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Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

economist.com

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Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#81

Post by Kinrany »

zombietfk wrote: post #69
john37386 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubisoft is adding NFT in its new games. Ubisoft is a real company producing real games with real players all around the world. https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/7/22822410/ubisoft-nfts-qua...

But is it actually adding anything? Even the article says what they are doing (reselling digital goods) doesn't require any blockchain technology at all.

It does make the ability to resell inalienable.

Of course it's worthless when the game will be shut down in only a few years.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#82

Post by netcan »

throwaway55421 wrote: post #60
netcan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's point? The whole point of Google, to some people at Google, might have been " don't be evil " at one point in time. Decentralisation was the whole point of the WWW. Different people have different goals. Largely, it's just about making money.

Google is a company, it's not comparable. Companies almost by definition seek to gain at the expense of others, if not initially then a few years in after the honeymoon. I agree that decentralisation is the whole point of the WWW and I use it in that manner, I think people who spend all of their time on one or two centralised platforms are bizarre.

>>I think people who spend all of their time on one or two centralised platforms are bizarre.

I think you are missing the point. The rhetorical does not dictate what will actually happen. Crypto is a step ahead of regulators, in much the same way that uber was ahead of regulators. That allowed uber to blast through a global complex of taxi regulations. Crypto has/is similarly able to innovate outside of a handful of institutions.

That does not mean that it's unregulatable. Also, if both regulated and unregulated options exist... there's no reason to think that the unregulated one wins.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#83

Post by gambiting »

snarfy wrote: post #72
gambiting wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Humans have been playing games literally for thousands of years - there is a value in entertainment, especially with our busy lives of 21st century. You can of course overdo it, turn it into an addiction and it can destroy your life - like many other things. Crypto trading is as valuable as trading scraps of paper with a dollar sign scribble…

It's true - crypto is bullshit. I've had a hard time shaking the realization that money is bullshit too.

I think there's a fundamental issue here that prevents us from reaching an understanding.

ANYTHING can be used as money. The systems that we currently have in place have lots of big problems, but "we" decided to use them and that's why they are popular. We could also decide to use a cryptocurrency as money, and it would be equally valid, and it would become our "money" - that bit is fine and I'm not arguing with it.

What I am commenting on, and what I am calling bullshit, is the cold hard reality of crypto - there hasn't been a coin invented yet that is anything but a ponzi scheme. Everything from bitcoin to ETH to dogecoin is just a scam to make some people rich, even if it started with good intentions(and I believe Bitcoin really was started with the intention to become a currency).

The second this changes, and we have a cryptocurrency that is actually used as money and not a plaything, I'll happily stop complaining about it.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#84

Post by eloff »

user-the-name wrote: post #39
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If climate change is finally taken seriously at some point, I hope they get clamped down on very hard. Unlike meth labs and "terrorists", a large mining farm can be traced by power usage. (Unless you're using solar, then go ahead and mine all you want.) Crypto fanatics are doing nothing of any practical value while greatly helping out with destroying our planet. We've been having rolling blackouts recently because of…

If you're using solar, you're still wasting energy that could go into replacing coal or gas elsewhere. Fully green bitcoin mining is still hampering our efforts to tackle climate change.

That's only true if the miners didn't buy the solar panels themselves.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#85

Post by Quindecillion »

naruvimama wrote: post #29

My biggest fear is that institutions & governments jumping into this pyramid scheme, throwing our hard earned money to make billionaires out of snake oil men. Bitcoin was fine as long as it was a small geeky fun currency with actual small transactions. It became a pyramid scheme once speculators jumped in. I am open to government or industry backed crypto or digital currency.

> I am open to government or industry backed crypto or digital currency

Then you don't understand the point of Bitcoin.

Any "government backed" crypto (also known as Central Bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs) will be under the complete control of bureaucrats, much like how money currently is.

That means they can create as much of that money as they like to fund whatever they want.

That kind of monetary expansion is not possible with Bitcoin, which is entirely the point.

"The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts." - Satoshi Nakamoto

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#86

Post by throwaway52355 »

antihero wrote: post #44
donatj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doing nothing of any practical value while greatly helping out with destroying our planet Serious question, where does this line of thinking end? Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Watching sitcoms on a television has no practical value. Phones capable of doing things other than making calls have no practical value, but we charge them all the time. Honestly I think providing…

Gaming and TV shows use a fraction of the energy to bring joy to far more people. Even if your enjoyment comes from watching numbers go up so you can get rich quick, it's literally burning through power and advanced components to do it at a rate like nothing else ever conceived. And it achieves basically nothing. Crypto is currently useless at doing anything other than making some people rich.

So entertainment matters more than censorship-resistance and self-sovereignty.

Remind me what did Wikileaks resort to using after it got banned from all payment networks?

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#87

Post by Quindecillion »

stefanve wrote: post #30

total privatisation of the money system, sold as democratization

Bitcoin isn't "private".

It's probably the most open and public money that has ever existed.

There's no company behind it, no CEO, no marketing team... it's just a protocol for a p2p network.

All the other "cryptos"? Sure, regulate them to death. I don't care. Good luck doing that with Bitcoin though.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#89

Post by kamanjak »

HPsquared wrote: post #55
BoxOfRain wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I bought some crypto early on as a hedge against global politics going to shit (US, Russia or China going into proxy wars) or economics taking a dive (and governments/central banks deciding to devaluate, ...). Genuinely asking as a newbie to this kind of thing, what's the advantage of using crypto over assets more traditionally used for this purpose such as gold?

Crypto is something you can "physically control" like gold (through being the only person who knows the key). Unlike gold it can't be physically stolen or confiscated. It can be easily authenticated (no counterfeiting). Unlike land or shares, or other paper assets it can't be transferred without the owner's consent. You can be 100% sure you actually do hold the asset. In a stable, law-abiding society these advantages…

I guess as long as some guys with guns don't show up at your house and threaten to kill you, unless you open your binance app and send them all your crypto before killing you, you're fine.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#90

Post by Avshalom »

Kinrany wrote: post #81
zombietfk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it actually adding anything? Even the article says what they are doing (reselling digital goods) doesn't require any blockchain technology at all.

It does make the ability to resell inalienable. Of course it's worthless when the game will be shut down in only a few years.

Sort of. You can sell it but Ubi can just as easily blacklist any ID it feels like, preventing you from actually using anything you bought.

Which will probably happen the first time some high profile streamer gets scammed out of his special shirt or whatever.

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