01-08-2018, 11:34 PM
(01-08-2018, 02:05 PM)rayray Wrote: what do most of these crypto's make? What kind of products? What do they sell? What's their service? Who is their customer base and why? How long has this company been in business? Why should I put money in Bitcoin vs Gold? Why buy Ripple vs V?
Well, it depends on which crypto you're talking about, while a lot of them are pretty similar they still have different functions and are designed for different things. What do they make? Well for one, the majority of cryptos (I noticed that bitcoin is not one of these anymore) allow for pretty much free and instant delivery of money to anywhere in the world.
Say I need to send $100 from Europe to the USA. My bank will charge me about $15 to do that, maybe $20. Then they will exchange it to dollars at a rate that is 1.5% lower than the current market rate. So I'll be paying between 16.5% and 21.5% in transfer fees and the transfer will take 3-4 days.
I could use Paypal. Where I'll pay 2-3% extra for the currency conversion and maybe 5% as transaction fees, so a total of 7-8% and it's almost instant.
Or I could use crypto where I'd pay something like $0.02 as a transaction fee, and if the receiver wants to change it to USD then he would pay about 0.2% for the exchange fee. If I wouldn't have crypto and needed to do the EUR -> crypto then that would be another 0.2% or so. And this would be just as fast as paypal.
Then there are cryptos who do this completely anonymously. And like it or not, privacy is a big thing for a lot of people. There are those who do it in a completely untraceable way... imagine the uses (not always legal :p) with that. How about using these wallets for online gaming... lot's of games have all sorts of micropayments. Instead of plugging in your credit card (where the company receiving the money always pays a fee) how about you just have a browser extension where you upload money and then you can use that to fund all the purchases in any of the games you play? Less fees, no need to put your credit card number anywhere etc. The banks are already looking to use these platforms internally because it would save them so much money, so why shouldn't we?
Once again, I don't really see these as investments, more like gambling. And I'm almost certain that at some point, one way or another, I'll lose a bit of money because of something like a transaction to a wrong adress or an exchange just disappearing etc. But the technology, and some of these coins (by no means all of them) have potential. Not potential to completely replace the current system but rather to offer more attractive ways of doing some things.