Your community is a bunch of selfish near sighted-pricks

[OhioSoft]

TL:DR Your cryptocurriences are little more than ponzi schemes wrapped up in the hype of distributed inefficient databases, mainly driven by people with no understanding of economics preying on people with even less of an understanding of economics.

Points:

1. You have no high-level long term plans
The community has yet to decide if cryptocurrencies are mean to store wealth or provide a liquid value-exchange program for routine transactions. For example if everyone on earth could be given a equal amount of the currency would it be better than fiat because it is fairly distributed and has finite amount? Or is it worthless because the currency was not distributed based real-world commodity buying power but instead based of the fair distribution of unrated and unsorted labor.
2. Why do you expect the value of your currencies to rapidly appreciate?
In the real world this is caused deflation (a negative inflation rate) and as nice as it sounds to have staples get cheaper there is a huge downside. Even though your ie. $100 dollar paycheck can now get you $110 worth of food [Assume -10% inflation rate] the reoccurring car payment of $20 which was 18.18% of your $110 dollar check is now 20% of your $100 paycheck and despite your "increased buying power" your going home with a smaller percentage of disposable income.
3. Bitcoin reward and distribution system is fundamentally wrong
It's as if the inventors of bitcoin thought everyone would get into the market by mining and not buying BTC off other users. Why then were multiple small easy to win blocks and steady mining rewards not integrated into initial release. Because a currency with a limited number of coins 70%+ distributed in first few months to year lowers the value proposition of newcomers to profit "innovators" and "early-adopters". You use this same strategy in crowdfunding donate at seed stage so we can sell you product at cost 20-60% less than we'll charge the suckers. I bet a red squiggly line would appear under Walmart if they had tried that.
4. MONEY GOES TO PROVIDER OF GOODS & SERVICES, NOT FACILITATOR OF TRANSACTION.
If you want your currency to buy things in the real world you need to sacrifice something in the real world. Big surprise money isn't enough to sacrifice unless that value is transferred to the person who your purchase products from in bitcoin not the person you acquired the currency from.
5. Bitcoin was not designed to be fast
Workarounds exist to provide instant confirmation because of 10 minute block times. However it should be obvious that blocks are the problem in the first place. Double-spend protection should be provided instantly after contacting a set or variable number of randomly selected nodes.
6. Mining
Mining should not exist end of story. POS is not the solution if your still using mining for coin distribution but skipping most of algorithmic waste of computer cycles. Seriously figure out a new way of distributing coins. Anything else like buying index funds or donating money to charity. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1659629.0
7. Focus on the Blockchain
The Blockchain is your primary source of value if your not going to use real life interest bearing investments like index funds or humanitarian aid. Seriously smart contracts nothing more than re-vomited stored procedures of databases for the past 30 years. Non-Financial Blockchain is less than 5% of projects according to me. Cool uses like Gridcoin, bigchaindb, RChain have no mainstream commitment from your community.

[ZACHM]

Even though your ie. $100 dollar paycheck can now get you $110 worth of food [Assume -10% inflation rate] the reoccurring car payment of $20 which was 18.18% of your $110 dollar check is now 20% of your $100 paycheck and despite your "increased buying power" your going home with a smaller percentage of disposable income.

Your reoccurring car payment of $20 was 20% of your paycheck.
Your $20 car payment is still 20% of your $100 paycheck, but now with the left over $80 you can now buy $88 worth of food.
So the payment is only 20/108= 18.5% instead of 20%. 

[OhioSoft]

Your right about my example I knew it was a little flaky. I tried to oversimplify it for this example because in reality it is very complex and tied to many factors. Wikipedia summarizes it as this "A deflationary spiral is a situation where decreases in price lead to lower production, which in turn leads to lower wages and demand, which leads to further decreases in price." On a simplier to understand note when the US Dollar grows in proportion to other countires it's typical that exports drop because the same products we export cost a larger number of their currency. Now Americas exports are pretty damn important because of our size and patent portfolio so don't expect strong correlations. Just remember,
"When people in one country demand products from firms in another country, they must enter into another market first, to buy that nation’s currency".
http://www.econedlink.org/lesson/342/Exchange-Rates-How-Money-Affects-Trade
Does this sound like a ponzi scheme?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/03/forget-the-1-percent-in-the-bitcoin-world-half-the-wealth-belongs-to-the-0-1-percent/

[ZACHM]

Yes, it is a very complex topic. And the same goes for Bitcoin. The value of Bitcoin rising or falling is dependent on many things. Including the valuation between almost every fiat currency, which creates further complexity.

That article is two and a half years old, and not necessarily representative of the current conditions.

[jbreher]

TL:DR Your cryptocurriences are little more than ponzi schemes wrapped up in the hype of distributed inefficient databases, mainly driven by people with no understanding of economics preying on people with even less of an understanding of economics.

Points:

1. ... 7.
<< a handful of cherry picked statistics, employed to reach sketchily reasoned faulty conclusions>>

Sorry, mang. We regularly -- since 2011 at least -- get people charging in here, just having discovered Bitcoin, lecturing us on how it can't possibly work, based upon their extensive three hours of study.

Well, we're still here, and Bitcoin has gone from sideshow novelty to a market cap equivalent to a mid-sized company stock. All with no help from central planning. Years in the field, and working better than ever.

Rather than expend the energy to rebut each of your points, I'll just suggest you read a little, and ask some questions. It's not like you've raised any points that have not been discussed (and dispatched) ad nauseum.

Other than that - welcome to the monetary alternative. Hope you enjoy it.

[osmio]

I think your title says a lot about how you approached criticizing cryptocurrencies. The first thing I would ask you is do you think Bitcoin is novel? Do you think it was worth trying? The blockchain has applications. It will be used in the real world. I don't think a cryptocurrency will be replacing FIAT anytime, which is the marker of success you seem to have set. It already serves purpose for people without access to banking or those who wish to send money internationally. This is not something that will be even close to perfect out the gate, that is your erroneous assumption.