Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#431

Post by ed25519FUUU » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

Frost1x wrote: post #319

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greed is perhaps one of the most powerful motivators known to man.

Probably because it largely acts as a proxy for survival mechanisms. Give most people want they need and a little of what they want and you'll find most greed driven behaviors largely disappear except for a select few who I'd argue have dysfunctions or lack basic social maturity.

The Mouse Utopia study from the 1960's suggest otherwise.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-mouse-utopias-...

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#432

Post by drcode » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #413

albntomat0 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider missing context, what are the answers to the following? They are all valid questions that come up every time, and aren't well answered, given my research into them. - Is the long term alternatives to PoW actually viable, given the huge power consumption of cryptocurrency currently? - Are the valid use cases (other than drugs, ransomware and speculation) worth the valuation? - If Tether collapses, due t…

- Is there anything actually wrong with PoW? It's fun to say it's "wasted" electricity, but we "waste" more power, resources, and man-hours in other trivialities (eg. video games) without really caring. - Read the whitepaper of whichever crypto you're asking about. The answer is "it depends", because each one exists to fill a different niche. - Nobody really cares about Tether, so probably nothing.

A failure of tether would certainly cause a ton of market volatility, but there's enough tether substitutes for the markets to adjust pretty quickly. Sure, the failure might freeze a lot of funds and depress market caps a bit in the process.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#433

Post by als0 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

albntomat0 wrote: post #401

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #375

The Hacker News community has long been anti-crypto, and as someone deeply involved in the space, these long threads of complaints and diatribes are difficult to handle. Everyone is missing so much context. Ethereum gas prices are astronomical because there's unprecedented demand to use the network: NFT art and collectibles are exploding (NBA TopShot, Foundation, SuperRare, Rarible, OpenSea, etc.) at the same time De…

As an outsider missing context, what are the answers to the following? They are all valid questions that come up every time, and aren't well answered, given my research into them. - Is the long term alternatives to PoW actually viable, given the huge power consumption of cryptocurrency currently? - Are the valid use cases (other than drugs, ransomware and speculation) worth the valuation? - If Tether collapses, due t…

> - Are the valid use cases (other than drugs, ransomware and speculation) worth the valuation?

I think it's fair to say that the current valuation of cryptocurrencies have nothing to do with their tech or use cases. These markets have the same signs as the dot com bubble. However, there are valid use cases if you're willing to search for them. One of them is decentralized DNS name registration without third parties like GoDaddy or ICANN (https://handshake.org/), though this is a market, not a currency per say.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#434

Post by skybrian » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #410

skybrian wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does borrowing work in an automated, trustless environment? Doesn’t someone have to decide whether you’re likely to pay back the loan with money you haven’t earned yet?

It's over-collaterized, so you put more crypto than the loan value. You might say "why the hell would I do that?", in order of importance: 1) you hold on to your asset's appreciation, 2) access the liquidity, 3) avoid capital gains tax.

Okay, but that seems like a pretty small niche? Most people don’t borrow just to save money on taxes on their cryptocurrency gains.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#435

Post by ohgodplsno » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

keithtom wrote: post #407

Retric wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN seems wildly pro crypto compared to most places. It’s like Tesla which isn’t universally supported, but still gets a lot more coverage than Ford. People do bring up quite reasonable objections like environmental costs, but it stories get a lot of upvotes and suggesting many people are strong supporters.

Re environmental costs, I have yet to hear anyone make an analysis of the environmental cost of the banking system or an equivalent; that is, how much to warm all the offices, the computers and servers, the transportation costs of cars & planes for all the employees. Also, proof of stake will reduce 99% of the environmental cost.

The banking system _exists_. It's what powers all our daily transactions. It's what has been tried and tested for hundreds of years, and got regulated. Even if Ethereum or coin-of-the-week takes off, this existing banking system will not go away. What you're doing is a well known crypto-lover tactic to distract from the fact that cryptocurrencies are an ecological catastrophe.

Meanwhile, we're burning coal to produce bitcoin whose only value is that number gets green and goes up. Eth is slightly better on that point, but still wasted multiple TWh of electricity while it was in PoW mode, and it still is today.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#436

Post by nitrogen » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #413

albntomat0 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider missing context, what are the answers to the following? They are all valid questions that come up every time, and aren't well answered, given my research into them. - Is the long term alternatives to PoW actually viable, given the huge power consumption of cryptocurrency currently? - Are the valid use cases (other than drugs, ransomware and speculation) worth the valuation? - If Tether collapses, due t…

- Is there anything actually wrong with PoW? It's fun to say it's "wasted" electricity, but we "waste" more power, resources, and man-hours in other trivialities (eg. video games) without really caring. - Read the whitepaper of whichever crypto you're asking about. The answer is "it depends", because each one exists to fill a different niche. - Nobody really cares about Tether, so probably nothing.

If actual, real consumers and professionals can't buy gear because it's being hoarded by miners, yeah, that's pretty wasteful (as in, a thing that consumes vast resources without benefiting very many people).

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#437

Post by MagnumOpus » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

keithtom wrote: post #407

Retric wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN seems wildly pro crypto compared to most places. It’s like Tesla which isn’t universally supported, but still gets a lot more coverage than Ford. People do bring up quite reasonable objections like environmental costs, but it stories get a lot of upvotes and suggesting many people are strong supporters.

Re environmental costs, I have yet to hear anyone make an analysis of the environmental cost of the banking system or an equivalent; that is, how much to warm all the offices, the computers and servers, the transportation costs of cars & planes for all the employees. Also, proof of stake will reduce 99% of the environmental cost.

The banking system does a lot of other things than transaction processing. Mortgages, loans commercial banking, trade finance, acquisition financing etc are 95% of what banks do, and cryptocoins won't replace them in any way.

Of course even if you count all that, the power consumption per transaction will be at least five orders of magnitude lower than the 0.6MWh per transaction in BTC.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#438

Post by drcode » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #56

Building something useful on something that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument always rubbed me the wrong way. The whole crypto scene is just about making quick dough with a technology, that for some reason remains hyped through and wrapped in mysticism. Face it, there is no sexy killer app for the masses. Wait. There is one: Crypto trading to... make quick dough. And the cryptonerd…

The alternative is building on AWS or whatever, where a big company can just decide arbitrarily to kill your startup at any arbitrary moment by shutting down your access, or confiscating your funds.

This happens all the time.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#439

Post by jordanmarshall » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #375

The Hacker News community has long been anti-crypto, and as someone deeply involved in the space, these long threads of complaints and diatribes are difficult to handle. Everyone is missing so much context. Ethereum gas prices are astronomical because there's unprecedented demand to use the network: NFT art and collectibles are exploding (NBA TopShot, Foundation, SuperRare, Rarible, OpenSea, etc.) at the same time De…

Help me understand the appeal of NFT art. I love digital art, but I don't see the appeal of spending money to get the token certifying you as the owner. The image/work is still out there and can be viewed/downloaded by other people. You don't even control it, unless the artist agrees to send you all of the files and delete them on his or her system. Your name doesn't even appear next to the piece when people look at it.

Sure, usually the tokens come with a print, and you support the artist, but those are things you can do via other means. What is the NFT adding? It seems only slightly more authentic than "buying" a star from a star registry.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#440

Post by megameter » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #375

The Hacker News community has long been anti-crypto, and as someone deeply involved in the space, these long threads of complaints and diatribes are difficult to handle. Everyone is missing so much context. Ethereum gas prices are astronomical because there's unprecedented demand to use the network: NFT art and collectibles are exploding (NBA TopShot, Foundation, SuperRare, Rarible, OpenSea, etc.) at the same time De…

Yep, this is it. There has been a graduation from toy to tool. And...there is also rising demand for lower overheads to get the same functionality, which means there is serious competition for good tech now. If BTC and ETH are examples of "worse is better", there are some Right Things just around the corner.