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What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

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Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#181

Post by TeMPOraL »

hdhrnnrkrkf wrote: post #156
RealityVoid wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am... Suspicious of all the chia articles popping up on HN. I have not seen the same kind of buzz happening in other crypto spaces about it. And I am also suspicious about the claims that chia is the one that is such a threat to data storage supply, considering there are other crypto currencies with a similar approach. Overall, I am inclined to say that this is a submarine and HN is falling for it. Regardless, more…

I learned about Chia last week by googling "hard drive shortage" to figure out why suddenly hard drives prices are spiking where I live. Definitely not a submarine.

Hard to say, really. It could be organic, but then, it is in the interest of Chia to spread the stories about "hard drive shortage" - like all crypto schemes, their best user base are people who will see an article about cryptocurrency causing a social-wide issue, and read it as an opportunity. The people who see a disaster and their first thought is about how to profit off it.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#182

Post by unnamedhorse »

theshadowknows wrote: post #4

I asked this recently but the topic died before I got many answers. Basically, I’m not a cryptocurrency denier. I just don’t understand it. Do people want cryptocurrency because they want to spend it on stuff? Or do they want cryptocurrency because they want to sell it for other currencies? In other words, at what point will a cryptocurrency stand on its own as something that’s worth a pair of shoes? Instead of being…

Disclaimer: I'm a Bitcoiner, which seems to be an unpopular stance here. I'll do my best to explain some of my motivation and answer to your questions.

Q1: Why would people accept these currencies in the first place? I want to hold Bitcoin because of its monetary policy. It has a fixed, capped supply of 21 million BTC, whereas fiat can be printed at will. This property is what fuels the current hype, and the fact that central banks around the world are inflating money supply as we speak certainly helps the narrative. So for bitcoiners, money saved in fiat is likely to lose buying power over time, but in Bitcoin we see, on average, a steady increase. Since I see Bitcoin as a superior form of money, I would certainly prefer getting paid in Bitcoin than in fiat.

Q2: Why do people that accept Bitcoin still denominate prices in USD? Bitcoin is far from being an established currency, and it is still very volatile (though far less than a few years ago). Most of the population are not bitcoiners. The US are denominated in USD. So, until Bitcoin is both more stable and more popular, it is the most convenient to do what we're used to and denominate things in USD.

Q3: Is speculation the primary reason for Bitcoin's rise in popularity? We're in the middle of a bull run right now, so probably? But if you zoom out and look at the price evolution over 5 years it looks different, and there is a steady growth.

Q4: Do people just want to increase their USD? ("spend 10,000 [...] and then extract 15,000 fiat") Some do for sure, but I don't see much appeal in exchanging hard money into money with arbitrary monetary policies. Bitcoin tripling in value does not change the initial motivation I had to buy it, so why sell? Of course, if I want to buy something with btc then that amounts to selling some. But my motivation to be in Bitcoin is to protect my time, the most limited resource I have in my life, from inflation, and that does not change with price.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#183

Post by sygma »

cwyers wrote: post #94

I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, can look at Bitcoin... the waste, the way it has utterly failed to achieve what it set out to do[1], everything, and thinks, I know, I want to do that, but instead of blowing up the market for GPUs it'll be SSDs. Why? To get rich? It even seems doubtful to me that the people who developed Ch…

Saying that Bitcoin blew the market for GPUs reveals that your knowledge is years out of date. Bitcoin is predominately mined on ASICs.

Viagra was originally developed as chest pain medication. Did it utterly fail, simply because a new use-case was unveiled?

Which begs the question, what is the new use case for Bitcoin? Some say digital gold, but only time will tell.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#184

Post by unnamedhorse »

cwyers wrote: post #94

I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, can look at Bitcoin... the waste, the way it has utterly failed to achieve what it set out to do[1], everything, and thinks, I know, I want to do that, but instead of blowing up the market for GPUs it'll be SSDs. Why? To get rich? It even seems doubtful to me that the people who developed Ch…

I run a Bitcoin lightning node on a small Raspberry Pi, and I use Bitcoin for p2p payments. So from my perspective, Bitcoin is both a great store of value and a good currency.

But since this thread is about an altcoin: Almost no other altcoin enables me to run my own fully-validating node on cheap hardware. And that is 100% a requirement I have since the whole point of crypto to reduce trust to a minimum. I don't know about the details of Chia, but as far as I know most coins with "smart contracts" built into the blockchain require expensive full nodes, so I personally do not see much appeal.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#185

Post by hdhrnnrkrkf »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #181
hdhrnnrkrkf wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned about Chia last week by googling "hard drive shortage" to figure out why suddenly hard drives prices are spiking where I live. Definitely not a submarine.

Hard to say, really. It could be organic, but then, it is in the interest of Chia to spread the stories about "hard drive shortage" - like all crypto schemes, their best user base are people who will see an article about cryptocurrency causing a social-wide issue, and read it as an opportunity. The people who see a disaster and their first thought is about how to profit off it.

I'm a bit worried it's a self fulfilling prophecy:

"People are buying hard drives to farm despite price increases, it must be profitable, maybe I should buy one too..."

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#186

Post by Igelau »

sygma wrote: post #183
cwyers wrote: post #94

I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, can look at Bitcoin... the waste, the way it has utterly failed to achieve what it set out to do[1], everything, and thinks, I know, I want to do that, but instead of blowing up the market for GPUs it'll be SSDs. Why? To get rich? It even seems doubtful to me that the people who developed Ch…

Saying that Bitcoin blew the market for GPUs reveals that your knowledge is years out of date. Bitcoin is predominately mined on ASICs. Viagra was originally developed as chest pain medication. Did it utterly fail, simply because a new use-case was unveiled? Which begs the question, what is the new use case for Bitcoin? Some say digital gold, but only time will tell.

> Which begs the question

Heh. I think you just unintentionally used this correctly by assuming there even is a new use case.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#187

Post by Igelau »

wsc981 wrote: post #162
cwyers wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it doesn't work. I wish it worked! It does feel like something out of a cyberpunk novel. I loved "Crypronomicon." There's nothing punk about Bitcoin anymore, though. IBM, the least punk organization in the history of mankind, wants to sell you a blockchain. The promise of Bitcoin is the idea that individuals, not large financial concerns, have the power. Coinbase just IPO'd for an eye watering amount of money…

>Because it doesn't work. Bitcoin works well in plenty of ways. Bitcoin just doesn't work very well as a currency, but that ship has sailed and it's ok.

> that ship has sailed and it's ok.

I've seen this comic, and the dog is melting in the next panel.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#188

Post by chrisan »

sygma wrote: post #183
cwyers wrote: post #94

I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, can look at Bitcoin... the waste, the way it has utterly failed to achieve what it set out to do[1], everything, and thinks, I know, I want to do that, but instead of blowing up the market for GPUs it'll be SSDs. Why? To get rich? It even seems doubtful to me that the people who developed Ch…

Saying that Bitcoin blew the market for GPUs reveals that your knowledge is years out of date. Bitcoin is predominately mined on ASICs. Viagra was originally developed as chest pain medication. Did it utterly fail, simply because a new use-case was unveiled? Which begs the question, what is the new use case for Bitcoin? Some say digital gold, but only time will tell.

Out of all my bitcoin friends, no one I know owns an ASIC

Everyone mines on GPUs because they are cheaper and casual dual purpose (play games and mine afk)

Aren't ASIC normally limited to a single algo as well?

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#189

Post by briefcomment »

wmf wrote: post #62
briefcomment wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, but if we solved for those issues, we would probably just have USD. I thought the appeal of a fixed supply, non-double spend asset was to be able to keep up with previously exclusive asset inflation .

That depends whether you want Austrian digital cash or Keynesian digital cash.

Lol, it’s the first time we’ve had an Austrian money, and the market seems to like it.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#190

Post by ignoramous »

cwyers wrote: post #94

I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, can look at Bitcoin... the waste, the way it has utterly failed to achieve what it set out to do[1], everything, and thinks, I know, I want to do that, but instead of blowing up the market for GPUs it'll be SSDs. Why? To get rich? It even seems doubtful to me that the people who developed Ch…

> Who uses Bitcoin for peer-to-peer payments? And the cryptocurrency ecosystem as it exists right now, far from allowing people to transact without third parties

Bitcoin may not be what it set out to be, but how is that a bad thing? The market decided whatever it should be.

What bitcoin did is inspire creation of many, genuinely interesting currencies, some even learning from bitcoin's failings: Stellar.org that aims to form a new kind of backbone for instant worldwide asset transfers; Monero that enables anonymous payments; and MakerDAO that makes it possible to transact across borders with a stable digital-currency, DAI.

Banks (like eco, onjuno, dharma) and other financial instruments on the Ethereum network (like curve, aave, compound) are a reality today. The space is far more than just currencies. Besides, networks like Cosmos, Polkadot are going to enable an even richer crossover among various currency networks that today is exclusive to Ethereum altcoins via uniswap, mdex et al.

I agree that mining seems like a lot of waste but Delegated Proof of Stake and other advances aim to address those issues.

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