How does this board feel about cryptocurrencies?

[JTDolan]

I still have some minor amounts of crypto, but I lost most of my interest in it this year 

[Halcyon]

My take on it (which seems to be the view of all experienced investors) is that it is/was just another fad. I invested a small amount in Ripple (XRP) early on and cashed it all out before everything fell off the cliff, I think I netted about $5000 altogether which isn't a bad haul. However many people got greedy and the fear of missing out quickly kicked in. Those who invested in the likes of Bitcoin and Etherium were the biggest losers. There were some winners but *a lot* of losers. No crypto currency is likely to ever recover as a serious currency (it never really was). Some is still being traded on the black market however many state and federal Policing agencies are wise to it and are able to somewhat monitor transactions and eventually seize the crypto from the crooks.

The biggest selling point was the ability to make instantaneous money transfers whereas with traditional bank transfers, people would need to wait between 24 and 48 hours to send/receive money. In Australia, that's no longer a limitation of intrabank money transfers. We have a National Payment Platform which allows for instant transfers between different banks.

Crypto does have some other valid uses other than sending/receiving money, such as smart contracts etc...

Overall, the concept was decent and it was a neat little experiment.

[vtwin@cox.net]

Crypto has a future in certain industries, such as the cannabis market here in the USA.

In the USA, there are no(*) banks which will process non-cash transactions from a business engaged in a cannabis-related activity, which forces the businesses into a "cash only" business model. However, many banks are now actively refusing to take cash deposits from a business engaged in cannabis activities.

Payment in crypto allows a degree of circumvention without the need to engage in cash.

All that said, I've never invested a penny into crypto (although, to be fair, it's entirely possible one of my mutual funds has and I simply do not know it since I tend not to look at the holdings of each fund).


* = I am sure there are probably a few exceptions, but this is generally the rule

[Marco]

It's a giant tulip craze ... but it's also an interesting wild west way for currency transfer, you can hitch a ride on the craze and the reluctance of regulators to step in.

Won't last though, this is e-gold all over again.

[station240]

Big waste of electricity if you ask me.
Plenty of distributed computer problems that need help, yet here we are creating hardware intensive problems that really only exist to make money.
Look at https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

The biggest selling point was the ability to make instantaneous money transfers whereas with traditional bank transfers, people would need to wait between 24 and 48 hours to send/receive money..

Except the increasing complexity of say BitCoin, made processing take longer and longer, as not only were more CPU/GPU cycles required, but some miners would drop out as it was no longer viable.
There was a discussion I found last year from someone who looked at Crypto currency for food vending machines, he worked it would take up to 20 minutes to verify the bitcoins (or other then mainstream crypto-currency) no one would wait that long, especially if the food required cooking as well.

[EEVblog]

There are countless places to discuss crypto, this isn't one of them, as much as I like talking about crypto myself.
Thread locked.