It's very unfortunate to see crypto heading into the wrong direction. What was once driven by utility, is now driven by hype/speculation. This situation diminishes innovation, as developers won't care about anything else other than making a quick buck out of investors' own pockets. You can see why Dogecoin's resurgence in popularity brought a wave of worthless "meme" coins into the market. Such coins often have more attention than Litecoin or even Bitcoin itself.

Despite this, I believe there's always a place for Dogecoin due to its inexpensiveness and blazing-fast settlement times. For serious transactions, you can use Litecoin as an alternative to Bitcoin. For micropayments, tipping, or even gambling, Dogecoin is a much better option. If the aforementioned coins stay decentralized, they should be able to last for generations. Just buy, "hodl", and forget about the rest.

It's an interesting concept that's yet to find its place in the mainstream world. Just like people thought "Magic Internet Money" (eg: Bitcoin) wasn't going anywhere, the same happens with Digital Real Estate and NFTs + RWAs. This is the future whenever you like it or not. It's going to take some time to get used to it, especially when Real Estate has dominated the market for years. But change is inevitable.

It's likely new generations will embrace the tech for a fully-digitized society. Decentraland and The Sandbox are just starting to blossom. So hold on tight as this is going to be a wild ride. Who knows if buying virtual land now will make you rich in the future?

Exactly. The FTX collapse is history. People forgot all about it, and moved on with their lives. CEXs will still be around with us for quite some time, since they're the main "gateways" from both the crypto and Fiat worlds. Governments can keep track of illegal actvities involving crypto thanks to CEXs. With DEXs and privacy coins, it's almost impossible to do that. These solutions are widely unpopular due to their steep learning curve. Not everyone is willing to learn and take responsibility of securing crypto funds.

CEXs are easy to use, cheap, and fast. It's this reason why they're still afloat. I've read rumors of an "FTX comeback", so things might turn in the right direction soon. Who knows if the defunct exchange turns into a hybrid platform (centralized + decentralized) in the future?

It's just like the Internet. People can use it for both good and bad things. There's nothing governments can do about it, other than enforce the rule of law whenever possible. Instead of hunting down crypto mixers, governments should hunt down people using these services for illegal activities. Not doing so tells us there are other intentions. We all know governments want to destroy crypto (or at least minimize its impact on the mainstream economy) because of its decentralized design. Especially anything that has to do with privacy. When they can't track or control financial activities, that's when you become a threat to the corrupt system empowered by banks.

I believe the future of crypto mixers lies in decentralization. The more non-custodial (decentralized) mixers there are, the harder it will be for governments to stop people from obtaining true privacy. I'm yet to see how it's possible to stop criminals from using decentralized mixers for breaking the law (money laundering, tax evasion, etc). KYC/AML is not the answer to this. We can't predict the future, so lets hope for the best. Just my opinion

Received. All good. Thanks!

Exactly. Bitcoin can be used regardless of government censorship because of the way it was designed (decentralization). Stablecoins like USDC and USDT are more like credit/debit cards which can be censored at will. They're starting to look like CBDCs. I don't like the fact that these centralized stablecoins are used by "De-Fi" protocols. It greatly defeats the entire purpose of crypto/Blockchain tech. We should change the name from "De-Fi" to "CeDe-Fi" (Centralized/Decentralized Finance). Truly-decentralized finance would only use censorship-resistant alternatives to help eliminate the middleman from the system.

Despite the downsides of using centralized stablecoins, don't expect them to go anywhere soon. They will become bigger and stronger than ever, as long as "Wall Street" keeps supporting them. Who knows if they will become the new CBDCs everyone was talking about?

I'm sure Bitcoin will reach a new ATH soon. The upcoming halving event, and companies buying like crazy (Blackrock, Fidelity, Microstrategy) will help BTC cross the $30k range faster than you could imagine. You can buy BTC at a huge discount and sell it for a profit once the market pumps again. Gold rises during times of war, but it doesn't experience high gains as Bitcoin does. It remains relatively stagnant for long periods of time.

When you invest in Gold it's to help preserve your capital/purchasing power. Not to get richer over time. By leveraging between the two assets (Bitcoin and Gold), you'll be able to achieve peace of mind. These are uncertain times we're living into, so expect the unexpected. Just my thoughts

Why would Monero be much easier to use than Zcash? I'd say XMR is harder to understand than ZEC because of the way it's designed. It uses three keys instead of two used by coins like Zcash and the others (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc). ZEC only has shielded addresses, whereas Monero has a public key/address, a spend key, and a view key. If you want someone else to view your transaction history, you'd need to share your view key to do that. Using only the public key won't suffice.

It takes quite a bit of understanding to get your way through the XMR blockchain. And it's even worse with Mimblewimble coins such as Grin, BEAM, and Litecoin (yes, Litecoin added said privacy feature some time ago). I think that's one of the reasons why privacy coins are very unpopular. At least, there are plenty of options to choose from. As long as R&D for privacy/anonymity continues, we should have nothing to worry about.

That's certainly true, mate. Dogecoin's success is concentrated in Elon Musk himself. Almost everyone follows the man's advise when investing into DOGE. Talk about "decentralization". On the other hand, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee decided to step down from the project to make it more decentralized. There's no one to follow, other than the community itself.

We could say Litecoin's price is driven by utility instead of hype (speculation). The cryptocurrency (LTC) is often used to test new features before they're integrated into the main Bitcoin blockchain. With a limited supply of only 84m units, Litecoin has a high chance of becoming "Silver to Bitcoin's Gold" in the future. It's very undervalued to say the least. Hopefully, people will notice its true benefits resulting in a massive pump in market prices. Who knows how far will LTC go?

Instead of "Digital Real Estate", they should change the name to "Virtual Estate". I honestly don't see how the hype will hold for long, when real estate is still one of the driving forces of the market. The new trend may be well ahead of its time. Just like NFTs and RWAs. Whenever we like these trends or not, there's no denying that this is the way of the future. Everything is pointing to that direction. AI, the metaverse, CBDCs, NFTs, RWAs, virtual estate, and quantum computing will pave the way towards a full-fledged digital society.

The question is not "IF" but rather "WHEN" it will happen. I think it's going to take quite a few decades from now before this becomes a reality. I'd put my money where my mouth is by investing into promising projects with real utility. As long as you don't invest more than what you can't afford to lose, there should be nothing to worry about.

For some reason, the link did not appear on my post. Here it is again: https://electriccoin.co/blog/the-trailing-finality-layer-a-stepping-stone-to-proof-of-stake-in-zcash/

Quite an interesting read if you tell me. Zcash will become a hybrid PoW + PoS coin and then switch to full PoS. A great opportunity to buy ZEC at a cheap price, IMO.

Of course. Without hype, I don't see ZEC "pumping" anytime soon. The developer team already announced their intentions to make Zcash a PoS blockchain. It seems they will be following ETH's footsteps. If the upgrade gains the approval of the community, market prices will "pump" like crazy. At least for a short period of time. This should be able to bring back the hype. If you're curious about the transition to PoS, I invite you to read all about it here:

Exciting times ahead for ZEC and Zero-Knowledge proofs as a whole. Even ETH L2 networks have been using ZKPs. Maybe someday ZEC will go all the way to the moon? Just my two sats.

It seems to me that the world is heading towards complete digitalization. What Matrix (the movie) showed us, could not be far from becoming a reality soon. Constant wars, economic instability, and a persistent health crisis (because of the COVID-19 pandemic and other diseases) will make us more isolated and away from reality. Everything will live in the "virtual realm" whenever you like it or not. Digital Real Estate, Tokenized Real World Assets, and the Metaverse are the way of the future.

It may not make sense today, but it will in the long run. I wouldn't invest into digital real estate as the industry is still immature. Everything is overhyped these days. Give it some time, and it could become a part of our daily life. The future is widely unpredictable, so we can only hope for the best.

For starters, Litecoin has the "Mimblewimble" privacy feature and LN integration. You don't see that coming with Dogecoin. I think most people prefer Dogecoin on top of Litecoin because of its inexpensiveness. It's no secret that Dogecoin market prices are a hell of a lot cheaper than Litecoin. The latter has a limited supply, whereas Dogecoin's supply inflnitely expands over time. This makes the "meme" coin more suitable as a currency than a store of value.

Dogecoin's inflation rate should be able to keep market prices low for the forseeable future. How cool is that? Sometimes I wish Dogecoin would go back to being worth less than a cent (USD). Just like in the early days. Maybe it will happen after the hype fades away?

I guess Bitcoin is still new to the world. Investors trust Gold because it has been around for centuries. I think we should give Bitcoin more time to see what happens. I'm certain the world will adopt BTC as the new store of value because of the benefits it provides. Volatility aside, Bitcoin is better than Gold because it's portable, decentralized, and highly-divisible. It should only be a matter of time before people recognize this.

I'm in no hurry to see Bitcoin going all the way to "Mars" as long as it does the job it's supposed to (bringing banking to the unbanked). If it doesn't sacrifice decentralization in the long run, it could last a lifetime. Maybe Bitcoin and Gold will co-exist for generations?

This explains everything. Thank you very much. Based on what you've described here, does that mean Zcash has the strongest privacy technique? If that's the case, I'm surprised to see XMR being hailed as the #1 privacy coin in the world. ZEC's limited supply (21m like Bitcoin) and innovative approach to privacy/anonymity should've made it one of the most valuable crypto coins on the market today. It's very undervalued to say the least. The majority are not focused on privacy coins these days, so don't expect things to improve anytime soon.

I'm yet to see if developers will launch new privacy coins that will challenge existing ones in the future. The lack of innovation in the privacy space, tells us developers are afraid of increasing regulatory pressure. It's likely privacy coins will remain a niche forever. At least, people have a choice. As long as decentralization wins, nothing else matters.

Having a centralized stablecoin that's prone to censorship, certainly does not go well with crypto/Blockchain tech's core ethos. I can't imagine how disastrous it would be to combine such a stablecoin with "De-Fi". It's like bringing banks to the Blockchain. This introduction of a middleman or third-party, greatly brings us the single point of failure from centralized systems. Most people don't care about this because they only want to make money fast.

As I always say, convenience goes on top of everything else. I hope we get more decentralized alternatives to help make "De-Fi" truly censorship-resistant. Otherwise, crypto will be doomed to failure. The future is widely unpredictable, so we can only hope for the best. Just my opinion

If there's one person who takes Dogecoin seriously, that would be Elon Musk. After all, he's the one who brought the "meme" coins hype. Foolish investors make their decisions based on Elon Musk's opinion. They will end up getting "rekt" in the long run. As the original creators stated, Dogecoin is only a "joke". It's more like a "fun experiment" that "doesn't break the bank". With ever-rising inflation, DOGE will become worthless in the future. It's not a matter of "IF" but rather "WHEN".

For serious day-to-day transactions, Litecoin would be the way to go. It's close to Bitcoin in terms of decentralization, economic model, and censorship-resistance. With added privacy features (Mimblewimble) and LN integration, LTC will become bigger and stronger than ever. Maybe LTC will reach a new ATH within the not-so-distant future?

Do you mean custodians like Goldmoney and Vaultoro? I was looking more into Blockchain-based digital Gold, because of the benefits it provides. Custodians charge fees for keeping your Gold stored in a vault. You don't have to worry about that with Gold-backed tokens on the Blockchain. You'd just buy, sell, and manage your "digitized Gold" on an ETH wallet of your choice. It's even better when you hold the keys/seeds yourself.

Digitized Gold is certainly an appealing option for investors who want portability and unparalleled security. It's the "best of both worlds". This is one of the many RWAs (Real World Assets) that will take the world by storm. If I had to pick between the two tokens, I'd choose Paxos Gold. It's not as shady as Tether. Hopefully, we'll see more options available in the future as RWAs becomes more popular. Just invest what you can only afford to lose, and there should be nothing to worry about.

I doubt Gold will lose value quickly, especially when it's been trusted by investors for centuries. I know the discovery of an asteroid with Gold in it increases the supply. But that doesn't mean its value will go down overnight. The only way this could happen is if BTC becomes the world's preferred store of value. It could take decades before we're able to witness such a change.

I'm fine with BTC just the way it is, as long as it doesn't sacrifice decentralization in the long run. Knowing that the supply of BTC is limited, there's a high chance the cryptocurrency will reach a new ATH in the future. With or without market momentum, don't expect Bitcoin to go anywhere soon. Just my two sats.