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The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

stephendiehl.com

1–10 of 704 posts

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#3
> bitcoin is a meme token for gambling on a fantasy about living in a cyberpunk dystopia.

Ok, thanks.

> It’s a scary but essential truth to realise that normal software engineers like us are an integral part of society’s immune system against the enormous moral hazard of technology-hyped asset bubbles metastasizing into systemic risk.

This sure sounds like “a fantasy about living in a cyberpunk dystopia” too. Maybe the author should diversify a little into Bitcoin, and relax.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#4
Another rant about crypto which ignores Nano, which has been around for 6 years now.

*y*a*w*n*.

There is immediate and obvious utility in being able to send value instantly with no fees, with no dependence on a centralized authority.

Nano just got its own currency ticker - XNO - and avoids every fault this author finds in the rest of the field.

Mr. Diehl went far enough to pick out some flaws, and then generalized them onto every variant of the technology without going that little bit further to actually check if he's right or not. Laziness.

There's so many 'Edisons' out there who have decided that because 9,999 filaments don't work that well, lightbulbs are a dead technology. And it's so tiresome - because there's a feckin LED lighthouse beaming photons across the planet as we speak.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#5
This entire post seems to avoid or lack the understanding of the basic reasons blockchain were created; that is, to offer a decentralized, permissionless, censorship-resistant network.

This was Satoshi's vision, and those values are a blockchain's express priority over scale and efficiency.

Centralization is great for speed and efficiency, not so great for protection against authoritarian actors (governments or central banks).

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#6
From the article:

> Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime.

Governments, world-wide, may end up emulating China, which is planning to outlaw other crypto-currencies while providing its own. The information gathered by a national government monopolizing crypto-currency is simply too appealing to those that would like to deter crime, stop tax-avoidance, or even understand in real-time what is going on in their economies. After China, I believe that other nations are likely to do the same thing and outlaw or heavily regulate crypto.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#7

Another rant about crypto which ignores Nano, which has been around for 6 years now. *y*a*w*n*. There is immediate and obvious utility in being able to send value instantly with no fees, with no dependence on a centralized authority. Nano just got its own currency ticker - XNO - and avoids every fault this author finds in the rest of the field. Mr. Diehl went far enough to pick out some flaws, and then generalized th…

> Another rant about crypto which ignores Nano, which has been around for 6 years now.

And also something like Stellar or Hedera which isn't mineable at all and are used for CBDCs.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#8
> Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime.

After all as we all know: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear.

And look at how inefficient all these permissionless, trustless protocols are! What a waste! Let's just all trust a central authority and think of the savings and the children.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#9
Dogecoin started out as an explicitly value-free "let's play with this without risk or seriousness" fork of Bitcoin. The speed with which the scams took it over was instructive and I think indicative of everything that's played out since then... In that sense, Dogecoin was a rousing, complete, wonderful success.
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