Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 203 posts

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#121

Post by FDSGSG »

jakub_g wrote: post #109
unicornmama wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even before the dot com bubble burst, we saw businesses with practical value producing applications of the Internet. Today it’s over 10 years of crypto. I have only observed one application of crypto that touches the real economy - with a relatively obscure token. Everything else, seems to be just be playing financial games inside of crypto, money laundering, side-stepping regulations, speculative meme assets and of…

Crypto made producing ransomware a viable business model. Touching real economy in real ways!

Ransomware was a viable business model before cryptocurrency. The beginning of the winlocker boom slightly predates cryptocurrencies, ransomware was already the hottest thing on cybercrime forums before cryptocurrency appeared.

Crypto as in cryptography? Maybe.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#122

Post by UncleMeat »

donatj wrote: post #37
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…

> 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…

Yeah, people should pay for their externalities. Currently, emissions are not priced and everybody who is using a lot of power is stealing quality of life from future generations and the global poor. BTC mining is just one of those operations that is resistant to a carbon tax since the price of BTC and therefore the mining rewards can just rise to compensate.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#123

Post by MilaM »

xiphias2 wrote: post #118
mudlus wrote: post #79

Reading the top comments in this thread we are still hilariously early.

Adoption rate at this point is about 0.5%. I guess things will start to change here on HN at 10% global adoption rate (5 more years)

Adoption as what? To do anything useful with Crypto you still need to change it to a real currency on a bank account.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#124

Post by jfk13 »

ElonMuskrat wrote: post #77
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...

Is this just protifing on a topical craze or does this have staying power? What experience does in-game NFTs offer to players that they otherwise cannot find in traditional database backed assets?

> Is this just protifing on a topical craze

Of course.

> What experience does in-game NFTs offer to players

The warm glow of feeling they're the trendiest kids.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#125

Post by FDSGSG »

unicornmama wrote: post #49
MadSudaca wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s be like the dotcom bubble. It’ll burst in a big way, leaving many people broke, then from the aftermath good projects will emerge and will come to redefine the world.

Even before the dot com bubble burst, we saw businesses with practical value producing applications of the Internet. Today it’s over 10 years of crypto. I have only observed one application of crypto that touches the real economy - with a relatively obscure token. Everything else, seems to be just be playing financial games inside of crypto, money laundering, side-stepping regulations, speculative meme assets and of…

>Can you point to an actual application of crypto that touches the real economy? I will be very interested!

Yeah, cryptocurrency effectively replaced Liberty Reserve & co.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#126

Post by tsimionescu »

michaelscott wrote: post #73
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…

Humans have also been gambling for thousands of years (which is just playing games with the added component of money on the line), so by this logic there's value in it too. I would also be interested to see the worldwide energy consumption of all gaming devices in comparison to the worldwide energy consumption of all crypto mining, especially now that many have moved to proof of stake. Considering the explosion in th…

> especially now that many have moved to proof of stake.

For tiny values of many.

There is no major cryptocurrency using anything other than PoW. Ethereum has plans to start moving to PoS in 2022, but isn't there yet.

And related to gaming: Bitcoin alone consumes more power than entire European countries - including all the gaming, smelting, heating, industry, finance, data centers etc in those countries. There is no chance in hell gaming alone, for the entire world, is consuming more power than even Bitcoin - not to mention comparing it to all crypto combined.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#127

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Quindecillion wrote: post #85
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 n…

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

Yes, which is (one reason) why all of these new projects and initiatives skip Bitcoin altogether and instead invent new tokens and coins for each new project.

Bitcoin may not be expanding the Bitcoin supply, but the overall coin supply in the cryptocurrency world is absolutely exploding.

New cryptocurrencies pop up every day and each new project mints new coins for arbitrary reasons (so their founders can keep most of them, usually). Why can’t I just pay for a Web3 service using existing Ethereum? Why must we first trade some coin for arbitrary tokens and then pay for the service? The answer is because the founders and early adopters want to cash out as much as possible as quickly as possible, and the fastest way to do that is by minting new coins.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#128

Post by wrinkl3 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #122
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…

Yeah, people should pay for their externalities. Currently, emissions are not priced and everybody who is using a lot of power is stealing quality of life from future generations and the global poor. BTC mining is just one of those operations that is resistant to a carbon tax since the price of BTC and therefore the mining rewards can just rise to compensate.

> BTC mining is just one of those operations that is resistant to a carbon tax since the price of BTC and therefore the mining rewards can just rise to compensate.

But if it's still taxed proportionally to the generated emissions, does it matter how big the rewards are?

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#130

Post by CynicusRex »

donatj wrote: post #37
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…

> 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…

>“Serious question, where does this line of thinking end?”

It ends at the last pyramid scheme.

Post reply on HN