Trump NFT Trading Cards - WTF!

[jimboston]

but if it stabilizes, so as-to-become a ‘valid currency’ in more parts of the world…

Doesn’t that make it lose interest to investors like yourself who play the market?

I’m saying it can’t be both.

(if successful) it won't be both... it will transition from being one into the other based on the adoption curve. Early = volatile , Late = stable

But listen, I'm just outlining what the hardcore believers think. There is a massive and growing camp of crypto maxi's that think BTC is already dead for a few reasons (most of them are ETH maxis)
a) it's sticking with POW (proof of work), meaning it continues to be a large electricity use chain.
b) It is by it nature inflationary (at least until the end of the century)
c) You can't build anything on the chain directly (you can't have smart contracts/dapps built on chain to leverage it's security for transaction beyond just send/receive BTC)

They would point to the fact that (again aside from price action) Ether is true 'ultra sound money' because the switch to POS from POW transitioned it to being deflationary. (new supply is being created, but an equal or greater amount is being burned through network gas fees)
https://ultrasound.money/

Also the fact that you can actually build stuff on ETH network to leverage it's security.

You lost me with some of the acronyms… let me paraphrase and you correct me?

You say…
- It’s not ready for “prime time” as a currency replacement in the West.
- Some think it’ll never be a good currency replacement, in part due to energy use and in part do to limitations of the technology.
- It’s possible ETH (Ether/Ethereum) may be a better option in the future as the technology allows for some options that could add value.

Is this an accurate and dumb shorthand?

[mookiemcgee]

oh man, it's really rough trying to paraphrase these types of things, so

- It’s not ready for “prime time” as a currency replacement in the West.
true, for alot of reasons beyond price volatility. It also doesn't want/need to 'replace' dollars, just be an alternative. dollars are dollars and if we didn't have them what would you value bitcoin in? 1BTC = 1BTC , 1USD = 1USD , 1USD ≠ 1BTC

- Some think it’ll never be a good currency replacement, in part due to energy use and in part do to limitations of the technology.
True, 'Bitcoin maximalists (this is what my maxi shorthand stands for) actually believe the energy use part is critical to it's security and makes it safer than POS (proof of stake, there is no mining). But there has been a large and growing community of people that believe that the energy burn of mining is 'unnecessary' to have a secure decentralized network. Parsing that out any further gets really in the weeds, but I'm happy to clarify any terms.
BTC Maxis also think that the technological limitations (which are actual self imposed) are a strength. BTC does one thing and one thing only, and it does it very well, very securely. It send BTC to other BTC addresses. In that sense it can only ever serve that function using the actual BTC blockchain. A just wrote a whole nother paragraph about how BTC can still be used offchain, but it got way too nerdy so I deleted it.

- It’s possible ETH (Ether/Ethereum) may be a better option in the future as the technology allows for some options that could add value.
It's hard to say better, it's just different. It's more centralized and less secure but slowly it's becoming less centralized and more secure. It can just 'do' a whole lot more.
Most blockchains that are popular and have big marketcaps are not at all 'copying' or reinventing BTC. Most all of them are building to compete with ETH. The main reason is 'smart contracts'. It's really hard to give you a quick concise answer on what they are or WTF I mean by that but I'll try to maybe highlight some of the differences.

with BTC there are wallets, and there is BTC. All you can do is send BTC from one to the other, you can't store any other types of coins on the chain.
In an ETH wallet you can hold ETH, or USDC (stablecoin pegged to Dolalrs), you can hold basically any of the hundreds of thousands of shitcoins that have 'launched' on the ETH network (you can also hold 'wrapped BTC' in an ETH wallet.

With an ETH wallet you can interact with protocols that do 'banking-like transactions', without involving a 3rd party (like a bank): On Aave -https://app.aave.com/ - you can 'lend' your USDC, and earn interest. then if you want you can borrow wBTC or ETH and pay interest until you return it

With an ETH wallet you can interact with a 'Decentralized Exchange' which will turn ShitcoinA into ShitcoinB, again without needed to involve a bank or 3rd party that needs trusting. Uniswap is the leading DEX - https://app.uniswap.org/#/swap
This is critical, because without a decentralized swap the only option for people before was to used a centralized service. FTX was a centralized exchange, as I'm sure you read they stole users money and used it to gamble on leveraged trading crypto. This can't really happen with something like Uniswap, explaining why is very hard in plain language but basically (FTX = you give them your funds, you trade and withdraw those funds., with uniswap you send the coin you want to trade, code takes it and spits out the coin you want. Liquidity for this is provided by anyone for as long or short as they want (you can be the bank if you want)

so idk... they are just different. ETH isn't really trying to be a 'currency' for buying milk at whole foods... but it might end up being a good one. Elon musk believes dogecoin would make a much better currency than either ETH or BTC. Could be that we all keep using ETH style wallets, but use USDC to interact with merchants. Who knows, it early and there is still upside if one of these things really does become a dominate global currency.

It might end up that BTC just isn't good for massive scale microtransacting (what you probably mean by the term currency and how i've been using it above), but it's actually great as a store of value. Nobody actually moves BTC around much, but other things are valued against it instead of valued against dollars. In the same way people don't really use gold to buy shit (they could but it's inefficient), but gold still has value and is a good barometer of how the USD is doing (when you don't want to just measure it against other fiat).

[jimboston]

I get like 80% of what you are saying and your assumption of how I use the term ‘currency’ is accurate.

(depending on how you define micro-transactions

It is still a little ‘complicated’ for most average users.
There is also trust and adoption rate.

I mean I know people who are my age that still won’t use ATM’s to make deposits!
Then there’s the younger peeps… my daughter got home from work last night and ‘deposited’ her paycheck at 11:30pm through her phone. (It’s a new job and only working there over break so she didn’t bother with direct-deposit.)

So there are definitely extremes based on comfort with technology, age, access to technology, need, etc.

Living in the USA with a (currently) stable currency I don’t see a ‘need’ to adopt this as a currency, and I’m personally not well-informed enough to really wanna put any money into the market to ‘play’.

That said, I could see it having value as a currency for me when I travel abroad. Right now I have to exchange dollars for local-currency and pay those fees… or I can use a card (if a vendor accepts) and pay those fees. If there were a universal currency I could pay with via some App, and the fees were zero/low to change dollars to that currency then it could be useful in that scenario.