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Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

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Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#391

Post by scrubs »

boh wrote: post #266
jcbrand wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is NOT dominated by a few major players. A few years ago when some large commercial players wanted to increase the block size, they weren't able to do so because a majority of nodes on the network rejected their code. The Bitcoin network has stayed remarkably stable and it's still possible to run a node on a raspberry pi, which is done exactly because the Bitcoin community value the ability of normal people t…

Most people who have Bitcoin don't spend it, only trade it. If you're only trading it, then your only interaction with Bitcoin is via exchanges. A handful of exchanges control most of the trades.

Well said.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#392

Post by xormapmap »

stephen_g wrote: post #189
skinnyasianboi wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just ugly gifs. It's digital art, your online game items, concert tickets, supermarket vouchers and so on. Quote from statista: "In 2020, global gaming audiences spent an approximate 54 billion U.S. dollars on additional in-game content". But the players don't own their purchases. You don't play the game anymore, servers go down or you get banned and all your stuff is gone. Think about that. Edit: Of course…

But it’s not. It’s a token on a blockchain with some metadata. You’d actually need a separate legally binding contract to link it to actual ownership, and at that point you could have just made up the legal contract without any blockchain or token… With your example, if the game goes down, an NFT of the in-game purchase isn’t going to be very useful. What’s the difference between having a token or not of the content…

> You’d actually need a separate legally binding contract to link it to actual ownership

Why? The blockchain already does this. All you need to do is hold the private key to the wallet.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#393

Post by stale2002 »

yellowapple wrote: post #388
stale2002 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then every agency would have to trust some central authority. They already have to do that! The central authority has to issue the licenses in the first place. Unless you are suggesting some absurd, decentralized driver's license issuing? Even that is begging the question though, as there has to be some centralized process to decide who is allowed to issue driver's licenses. > A.k.a. a blockchain. You don't even ne…

> The central authority has to issue the licenses in the first place. The US federal government is not at all involved in issuing state drivers' licenses, last I checked. Nor is some international agency at all involved in issuing drivers' licenses within any given country. That's what I'm getting at with "central authority" - specifically, a central authority external to the issuer and/or validator. > Like, lets say…

> Is that person going to continually copy it down? What about data from other agencies? How many people are going to be using your web interface?

> What I'm getting at there is that this all seems like an awful lot of work compared

They are literally the same thing.

The definition of what a "Blockchain" is has stretched so much, that having 1 mirror of a database would now fit people's definition of what a Blockchain is.

Once we get rid of proof of work, and transactions, the only thing we are left with is "a database which has mirrors".

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#394

Post by didntknowya »

jcbrand wrote: post #190

This article conflates NFTs with cryptocurrency, in a way that looks to me to be intentional in order to bolster his argument that crypto is for rich people to conspicuously consume and to pump and dump on the plebs. NFTs aren't money, or currency and just because they can be created on some blockchains doesn't make them so. I also don't see a genuine effort from the author to really understand why proponents think t…

yea bitcoin is open sourced, but with a substantial stake already mined by the founder (anonymous and which could also be an individual, VC, country etc who knows) so while the most popular is not exactly the best defense of the blockchain tech.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#395

Post by ryan_lane »

yellowapple wrote: post #350
Ansil849 wrote: post #99

> Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer An amazingly succinct title. Absolutely true. Whenever someone hypes up cryptocurrency, it is almost always for their personal gain, directly or indirectly.

And likewise, whenever someone downplays/criticizes cryptocurrency, it is almost always for their personal gain, directly or indirectly.

I want poor people to stop losing their money to scammers. This is primarily who loses money in pump and dumps. Rich people pump the currency, recruit, then dump.

FOMO hits the poor way harder than it does the rich. Rich people have lots of places to invest their money that give good returns and they don't need to "get rich quick".

I want cryptocurrencies shut down so they stop using insane amounts of power so that people can gamble.

We all indirectly gain if cryptocurrencies cease to exist, because less carbon will be released into the atmosphere.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#396

Post by KorematsuFredt »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #358
KorematsuFredt wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be I am too old but completely fail to see any value in the notion of NFT. I do see value in Bitcoin. Bitcoin has basically thrown a wrench into all government controls on cross border payments. I don't know if Bitcoins will be very successful or not, but I am pretty sure the concept will last very very long. NFTs on other hand appears to be equivalent of selling Golden gate bridge to tourists.

Do you see value in rare baseball cards selling for millions of dollars? That's the same, but the card's authenticity can be verified cryptographically rather than through complex means like radionuclide analysis and such.

Yes. A rare baseball card (physical one) might be worth some non zero money to many people. But only as long as it is physical card. Any digital asset that represents it would be valuable to if it is NFT. This is nearly same as holding some bits of data in your bank account. Those numbers are valuable because they map to real world currency which the bank is holding for me.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#397

Post by yellowapple »

stale2002 wrote: post #393
yellowapple wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The central authority has to issue the licenses in the first place. The US federal government is not at all involved in issuing state drivers' licenses, last I checked. Nor is some international agency at all involved in issuing drivers' licenses within any given country. That's what I'm getting at with "central authority" - specifically, a central authority external to the issuer and/or validator. > Like, lets say…

> Is that person going to continually copy it down? What about data from other agencies? How many people are going to be using your web interface? > What I'm getting at there is that this all seems like an awful lot of work compared They are literally the same thing. The definition of what a "Blockchain" is has stretched so much, that having 1 mirror of a database would now fit people's definition of what a Blockchai…

> Once we get rid of proof of work, and transactions

Neither of which I suggested getting rid of above (though to be clear, proof of stake and proof of burn both exist). Transactions are especially handy when you move beyond merely recording the drivers' licenses themselves and actually start recording things like, say, traffic tickets or new endorsements or what have you - and that handiness is significantly improved further when agencies are sharing a single public blockchain instead of trying to maintain umpteen different internal databases explicitly tracking each other.

Even taking your assumption that a blockchain and a database mirror are "literally the same thing", you're still missing the key difference: that the former gives you the benefits of the latter (or at least the ones relevant to this context) with significantly less effort. It's similar in comparison to, say, using IPFS v. mirroring an FTP server; yes, you can create a bunch of FTP mirrors, and reinvent a poorly-specified ad-hoc substitute for half of IPFS, but it'd be a heck of a lot easier and more robust to... just use IPFS.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#398

Post by yellowapple »

ryan_lane wrote: post #395
yellowapple wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And likewise, whenever someone downplays/criticizes cryptocurrency, it is almost always for their personal gain, directly or indirectly.

I want poor people to stop losing their money to scammers. This is primarily who loses money in pump and dumps. Rich people pump the currency, recruit, then dump. FOMO hits the poor way harder than it does the rich. Rich people have lots of places to invest their money that give good returns and they don't need to "get rich quick". I want cryptocurrencies shut down so they stop using insane amounts of power so that p…

> I want poor people to stop losing their money to scammers

Then your ire should be directed at scammers, not a specific implementation detail of their scams. Should we abolish wire transfers and gift cards because scammers use those in scams, too? How about stocks, while we're at it? Those get pumped and dumped all the time, too.

> I want cryptocurrencies shut down so they stop using insane amounts of power so that people can gamble.

> We all indirectly gain if cryptocurrencies cease to exist, because less carbon will be released into the atmosphere.

Not all cryptocurrencies are proof of work; proof of stake, for example, is increasingly common (Cardano is the biggest current example, and Ethereum is moving toward it) and uses negligible energy (and therefore releases negligible carbon into the atmosphere).

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#399

Post by Valakas_ »

a_rustacean wrote: post #136
HelixEndeavor wrote: post #81

I won't pretend I'm a computer genius or anything, but I feel like I understand tech at least more than the average Joe - at least, I'm the designated IT guy for computer problems faced by anyone I know. The fact that, despite having it explained multiple times by multiple sources multiple ways, I still can't seem to wrap my head around how crypto functions... Makes me suspicious. It feels like the whole idea is to o…

"I don't understand it, therefore there is something suspicious about it" is a very dangerous way of reasoning. We burned innocent people because of this not long ago. Anyways, I find the Bitcoin paper very approachable. You may need to read it a bunch of times until everything clicks into place. But it's all there, in just 8 pages.

Humans haven't changed. We just like to pretend we have and are superior now. Pick any random person and put them back in the middle ages, they'd be burning witches and screaming of joy at gladiator matches.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#400

Post by amanda62996 »

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