More recently Vitalik has said Ethereum PoS is at least a couple of years away, likely due to new attack vectors that require further research https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.10086, one of which enables an attack with only 0.09% of the total staked. It would have been foolish to fork knowing attacks like these are still being discovered.
"with more than 99.6% probability, an adversary with 0.09% of total stake is in
a position to execute a 1-reorg for any given day."
Another which could prevent the chain moving forwards indefinitely.
"an adversary controlling 15% of stake can stall PoS Ethereum"
I heard June-ish 2022, which is a couple quarters away, not a couple years. Could potentially be delayed further, but 3 quarters doesn't seem unreasonable.
Property prices aren't so crazy - a friend of mine pays €400 a month in a nice part of Costa da Caparica for a 2 bed, another bought a great place for under €200k in Cacilhas.
For under €500k you can get something like this https://www.idealista.pt/imovel/31578168/ more than decent in such a desirable location in the centre of the capital..
The minimum wage is so low because more than 50% of the workforce didn't finish school https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/50-of-portuguese-betwee...
There are plenty of Portuguese people smarter than I commanding nice salaries, yes not as high as elsewhere in Europe but the quality of life and cost of living I believe make up for it.
You're quite right, there are risks with everything in life. I believe a hardware wallet to be far more secure than online banking. I think you'll find this interesting: https://trezor.io/shamir/
Bitcoin is imaginary in the same way an email is an imaginary letter, or this is an imaginary conversation (we are not talking face to face, people of last century would struggle to understand that I am indeed talking with another person, somewhere in the world, even though I have never seen you, I understand you do exist as a thinking feeling person. Hope you're having a good day :) ).
Thought you might find this insightful. I agree with you on, not your keys not your crypto - this ETF is not the best option for many people, but for some it is perhaps their only and therefore best option: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/q6pwtp/michael_say...
I don't assume intent but this comment is disinformation - stable coins are some of the riskiest major assets in the space, since their backing is questionable at best[1], and even those that are "backed" are inescapably custodial with all that entails (lack of censorship resistance being one unavoidable property so long as coins retain any sign of fungibility). I hope they "concentrate on" Bitcoin - which under close examination seems the first time hard money has ever been created.
Stablecoins are indeed immature. But volatile assets don't make for good money. Have you heard of Gresham's Law? "Bad money drives out the good"- that is, people will hoard the lucrative asset (bitcoin) and actually use the boring one (stablecoins).
AAVE appears hard to trust that since they offer their own tokens.
If you're a wall street investor, you want a bank to have an accounting firm that is completely independent from the bank it's auditing -- no side deals, no consulting services in either direction.
Not the same (or even similar) per your own link actually (which i think you added in an edit after I replied? Either way it’s a decent breakdown).
I’m not saying DAI is risk-free or even objectively less risky (though it could be argued); it has a different kind of risk-profile and all-together due to how it’s constructed.
Just so you know, Dogecoin's blockchain is trivial to attack; its ledger can be altered at such low cost it is unlikely several such attacks aren't already underway. Upon publushing of new "longest chains" it will no longer be possible to determine which doge chain is valid, putting all balances in danger until the Proof of Work mechanism is replaced - which will only work briefly before the same problem recurs, due to the nature of how blockchains are secured.
This will demonstrate why Bitcoin and Ethereum are valuable.
More info: https://www.intuitecon.com/post/why-dogecoin-is-going-to-zer...
Most of the other articles I saw when I googled "51% attack doge" said that this was unlikely, and that it had the 3rd most hashing power among crypto, mainly because of it being mined with litecoin. Saying it would be trivial to attack comes off as a hyperbole with that in mind. Litecoins 1 hour attack cost is $29,000, while Bitcoin's and Ethereums are $716,000 and $418,000 respectively, only a magnitude higher.
Those articles also mentioned a lack of incentive due to sending the price to zero, but perhaps that's an incentive now since there are ways to short the price of a coin.
Yes, DOGE can be borrowed and then sold, to be repurchased later (at a possibly lower price); short positions can be opened. Plenty of DOGE is available for shorting. GPUs currently mining Ethereum can be used instead in a 51% attack against DOGE. No such pile of resources exists that can be redirected to attack Ethereum or Bitcoin.
Tether, the 6th largest cryptocurrency has a market cap of ~$160B, seems pretty "popular" to me.
USDC TUSD and BUSD are further popular examples.
Cryptocurrencies are not MLMs, you would do yourself a huge favour by learning what they are.
In brief, Bitcoin is a scarce asset, and Ethereum is the credit required to run trustless logical conditions relating to a transaction, and also securing assets involved in those conditions.
>Cryptocurrencies are not MLMs, you would do yourself a huge favour by learning what they are.
I did and it changed absolutely nothing. It's literally just the dot com bubble all over again but it keeps coming back every 3 years.
Here, I'll explain the core problem of the dot com bubble. People started internet companies with basically close to zero revenue. To convince investors to buy in they used weird non standard metrics that indicate popularity and growth potential like page views. The fact that these businesses were not earning money let the imagination of investors run wild. Companies that were actually earning money had much lower valuations back then, because people immediately understood the value proposition and that growth isn't endless.
It's the same with Bitcoin. There is no reason why it should have such a high market cap. It's only riding network effects but those are all there is to it, MLMs are exactly the same, they endlessly recruit members and that is how they make money.
Because there are no other reasons, the imaginations of speculators run wild. They will come up with an endless number of bullshit reasons that you have to cross check. When the initial pitch turns out to be wrong, they just shift goalposts and come up with another reason. Remember, Bitcoin started out as a currency, then became a store of value and now it is becoming a settlement layer.
Really, if you want to gamble your money in Bitcoin, do it with the realization that it's just that, a gamble with better odds than a conventional casino.
The vast majority of people don't buy Bitcoin because they want a deflationary currency that goes up slightly faster than inflation, they buy into it because of its volatility and ability to generate otherwise impossibly large returns fueled by future investors.
I buy bitcoin because I want to own bitcoin and have the money to burn - there can only ever be 21 million, so it has a collector appeal. I don't really give a shit about selling or using it, so the valuation doesn't matter to me.
>Tether, the 6th largest cryptocurrency has a market cap of ~$160B, seems pretty "popular" to me.
MLM creates tens of billions in revenue per year in the US alone. Cryptocurrencies aren't inherently marketing schemes but they're pretty close to it and most of the value they have on markets today is basically a case of a 'greater fool' mechanism.
Also market caps for crypto is pretty meaningless. If I mint a trillion random coins and manage to sell a bunch for a dollar I'm the richest man on earth by market cap. Market cap without considering liquidity is meaningless and most if not all of these coins will go to zero as soon as someone actually tries to sell them en masse.
For me, knowing that a contract will be followed regardless of the wishes of any party involved is very valuable. Knowing that an asset will remain scarce, its issuance predictable, and that I can store it securely at extremely low cost, is very valuable.
Crypto are a scam these days. The contract can be changed, it isn't set in stone. Look at the Ethererum and Ethereum Classic.
While they are called crypto currencies, most of them if not all aren't used as currencies.
I just to give a hint I am involved since 2011 and just dumped all crypto. When I get crypto tips from strangers at my son's swimming team, it's about time to quit it.
Bitcoin has outperformed gold significantly in the past, so that can't be the reason why people buy it. They'd stop buying it because it is overpriced.
Now that inflation is up again, people are realizing that fact. Gold is going up, Bitcoin is going down.
As per terms of settlement with NYAG, Tether will be disclosing details of their reserves on a regular basis from now on to NYAG, let's see how fake USDT is - NYAG seem satisfied for now that it is backed by full reserves.
I don't like Tether as it's no different from fractional reserve banks, but as long as the NYAG remains content with what she sees, it's sound money. Been waiting its supposed collapse for half a decade now with bated breath, but it still has yet to happen.
Disclaimer: I own zero USDT and an insignificant amount of USDC, being rather skeptical on "stablecoins" in general.
NYAG stated that "Tether’s claims that its virtual currency was fully backed by U.S. dollars at all times was a lie" and banned it entirely from New York.
"I don't like Tether as it's no different from fractional reserve banks,"
That reserves don't add up to the currency in circulation is somewhat similar to a central bank but the similarities end there and they are basically nothing alike.
USDT, USDC and DAI each have their own set of counterparty risks.
USDT is regulated somewhere sunny, USDC somewhere that could be hostile if given enough power, and DAI is backed by digital assets such as custodied Ethereum.
The sooner there are more solid options in more jurisdictions, and more certainty around USD stablecoin regulation, the better.
I will be very glad to see Tethers go away.
I can’t find where Tether is ACTUALLY regulated, but I can find a lot of misinformation about where it is regulated and how, even in their own legal pages. For instance, they claim they are regulated by FinCEN. However, they appear to only be registered with FinCEN for the purpose of reporting crimes and the like (money laundering), which does not (quite explicitly) give them the right to claim FinCEN in any way is regulated or overseeing them in the traditional sense.
If someone runs across Tether (somehow?) explicitly committing money laundering in a jurisdiction that FinCEN controls, yeah they could go after them - but since they don’t have an address near as I can tell, that’s not easy to do, and all they say on the matter is they are ‘incorporated in Hong Kong’ [https://tether.to/contact-us/]
Given the amount of money we’re taking about, the number of investors affected and the extent of the fraud around these entities, I’m surprised we have not yet seen a securities class action suit raised against them... I suppose it’s all good while the ROI goes up. After the seemingly inevitable crash, I suspect a SCA would be on the cards
"with more than 99.6% probability, an adversary with 0.09% of total stake is in a position to execute a 1-reorg for any given day."
Another which could prevent the chain moving forwards indefinitely.
"an adversary controlling 15% of stake can stall PoS Ethereum"