crypto: more friction, slower transactions, higher transaction costs. And wicked exchange volatility.
Plus no way to expand or contract the supply to prevent economic shocks.
I like my fiat and central banks, thank you very much.
Bitcoin, sure. Plenty of other cryptocurrencies which don't have these issues.
Cardano has faster transactions than any monetary transfer method (besides cash), with low fees. You also get
Bitcoin cash has negligible transactions fees with 10-20 minute transactions.
Nano has fee-less, near-instant transactions (could actually compete with cash for p2p transactions)
HN doesn't like crypto. Say anything pro crypto (even when it's true) and get downvoted.
very sad.
I'll send you any amount you want with Nano: <1 second transaction, 0 fee.
Try to beat that!
Just wait and see which solution will come on top.
How often do you need $50k without being able to wait a business day?
You are taking a look at the start of the speedrun and claiming that it's already over. All of those issues will eventually be solved.
>Plus no way to expand or contract the supply
This is simply not true. It is entirely possible to make it possible to mint new coins. You can burn coins by buying them back and sending them to a wallet owned by no one.
When does "eventually" arrive? For 12 years I've been hearing that all of the problems of cryptocurrency will be solved very soon. But merchant adoption peaked years ago and has notably declined. Most of the problems are still problems. At this point, I'm pretty sure "eventually" means what I mean by "soon" as a teen when my parents asked me to clean my room. That is, "not now and I'd like to keep ignoring the topic please".
I do too! But some people don't. And it appears that there are now options for everyone, which seems...good?
But regulated currencies can also turn out disastrously bad (see: Venezuela, Zimbabwe hyperinflation, Nigeria, Argentina). This hurts ordinary people too. There's an Argentinian in this very thread that's chimed in with their personal experience.
I won't pretend one approach is strictly superior to the other, nor am I suggesting that one ought to put 100% of their life savings into BTC or US T-bonds, but having options allows the ordinary person to hedge. That's the point. Optionality is good, and because BTC isn't legal tender (nor will it ever be), nobody is forced to use it anyway.
Still, buying shares of a company is much more "friction" than buying coins.
> crypto: more friction
Can you elaborate?
> slower transactions
Huh, even bitcoin will settle with 6 confirmations in an hour. Settlement to buy a share or FX is 2/3 days.
> higher transaction costs
Hmm, no.
> And wicked exchange volatility.
Volatility is a property of the underlying currency, not to "crypto currencies" in general. The volatility of USDTxUSD is zero.
> Plus no way to expand or contract the supply to prevent economic shocks.
You are mixing "crypto currency" and "bitcoin".
Absolutely not. If you take the top 10 crypto currencies sorted by marketcap, half of them are actually stock-like tokens. It is not a misinterpretation, or a deviation from the intended purpose at all. These tokens are intended to replace shares of the company, and they have rather similar capabilities: by owning them you have voting rights, different token (share) classes exist, etc.
Honestly, the term "crypto currency" is very misleading, most of the tokens issued nowadays are share-like, and buying them is just a form of venture funding for these startups.
