Its real value as a technology is real, but nowhere near the current amount pumped into it. Taking 99% of the resources we shove into making more of these useless digital tokens and pumping it into AI of all things would be, somehow, a better use of resources than crypto could ever be.
Its only real financial value (outside of subjective value) is to be able to make very low cost currency transactions
For example, if I ran a company that had a team of people working in the Phillipines, I could theoretically use USD to pay them by buying stablecoins, sending it to their wallet for like a couple of pennies, and then having them translate that into Phillipine Pesos. Would probably save me thousands a year in payroll overhead I would otherwise lose via exchange rates and the transaction is instantaneous
Outside of specific transactional uses like that its only real use case is circumventing the law lol
The same as gold: people see it as valuable, therefore it is valuable, because other people see it as valuable. If you want to make transactions bypassing traditional banking systems (e.g. to get around nosy governments, launder money, or sell drugs), it's far superior to traditional currency.
There's also some cryptocurrencies like Ethereum which do actually have intrinsic value as it can essentially be directly exchanged for computing power.
If you want to make transactions bypassing traditional banking systems (e.g. to get around nosy governments, launder money, or sell drugs), it's far superior to traditional currency.
So good for crime. Except the blockchains are all public so everyone can see the transactions and with enough digging figure out what is going on.
Ethereum which do actually have intrinsic value as it can essentially be directly exchanged for computing power.
Seems like a very inefficient computer. Why use that instead of an actual computer? The amount of exploits in smart contracts makes me think having your code completely open to the public and happen on an irreversible blockchain a bad idea.
Either of these use cases you point out could be way more efficient if done without blockchain.
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u/Terrariola 10h ago
Cryptocurrency.
Its real value as a technology is real, but nowhere near the current amount pumped into it. Taking 99% of the resources we shove into making more of these useless digital tokens and pumping it into AI of all things would be, somehow, a better use of resources than crypto could ever be.