Genuine question, is crypto good for anything other than gambling at the moment? I don't ever hear of anyone buying anything with crypto, only exchanging it out for USD. NFTs are basically a punchline now... what is it actually good for?

Well, it should have went to some value from no value. So initial volatility was to be expected.

While the current volatility - I don't know, I guess it's because a transaction is expensive and takes some time. If transactions would cost almost nothing and were almost instantaneous, I'd expect the volatility by now to not be very big. And if there were no premined coins, of course.

And if there were inflation built into the system. BTC proponents boast how it having no such artificial mechanism is good.

They, 1) don't understand that having inflation stabilizes a currency, because there's a stimulus to spend practically and not as part of speculation, 2) don't understand that what they would want to imitate, gold, has inflation too.

So - inflation and cheap and fast transactions are what would make BTC less volatile. It would be a less lucrative speculative asset.

In a Thursday speech, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Paul S. Atkins announced “Project Crypto,” an initiative to modernize the country’s securities rules and regulations to move financial markets on-chain.

“Under my leadership, the SEC will not stand idly by and watch innovations develop overseas while our capital markets remain stagnant,” he said at an America First Policy Institute event in Washington D.C. His plan includes measures to reshore crypto businesses that have left the country and to ensure that “archaic rules and regulations do not smother innovation and entrepreneurship in America.”

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Fiat currency is controlled by central banks and nation-states. Obviously.

It was great to trade and move value around. You could send to other countries, or do work for it. But Bitcoin fucked it all by basically being a ponzi scheme. People below will talk about it and how it holds or increases in value. Thats because most people are still buying in and hording it. Making it terrible as a currency.

I never bought crypto, I only traded, bartered, worked for it. I never put it on an exchange or used another company. Another sink of value and a stupid place to keep it. But that is the vast majority of people now.

So it is not good for anything anymore. Except speculation and hoping your are not the last holding the bag.

Monero is good for completely private and secure transactions. People often use it to buy drugs online... From what I've heard.

Bitcoin specifically was never meant as a currency. There is a reason why people call it "digital gold". I do find myself hesitant to buy it since people buy it with the goal of getting rich, it ruins the entire point.

In theory I actually love the idea of Bitcoin, something independent of resources. I know that sounds weird, but the moment asteroid mining gets big, traditional money storage will get rocked, hard. While something like Bitcoin, in theory, would be safe.

I see deregulation as generally a bad thing if you want any of this to be taken seriously and not be manipulated. At least, for most of them. In theory you could have a crypto that is very resilient to manipulation, I just don't know if that exists right now.

Don't a lot of platforms online not let you buy Monero because of this? Like how do people buy Monero through a reputable source?

In a Thursday speech, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Paul S. Atkins announced “Project Crypto,” an initiative to modernize the country’s securities rules and regulations to move financial markets on-chain.

“Under my leadership, the SEC will not stand idly by and watch innovations develop overseas while our capital markets remain stagnant,” he said at an America First Policy Institute event in Washington D.C. His plan includes measures to reshore crypto businesses that have left the country and to ensure that “archaic rules and regulations do not smother innovation and entrepreneurship in America.”

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(qz.com)

You say that now, but wait for the US economy to completely shit itself.

COVID and the Great Recession were both spectacular for reducing emissions.

Yeah, because the last time humans tried decentralized money it also caused a ton of problems.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency isn't inventing anything new, it's just doing the same old localized bank notes system again, but with computers

Even if crypto had any actual physical value, and solved the stability problems, lack of inflation, etc, it would still end up having control issues, because those already wealthy in a lot of it could manipulate the value easily by simply exchanging it or dumping it.

So basically you'd just end up with the problems of current currencies + all the problems crypto has, which were the same problems localized notes had 200 or so years as well.

The reason for volatility is that any such concept at scale is subject to just the messiest lump of evolving opinions on everything. It will deflate, inflate, deflate wildly because it's utterly subject to the whims of the people without any mechanism to counter a lack of mass consensus on what 'value' is.

We started noticing as things scaled up, there needed to be some regulatory management to counter the whimsical populace. Hard to fight mass inflation or deflation when you can't do anything to manage the "money supply" to offset panic.

Yes, I've remembered my old idea of something like an automated digital barter connected to storage space and computation provided on demand for tokens (every provider an issuer), or something else confirmed by escrow or whatever, after learning that in China 200 years ago people used non-uniform money, that is, all kinds of coins, some literally ancient still in circulation, and somehow that worked.

That wouldn't be as convenient as uniform money as a universal equivalent, but wouldn't have that particular kind of problem, which value manipulation via such globally meaningful action. Simply because there'd be no single variable to manipulate.

Don't a lot of platforms online not let you buy Monero because of this? Like how do people buy Monero through a reputable source?

Yes. There are a few legitimate non gambling non crime uses. But those are typically very minor transactions. The problem is that it is somewhat anonymous and not refundable. It turns out that we really do want those features for almost all medium-high price purchases. Otherwise the thieves and scam artists will jack our shit.

It's a really good way to bribe politicians and public figures.

I mean, global economy really. Crypto has the potential and already fucked a few banks when it shit itself which could've led to awful bank runs.

If/when it destabilizes the American banking system the entire global economy will follow its lead down, at least a bit.

Like I don't think people understand how devastating letting a scam like this into proper finance can be. Finance itself already has way more latitude than it should- wait until this just splits everything wide open.

Bitcoin specifically was never meant as a currency.

Sure it was, look at the name of Satoshi's paper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

It's traceable and immutable. It's a bad way to do anything illegal.

Wouldn't it be funny if conservatives actually gave a shit about being blatant hypocrites?