Shocking to see how most criticism is just hand waving “technical and social issues” without citing any details.
And when they do those “issues” are almost all out of date and ignore current technology. Crypto uses too much energy ignores Ethereum converting to PoS in six months. Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today. Crypto is too slow and expensive to transfer ignores super high capacity L2s and rollups that are processing tens of billions in transactions today with essentially zero costs.
> Crypto uses too much energy ignores Ethereum converting to PoS in six months
If it doesn't get delayed yet again. And if it works. Also, right now it's BTC the one with the biggest market cap and name recognition, and I don't think that one is going to change anytime soon.
> Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today
Can I get a loan without 100%+ collateral yet?
> Crypto is too slow and expensive to transfer ignores super high capacity L2s
Tens of billions? Zero costs? Where is that?
You also forget the following issues:
- Irreversible transactions mean that scams, bugs and fraud are much more difficult to fight and revert. If someone steals my card I can cancel it and be safe. What if I lose my crypto wallet?
- DeFi does not actually bring anything new to the table other than "decentralized". It will still have to deal with all the problems of financing and loans, from scratch. Default risk, collection of collateral, predatory loans...
- The current economic system doesn't work too well with deflationary currency.
- Volatility. As long as crypto is more of an investment than a currency, people will prefer to have their actual money in something more stable. And as long as supply is limited, speculation will always be present.
- A big one: governments! It's pretty naive to think that governments are just going to give up monetary policy to an algorithm and a bunch of nodes in the blockchain.
- The main new thing from the blockchain is decentralization and authenticated record of transactions. Claiming that it's going to solve problem that have nothing to do with those two features is wishful thinking, usually from ignorance of the problem space.
Both of these sound like they made a regular bank, or a p2p lending platform. You could make exactly the same thing they're proposing without crypto. The goldfinch one is weird, as it completely glosses over the part of borrower defaults.
> Fast, feeles, higher tx troughput crypto, NANO:
This looks interesting, but the problem is the same as with Ethereum: too many coins, each with different technologies and protocols. Meanwhile, BTC still is the best-known one and the one with the highest market cap. The energy usage problem is not going away anytime soon.
This is quite common in trust less scenarios. We call them pawn shops or "empeños' in México. They are one of the most important lending instruments over here given the high default rates and lack of legal means to get money back for a non-collateralized loan.
Except that in this case, the collateral needs to be actual money. While in real life you can give someone a physical thing, you can't give it in the virtual world (and NFTs do not matter here: if I have the NFT title to your house but I can't evict you from it and sell it, it's useless).
These DeFi loans are less useful than pawn shops. That's the point they're at right now.
One issue with crypto is that it doesn't produce any value (it consumes value) and it has no intrinsic value. So as an investment it doesn't make any sense.
And when they do those “issues” are almost all out of date and ignore current technology. Crypto uses too much energy ignores Ethereum converting to PoS in six months. Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today. Crypto is too slow and expensive to transfer ignores super high capacity L2s and rollups that are processing tens of billions in transactions today with essentially zero costs.