• TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I’m well aware.

    But far, far, far, far more people use it as currency. Exchanging it for goods and services is clearly the main use for it.

    Crypto is used like a stock.

    • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      In addition to using it as a currency, sure. But as I asked rigatti, is that a problem? At worst one might perhaps argue that the name “cryptocurrency” is misleading, but I’ve never cared much about semantics like that.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        You’re saying “in addition to using it as a currency” as if that’s actually what people do with crypto. They don’t.

        And yeah, it is a problem. It renders it useless outside of as a bit of gambling on the side.

        • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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          9 months ago

          Alright, so let’s call them cryptotokens instead. I’ve always preferred that myself, it’s a much more general description of what they do. It doesn’t change what they are but if that term makes you happier we can go with that.

          It renders it useless outside of as a bit of gambling on the side.

          Hardly, there are lots of things you can do with these things. A ledger is more than just for tracking money, it’s a database. You really can’t think of useful things that could be done with a completely decentralized and permissionless database?

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            People don’t use bitcoin or other cryptocoins as a general purpose database. They use it as they’d use a stock.

            • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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              9 months ago

              Bitcoin, no, because it’s a hopelessly out of date blockchain that actively resists having new capabilities added to it. Ethereum, on the other hand, is designed that way from the ground up. Many of the other smaller but more modern blockchains are also like that.

                • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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                  9 months ago

                  You can’t use them as a currency everywhere. But the same can be said for any other currency too. You can’t use US dollars everywhere. You can’t use Chinese Yuan everywhere. And so forth. A currency doesn’t have to be universally accepted everywhere on the planet for every application before it’s useful.

                  Regardless, I was talking about using Ethereum as a distributed database.

                  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    You know fine well that’s not what I meant.

                    If you were to attempt to only use Bitcoin, Ethereim, whatever, you almost certainly literally wouldn’t be able to live.

                    You can’t just pay all your bills with it.

                    And even the people who own it almost never use it as a currency. They treat it like a stock.

    • deafboy@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      There are people who ride the bike as a means of transport. Then there are people who build their entire identity around riding a bike. That doesn’t mean one or the other rides it wrong.

      A token of value can have multiple different usecases at the same time.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Bikes are used as a mode of transport. That’s what everybody uses them for.

        Crypto isn’t really used as a currency. It is used like a stock. That’s what everybody uses them for, if we’re being honest.