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Thanks for taking the time to explain a bit how this works with its use cases, a bit rare over here.

With the art craze I could really draw almost all parallels with real physical art: if I paint a blue square, sign it myself and ends in the Louvre, no matter how many pictures of it appear online or how many others draw the blue square to the T, there will always be one original one... the one in the museum. Same with art that starts on the digital front, like 3D renders and sketches (or others that are digitized for that matter with cameras or scanners)... the one signed will become the original one and even if people find the scene files and re-render themselves an exact copy (minus a few pixels because of RNGs maybe) it won’t be the source one.
In both cases some people will spend crazy amounts of money for some reason that I don’t comprehend yet, the blue square could rack up several hundred millions too (and it did).

However that does cloud a bit the full reach, I didn’t think about the land deeds and any other sort of signature really, like a DRM++, stopgaps for digital counterfeiting, tracked history of the life of the original, etc... curious to see where this is gonna go.

EDIT: had a thought about the duplication issue, maybe is it more establishment too? Because sure I could make a copy paper currency and name them $pollars and put bears faces instead of Bejamin Franklins, yet the value of 1Million $pollars is practically none.

Adobe is already working on a file and cloud system that tracks origin of a file. But you can easily just convert it to another file format, high res screen cap or scrub the meta data. Anything made of bits or color values can be copied.
 
Adobe is already working on a file and cloud system that tracks origin of a file. But you can easily just convert it to another file format, high res screen cap or scrub the meta data. Anything made of bits or color values can be copied.
Oh didn’t know that, I’m curious to know if the tracking behind it happens to be cryptography tech or something else.
 
Holy 💩!!! You just failed crypto 101.

Bitcoin has been forked into several coins and each fork rewards holders with the same number of coins in each new forked chain. That’s literal duplication.

Bitcoin’s source code repository has also been cloned and had some minor parameters changed to create a joke like of new 💩 coins like Litecoin etc

If I want I can take the bitcoin source code right now and start the whole thing over again from scratch without forking. All I need is a few computers to host the nodes and miners.

There are also still double spend bugs in most of these chains that are always being fixed.

How come blockchain blockhead defenders don’t know how this stuff works? 😝😂😂😂😂

ANYTHING digital can be and is often duplicated.

And if you people really were interested in artists, you would find one and commission them or hire them or find jobs for them. But no crypto people weren’t interested in doing that for 11 years. They don’t give one F about artists. It’s just a fat scam by the 1 percent because they are always creating new schemes to get rich off everyone else.
You're out of your depth and that's OK. Blockchain is relatively new and even the diehards are trying to figure out use cases. We've never had digital scarcity before so it's going to take time to grok it.

The price of 1 bitcoin is, (at this very minute in Canadian dollars) is $73,548. That can only happen because it works how everything else in the free market works: Supply and demand. It used to be worth less than that but demand has gone up with people's interest and the supply has not (thanks, NFT scarcity!). Forking bitcoin to create a new currency based on it has no factor on this. Your contention that a bitcoin (a digital thing) can be duplicated breaks the supply side and bitcoin's price would be $0. Even if you HATED the idea of bitcoin, you could still hold your nose, duplicate it a bunch, cash out, and become richer than Jeff Bezos. But you can't. Because each bitcoin is a scarce resource that can be tracked with each buy/sell.

AND one of the benefits of bitcoin (and blockchain widely) is that it's a trust-less system. This is not about the global elite making money off others because it actually disintermediates them. Because of the ledger, you don't need a third party, like a bank or retailer to make a sale. You can sell a thing to someone without someone in-between.

Your problem, I think, is that you're making this a subjective and qualitative debate about art. I love art (and have bought many paintings by real local artists that hang around my house). I paid an NYC oil painting artist several thousand dollars to paint my kids. I have friends wh are amazing digital artists and they can now sell their work, because in my eyes, a beautiful picture they spent days on is worth MORE (despite being digital) than paintings of planets that take 20 seconds using stencils by some guy on the streets of San Francisco's touristy areas (who uses IRL materials). But the love of art is not my argument. The fact that Visa now accepts Bitcoin (as of March 29 this year) and Tesla taking it as car payment means it's not just blockchain hustlers who appreciate the value.

I don't care to buy digital art. It's not really my thing. But NFT scarcity and the security of a distributed ledger verifying provenance is going to be increasingly important because it'll probably be vital to: eventually voting with our phones, buying tracts of land in VR, securing our IRL land in a way that can't be forged, and creators of ALL types being paid.
 
Holy 💩!!! You just failed crypto 101.

Bitcoin has been forked into several coins and each fork rewards holders with the same number of coins in each new forked chain. That’s literal duplication.

Bitcoin’s source code repository has also been cloned and had some minor parameters changed to create a joke like of new 💩 coins like Litecoin etc

If I want I can take the bitcoin source code right now and start the whole thing over again from scratch without forking. All I need is a few computers to host the nodes and miners.

There are also still double spend bugs in most of these chains that are always being fixed.

How come blockchain blockhead defenders don’t know how this stuff works? 😝😂😂😂😂

ANYTHING digital can be and is often duplicated.

And if you people really were interested in artists, you would find one and commission them or hire them or find jobs for them. But no crypto people weren’t interested in doing that for 11 years. They don’t give one F about artists. It’s just a fat scam by the 1 percent because they are always creating new schemes to get rich off everyone else.

Let's actually attend crypto 101, shall we?

Let's say you opened a pack of baseball cards in the 60's, and you got a rare, sought after card that people assign value to. Can you duplicate that today? I mean, you could expertly photograph it, and attempt to print it and make it look just like the original card, but of course any expert would be able to tell it's a fake, and there will be no value assigned to it. Keep that in mind for a bit.

Sure, Bitcoin has been hard forked, but it's not as simple as you make it sound, and it's not literal duplication. Hard forks occur when updates are applied to a chain. Some miners may choose to mine the original coin with updates applied, at which point a fork occurs (which is the most common scenario). Some might say "Sorry, no, we don't support this, and we will continue to mine the chain before the update was applied." Depending on whether there is enough mining support to actually keep that chain running, it does or doesn't. Assuming it does, yeah, you have two sets of coins now. Are the additional coins you now own literal duplicates of what you owned before? No, because the same value is not assigned. This has happened with many chains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ethereum and Ethereum Classic are different chains at this point. 1ETH is currently worth ~$2,100. 1ETC is currently worth $~19. So it's not 1:1 if you consider value, and technical capabilities.

And yeah, most blockchains are based on open source code, and yeah, you could repuprose that code and launch your own copycat coin if you wanted to. But would you really have any mining support to properly secure the chain? Would you actually be a properly decentralized chain that people value? Would your coin be worth anything? Or would you essentially have a forged baseball card that nobody cares about?

One of the key features of an immutable blockchain is that it can't simply be duplicated. It is not possible to take a Bitcoin I own and duplicate it on the same chain so that you now have an extra coin that's also worth ~$60k. You simply can't do it. If you say you can, then do it now. I'll give you my Bitcoin address. Please, duplicate the coins in my wallet. I want to see you do it. Of course you can't, and you know that, so sadly we won't get to see you do this.

On to the topic of NFT's, sure, there's some ridiculous stuff happening at the moment. People selling the rights to animated gifs, or images, etc, but who cares? I don't concern myself with things that don't interest me. If someone else wants to pay an insane amount of money for animated gif that you could duplicate and keep on your own machine, that's not really my business. And yeah, you might also have the gif, but you don't own the rights. You don't have ownership. That ownership is unique, exists on an immutable blockchain, and can be bought and sold as owners and buyers see fit. It's a lot easier to understand NFT's if you think about that baseball example I gave above, or even more specifically if you think of digital versions of Pokemon cards, or Magic the Gathering cards. If you purchase a digital pack of cards, where the cards exist on a blockchain, and you control and can prove ownership, those become collectables that people can choose to assign value to if they like, and ownership can be transferred. Just like a physical pokemon or MTG card. Sure, you could screenshot the card, but you don't actually own it, and you couldn't choose to transfer ownership to someone else with your screenshot. Because you don't own the actual card. You couldn't use your screenshot card in a digital version of the game online, nor could you hack a card you want into existence, or steal someone else's card and take control of that ownership, unless you had their private keys.

Lastly, I have no idea why you keep going on about this 1% thing in regards to crypto, or acting like "Crypto people" don't care about artists. To your first point, about the 1%.. nobody knows who created Bitcoin, and it certainly doesn't seem as though it was created by the 1%. If it was, it would have been distributed to those types of folks, but it wasn't. Early adopters, primarily tech enthusiasts were the ones who got rich off of it. Only recently have institutional investors started to warm to crypto, and Bitcoin specifically, and sure, they've made money off it, but the promise of crypto is that it's really open to everyone. Things like DeFi level the financial playing field and make financial services available to absolutely everyone, where in traditional markets, those services are only available to accredited investors, or "the 1%" To your second point about crypto people not caring about artists.. I don't even see the connection. Crypto wasn't created to be a support platform for artists. In the case of Bitcoin, it was created to be a peer to peer digital cash. Because of its decentralized nature, developers have been unable to agree on technical improvements that would allow it to function in that way still, so it's morphed into more of a store of value, due to it's limited nature. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins. Not more. It's essentially digital gold now. But there are other chains that are living up to Bitcoin's original use case, and more. Look into Ethereum. Smart contracts have enabled all sort of interesting ideas, namely DeFi, and now NFT's also.

It's clear you have a dislike for crypto, and that's fine, that's certainly your right to your own opinion, but why you're on a public crusade against it, and spreading mis/disinformation to make a point that isn't there, is less clear. If you don't understand what you're talking about, that's fine, but don't pretend that you do.
 
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Let's actually attend crypto 101, shall we?

Let's say you opened a pack of baseball cards in the 60's, and you got a rare, sought after card that people assign value to. Can you duplicate that today? I mean, you could expertly photograph it, and attempt to print it and make it look just like the original card, but of course any expert would be able to tell it's a fake, and there will be no value assigned to it. Keep that in mind for a bit.

Sure, Bitcoin has been hard forked, but it's not as simple as you make it sound, and it's not literal duplication. Hard forks occur when updates are applied to a chain. Some miners may choose to mine the original coin with updates applied, at which point a fork occurs (which is the most common scenario). Some might say "Sorry, no, we don't support this, and we will continue to mine the chain before the update was applied." Depending on whether there is enough mining support to actually keep that chain running, it does or doesn't. Assuming it does, yeah, you have two sets of coins now. Are the additional coins you now own literal duplicates of what you owned before? No, because the same value is not assigned. This has happened with many chains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ethereum and Ethereum Classic are different chains at this point. 1ETH is currently worth ~$2,100. 1ETC is currently worth $~19. So it's not 1:1 if you consider value, and technical capabilities.

And yeah, most blockchains are based on open source code, and yeah, you could repuprose that code and launch your own copycat coin if you wanted to. But would you really have any mining support to properly secure the chain? Would you actually be a properly decentralized chain that people value? Would your coin be worth anything? Or would you essentially have a forged baseball card that nobody cares about?

One of the key features of an immutable blockchain is that it can't simply be duplicated. It is not possible to take a Bitcoin I own and duplicate it on the same chain so that you now have an extra coin that's also worth ~$60k. You simply can't do it. If you say you can, then do it now. I'll give you my Bitcoin address. Please, duplicate the coins in my wallet. I want to see you do it. Of course you can't, and you know that, so sadly we won't get to see you do this.

On to the topic of NFT's, sure, there's some ridiculous stuff happening at the moment. People selling the rights to animated gifs, or images, etc, but who cares? I don't concern myself with things that don't interest me. If someone else wants to pay an insane amount of money for animated gif that you could duplicate and keep on your own machine, that's not really my business. And yeah, you might also have the gif, but you don't own the rights. You don't have ownership. That ownership is unique, exists on an immutable blockchain, and can be bought and sold as owners and buyers see fit. It's a lot easier to understand NFT's if you think about that baseball example I gave above, or even more specifically if you think of digital versions of Pokemon cards, or Magic the Gathering cards. If you purchase a digital pack of cards, where the cards exist on a blockchain, and you control and can prove ownership, those become collectables that people can choose to assign value to if they like, and ownership can be transferred. Just like a physical pokemon or MTG card. Sure, you could screenshot the card, but you don't actually own it, and you couldn't choose to transfer ownership to someone else with your screenshot. Because you don't own the actual card. You couldn't use your screenshot card in a digital version of the game online, nor could you hack a card you want into existence, or steal someone else's card and take control of that ownership, unless you had their private keys.

Lastly, I have no idea why you keep going on about this 1% thing in regards to crypto, or acting like "Crypto people" don't care about artists. To your first point, about the 1%.. nobody knows who created Bitcoin, and it certainly doesn't seem as though it was created by the 1%. If it was, it would have been distributed to those types of folks, but it wasn't. Early adopters, primarily tech enthusiasts were the ones who got rich off of it. Only recently have institutional investors started to warm to crypto, and Bitcoin specifically, and sure, they've made money off it, but the promise of crypto is that it's really open to everyone. Things like DeFi level the financial playing field and make financial services available to absolutely everyone, where in traditional markets, those services are only available to accredited investors, or "the 1%" To your second point about crypto people not caring about artists.. I don't even see the connection. Crypto wasn't created to be a support platform for artists. In the case of Bitcoin, it was created to be a peer to peer digital cash. Because of its decentralized nature, developers have been unable to agree on technical improvements that would allow it to function in that way still, so it's morphed into more of a store of value, due to it's limited nature. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins. Not more. It's essentially digital gold now. But there are other chains that are living up to Bitcoin's original use case, and more. Look into Ethereum. Smart contracts have enabled all sort of interesting ideas, namely DeFi, and now NFT's also.

It's clear you have a dislike for crypto, and that's fine, that's certainly your right to your own opinion, but why you're on a public crusade against it, and spreading mis/disinformation to make a point that isn't there, is less clear. If you don't understand what you're talking about, that's fine, but don't pretend that you do.

What you have written above is complete horse 💩

You’re acting like I don’t know about crypto when I know it inside out. Like any cult member you supposed that a critic must be ignorant.

You quickly skipped how wrong you were that a crypto currency can’t be duplicated. They are often duplicated and forked.

Then you made the most ignorant or naive statement that something like Bitcoin is trust less. That was the intended design but it has FAILED because China developed ASIC chips to completely monopolize not only the mining but also the supply of mining chips.

Today China’s miners, who are supported by government subsidy, control well over the 60% of the hash power of just about every crypto. That’s much higher than the 51% attack it takes to control and scramble a blockchain. That should be seen as a threat. Not just ecological but also a financial threat if at some point enough westerners have foolishly thrown their money at this thing. China could simply command their miners to destroy every westerner’s investment in it.

So it isn’t trust less or decentralized.

Could they do it? Yes, if there was a conflict between West and East then you could consider your investment in crypto completely destroyed.

Look, this whole thing was invented by a small clique of wealthy extremist libertarians (people like Bannon, Brock Pierce, Andressenn, etc) who wanted a kind of digital version of gold that would give them a massive amount of wealth because they own the majority of it. The Chinese saw this as a threat to their economy when it entered their country so they took control of it completely.

So now over 90% of “coins” are controlled and owned by a tiny number of people. A truly democratic financial revolution doesn’t look like that at all, especially when it is environmentally corrosive and makes “hodlers” behave like an irrational cult with laser eyes profile pics.
 
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What you have written above is complete horse 💩

You’re acting like I don’t know about crypto when I know it inside out. Like any cult member you supposed that a critic must be ignorant.

You quickly skipped how wrong you were that a crypto currency can’t be duplicated. They are often duplicated and forked.

Then you made the most ignorant or naive statement that something like Bitcoin is trust less. That was the intended design but it has FAILED because China developed ASIC chips to completely monopolize not only the mining but also the supply of mining chips.

Today China’s miners, who are supported by government subsidy, control well over the 60% of the hash power of just about every crypto. That’s much higher than the 51% attack it takes to control and scramble a blockchain. That should be seen as a threat. Not just ecological but also a financial threat if at some point enough westerners have foolishly thrown their money at this thing. China could simply command their miners to destroy every westerner’s investment in it.

So it isn’t trust less or decentralized.

Could they do it? Yes, if there was a conflict between West and East then you could consider your investment in crypto completely destroyed.

Look, this whole thing was invented by a small clique of wealthy extremist libertarians (people like Bannon, Brock Pierce, Andressenn, etc) who wanted a kind of digital version of gold that would give them a massive amount of wealth because they own the majority of it. The Chinese saw this as a threat to their economy when it entered their country so they took control of it completely.

So now over 90% of “coins” are controlled and owned by a tiny number of people. A truly democratic financial revolution doesn’t look like that at all, especially when it is environmentally corrosive and makes “hodlers” behave like an irrational cult with laser eyes profile pics.
No, it wasn't "horse 💩"

I'm acting like you don't know about crypto, because you clearly don't.

I didn't quickly skip over how a cryptocurrency can't be duplicated, I illustrated precisely how it isn't a literal duplication, because while you can copy the code, that has no effect on the value, and I gave an example to back that up.

I also didn't say anything about trustless.

The rest of your response is unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. You aren't a person to be taken seriously on this matter.
 
The absolute last person I would ever take advice from is Cue
Why?

Cue has been at Apple a very long time: spearheading and in charge of:

iTunes Store,
App Store,
Book Store
Apple Pay Payments - yup he spearheaded that too.


Sure there have been outages and restored services are very quick - the worst I recall was less than 48hrs for all, and I think 72hrs for 1 service. Not bad for more than 20yrs operation.

board member of Ferrari - lots of great cars released as well. Apple Car on Ferrari.

he’s done very well for both Apple and himself. How good is your career again, how many people has your work or advice positively affected again, how much do you earn again? I’m sure there is a few advice conversations you’d be very happy to have from Cue.

Same for me. Actually, him and Mark Zuckerburg.
Cue I’d listen to and take notes.
Zuck (fun y iOS wants to auto correct with Sick 😝) I’d have a conversation with to figure out why he’s so greedy n evil while sitting on my hands to keep me from doing something that would land me into deep trouble lol.
 

Hahahahahaha


.this was WWDC 2015! Which incidentally was on fellow Phil Schiller's birthday! Cue called him out and you can tell how embarrassed Phil was but it was done after Drake‘s commentary of Apple Music launch as well, Cue was dancing to Latin music to celebrate Phil’s Bday. He said that night was Karaoke night. Would loved to been there just to see the staff cut loose and be their real selves.


the internet focused on his shirt and dancing BUT the entire presentation was really great he Drake, Iovine knocked it out of the park.

also Toronto artist extraordinare TheWkend performed killed it!
 

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No, it wasn't "horse 💩"

I'm acting like you don't know about crypto, because you clearly don't.

Frankly you’re speaking crap and you have no answers. You are fully aware China owns nearly all mining capacity and that’s no “conspiracy”. You are fully aware how many exchanges have used fraud to pump the values of “coins” and that’s no conspiracy. Just last week Coinbase paid a big (not big enough) fine for wash trading Litecoin before they listed it.

You’re a cult member hoping to profit from:

- the great fool being suckered into it
- more ransomware payments being forced on to businesses
- more ransom and blackmail demands made against people
- more drug users and child abusers buying crypto so they can do these activities
- more money laundering between terrorist and crime groups

Why do you enjoy the idea of making money from these things?
 
Frankly you’re speaking crap and you have no answers. You are fully aware China owns nearly all mining capacity and that’s no “conspiracy”. You are fully aware how many exchanges have used fraud to pump the values of “coins” and that’s no conspiracy. Just last week Coinbase paid a big (not big enough) fine for wash trading Litecoin before they listed it.

You’re a cult member hoping to profit from:

- the great fool being suckered into it
- more ransomware payments being forced on to businesses
- more ransom and blackmail demands made against people
- more drug users and child abusers buying crypto so they can do these activities
- more money laundering between terrorist and crime groups

Why do you enjoy the idea of making money from these things?

Frankly, I gave you answers, you just don't like them.

Luckily, blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies will continue to flourish and become more mainstream, regardless of your lack of understanding, your conspiracy theories, and your kicking and screaming. You're that guy in the mid 90's warning about using your credit card online to buy things from some website called "Amazon," because it'll just get stolen and buying things online isn't going to take off anyway.

See you in the future, my friend :)
 
Frankly, I gave you answers, you just don't like them.
The only answer you gave was ‘Look number go up’.

Your cretinous ideology is ‘Please make my number go up.’

Bitcoin, all cryptos, are almost completely owned by a tiny sliver of people. They estimate only a few hundred people own almost all the Bitcoin supply and your exchanges are run by crooks. So your whole ‘number go up’ religion makes a tiny number of wealthy people more wealthier while the rest of the world gets fked with more climate change and silicon chip shortages.

Bitcoiners : Please make number go up.

Rest of the world : Maybe wealthy people should stop storing stupid amounts of money in offshore tax havens and non productive assets and pay more taxes so that we can invest in education, health care, infrastructure, climate targets, wildlife preservation and development.

Bitcoiners : No please just make my number go up. We need to spend billions a month on wasting energy to maintain our global multiplayer spreadsheet pyramid scheme.
 
The only answer you gave was ‘Look number go up’.

Your cretinous ideology is ‘Please make my number go up.’

Bitcoin, all cryptos, are almost completely owned by a tiny sliver of people. They estimate only a few hundred people own almost all the Bitcoin supply and your exchanges are run by crooks. So your whole ‘number go up’ religion makes a tiny number of wealthy people more wealthier while the rest of the world gets fked with more climate change and silicon chip shortages.

Bitcoiners : Please make number go up.

Rest of the world : Maybe wealthy people should stop storing stupid amounts of money in offshore tax havens and non productive assets and pay more taxes so that we can invest in education, health care, infrastructure, climate targets, wildlife preservation and development.

Bitcoiners : No please just make my number go up. We need to spend billions a month on wasting energy to maintain our global multiplayer spreadsheet pyramid scheme.
Aww, someone's upset. Missed out, hey? I get the anger now.
 
I understand NFT's but I don't get the hype. The money being paid for nonsense is astounding to me.
It is the new frontier in money laundering & tax evasion using a maze of shell corporations to 'invest' with.

There is zero chance tax authorities are going to be able to say what the appraised value for a $60 million dollar series of animated kitten gifs actually is.
 
Would you like to try again, and this time refute anything I'm saying? Blockchain/crypto has only continued to get more mainstream in its 12ish years of existence. That's a fact. From a purely speculative point of view, in 2017's bull run, institutions wanted nothing to do with crypto. The run was primarily fueled by retail. Contrast that with today, and you've got institutions buying Bitcoin and ETH, and now you're starting to see large companies (like Tesla) holding also. Major banks are buying, and making buying available to their customers. Most will now agree that crypto is here to stay, and is a legitimate asset class. 5 years ago.. only laughs.

This week, Coinbase will IPO, and you'll see how insane their valuation is going to be. In their most recent quarter, they had revenue of 1.8 billion dollars. That dwarfs Canadian and US MJ companies despite weed being legal in Canada and a number of US states now. That sector is booming, but still, it's nothing compared to the money in crypto.

Also compare to 2017, you had companies doing everything they could to ban anything crypto related, now you've got companies like visa settling payments on the Ethereum network, and Paypal allows you to pay via crypto. Granted, I think it's stupid, but I could buy a new Tesla right now with Bitcoin. Look at Ernst & Young's blockchain division and everything they're building also. Or MIT. Or JP Morgan, or Microsoft. Or hell, here's a list of all the enterprise players that are working to develop and enterprise standard for Ethereum:


But even more telling is that when Bitcoin first came about, the only real use case was peer to peer cash. That's it. Since then, you've got hundreds... thousands of projects doing some really interesting things. I'm personally a big fan of Ethereum, and even just a few years ago, DeFi (decentralized finance), didn't exist - now it's absolutely exploded. In Jan of 2019, the amount of money in DeFi was 350 million. A year later, January 2020? Just under a billion. A year and change later to now, April 2021? 50 billion. It's growing exponentially. See for yourself:


You can "lol" all you want, but you're dead wrong if you think that a dismissive attitude from 2013 about Bitcoin or Crypto is still valid today. It isn't.
 
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Would you like to try again, and this time refute anything I'm saying? Blockchain/crypto has only continued to get more mainstream in its 12ish years of existence. That's a fact.

Some like Steam have already withdrawn from letting you pay with Bitcoin.

Most will now agree that crypto is here to stay, and is a legitimate asset class.
So you agree it’s not a currency, but an asset. I guess that’s a start.

This week, Coinbase will IPO, and you'll see how insane their valuation is going to be.
Yes, that would be the correct adjective.
 
Some like Steam have already withdrawn from letting you pay with Bitcoin.


So you agree it’s not a currency, but an asset. I guess that’s a start.


Yes, that would be the correct adjective.
I think "cryptocurrency," generally speaking, due to the speculative nature of some coins, is yeah, an asset. Bitcoin isn't really a functioning currency the way USD or the Euro is - again, due to their speculative nature - but there are stablecoins that could and likely will serve as the basis for digital versions of a countries currency. The US has already spoken about a need or want to do this at some point in the future, and other countries are already working on this.

Also, I clearly meant "insane" in that, they're going to have a really high valuation, but when you're making 1.8 billion a quarter in mostly fees, yeah, that's pretty insane. In a good way. It's not unwarranted.

Anyway, if the best reply you to have to back up your "lol" comment is that Steam has disabled Bitcoin payments, I'm going to have to assume that this is a bad faith argument on your part, based on a personal opinion, and not reality. Besides, Steam stopped allowing Bitcoin payments 4 years ago, and it was due to Bitcoin's high fees and speculative nature, which I don't think anyone would really disgree with. Like I said, paying for a Tesla with Bitcoin is kind of stupid in my opinion. It would be like paying with Apple stock. Why would I use an appreciating asset to pay for something and also trigger a taxable event in doing so? There are other cryptocurrencies (again, stablecoins) that would make far more sense in this regard, and some of those coins didn't even exist 4 years ago. They're proving themselves now. So going back to my original statement, blockchain tech, and cryptocurrencies will countine to flourish, and become more mainstream as time goes on. I'm sure that at some point in the future, Steam and others, like Paypal now, will revisit their decision as mainstream adoption continues.
 
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