I keep hearing the terms cryptocurrency and block chain being thrown around in the media and everyone and their grandmother seems to be in on some kind of get rich scheme. My limited understanding of it is that while block chain technology has usage in many industries (one of which happens to be cryptocurrency) it does not necessarily validate or give credence to cryptocurrency as a stable, reliable, "secure" means of financial exchange. There are huge differences between what we use as money, even though it is a "fiat" currency as well (now far removed from the gold-backed treasury systems of yester-year), and cryptocurrency, with enormous risks found in the latter which are obviously downplayed by people rushing into this area looking to make big bucks in speculative investments... nothing more than the next derivative market, and I use the term "legalized" loosely when I say legalized gambling.
For one, if you managed to get in on Bitcoin early enough, your "money" was really created on the backs of algorithms... computing cycles to fabricate and then lock in (as part of the block chain) the bitcoins. It was this "work" and difficulty and limited pool of bitcoin (which is harder and harder to calculate) that gave it value. After that, the entire value of bitcoin jumped exponentially due to people jumping in on the bandwagon speculating and not wanting to waste the resources needed to compute further bitcoin. Every cryptocurrency seems to start this way. As long as you have enough people believing this and treating it like money, it behaves that way (much like our little paper or plastic bills we carry around). However without major adoption by governments and all the legal protections, banking rules, financial oversight and controls that real money has, it will always fall short and be nothing more than a highly volatile "currency" and as such will result in continuing to be that way. Chicken-egg problem.
Now I have nothing against cryptocurrrency as long as people are aware of what they are getting into. It also doesn't help its reputation when malware and crypto-jacking today scams people into buying cryptocurrency or hijacks your computing cycles to create more crypto for hackers or advertising agencies... much of it to avoid tracking for illegal purposes. I do find the idea interesting as a means for publishers to get paid for their content (by you donating some of your computing power in generating cryptocurrency for the site). However what we have today is a crazy market where you hear $300,000,000 worth of bitcoin lost... what does that even mean? Poof it's gone... but if it was just artificially created value which speculators drove up into the clouds, how do you equate this with real value?
Anyways, just my two cents. I also contemplated running some cryptominers but realized it wasn't economical for me and when you have Chinese farms mining for next to nothing and cashing in on millions in illicit operations and hackers contributing to the rise in values by hording or holding people hostage by demanding they trade real cash for bitcoin (driving the "value" up) I just don't see this as an alternative at this time. Perhaps the entire system needs to mature a few more years and get through some major upsets before the masses trust it. Until then I am keeping far far away but keeping a keen interest in this.
