“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#281

Post by PragmaticPulp » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

Zaskoda wrote: post #279

I have gone down the play-to-earn rabbit hole in an unexpected way. In 2017 I started learning about Ethereum. Once I understood it as a virtual machine, the idea hit me that one could build a game. About that time, CryptoKitties hit and became an example of what could be built. Shortly late, a tutorial called CryptoZombies helped teach "a way" to build crypto collectable style games on distributed virtual machines l…

> I didn't intend to, but having done those things now means I am building a Play To Earn game. That is, of course, assuming my game assets and in-game currency actually have value and a value higher than the cost of creation.

Other than speculators hoping to flip them to someone else, what would give them that value?

Like most crypto games, the value would inherently have to come from new players putting more money into the system to cash out old players. It works as long as hype exists and the users curve continues upward, but it crashes immediately as that stops and everyone wants to extract whatever value they can.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#282

Post by galaxyLogic » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

Do the players who earn money from the game somehow make the game more entertaining for other players?

I had a friend who was a tennis teacher. He didn't really teach so much as play with other less skillful players and get paid for doing that. That's kind of a similar situation right?

The answer depends on whether the players who get paid are rewarded for a service, something that other players perceive as having value to them. Or is it just a way by the game providers to lure people in to the game?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#283

Post by np- » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #260

The thing I really like about this article is that, at least in my mind, it really helped me clarify what I think of as "Bullshit Jobs". It's not so much "do you consider your job useless", but it's more along the lines of "Is your job set up to fulfill tasks that were, generally, arbitrarily designed by some gatekeeper?" A great example of this is tax departments at large companies that look for tax avoidance strate…

> "Is your job set up to fulfill tasks that were, generally, arbitrarily designed by some gatekeeper?"

But isn’t this basically every job that doesn’t directly support a human need (like food, clothing, shelter)? Just arbitrarily working to meet some other human’s desires?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#284

Post by mertd » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

admax88qqq wrote: post #271

WJW wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as miners can't pay the power company with their mining rewards, bitcoin can't exist outside the fiat system. The mining reward denominated in the currency the miner has to pay their electricity bill in MUST be higher than the electricity cost to mine the reward, otherwise the miners go bankrupt.

I can't pay my hydro bills with shares of a private company either or japanese yen either, it doesn't mean those things have no intrinsic value.

The difference is that you can pay someone with JPY and that's the whole transaction. When you pay someone in BTC, you also have to pay the power company with something. The system is an inherently leaky bucket.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#285

Post by Geee » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

mertd wrote: post #256

anonporridge wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the same true of gold? The gold supply is inflating at about the same rate as bitcoin right now, but has enough incoming cash flows to keep the priced propped up enough to maintain a $10 trillion market cap. Obviously some of that incoming cash flow is for actually generative industrial use cases, but it's a minority, https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in... . The lion's share of incoming…

You need to pay the miners just to be able to transact with Bitcoin. Gold on the contrary, you can just hand it over to someone else.

It's way more expensive to store and transport gold than bitcoin, although it depends on the amount. You also have to price in the protection provided by local authorities that protect your property, in addition to your own security measures.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#286

Post by crabmusket » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

webinvest wrote: post #258

whatshisface wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is unlikely to have a 5,000 year lifespan because unlike gold it can be obsoleted.

It’s likely after some number of years, most people will have lost their Bitcoins and there won’t be many left in circulation.

I think that would be a very amusing outcome. the rate of accidents can't be held at 0 so the supply of Bitcoin can only decrease in the long term.

However, is there any reason the network couldn't decide to, say, subdivide Satoshis even further to allow the remaining supply to become more tradeable? If the changes are slow enough over time it doesn't seem like there's a limit to how far that could go.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#287

Post by endisneigh » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

admax88qqq wrote: post #271

WJW wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as miners can't pay the power company with their mining rewards, bitcoin can't exist outside the fiat system. The mining reward denominated in the currency the miner has to pay their electricity bill in MUST be higher than the electricity cost to mine the reward, otherwise the miners go bankrupt.

I can't pay my hydro bills with shares of a private company either or japanese yen either, it doesn't mean those things have no intrinsic value.

no one said that. you're paying in some fiat, right?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#288

Post by Arubis » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

58x14 wrote: post #32

In the late 2000s, as a teenager, I was gifted a Runescape account. This account had level 80+ woodcutting, allowing one to chop magic trees - which would produce the most expensive lumber in the game. It took a staggering number of real hours to achieve this skill level, we're talking several hundred hours minimum. At some point I had realized that there were different sketchy websites that would buy and sell the in…

If you haven't already read it (or, heck, even if you have), I _strongly_ suspect you'd have a blast with Neal Stephenson's _REAMDE_: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reamde

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#289

Post by devteambravo » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:31 PM UTC

Bullshit jobs? Let me tell you what a bullshit job is: Transcription. It's basically poor, often disabled people w/ 0 other options doing it. For slave-wage. That's right, one of the best way for disabled people in America to make $$ is to spend hours transcribing you next Sex & the City remake at breakneck pace. Excuse my french, but F this. Axie sounds like a lot less bullshit

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#290

Post by mjr00 » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #162

gitfan86 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what people don't seem to understand about BitCoin. It is cashflow negative, Money has to keep coming in to keep the price up due to paying miners. It is totally fine if you think BTC is better than the USD or Gold for whatever reason. But Bitcoin is still cashflow negative. You have to keep pumping money into it to keep up its value. Where is that money going to come from? Is it coming from Tether? Is it com…

You aren't talking about the intrinsic value of Bitcoin. You are talking about it's value relative to USD. These are completely different things. Bitcoin has intrinsic value outside of the fiat system. It can be used entirely independent of fiat. Whether that will become common is another matter, but the value of Bitcoin does not have to depend solely on it's value relative to USD.

> Bitcoin has intrinsic value outside of the fiat system.

Not really, because even though the number of Bitcoins is limited, the number of cryptocurrencies is not. In any application that uses Bitcoin, you can substitute Litecoin, Dogecoin, or most other altcoins/shitcoins in existence, and there would be zero difference.

In fact, Bitcoin's only advantage over those coins is extrinsic--it has more longevity, better brand recognition, and a lot of large players interested in making it seem (relatively) legitimate.

Contrast this to when people talk about gold having an intrinsic value, as you can't just replace gold with silver or copper when e.g. manufacturing electronics.