481–490 of 862 posts
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As opposed to other externally-caused problems like natural disasters, beating eaten by lions, etc. I would guess that a large chunk of human history was dominated by these problems.
Or just hunger in general. Before the agriculture revolution starvation was the primary cause of human death.
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It's just a risk that the value of it drops to near zero if it's outlawed. Or it could become highly regulated and be much less useful for trade due to onerous compliance requirements. For example, how do you prove that wallet X that one is sending money to isn't going to someone who's in an embargoed country?
It's a big risk. But, to answer your second question, its a public ledger. Its significantly more conducive to surveillance than cash. Just punish people if they send money to an unverified address. I think that's a gross possibility, and I hope no governments take this measure, but I don't think it would be difficult.
From that perspective, it seems to follow that most governments would want to regulate cryptocurrencies, and probably not in the way that Bitcoin bulls would like it to be.
I could definitely be wrong on this though. I thought in the past that the ad model of Facebook and Google would go nowhere, and look where they're at now.
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Not a bitcoin fanboy, but that's a bit strong a statement. What is "greed" versus motivation for innovation? Is innovation rewarded with (taxed, regulated) wealth greed, and if so, is that "bad"? And if it creates Teslas and rockets that land, and robots on Mars that last a year or more analyzing samples, is it a fatal flaw? Some more questions... So let's say BTC is greed - the many financial instruments out there,…
Do you think it's true that bitcoin is the solution to a couple of problems that don't exist?
It's not tulips and 100% useless. A digital currency is interesting to explore. It's interesting enough that institutions are stuffing their cash into it because they are fearing inflation, and the old school explanations of why we won't get inflation are now being questioned.
Don't ask me to forcefully argue for or against, there are many other people on this thread to argue both positions. But you can't say it has NO utility.
Green tech.
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> If I launch a BTC miner into space and use a star to power it, will you worry about what else could have been done with that energy? Well first of all you used a ton of energy to get it to space. But yes, I would definitely worry about it. There are a ton of other CPU intense jobs you could do with a rig like that that would be more beneficial to humanity. Medical research for example. It doesn't matter where you d…
Why is using computing power for bitcoin not beneficial to humanity?
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> How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems? That's a pretty good indicator of a civilization's state. For an advanced one, the answer to your question would be "it's nowhere near the top worries". All human-made horrors (war, climate change, etc.) would be left far behind. If we were as smart as we think we are, our biggest problems would be rogue asteroids, solar storms and aggressive aliens, not…
Again, question the premise holding in your mind’s hand a momento mori. All those things can and likely will happen. If the key advancement of human civilization was in virtue, would those things be a cause for worry or suffering? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
What's bad for the planet is how decades of individual work output in money can be confiscated (by printing and inflation, not taxation) by the Government under the pretense of doing good. What's bizarre is that the Government is not affected by market forces while the rest of us plebs are forced to be efficient lest we lose to competition. Note: when I say confiscation, I mean money printing and not taxes (which wil…
The reality is that the world, companies, people and nation states do not care about that. The current divide is due to the "system" being non-inclusive (only some people are in) and given that the system carry on to exclude more people while giving more privileges to the incumbents, the crypto tension will continue to rise.
Cryptocurrencies are not challenging banks. They are challenging governments, but they are too slow and bureaucratic to understand that.
Bitcoin is a beautiful concept that has been bastardized by economies of scale. The mining concentration is decreasing its security over time. The centralized block structure and exorbitant fees will afflict it more and more as it grows. Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. I truly be…
That argument itself is not great either because it assumes the fixed pie fallacy.
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Not a bitcoin fanboy, but that's a bit strong a statement. What is "greed" versus motivation for innovation? Is innovation rewarded with (taxed, regulated) wealth greed, and if so, is that "bad"? And if it creates Teslas and rockets that land, and robots on Mars that last a year or more analyzing samples, is it a fatal flaw? Some more questions... So let's say BTC is greed - the many financial instruments out there,…
Bitcoin innovated through a blockchain years ago and the world has already adopted that. But the current state of bitcoin makes it bad at its other 'innovation', digital currency. Bitcoin is far too volatile to be a widespread, standard currency which seems to be the "reason" people say it's worth as much as it is. But it will never be a widespread currency until it has stability. So it's a chicken/egg situation, one…
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You know what actually bothers me the most about all crypto-currencies? None of them are actually money, like in the paper-or-gold-coin sense. They're all ledgers. The thing about money is that I can hand it to someone . Possession of the money is possession of the money and third parties don't need to get involved in every transaction. I can hand someone dollars and take a sandwich and walk away, transaction done. T…
> The thing about money is that I can hand it to someone. Honestly don’t know if you’re trolling or just old. I used paper money once last year. To buy weed. Because the federal government has determined I am not responsible enough to use or own weed. No one I know uses physical cash anymore. We’re moving away from physical items where possible, not toward it. I would rather have my currency on a public DLT than cont…