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Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

louwrentius.com

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Re: Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

#31

Post by jariel »

elevenoh wrote: post #4

tl;dr - "So in short, I think that cryptocurrencies provide nothing of value to society. They do however facilitate crime and contribute to climate change." Is this satire? I'm wondering if this author covertly intends to strengthen the perceived utility of through this article. Yes, near-free & instant to exchange, borderless, alternative to gov't, privacy-preserving, competitively evolving etc. digital money provid…

"near-free & instant to exchange, borderless, alternative to gov't, privacy-preserving"

Cryptocurrencies provide none of this in practice.

Re: Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

#32

Post by twomoretime »

bootlooped wrote: post #11

The extreme energy waste is the most salient point to me. Imagine what you could have if you took all the energy spent mining crypto and instead had spent it on building solar panels or N95 masks or high speed rail.

Energy is nowhere near the limiting constraint for either of those things, this comparison doesn't make sense.

Re: Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

#33

Post by louwrentius »

drcode wrote: post #17

This post presents a very low effort argument. It's basically taking the argument "the only reason anyone would want privacy is if they have something to hide" and applying it to money "the only reason anyone would want financial privacy is because they are buying drugs".

It all depends on what kind of level of privacy you expect. Absolute privacy is an illusion people seem to chase. Why would you have any rights to that?

Re: Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

#34

Post by twomoretime »

bootlooped wrote: post #30
elevenoh wrote: post #4

tl;dr - "So in short, I think that cryptocurrencies provide nothing of value to society. They do however facilitate crime and contribute to climate change." Is this satire? I'm wondering if this author covertly intends to strengthen the perceived utility of through this article. Yes, near-free & instant to exchange, borderless, alternative to gov't, privacy-preserving, competitively evolving etc. digital money provid…

I don't think a public ledger of every transaction is a privacy preserving feature.

It is when the transactions are pseudonymous and you can create as many addresses as you want.

Re: Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

#35

Post by elevenoh »

louwrentius wrote: post #20
elevenoh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the 'actual value' of performing an ecommerce transaction with an asia-based merchant w/ crypto: near-zero fee & instant receipt (+ seconds for 'confirmation') vs. foreign exchange + payment processor fee - which can come to >5%, yes 5% + multi-day bank deposit wait time?

You mean the fee you pay when you covert cryptocurrency to something real and back?

Resorting to a loaded label fallacy, nice.

Re: Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

#37

Post by montenague »

Half way down the page and there are zero arguments in favour - deeply disingenuous article.

Much of what this "discussion" focuses on casts every innovation (of which there are many) into the Bitcoin Proof of Work pidgeon hole.

Bitcoin is a primitive protocol - nothing more than a technical proof that can now be used as a gold store.

There are some serious upcoming corporate monsters building their foundations right now. Cardano, Chainlink, ETH(Maybe), Augur.

All of those are real companies not anarchist dreams. Serious scientific minds like Philip Wadler, who has contributed majorly to Haskell and Java, this is not some libertarian dream.

This is IoT and the eventual interface with AGI.

But yeah, focus on the silk road for gods sake.

Re: Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

#38

Post by aww_dang »

>unimaginable energy waste of mining cryptocurrencies Not all cryptocurrencies require a massive amount of energy.

>Cryptocurrencies have existed for eleven years, they should have something to show for right now

I'm using a cryptocurrency for feeless, instant microtransactions in a browser based game. It happens to be a near ideal solution. That, said I won't force it upon anyone. It is a purely voluntary proposition.

>Ponzi

This is somewhat true. When there is no actual use case, there is no actual value. But again, the author generalizes. Not everyone is in it to promote some coin. Some of us are just looking for a technical solution.

Let's take a second to remember what happened with e-gold and liberty reserve. There's a reason why cryptocurrencies are necessary. They aren't backed by anything because they are decentralized. They can't be backed by the obvious (precious metals) because that is highly regulated.

>Those regular currencies provide tremendous value to our societies.

This is as far as I have time to go right now. If you think there's no issue with traditionally issued paper and digital money, then there's very little to say here. The US is about to issue $2 trillion in monetized debt.

From Roman coin clipping to the Wiemar republic's hyperinflation, if you can't see what is happening and actually believe that this process is 'adding value' to society...

If hamburgers were once 5 cents each, how has value been added?

Re: Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

#39

Post by onion2k »

StavrosK wrote: post #18
bootlooped wrote: post #11

The extreme energy waste is the most salient point to me. Imagine what you could have if you took all the energy spent mining crypto and instead had spent it on building solar panels or N95 masks or high speed rail.

I don't know, how much energy is spent producing reality TV shows? To me, those have less value than instant, trustless payments. That's not to say that I don't hope non-PoW cryptocurrencies become more popular, we should conserve energy when we can. I haven't looked very much into it, but Stellar seems interesting, and it's not PoW.

I don't know, how much energy is spent producing reality TV shows?

A fraction of a percent of what gets used on cryptocurrencies.

Re: Cryptocurrencies Are Detrimental to Society

#40

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

robcohen wrote: post #26

This blog post fails to mention anything about alternative consensus mechanisms to Proof of Work (PoW). Proof of Work requires the energy expenditure of a small country. Proof of Stake requires far far less power, negligible amounts of power. https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/ethereum-plans-...

And yet, proof of stake has led to no cryptocurrency that can claim anywhere near the activity of Bitcoin.
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