The author seems to expect that the changes created by cryptocurrency should be visible immediately. It is a lack of patience, and lack of understanding that changing deeply rooted systems and behaviors takes time.
People have never managed software where if you lost your "password", your money was gone forever. They never had to keep a 12-24 word recovery phrase. They've never sent money to addresses that look like hash strings. Their money value was never this volatile (in some countries anyway) and never this complicated to use (understanding and waiting for block confirmations, looking up transactions in the blockchain explorer).
That's why Coinbase exists, to obfuscate these complexities, to sell security as a service. The cryptography behind cryptocurrencies allows you to basically be your own bank vault; this is not intuitive to people.
The fundamentals for Satoshi's vision have been laid out, the rest of the implementation details will come in time.
> People have never managed software where if you lost your "password", your money was gone forever. They never had to keep a 12-24 word recovery phrase. They've never sent money to addresses that look like hash strings. Their money value was never this volatile (in some countries anyway) and never this complicated to use (understanding and waiting for block confirmations, looking up transactions in the blockchain explorer).
Well yeah, nobody in his sane mind would have designed such an unpractical system. It took a bunch of out of touch, fresh out of school computer scientists to reach such nonsense.
I doubt that blockchain was invented by a fresh out of school computer science graduate. The breadth and depth of technical complexity (even if just the white paper) that blockchain covers requires time and experience to accumulate.
That is a good analogy, if you choose to you can use a bank (or Coinbase) but you also have the option of doing everything in cash or managing your own Bitcoin wallet. Prior to cryptocurrency if you wanted to quickly send money around the world without going through a bank or other financial institutions you were out of luck.
Banks can't print money either, and this isn't some "ackshually it's the Mint" thing: banks have the power to create debt. But this isn't special, because you and I also have the power to create debt. What makes a bank special is that debt is its business (so most of its operation concerns the management of debt), and much of its debt can be called on demand, and so we call banks' debts to us demand deposits.
Fractional reserve is just a particular kind of regulation placed on banks' creation of debt, and it usually isn't the most important one. The practical limit of banks is that they have to be able to extinguish their debts (which we call withdrawal), including being able to transfer them to other banks in exchange for cash (which we call clearing), at the whim of the creditors (you and me).
The problems with banks are the problems with debt generally, but that's much trickier than some glib remarks about monetary policy.
You can't really create debt with money that you don't have, as the banks do.
You can't make 1000$ appear on my bank account and say " you now have a debt of 1000$ to me". You need to give me physical money. But bank can create this money they don't have.
The bank isn't creating that money. When you deposit $1000 in a bank account, you lose that $1000 and gain 1000 FunnyMonies instead. The bank can then turn around and give that $1000 to someone else. At the end of the day, there's only $1000 running around.
What makes it look different is that we treat 1000 FunnyMonies as if it were $1000. So instead of saying "there's $1000 and 1000 FunnyMonies" we say "there's $2000, oh look, the bank created money." But it hasn't, and when the difference really matters, and the bank doesn't have the ability to give you back $1000 for your 1000 FunnyMonies, that's when bad things happen.
Let's be careful about what scenario we're talking about.
> You can't make 1000$ appear on my bank account and say " you now have a debt of 1000$ to me". You need to give me physical money. But bank can create this money they don't have.
This scenario doesn't involve real money at all. It's just two IOUs in opposite directions. You and I could make such an agreement trivially.
> I think it can lend it up to 10 times the money it has in its vault (not sure about the exact amount)
So this involves real money. But it's not a special bank power. You can loan a friend some cash, which they give to you for safekeeping. Then you can loan another friend the same physical dollars, which they also give to you for safekeeping. Then another, and another...
Now you have $10k in cash deposits even though there's only $1k in physical cash.
The only reason you can't do it in practice is that nobody wants to give you their money for safekeeping. You don't lack the ability to multiply money. You lack anyone handing over money to do it on.
You can avoid the fees on some bitcoin exchanges if you're a market maker, and with the volatility that's pretty easy most days. I made a couple 0% fee trades today alone. But, the second part is definitely true... you still need deep pockets to hold a long position.
Buy and hold doesn't have any recurring fees. If you look at the opportunity cost between crypto and any other financial security in the market, its an easy decision.
I suspect the investment banks that say they're going to stay away will quickly get FOMO and jump in sooner rather than later.
Crypto is always in the headlines and will constantly occupy the headspace of trader's colleagues and peers, so it's just human nature that they will not be able to resist having a taste.
It's for wholesale drug operations. Usually drugs go at one time, money comes back another time. Only now instead of cash you could just use a crypto, but figuring out how to liquidate enough of it would be difficult.
Quick question, do you have to download the full ethereum chain before you can start messing with smart contracts? Or is there a "light" client you can use?
You shouldn't use the main ethereum network when testing smart contracts - develop on a local testnet and then if you want, on a public testnet (eg rinkeby or ropesten) first
I've had success listening to events using web3, against both testrpc and geth (on private and test networks). What version of web3 & testrpc are you using?
Why does he need to call you back? Stock market crashes are nothing new. Bitcoins are basically the same thing as stocks in terms of the way they're traded.
No one is saying a price crash isn't possible. But it won't be caused by some liquidity issue, it'll just be people selling off.
I deposit USD to an exchange...then use that USD to place a Bitcoin buy order. Then I sell some Bitcoin another buyer on the exchange, who was only able to make this transaction happen because they too deposited USD or fiat into their account.
I get the money, they get the Bitcoin. Who is getting screwed?
If the banks cut off access to the funds (e.g.: GDAX can no longer accept USD deposits/withdraws, or possibly even the funds in their own accounts) they basically can't be considered an "off ramp" anymore. If all exchanges were barred from doing business from U.S. banks, than there is no way to get money from 1 BTC (or any other denomination/currency). Herein lies the screw.
LocalBitcoins would become a seller or buyers only recourse, for U.S. customers anyway, which takes a lot of coordination/time, and essentially becomes an obvious form of money laundering.
Nobody thinks of BTC in BTC terms. They think of it in USD terms, and right now the notional amount of BTC is higher than the amount of USD that will be available to meet it in the event of a very sharp correction.
At least, that's my view. We'll see if there's a flight to liquidity when the bubble in Bitcoin's price finally pops.
People have never managed software where if you lost your "password", your money was gone forever. They never had to keep a 12-24 word recovery phrase. They've never sent money to addresses that look like hash strings. Their money value was never this volatile (in some countries anyway) and never this complicated to use (understanding and waiting for block confirmations, looking up transactions in the blockchain explorer).
That's why Coinbase exists, to obfuscate these complexities, to sell security as a service. The cryptography behind cryptocurrencies allows you to basically be your own bank vault; this is not intuitive to people.
The fundamentals for Satoshi's vision have been laid out, the rest of the implementation details will come in time.