Plus, cryptos are responsible of 1% of world elecrticity consumption. Holy cow.
It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
321–330 of 1001 posts
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't agree with your point hard enough. Really useful nascent technologies all have this pattern—they grow incrementally more interesting and constantly gain applications. Bitcoin followed this pattern for a while. But then at some point it started to regress on that axis. You could no longer buy a pizza with it, you could no longer mine it, and it got too flooded by scammers to use safely. There's nothing to real…
I've been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point (programming work for overseas clients), and I haven't gotten scammed yet. I'm not engaged in money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, or gambling, and only the usual amount of delusion. And I don't even buy illegal drugs! And, yeah, 13 years after the internet's invention was 01982; not only couldn't you get so much as a weather report on…
Reminds me of the old adage about technical solutions to social problems. Cryptocurrency isn't going to un-fail these states, all it does is enable the wealthy to evade currency controls and reinforce the downward spiral. If someone lives in an oppressive regime it's governmental change they need, not worldwide abandonment of financial regulation just so the lucky few can escape.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#323The difference between Bitcoin and a pyramid scheme is that most pyramids are basically zero sum games... for every dollar one player makes, another player loses a dollar.
Bitcoin, due to its mining costs, is a massively negative sum game. So much worse.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
This all falls apart if bitcoin isn't a scam. The burden of proof lies with those accusing it. Additionally, there is no "silent majority" in tech that think it is a scam; the author has invented this.
It’s both. It’s not a scam in a sense that it is a store of value(digital property) to a small degree. But a scam in a sense that it can’t power every day transactions or day to day needs etc
There are a dozen different approaches to solving the bandwidth problems. IMHO, it's safe to say one or more will succeed.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin didn’t regress, what actually happened is that its fundamental flaws ended up eventually dominating whatever early enthusiasm allowed them to be ignored. It was never going to work, for a variety of reasons that were incredibly apparent at the time. “Why did it regress” is much less interesting than “why did anyone ever fall for this?”
What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about? (I assume throughput but I'll wait for your reply). What do you mean by saying people fell for "this"? I assume you mean it's a scam but I will wait for your reply.
> What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about?
For a payments system, the fact that all transactions are final is pretty bad. I'd say this, by itself, makes the system unusable in the real world.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
Second Life did this 3D virtual world stuff almost 20 years ago, and even managed to use real money with an exchange rate as well to do exactly the things you're saying are now new with crypto and blockchains. Also for your other points - the games in this space are universally unfun to play with hardly anyone actually playing them; I can pay normal money to commission artwork; and I can use a zillion platforms that…
They did, but they were an insular community as a result. NFTs allow for a common open standard to be interoperable between games. That helps create an economy where, for example, you can buy a digital artwork at a Christie's auction and display it in Decentraland and have it be verifiably authentic. Second Life was awesome! This Metaverse trend is pushing that concept much, much further and it's giving ownership and…
Look to the Steam Community Market & Trading if you want an example of a cross-game economy.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#327One thing is for sure. HN community has never gotten any trends correct. That must say something. FAANG, crypto, AI, javascript etc gets hate. Post about lisp, shell, emacs and if will be hailed :-
Bring the downvotes now.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#328These two resonated with me: > A lot of intelligent observers look at cryptocurrency, see that it makes no sense, and reasonably infer that they must be missing something profound on the technical level. Tech culture has a nice tradition of not deriding new ideas, but we need to break it here and speak out > [non-tech people] don't see the huge silent majority of tech people who know it's a scam. That's on us It is o…
This huge silent majority that know it is a scam doesn't exist. Crypto is so large, complex and fast-moving that it takes thousands of hours to grasp. If I'd make a list of 100 questions regarding crypto, an exam so to speak, I am reasonably sure that this silent majority can't even answer 5% of the questions. Because they don't know crypto. At all.
> Crypto is so large, complex and fast-moving that it takes thousands of hours to grasp.
The thing is, regular money is, from a certain perspective, also a "scam". A lot of the financial system is effectively make-believe, with massive conflicts of interest at every corner and dynamics that keep working because everyone believes they should - until, for one reason or another, they stop believing, and then you have 2008.
Crypto is just another big mountain of make-believe systems (and getting bigger with every new contraption), but it is so young that the games of pretend are still very visible; and the key actors in crypto are different from the key actors in regular finance, which means it gets a bad rap from the latter. But if it can survive long enough (say, 30 or 40 years), people will just stop pointing out the "scam" and will go along with it, because "why not? If it works, it works".
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#329One thing that I find so confusing in the crypto maximalist sphere is the obsession with decentralization of everything but also with mainstream adoption. Coinbase is centralization, bank adoption is centralization, etc... Also if “fear of regulation” causes massive sell-offs, doesn’t it totally fail at being the “anti-government” centralized currency? I’m also just not convinced total decentralization is good? I mea…
Decentralization is a spectrum. Bitcoin cannot be shutdown because it is decentralized. There can be centralized actors within a decentralized system. The major benefit is you can choose between various service providers and switch when you please. With government monopolies you use their service at gunpoint.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm pretty sure it's nothing but a pyramid scheme, but I always gave the enthusiasts the benefit of the doubt. So go find out? I’m quoting you here for the “pretty sure” part. Do a deep dive. I’be done deep dives on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Monero, Nano, Iota, Hyperledger, BSC, Uniswap, Tether, Chainlink and cursory glances at dozens of other coins/tokens. I’m a tech guy. I work on an operating system/embedded s…
I'm a tech guy. I've spent years experimenting with crypto and it isn't fit for any legitimate purpose.
You're not very good at experimenting then. I first bought BTC in 2013 because of a legitimate purpose: to pay for online goods (legal software) to a seller who wanted to completely eliminate any risk of chargebacks.