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It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

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Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#731

Post by ggreer »

jedberg wrote: post #615
ggreer wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone steals your fiat USD, there will eventually be someone with guns removing you from society if you don't return them. That's true for any type of property, including cryptocurrency. US police have returned stolen cryptocurrency to its rightful owner.[1] The wrinkle is that police can only recover property if they know where it went. Cryptocurrency makes that harder in some ways (pseudonymity/anonymity, mi…

USD is fungible. They don't have to recover your stolen dollars. They just have to get you an equal amount. And that's why it's far more useful than cryptocurrency. The government has lots of ways of giving you equal amounts, including simply creating it out of thin air. Cryptocurrency is by definition non-fungible, and as you rightly pointed out, harder to recover. But more importantly, if you are a US citizen you c…

> Cryptocurrency is by definition non-fungible, and as you rightly pointed out, harder to recover.

Cryptocurrency is very fungible. When I withdraw BTC from Coinbase, it's the same as any other BTC. There are blacklists of BTC addresses (for scams, ransomware, blackmail, etc) but there are also blacklists of USD serial numbers (from robberies, ransom payments, etc). Also there's the issue of counterfeit bills.

> But no matter what country you are a citizen of, you can use the US government to recover your USD.

Where did you hear that from? There are plenty of nations that the US has shunned from banking infrastructure: Iran, North Korea, Cuba, etc. People in those countries will have no help from the US in recovering their stolen money. Also the US government isn't required to help anyone recover USD. They usually don't do squat when there's theft overseas. And by using the banking system, you open yourself to the whims of US authorities.

If anything it's closer to the opposite of your claim: For citizens of most countries, the US government can freeze your accounts and take your money.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#732

Post by baby »

cyou111 wrote: post #676

As a software engineer I was curious about bitcoin in 2017, when price was around $15,000, so I bought $500 bitcoin through coinbase. I created a personal wallet and transferred half of the bitcoin to it. Two big issues immediately stands out that made me believe that bitcoin has no future: 1. Long latency of transactions. I remember it took about 10 minutes for the purchase on coinbase to finish, and another 10 minu…

Your belief are yours, but to touch on your 2 points there exist cryptocurrencies today that have neither issues.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#733

Post by eloff »

revel wrote: post #633
leifg wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is cryptocurrency/blockchain necessary for that? You could have all of this with open banking standards.

No you can't. The protocols for buying and selling or making payments haven't changed in decades. The problem is communication authority and scaling, not the data format. Blockchain enables so-called triple entry accounting. Everyone sees everything everyone else is doing (if you want them to). There is never an argument about who did something or why. Just consider the audit and servicing cost savings.

You can do all that with a centralized db and Merkel trees. The technology has been around for 40 years.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#734

Post by baby »

sedatk wrote: post #155
blurbleblurble wrote: post #60

I can understand peoples' frustration with the artificial scarcity, but would like to see this same energy over the artificial scarcity of housing and free time. The oligopoly of national money systems is currently failing to provide people with basic access to capital. There's nothing intrinsic about cryptocurrency that will necessarily help this or exacerbate it, but the fact that I can get better interest on US do…

That's just an overly simplistic summary of the whole thread. Pinboard isn't angry about artificial scarcity, but how cryptocurrency fails to fulfill its promises: it fails to decentralize, it fails to reach performance levels of existing financial institutions, it wastes huge amounts of energy, and it provides zero value other than being a ransomware enabler. (Disclaimer: I own cryptocurrency)

And he is wrong. Plenty of cryptocurrencies are fast, with low fees, and with minimal energy consumption.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#735

Post by K0balt »

pavlov wrote: post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

Hmm. It’s interesting to note that skeptics seem much more invested in being right about crypto being a scam than proponents are in it being here to stay.

The more time passes, the shriller the cries of skeptics become, leading me to believe that skeptics are emotionally invested to the extreme in the failure of crypto. I rarely see any carefully considered, informed opinions just tulips and drugs and money laundering lol. You know what is used for drugs? Cash. You know how money is laundered? Banks. You know what is worthless? Venezuelan currency. Sure, crypto, just like any fungible asset, is used in these ways... but none nearly as much a fiat is.

I’m becoming convinced that naysayers are more and more afraid of having been wrong and missing the boat as time goes on.

Every day Bitcoin fails to go to 0, it gains legitimacy as a store of value and means of payment.

I guess that is pretty nerve wracking if you made a hasty decision early on to pretend it wasn’t happening, and now it seems like you’re being left in the dust, still preaching from your soap box.

It’s been more than a decade. It’s here to stay. It will get better, but it’s not going anywhere.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#736

Post by skinnymuch »

mthoms wrote: post #261
pavlov wrote: post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

The "early internet" comparison is usually presented when talking about how clumsy and slow the technology is in its current state. The argument is certainly not presented in the context of how "fun" it is. There's nothing "fun" about finance (and there never will be). In the context of technological state (how brittle and obtuse the tools are), the comparison between the two is right on the money IMHO. I once config…

You can go a bit later and talk Windows 95 time. The internet was a live enough by the mid 90s. If that’s not early enough then the argument is just silly.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#737

Post by baby »

shkkmo wrote: post #494
ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying pizza isnt scarce because you can cut one into 1000 tiny slices. Or gold isnt scarce because you can cut 1 bar into 1 tiny million pieces. Pretty hilarious misconception

Except pizza and gold both have fundemental value as you decrease the size. Bitcoin has exactly the same techinical functionality regardless of the size.

Yes money is fungible, doesn’t make your point valid.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#738

Post by baby »

texaswhizzle wrote: post #362
Graffur wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 = x 1/100,000,000 = x/100,000,000 "stacking sats" is a common phrase so it's not really a secret that a bitcoin can be subdivided. In fact, a lot of bitcoin supports would support people learning this fact.

There is nothing special or important about a single entire Bitcoin. It’s completely arbitrary. The question is whether Bitcoin is scarce. If there are millions of trillions of tradeable assets, it’s not scarce.

If most of it is locked in someone else’s account and they won’t sell it to you: it is scarce. If nobody wants to buy it: it’s not scarce. Scarcity is based on supply and demand, not on a single number.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#739

Post by baby »

idlewords wrote: post #34
kemonocode wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can use cryptocurrencies from anywhere in the world, I can't use M-Pesa unless I'm in one of the few countries it operates, and even then I'd be at Vodafone's whims. Truly it may serve similar needs (money for the under/unbanked) but the scope is not nearly the same.

How do you move cryptocurrency back and forth to local currency you can spend?

If enough people adopt the currency you don’t need to off ramp.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#740

Post by baby »

coliveira wrote: post #278

This is not even touching the fact that bitcoin and similar currencies are a danger for the environment. They spend huge amounts of energy that are helping destroy the planet. The longer this scam goes on, the more damage will happen to the world.

It’s worth noting that most modern cryptocurrencies consumes minimal energy as they are not based on the same technology of Bitcoin (proof of work)
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