Note that Patrick Cox is prolly a lot younger than me, but he writes for Mauldin Economics, which is definitely an old-people resource.

The straight press is largely dismissive or agog of cryptocurrency. The financial press is no different. Mauldin himself called it "goldbugging for nerds" maybe three years ago but now that things are moving at hyperspeed they kind of have to talk about it?

And the shit they don't get could fill a book.

Interestingly enough, the whole "energy" equation appears to be gaining some traction.

rthomas6:

I'm writing off BTC until I see some tangible progress with improving tx time and decreasing fees, i. e. fixing scaling issues. Back in 2013 when I was more into Bitcoin, people were talking about the utility over fiat as much or more than they were talking about the price. The rising price was seen as a secondary effect of the ability to send money to someone in another country quickly for a very low fee, the prospect of replacing online payment companies like Paypal, and its utility in the future for things like land registries and name services.

Now nobody says those things anymore, because Bitcoin's transaction times, fees, and volatility make those things impossible. Most people are buying Bitcoin because they want to sell it to someone else at a higher price. They don't believe in its original purpose. Most don't even seem to understand or care about the utility of the blockchain.

OTOH I'm excited about Ethereum, because the community cares about scaling and has several ideas they plan to implement, and even a rough timeline. I also appreciate the focus on utilizing its blockchain for things other than sending Ether, for things like land registries, name services, and domain/application-specific currencies, and that smart people have already built and are running these services on Ethereum as we speak (and also digital cats).


posted 2320 days ago