Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies • Hacker News Board

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#151

Post by cwkoss » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

drdeca wrote: post #146

cwkoss wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portable assets is one. You can buy and NFT on one market, use it within a game, display it in your virtual home, then sell it on a different market. Blockchain allows individuals to actually own digital assets. (Whether those digital assets are valued correctly is a totally separate discussion - personally I think there are many that are grossly overvalued...) World of warcraft items, amazon video or ebook purchases…

On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, if some centrally-run MMO were to use NFTs that they issue for its items (or, I guess probably maybe they shouldn’t be non-fungible really, because one “hammer of smiting” should probably be equivalent to any other “hammer of smiting”, no point keeping track of them as separate entities when you can just keep track of who owns how many of each. But that is beside the point), W…

Yeah, I personally think using NFTs for gameplay-altering items seems like a bad path that will lead to frustrated holders of useless things, because either meta will shift and they'll have to disable some items or they have to manage permanent power inflation (challenging to do well and will devalue the items anyways).

A lot of "Free to play" games get most of their money from cosmetic enhancements. I think cross-game cosmetic enhancements could increase demand. Ex. Team fortress 2 hats would be more valuable if you could also wear them in world of warcraft.

Seems tricky to figure out how to incentivize other developers to implement this support for items they don't get revenue from, but I bet someone will figure it out in the next few years.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#152

Post by xeromal » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

lancemurdock wrote: post #44

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make it illegal for legitimate financial institutions to perform transactions related to cryptocurrency, crippling or outright destroying many of its applications. Sucking all the air out of the room is sufficient to address the negative externalities.

this would indeed be a serious blow to current price of crypto. Many projects would die and tons of liquidity would leave. Liken to a mass extinction event. But like all gov attempts to ban something, there would still be a cohort who believe in the product and keep it alive. And over time, from the ashes, the value would grow again

Just like POGs. haha

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#153

Post by atc » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

Clueless. Awful. This belongs in the dustbin.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#154

Post by ben_w » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #89

ben_w wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it functioned as a perfect replacement for all existing currency[0], it wouldn’t steal or create jobs, merely change some titles while the tasks (and likely the employers) remain the same. And the point of this website is to shake up the status quo specifically where tech meets business and finance, so we’d like it better if it actually did that. [0] which it can’t partly for the same reason the U.K. dropped…

"inflation is economically useful" is not proven (and at high levels is destructive and demotivating - look at socialist countries that blow up from hyperinflation and have no productivity) - its just the status quo. The idea that people dont spend in a stagnant/deflationary monetary environment is nonsense. People still want above average returns (investment) and will still spend on necessities and non necessities.…

Response to edit alone: Cryptocurrencies also suck as a value store, way too volatile.

If you’re going to argue with multiple nobel laureates about their own field of expertise WRT evidence for inflation being useful, we’re done here.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#155

Post by nscalf » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

jlmorton wrote: post #46

nscalf wrote: post #12

This is some of the worst junk writing I've seen on the hill. Some pretty wrong things in here, like insinuating that the only value of crypto is to criminals, and all but saying that the reason there are hackings to things like critical infrastructure is because crypto exists, which is just silly. Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard, though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewabl…

> and all but saying that the reason there are hackings to things like critical infrastructure is because crypto exists Just to play devil's advocate, how do you imagine ransomware would work outside of crypto? There had been a few toy ransomware attacks before Bitcoin, but the regulated payment industry ultimately prevented any major ransomware industry from developing. Bitcoin has changed all of that. Since the rel…

I’m not too well read into this space, but I would argue a large cause in the boom of hacking is external to crypto. The fact that so much monetary value and information has moved online would make me believe the pie was by growing regardless of crypto. The article points out the Biden administration being unsure of how to tackle the hacking problem, but governmental infrastructure being hacked is not a monetary extraction problem, it’s a national security problem. I’m much more concerned about power companies being shut down than Target leaking customer records, for example.

I definitely won’t say crypto isn’t used effectively for ransomware payments, it’s obviously the current go to. My issue is the article seems to reduce it down to ceteris paribus, hacking wouldn’t be a problem. When many of the bad actors here are nation states, that is not a valid argument.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#156

Post by cwkoss » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

noxer wrote: post #150

cwkoss wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trustless banking is the killer app. Credit card payments, bank deposits, stock holdings: nearly everywhere humans hold value currently is a trust-based system that leaves you at the whims of more powerful counterparties. If the bank decides to zero out your account balance, they can. You can sue them, and should be able to get you money back if you take them to court, but they have the absolute ability to destroy yo…

>If I lock 1BTC up in an encrypted wallet, nobody can deprive me of that 1BTC without my consent and participation. That is the killer app. And that's where you went wrong. Its not "nobody" instead its everybody who participates in this who collectively decide where the price goes. It doesn't matter at all that nobody can take your BTC the only thing that matters is the value of it which can be taken away while you s…

Yes, Bitcoin is much more volatile, but literally everything you said applies to every other currency or monetary instrument.

There is no guarantee that Tesla stock, or t-bills or the dollar will have value in 20 years. Money is a collective hallucination and can disappear as soon as people stop believing in it.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#157

Post by cwkoss » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #17

nscalf wrote: post #12

This is some of the worst junk writing I've seen on the hill. Some pretty wrong things in here, like insinuating that the only value of crypto is to criminals, and all but saying that the reason there are hackings to things like critical infrastructure is because crypto exists, which is just silly. Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard, though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewabl…

> Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard, though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewables. Is Bitcoin offsetting other uses that those renewables would have gone for or are people building solar farms out of their Bitcoin gains to fund more Bitcoin?

Bitcoin mining can serve as a price floor to incentivize green energy production - ex. An otherwise unprofitable solar farm could be profitable because instead of peak production getting sent to the grid at low or negative rates, they can mine Bitcoin and monetize that energy that doesn't have other demand.

This is certainly not universally the case at the moment. It is probably offsetting in the majority of cases currently. But I bet there are a non-zero number of renewable energy products that were able to get greenlit purely because crypto mining can function as a buyer of last resort, and this number will continue increasing.

Bitcoin mining uses a higher proportion of green energy than most other industries though, so I think this energy use criticism is pretty shallow. Some people just don't like Bitcoin and so are enthusiastic to have a reason to complain about it that doesn't require any critical thinking about energy markets. These people believe Bitcoin is entirely worthless, so they'd complain about any level of energy usage, because there is no upside in their calculus.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#158

Post by nscalf » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

Jasper_ wrote: post #33

nscalf wrote: post #12

This is some of the worst junk writing I've seen on the hill. Some pretty wrong things in here, like insinuating that the only value of crypto is to criminals, and all but saying that the reason there are hackings to things like critical infrastructure is because crypto exists, which is just silly. Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard, though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewabl…

> though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewables Bullshit. When one coal mine in a remote region of China flooded, the Bitcoin hash rate measurably dropped by 30%. Keep in mind this was just one coal mine. Not all of China's production. https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-env... > it's more apt to call it Web 3.0 than cryptocurrency at this point. I've said this so many…

You really seem like you're not open to having your mind changed here. You took many of the current use cases and threw it out for no reason. What would change your mind here?

I'm not making these estimates, so you can call bullshit but I'm just saying the numbers that have been reported.

It doooooes a lot actually. There are a lot of financial transaction tools, which are not reasonable to throw away. Ethereum alone is on pace to settle trillions this year in transactions. NFT's are a substantial market, and are more than just selling a jpeg (which is a massive business in and of itself). They're the more abstract idea of introducing uniqueness through scarcity into a system that is fault tolerant, distributed, and secure (without having to build that system).

Some of the best use cases I've seen are from Vechain (I invested in this project). Vechain does supply chain tracking, which you also threw away for no good reason, and they're currently live in the real world working with real companies. You can go into a Walmart in China and interact with their food supply chain tracking system today. They also just launched a covid vaccine passport for the San Marino government. There are video games being built on their ecosystem, just like there are on many other cryptocurrencies.

Comparing incremental advancements in technology to the fundamental creation of the internet and ecommerce isn't a valid argument for saying crypto isn't useful. Electric vehicles are junk because it's not a personal spaceship.

No one is saying we'll find a use case eventually. People were saying that 5 years ago, there are already use cases and people are building billion dollar companies in those spaces faster than Amazon grew to a billion dollars. You clearly have not been keeping up with this field, and throwing out anything that didn't fit into your narrative. You should try to revisit it with an open mind.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#159

Post by nscalf » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #17

nscalf wrote: post #12

This is some of the worst junk writing I've seen on the hill. Some pretty wrong things in here, like insinuating that the only value of crypto is to criminals, and all but saying that the reason there are hackings to things like critical infrastructure is because crypto exists, which is just silly. Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard, though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewabl…

> Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard, though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewables. Is Bitcoin offsetting other uses that those renewables would have gone for or are people building solar farms out of their Bitcoin gains to fund more Bitcoin?

So Bitcoin shouldn't use renewables because there may be other uses of renewables? I genuinely don't get the energy use argument, this is much more of a government policy problem than a cryptocurrency problem. It feels like this could be extended to any company or product you don't like because you want to save the clean energy for the approved uses.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#160

Post by nscalf » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

thrill wrote: post #22

nscalf wrote: post #12

This is some of the worst junk writing I've seen on the hill. Some pretty wrong things in here, like insinuating that the only value of crypto is to criminals, and all but saying that the reason there are hackings to things like critical infrastructure is because crypto exists, which is just silly. Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard, though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewabl…

"Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard" Well, it got that part right. Any non-POS scheme is just trading stake for something else, and buying and burning energy, no matter how green the source, is pure unnecessary waste. Skip the trading part and save the world. Your examples of use are all good.

I do agree, proof of work at this point is entirely outdated. I actually don't invest in Bitcoin because I think a lot of the technology is antiquated, and there are better solutions for everything but the network affect.