Slashdot Mirror
Crypto Growth Nears 'Ceiling,' Ethereum Co-Founder Buterin Says (bloomberg.com)
The days of explosive growth in the blockchain industry have likely come and gone now the average person is aware of its existence, according to Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum. From a report: "The blockchain space is getting to the point where there's a ceiling in sight," Buterin said in a Sept. 8 interview with Bloomberg at the Ethereum Industry Summit conference in Hong Kong. "If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchain at least once. There isn't an opportunity for yet another 1,000-times growth in anything in the space anymore." Growth in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the blockchain community through its first six or seven years was dependent on marketing and trying to get wider adoption, Buterin said. "That strategy is getting close to hitting a dead end," he said.
When the shoeshine boy is telling you what to invest in, you can be pretty confident that the boom is over.
Everybody's student loan money is near spent.
and money to be laundered. Those two things form the backbone of the crypto economy because they're both things that have a high risk tolerance. You don't care if somebody doesn't pay you for your dime bag because you're selling a bag of literal weeds for $100 bucks. If 10 folks stiff you and one pays you're way out ahead. The same's true for generic money laundering. The money's no good if you can't use it cleanly and without being caught, so you don't care if you lose half of it to transaction fees.
There's growing pressure to crack down on money laundering via bitcoin; mostly because governments have just plain caught up and caught on. And there's growing pressure to legalize drugs. There's where your ceiling is. A few more high profile money launderers will get caught (Bitcoin really isn't that good for it, it just took a while for the gov't to notice it was being used) and a few wins by left wing parties and that'll kind of be that when it comes to crypto.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Was bound to happen eventually. This is the classic behavior of every pyramid scheme: At some time you have all the morons with money in there and do not find enough new ones. Then the whole thing comes crashing down.
Will be interesting to see ho it happens here, because crypto currencies (not "crypto", _that_ is something else) are a bit differently structured than the classical pyramid schemes. They are fundamentally the same though.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The growth is all based on people thinking they're all going to get rich. We're running out of suckers is the problem here, so we're not going to get another 1000x growth in value because there's not enough crazy people with money left.
The problems with cryptocurrency are twofold. Transaction prices have spiked to more than $1 sometimes. That's not particularly attractive as an additional fee. Bitcoin has had even HIGHER fees.
The second problem is volatility. If you hold the currency for just 6 months you could suddenly either lose 90% of its value, or gain 10x. Neither one is good for using it for transactions.
Both problems need to be solved, otherwise cryptocurrency is going nowhere.
The past few weeks has shown over 100% growth while everything else is in the red. TO THE MOON.
I swear, I'm surrounded by idiots. "Oh, it's a scam!" "No, it's a stock!" "It's a ponzi scheme!" --- Guys guys guys... It's just money. "Digital Cash." Powered by a novel idea. You don't invest in Euros like stocks, do you? You don't think about Pesos when buying Cheetos at an American 7-11, do you? Of course not. Then why are you trying to complicate Cryptocurrency? It's just "Digital Cash" for buying stuff on the Internet, when you don't want to mess with (or have access to) credit cards. Get out of this speculative investment mindset. See it for what it is, and what value that has. CASH.
Read his Twits... it's comical
Just hoping I can get an AMD RX680 cheap when they come out.
who traded most or all of his Etherium for a pizza or soerng? (Note - I haven't RTFA yet.)
A cryptocurrency could go up a lot again if one becomes commonly used.
Right now, a very small percentage of the population holds any cryptocurrency, and a tiny percentage of worldwide financial transactions are conducted in cryptocurrency.
If this changed - if one became popular for financial transactions, where a lot of the population carried some device that could complete cryptocurrency transactions as easily as a credit card, and many or most businesses accepted cryptocurrency, than whatever currency wins that "common usage" battle still has a long way up. The price is just supply and demand, and large numbers of people acquiring some currency to use as currency = demand and would drive up the price further.
I don't know when or if that would happen, but it's conceivable that a cryptocurrency could, at some point, become very easy to use and offer some advantage(s) over other currencies such that it was widely adopted for use as a general currency, which would cause at least one more run up in price for any currency that does that.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Can't believe all the people in here thinking cryptos were only for buying drugs. I guess everyone forgot when payments to Wikileaks were blocked by Visa and the fact that Venezuela and Argentina are collapsing. Italy doesn't look hot, Deutsche Bank will probably blow up in everyone's face. Not to mention US debt is unsustainable.
The dollar is riddled with debt. A dollar isn't actually worth a dollar. When everyone realizes this that's when cryptos will explode.
That makes sense to me. If cryptocurrency was a replacement for cash, then it wouldn't be very exciting to invest in cryptocurrency. And if it's exciting to invest in cryptocurrency (which so far it certainly has been), then it wouldn't be a replacement for cash. Yet the cryptocurrency experts tell us the end game is that it WILL be a replacement for cash.
Anyone care to solve this riddle? I'm not aware of any form of cash that was once exciting to invest in, but now functions as a stable medium of exchange.
I'm not trying to argue pro or con bitcoin here, but I'm surprised people on the comments here are no more informed that people on other popular social media platforms. I see a lot of, scam, drug, money laundering, fake money. People don't really seem to know the different between bitcoin and the other cryptos. Or the basic concept that holding bitcoin is using bitcoin (Ansel Lindner said that), it's use case isn't to buy coffee right now, it's more of a store of value, digital gold. Again I'm not trying to post this as pro or con, just the level of understand of this space isn't very high on slashdot
This seems like just another damage control attempt (among so many other similar damage control attempts keep getting tried!) to make cryptocurrency investors think everything is okay and there is nothing to worry about!
IMHO, any smart crypto investors should try to get away with any money they have left, instead of keep "HODLing" until the end!
(Because almost certainly the end will happen very fast, and so, most people will not have any chance of getting back any money at all!)
The first thing is for people to decide BTC has value. Weâ(TM)re there, I think.
The second is to decide how much. Thatâ(TM)s being figured out now.
Bitcoin enables technologies like the Lightning Network - which offers distributed micro payments, for the first time in history - and was a keen interest of a former fearless leader here, RobLimo.
The shitcoins are indeed that, and there were a 1000 pets.com for every Amazon. BTC solves real problems and lets me pay for things like VPN services that would be a real headache, and let folks process payments from countries where banking systems are nonexistent.
Wait until people realize they can monetize their content directly without the ads.. and youâ(TM)ll see some interesting things happen.
..don't panic
IMPERSONATING ME? Please... grow up. I must admit what I read about the jews bears out to be accurate though.
I give folks what they want vs. your machinations, lol & THUS I always will win... & you KNOW it.
(You really ARE too STUPID to live... time to FIRE UP THE OVENS again & Zyklon B showers).
Ever see Dr, Strange? Keep it up, that's EXACTLY what I want "JudenMammu" - you're MY prisoner.
I must admit what I read about the jews bears out to be accurate though.
Quote George Washington father of our country:
"They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America." - George Washington
APK
P.S.=> Glad I am NOT jewish or their thieving slanteye FUCK mongoloids allies the Chinese who steal from greatness (like me and my hosts file engine)... apk
Condition - no "See Subject" line
If you ever saw the guy, you wouldn't say that.
See my subject: I'd kick YOUR FUCKING ASS JUDE for stalking & harassing me you unidentifiable little cowardly hook nose cunt - tell me your REAL name, address, & phone # so I can verify it's REALLY you & we can settle this once & for all, fucker...
* OH, I know (& so does everyone else to YOUR public dismay & humiliation which your UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts only PROVE for me all the more)... you're a waste of life UNDEREDUCATED all cheap "talk" imbecile.
Everyone SEES you constantly stalking & harassing me bitch, so WHO ARE YOU FOOLING but yourself - & IF I ever get to you? You'll WISH you were dead cocksucker.
You're the HATED minority ALL THRU HISTORY only fooling YOURSELVES, lol - self deluded morons & thieves
APK
P.S.=> It has to SUCK to be a total DOUCHE loser like you, lol - but you DO have 1 somewhat redeeming quality (lmao) - CHUMP do-nothing "ne'er-do-wells" like YOU do MAKE ME look GOOD @ your wasted life expense (hahahahaha)... apk
You sound overweight and unhealthy. Get that taken care of.
Nice user name. Glad no one is taking advice from you.
Everyone who got in early did cash out already. What are you talking about?
And this is where the smaller coins like Dogecoin, Reddcoin and Digibyte will shine. They'll probably never reach a value of $10K per coin, but $1 to $100 per coin might be possible since they're all divisible to 8 decimals just like Bitcoin.
#DeleteFacebook
I will post this every time I see a Slashdot story propagating the B$ term. 'Crypto' is a generic prefix and is meaningless on its own. Aside from that, it already has a traditional use as shorthand for *cryptography*, not the chain-of-partial-hash-collisions which burn perfectly good energy the world could use elsewhere, that passes for 'blockchain'.
When will we ever learn that "Exponential Growth" cannot, and does not, continue indefinitely. Oh, that's right, I forgot, we have an entire economic and investment fantasy constructed on the premise that unlimited exponential growth is feasible. I guess they never went through the "bunnies" thought exercise in biology/ecology class.
I have no advice to give, I'm just surprised of how many people are anti-bitcoin on a tech site.
Most of the people early on in bitcoin haven't gone anywhere.
I have no advice to give, I'm just surprised of how many people are anti-bitcoin on a tech site.
Because most here already saw the hype train start years ago. Just because this is a tech site doesn't mean that everyone here is going to fawn over everything that is "tech" regardless of it's actual merit. Slashdot is one of the few places that comes across as a voice of reason in the tech world.
Half of humanity isn't even on the internet yet. Only a minority of internet users use cryptocurrency, and of the ones that do, many don't use it for very much that's substantial in their lives. We've got at *least* another doubling of value to go.
One way to get to the next billion would be, oh I don't know, a working ethereum client in debian .
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
It took 40 years for credit cards to see widespread adoption. The problem right now is that people mostly see the value in crypto currency- but not its application- because promotion hasn't even occurred at the local level. That application is the reduction in the transactional costs of doing business. Until you have businesses accepting it there won't be significant user adoption. In New Hampshire we get that because libertarians have done an amazing job getting businesses setup to accept crypto currencies. As a result New Hampshire is the only place (outside of Caracas Venezuela where the need was obvious, ie because of multiple failed fiat currencies) in the world where you can actually step into a shop and find a cashier who actually knows how to take it or find a business that actually accepts it (I'm sorry- but I travel the world regularly- and I have yet to find a place which is actually taking it, including Austin Texas, which gives me a laugh when people say its a libertarian hotbed, and I could not find a single restaurant that actually took it while there, though one exception in PA exists in some small town, there was some small ass game store owner that was more interested in selling Bitcoin to me than taking it who did take it, but didn't even have a point of sale system to take it, rather he only had a wallet, and that was on my way to Columbus Ohio for a Linux conference, at which point again, nobody actually took it once I arrived in that city either who claimed to).
New Hampshire sees regular advertising of crypto currencies on the radio, in newspapers, at stores with stickers, at multiple places setups to support it with educational materials (from the Bitcoin Shop in Portsmith to the Blockchain Institute of Technology in Portsmith to 101 Local Goods and another education center that is being setup), plus numerous crypto currency groups throughout the state that have all been operating for a very long time now (in crypto terms any way). New Hampshire had the very first conference/event where Bitcoin was accepted up in Lancaster New Hampshire! That was before the very first Bitcoin or crypto currency conference.