slow to catch on. As many of them were spouting the same rhetoric as the likes of @GrandPapillon and @lkn for quite a few years. However, to date the majority have come around, knowing this industry is here to stay and are now working internally on crypto projects.

Like those banks, people will come around eventually. Some sooner than others.

As I and others have mentioned before, the world is moving on. And a hand full of oldtimers having trouble coming to terms with the new reality isn’t going to make a difference.

4 minutes ago, sucit said:

This isn’t too tough to figure who’s on the wrong side but to each their own. 

Spot on. However, thick heads are tough to crack. These same people have been peddling the idea of how the music is going to stop any time now. And they have been beating this drum for a decade now. Yet, here we are… 

1 hour ago, lkn said:

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.

Or, numerous of solid examples have been giving which are dismissed out of the gate without being judged on merit. But by all means; stick to your narrative. It’s pretty obvious that no matter what gets brought to the table, mental gymnastics are being pulled to dismiss it all. Who knows, maybe you simply just don’t get it and others do. I am perfect happy with that. The world is moving on, with or without that handful of oldtimers on TV. 
 

I am tapping out. Be well. 

23 minutes ago, lkn said:

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)

Excellent point! And since we can also make copies of famous paintings, it's good thing that whole art thing was proven to be a scam. Oh wait... was it though?

1 hour ago, lkn said:

Do we agree that demand is solely because people think that if they buy today,

No, we do not agree with that statement. Looking at ETH for example, every transaction on the network requires ETH to pay for gas, hence increase transaction volume brings increase in demand and therefor puts upward pressure on the price of ETH. Furthermore, a large number of NFT's traded on Ethereum are priced in ETH (pretty much everything sold on OpenSea at the moment), ie buyers of those NFT's will need to acquire ETH before they can purchase their NFT's. 

You're sure you want to continue proclaiming you know this space so well and follow it all closely?

7 minutes ago, lkn said:

This I just don’t understand: I have been accepting payment cards online since 2004

Well, that's fantastic for you. My experiences were vastly different. When doing large volume processing in certain industries, everything involving getting merchant accounts, settlement is a complete and utter <deleted>show. The hoops some of my businesses have had to jump through to be able to take payments were bizar and nearly put my last company out of business. And this was a legit business, turning over north of $20mil per year. And when we were able to hold on to a merchant account for a longer period of time, settlement took days (best case scenario) or weeks (more typical).

So while it's great for you that did not experience any of that nonsense, that certain does not apply to everyone else. Having to literally beg some clerk on a powertrip at the bank to release some of our funds so we can make payroll is a reality for some businesses. 

5 minutes ago, lkn said:

Oh the irony… so you also think it actually sounds rather dumb, and I must be explaining it wrong?

 

Yep, gotta side with those give you the blank stares after your explanation. It does indeed sound rather dumb and not quite accurate. But hey, don't beat yourself up over it. It's complicated. And you should choose your audience (hint: discussing the merits of blockchain/crypto at the Sunday bridge club probably won't work ???? ).

Next time you struggle with your audience, find some folks half your age and tell 'em they can ditch their <deleted>ty legacy savings account earning them 0.2% and instead they can earn 10%+ on stable coin yields through DeFi. Pretty simple to wrap your head around and an rather easy sell.

20 minutes ago, lkn said:

At first, they think I am explaining it wrong, because all this just sounds dumb ????

 

Lol. And you never considered the possibility that you don't know this stuff as well you think you do?

11 minutes ago, lkn said:

Do you have some good up-to-date information about how the system runs?

 

This is a slightly simplified flow of transacting through Chai:

1. Consumer connects his/her bank account to Chai

2. He/she makes a purchase using the Chai app
3. Chai creates and manages a wallet for the consumer

4. Chai converts KRW into KRT (Terra's KRW stable coin)

5. Chai sends the KRT to the merchant

Once the KRT lands in the merchants wallet, they can then choose to convert it into KRW (using one of the many offramp partners) or hold onto the KRT.

As I mentioned before, the upside for the merchant is instant settlement (again, something legacy payment networks can not provide) at a fraction of the cost (with legacy networks, 2% is considered a "good" fee rate, Chai charges around .5%). Instant settlement and fees that approach 0% do not exist on legacy rails.

4 minutes ago, lkn said:

Majority of these are probably *not* going over crypto rails:

 

“CHAI serves e-commerce companies with an API called I’mport, that allows them to accept payments from over 20 options, including debit and credit cards through local payment gateways, digital wallets, wire transfers, carrier billings and PayPal.”

 

I.e. this is not that different from the many other digital wallets that tend to piggyback on existing payment infrastructure, unless you do wallet-to-wallet.

 

Also, it does not take days or weeks to settle payments: Domestic payments have had instant settlement in most countries for more than a decade.

 

And CHAI is a startup with $75 million in venture funding offering an API, so this doesn’t seem to be decentralized / peer-to-peer.

 

When something has to be decentralized and trustless, there is an enormous overhead, therefore it is by definition always more effective to centralize. I.e. worst case, the overhead for running a trustless network would be zero, but then the central organization could just run the exact same network (it would not add any overhead).

 

Adding to that, in developed countries we generally trust our central institutions like banks, payment processors, and our government. Therefore it really doesn’t make a lot of sense to pay this enormous overhead, to get rid of the centralized institutions we trust, especially because if we remove these centralized institutions, we also remove a lot of security. I.e. in the current system, there is bank deposit insurance, there is a chargeback system, there is a bank you can call if you have any problems, and they can help you, e.g. if you have been the victim of scam.

 

I just don’t see a world where normal people would prefer the wild west of finance over the established system, especially because, as we have seen, a trustless system attracts all the people that you can’t trust, so you have removed the guard rails, and also released the wolves…

 

The TechCrunch article you're quoting is old (early last year if memory serve me right?) and Chai has since moved to settle ALL payments using Terra's blockchain. 

The fact that Chai is a venture backed company is completely irrelevant. You asked for a real life use case, for regular consumers, that uses blockchain/crypto tech. This is exactly what Chai does; the (venture backed or not) company uses crypto rails to settle e-commerce transactions. IMO, this is how crypto/blockchain tech will make its way into the "real" world. Onramps tend to be centralized, simply because it makes sense (like centralized exchanges).

1 hour ago, lkn said:

What I was asking for, was an actual use case that would appeal to the common consumer, and a use-case that is actually possible today

Ok, I'll bite.

The Chai payment system, is used by roughly 2 million South Koreans at around 2.200 merchants (including Nike and Phillip Morris) to pay for stuff. As of August the platform processes over 100.000 transactions daily by around 50.000 daily active users. Most of these users have no idea they're using crypto rails to pay for stuff. For subscribing merchants, Chai facilitates instant settlement (which compared to days, or weeks on conventional rails matters a lot) at a fraction of the costs of legacy payment networks. 

2 hours ago, GrandPapillon said:

it's a new kind of scam for crypto boys after they failed to convince the world that blockchain was the only tool ever needed for the human species ????

Failed to convince the world or just you and a hand full of other senior citizens? From where I am standing, it appears the world is catching on pretty rapidly right now. 

3 hours ago, fdsa said:

this.

It seems that there are no new "fundamentals" appeared in the past few years.

Well, I’d argue there are definitely new fundamentals. However, the ones I value all revolve around the Ethereum chain and their ecosystem

of protocols. Since DeFi summer last year, there are quite a few Ethereum based protocols with solid fundamentals (all verifiable, on-chain metrics). Things like protocol revenues were not a thing say 2 years back, but they definitely are today. I guess a lot of it comes down to what one would consider to be valuable fundamentals.

2 minutes ago, Chivas said:

Dear oh dear fella the envy is literally oozing off you

 

The salient point is I called both.....and you didn't

Perhaps you should have read through my recent posts before making such silly statements. I am nothing but extremely bullish when it comes to the crypto market. And although I stay away from hyped up, useless assets and focus more on those with actual fundamentals, my crypto holdings have done extremely well the past weeks, months, years... So no, zero envy on my part. The pie is large enough for everyone to make a buck, even those riding on hype and meme coins.

But let's not pretend that picking two assets and predicting their prices to go up while the entire market is in an obvious upswing makes us some sort of financial wizard ???? I'd say that's the salient point here.

24 minutes ago, Chivas said:

Now at $0.90 up some 114% from my earlier shout out on this sub forum

As is pretty much every other crypto asset in the top 50.

19 minutes ago, Chivas said:

I think it was a different thread few weeks ago that several were laughing at my "buy now" signal on $REN at $0.42

 

Today its $0.90

 

Also called $ADA at $1.44 its now $3.04 at time of post

Lol, the same is true for pretty much every major crypto asset. The entire crypto market still pretty much moves as a whole (with a few exceptions). So anybody could have picked any random asset from the top 50 a few months back and be up about a 100% right now. 

16 minutes ago, ed strong said:

At least it sounds like they are pushing in the right direction, however i still remember the infamous tweet by Vitalik.....''Guys can you stop trading''

 

Anyone that can do this and would instruct it has to be slightly worried that a similar scenerio could occur in the future and then where does it leave it? Just seem to flaky to be taking 100% seriously imo.

Yeah, I remember that Tweet. Unfortunately, the Tweet in question has frequently been taking way out of context. It took place during "The DAO" smart contract hack where hackers were exploiting a flaw in the DOA's smart contract and siphoning off large amounts funds while unsuspecting traders were buying into to the DAO. The aim of the Tweet was to get people to stop making additional funds available for the hackers. 

We should also keep in mind that this took place years ago when the Ethereum community was a fraction of what it is today and a similar Tweet today might not have the same impact today as it did then. 

2 minutes ago, gk10012001 said:

I agree with you.  your comments also ring the same:   Yawn..... this is the same rhetoric that has been making the rounds since Bitcoin first arrived on the scene. Yet, here we are. I guess there will still be people making similar statements ten years from now.

Lol, sure. One big difference though: those who were saying "crypto is going to see increased adoption, use cases and value over the coming years" ten years ago have so far been correct. The doom and gloomers have not. 

3 minutes ago, gk10012001 said:

You are drinking the Kook aid.  Millions of crypto have been stolen, lost, etc.  and those are just the big cases that make the news.  To even try to assert that everything is above the board, that the software is verified and validated, that all transactions are secure and inviolate is ridiculous.  Few people really understand block chains.  Ethereum just announced a known bug was exploited if one used an older version of its sw.  Invest as you want.  I can imagine a few Etfs might be worth taking a shot at.  But it is a pure gamble.  There is no real basis to judge the soundness of the investment as one might when buying a stock, such as Does the company make money, is there a financial moat, is expansion or growth likely, and dozens of other possible criteria.  Hoping to buy low and sell high...good luck

I am not drinking the Kool aid. I work in the industry and have a pretty solid grasp on what's taking place. 

Till date, in the main blockchains, the underlying ledger technology has not been compromised once. Let that sink in for bit... There have not been succesfull 51% percentage attacks (not in the major chains like Bitcoimn and Ethereum), no double spending attacks, nothing. 
 

All hacks, thefts you're referring either take place on the wallet level, ie unsafe handling of private keys (like storing funds at shady exchanges without access to your private keys) or smart contracts hacks where a coder simply built an unsafe contract that ended up being exploited. Blaming the later on the underlying blockchain tech is like using the password "1234" for your Gmail account and then stating that Internet is unsafe because your email got hacked. 

As for Ethereum having bugs, well yeah...it's a platform that's under development so there going to be bugs. However, these are always handled and sorted out in a timely manner and user's funds have never been at risk. This is way software moves forward unfortunately... things do break from time to time and will need to get sorted out. 

3 minutes ago, ed strong said:

Ethereum also had a 70% premine and unlimited supply, which brings the whole 'value' into question.

 

With the implementation of IEP1559, Ethereum has drastically decreased issuance. Better yet, once "The Merge" happens early next and Ethereum switches to PoS, issuance will be negative. ETH will become a deflationary asset. 

Have a look at this site: https://ultrasound.money/ and flip the "simulate merge" switch in the SUPPLY GROWTH meter on the dashboard to see what this will look like.

Disclaimer: I am part of the team working on the ultrasound.money site. 

5 minutes ago, gk10012001 said:

I suggest you consider the possibility of some Imploding.  Regulation and disclosure in the USA could be a big issue.  Around the world and in different countries, crypto has different levels of acceptance.  The less than open nature of some crypto and criminal elements is long from a settled issue.  It might not take much for some large scandal or theft to trigger some negative valuations

Yawn..... this is the same rhetoric that has been making the rounds since Bitcoin first arrived on the scene. Yet, here we are. I guess there will still be people making similar statements ten years from now.

Not arguing that regulating isn't a hurdle the industry needs to overcome, however the doom and gloom rhetoric does not sit well with me. I like to think regulation is a good thing, or at least it has the potential to be. First off, regulators taking notice and working on regulatory frameworks validates the industry as a whole; it's like saying "Ok, we admit this crypto thing is here to stay, let's figure out how we can build regulation around it". For crypto to make it to the next level, it needs regulation, period. Another upside I see is that it will increase the adoption rate. Some institutions are already buying, however I'd argue that the majority is still waiting on the sidelines and regulation could be the little push in the back they need. 

"The less then open nature of crypto..." really? A fully open and transparant ledger? Literally every transaction can tracked back till the beginning of time! This is a regulators wet dream come true for crying out loud. Combine this with KYC and AML on the exchange side of things and hiding anything on the major blockhains becomes nearly impossible. 

1 hour ago, ArcticFox said:

What Cryptos are gonna explode?

The one's you can't buy because you don't have an account in either Thailand or your home country due to the KYC requirement even though you have a ton of ID.  Those will be the one's that explode.

KYC and AML can be a major pain the behind, however I have not been able to get it. Even for exchanges like Coinbase and Gemini. It may take a few days and require a few glasses of Scotch to calm those nerves but I always get there in the end.

As for Thai exchanges; terrible exchanges rates, virtually non-existing liquidity for anything beyond BTC and ETH, dubious teams/companies, zero regulation, etc. Best to be avoided.