[ExI] lotta splainin to do

Wed Nov 16 21:45:16 UTC 2022

Spike,
All this has zero to do with BTC.
To answer your doubts:

   1. the value of the stuff depends on control of the quantity (BitCoin
   does that, but there is no way to stop a dozen companies from starting
   their own competing digital currencies, dragging down the value of all of
   it)
   Right, this why it was genius to have a finite number of BTC, this makes
   it more like gold than cash.
   I have models for BTC long time growth (it follows a power law in time)
   that have been very reliable for the past 10 years (I started these
   projections in 2012). There are 100s of competing currencies but
   nothing comes close to the value of BTC. This is both because BTC brand
   value but also because of the established network effect that is almost
   impossible to beat. So this problem of competing cryptocurrencies is not a
   problem at all because in the last 11 years nothing was able to beat BTC in
   terms of dominance in the market. Besides the cryptomarket works more like
   an ecosystem where other cryptos (in particular the stongest ones) give
   value to each other instead of competing with each other.
   2. there is a weak link in the chain if we need to swap digital currency
   to fiat money and back, which looks to me like a demonstration of that
   weakness just happened with FTX.
   It is not much the idea of converting to FIAT currencies that is the
   most risky point of failure but the fact most of the points of exchanges
   are centralized instead of decentralized.
   In theory people could exchange crypto in person and pay cash for it but
   this is considered in most places illegal (there is a service called
   LocalBitcoin that is considered illegal in the US). Attempts to create
   decentralized exchanges were done and there are few places online where it
   happens but these exchanges are not very liquid.
   The long term solution to all this would be the full adoption of BTC as
   a currency to buy almost anything you can imagine. In that case one could
   completely bypass the conversion ot FIAT.

On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 12:19 PM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Almost every single problem with crypto is that we fail in upholding
> crypto promise: decentralization. I lost 32 BTC because they were sitting
> in an exchange (while I was trading it) where the owner fled away with the
> funds (the exchange was called Mintpal, one of the largest at that time).
> Unfortunately when you deposit crypto in an exchange you lose control of it
> in a sense because the wallet is owned by the exchange and not you. It is a
> pretty stupid thing to do in particular when it happened to me that was
> early on when exchanges were even less secure than now.  We need
> decentralized exchanges. There are few but they are not very liquid. We
> need to find solutions to this.
> Giovanni
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 14, 2022 at 7:17 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> We have a lot of digital currency followers here, so perhaps some
>> kindhearted hipster can offer me an explanation simple enough a rocket
>> scientist can understand (one who never owned a bitcoin or was convinced
>> the notion of digital currency could work.)
>>
>>
>>
>> I keep hearing of this FTX digital money exchange, but I don’t understand
>> it.  Some news agencies are reporting that it was looted by someone,
>> possibly an insider, but that makes no sense because the main selling point
>> of bitcoin was that ownership is maintained by blockchain, which is said to
>> be inherently secure.  So… this looter, what did she steal?  Digital
>> currency?  Or did FTX have a huge pile of paper currency, and if so, why
>> did FXT have a huge pile of cash when inflation is at 8%?
>>
>>
>>
>> But if they did, was that cash in a safe, then some sneaky scoundrel with
>> the combination hauled away the loot in the back of a very sturdy
>> heavily-loaded delivery truck?  A USA bill has about 1g mass, so a million
>> bills is a ton, so even if all that moola was in the largest American bill,
>> the 100, we are still talking 4 tons of currency said to be missing and
>> that just doesn’t sound like something that would be easily carted away.
>> It would be a heeellll of a job just loading the truck.  But if it is
>> digital currency which was stolen, how can they suppose the looter somehow
>> got away with 400 megabucks?
>>
>>
>>
>> This story makes no sense to me.  A puzzled rocket scientist I am.
>>
>>
>>
>> Adrian or some of you other hep cats, do explain please.
>>
>>
>>
>> spike
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
>
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