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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#651

Post by acdha »

mannanj wrote: post #649
acdha wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that gold has useful applications which act as a floor for pricing and moderate fluctuations. Gold bugs can still lose their shirts speculating but a normal buyer knows the value will never be zero. Bitcoin is in contrast a pure fiat currency with very weak backing. Nobody has a need for it which can’t be satisfied at least as well by alternatives and it requires a very expensive always-on network t…

And how do I send money to pay a bill with pre-existing systems? Pay a third party like Venmo, Square, etc a fee, or use my banks (also horribly designed and bad UX system) to send the money slower than watching paint dry. I'd rather pay the Bitcoin Miners that fee than a third party or even by bank.

> And how do I send money to pay a bill with pre-existing systems? > > Pay a third party like Venmo, Square, etc a fee, or use my banks (also horribly designed and bad UX system) to send the money slower than watching paint dry. I'd rather pay the Bitcoin Miners that fee than a third party or even by bank.

Don't forget giving them cash or a check, or a credit card, as billions of people do every day. Fees are a fair point but that's purely a cost and timeliness question: Bitcoin historically has been slower and more expensive but it certainly could be useful as a competitor to horrible companies like Paypal if it can keep the costs down and transaction times low, not to mention scaling the system by 7+ orders of magnitude.

The catch, of course, is that this is not the path to world domination which features prominently in the sales pitch. That caps the maximum value at the percentage Visa, Paypal, etc. charge and if Bitcoin ever matured into serious competition, the credit card companies have plenty of margin to cut.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#652

Post by acdha »

mannanj wrote: post #648
acdha wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that gold has useful applications which act as a floor for pricing and moderate fluctuations. Gold bugs can still lose their shirts speculating but a normal buyer knows the value will never be zero. Bitcoin is in contrast a pure fiat currency with very weak backing. Nobody has a need for it which can’t be satisfied at least as well by alternatives and it requires a very expensive always-on network t…

>Nobody has a need for it which can’t be satisfied at least as well by alternatives Have you ever tried to send more than $5k, $10k or $20k before? You basically can't with your bank without having to go through a bunch of hurdles or time delays. I can easily do that with bitcoin. Legit, real need for it that can't be satisfied with alternatives. In addition the bank is often closed on weekends, and doesn't service y…

I have, actually, and it wasn't hard. It did require a out-of-band confirmation which I considered a good thing since I rarely make transactions that large and never in a case which can't wait until the next business day.

That is, of course, the flip side of that convenience: if you ever make a mistake with your Bitcoin wallet, it's gone with no recourse. Good luck!

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#653

Post by merrywhether »

Liron wrote: post #250

Here's patio11's thread: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1459682519360491523 I was shocked to see A16z recently investing $150M in Axie Infinity and doubling down on their justification of play-to-earn as a coherent concept, as if it's not fundamentally a pyramid scheme. It's lowered my expectation of what passes for thought leadership in our industry.

VCs have to put their monthly influx of FedBux somewhere!

Less sarcastically: cheap money effectively lowers the cost of risk, thus increasing the number of risky investments made. And Axie seems like less of a risky investment than Yo was, at least.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#654

Post by qeternity »

betwixthewires wrote: post #242

I'm a bit of a fan of the whole cryptocurrency thing, the early scope of the concept anyway, replace money, programmatic agreement enforcement, creating financial assets that can't be controlled, incentivizing things that need incentivizing and all that. It's interesting stuff. But this whole metaverse and play to earn is obvious nonsense. But then, if you show me a slot machine and explain it to me in plain English,…

> replace money

Uh what?

> programmatic agreement enforcement

If writing logic were this easy, we wouldn't need the court system.

> creating financial assets that can't be controlled

I'm quite libertarian but again, not sure this is a feature.

> incentivizing things that need incentivizing and all that

Otherwise broadly known as a "marketplace"

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#655

Post by betwixthewires »

qeternity wrote: post #654
betwixthewires wrote: post #242

I'm a bit of a fan of the whole cryptocurrency thing, the early scope of the concept anyway, replace money, programmatic agreement enforcement, creating financial assets that can't be controlled, incentivizing things that need incentivizing and all that. It's interesting stuff. But this whole metaverse and play to earn is obvious nonsense. But then, if you show me a slot machine and explain it to me in plain English,…

> replace money Uh what? > programmatic agreement enforcement If writing logic were this easy, we wouldn't need the court system. > creating financial assets that can't be controlled I'm quite libertarian but again, not sure this is a feature. > incentivizing things that need incentivizing and all that Otherwise broadly known as a "marketplace"

Well the idea behind bitcoin and what not is to use it as money. You might not think it fits the bill but that's the idea, and I think it's a good idea, whether or not execution in it's current state is sufficient.

We have a court system primarily because it was the most efficient way before. It is older than computers, it exists because there was no other way, not because writing logic is hard, although it is. But there's a trade off, if we assume you can never write logic to handle laws then you accept that you will always create a position of power from which law can be abused.

Why isn't it a feature?

Yeah, a marketplace.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#656

Post by derangedHorse »

firekvz wrote: post #424

I didnt read much of the thread but I will assume that most of the people here is aware of how every single NFT game is just a ponzi. But I've lived myself, what the author mentions as a "way to lift people out of poverty.", from the era before NFT or "play to earn" games existed. I come from Venezuela, a full 3rd world country and I was "lucky" to play an MMO (lineage 2) during my young days and somehow I was good a…

It seems like a bold statement to claim every NFT game is a ponzi. Some existing games are looking into incorporating NFTs to help facilitate the kind of transactions you previously needed paypal for. It seems a bit dismissive to hand-wave any games that want to incorporate the technology as not being able to operate sustainably.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#657

Post by shkkmo »

rank0 wrote: post #643
shkkmo wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have entirely missed the point. > let’s just talk about reducing your tax burden as much as possible For the purposes of the discussion, it is irrelevant if the overall tax burden should be raised or lowered. Given any target level of tax burden, it is inefficient to meet that tax burden by requiring large amounts of regulatory compliance by tax payers. If you can make tax rules simpler and easier to comp…

The world is more complicated than you’re letting on. Democracies have complicated tax codes to incentivize certain behavior and also as a political tool. Legislators need to use tax incentives to ensure their base continues supporting them, and to win over new supporters. Before you say “that’s messed up! Legislators shouldn’t do that!” Think for a second how anyone would possibly win an election and retain their po…

> Legislators need to use tax incentives to ensure their base continues supporting them, and to win over new supporters.

If it's legislators serving the interests of their constituents directly and thus get re-elected, that is one thing. However often legislators make these decisions to serve corporate lobbyists (such as Intuit's) and are working against the interests of their constituents so they can raise money from corporate doners to get reelected. This is why the IRS has been prevented from offering any sane method of filing personal taxes and wastes unmeasured amounts of tax payer time, effort and money every year.

> it’s not as simple as “this is all BS and those who make the rules are dumb.”

I didn't say that at all. Optimal taxation strategies are hard, but we haven't really tried to fix taxation in decades, meanwhile the length of the tax code has ballooned to several times what it used to be.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#659

Post by devteambravo »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #365
devteambravo wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's the basis of my issue with it all. Value created by people who do not benefit from it whatsoever.

>Value created by people who do not benefit from it whatsoever. That's basically all work? Bakers get paid to make bread for other people's consumption. Mechanics get paid to fix other people's cars. Transcribers get paid to make media accessible for other people.

If you look into what is involved in the work, as well as who does it, I doubt you'd lump all those together.
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