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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#671

Post by TimJRobinson »

gitfan86 wrote: post #272
jonathan-adly wrote: post #133

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 Pretty sure a sizable portion of Bitcoin holders understand and know that. They don't hold Bitcoin as a form of bespoke investment to be exchanged for money at some point in the future. They hold it because they believe it is sound and incorruptible money . And as long as they (not any additional people!…

Is this Peter Pan? If you just believe in the power of BTC it will never go down in value?

Yes. The key realization is all forms of wealth preservation are the same. We value things because other people value them (once we have our basic needs met).

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#672

Post by dllthomas »

bncy wrote: post #630
joombaga wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty into the idle/incremental game concept, though they're rarely implemented to my taste. It's difficult to quantify what makes a good one, but my favorite is Universal Paperclips. https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

Man, this is great, I've just wasted 30 minutes playing this.

Thankfully it can wrap up in about 5 hours (as you may've discovered), unlike some of them...

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#673

Post by wyager »

gitfan86 wrote: post #364
wyager wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If demand goes down for BTC the price will go down. Indeed. What may be missing from your model is that demand for BTC comes not just from people buying it, but from people holding it. > BTC needs a constant infusion of new investment to keep the price up. No it doesn't. Why do you say this? Where the market clears has essentially nothing to do with "new investment".

Stop and think about what you are saying. If everyone in the world stopped buying TVs and instead held onto their current TVs the demand for TVs would go to zero. What would the market price of TVs be when there is zero demand? How do you think BTC miners pay for the graphics cards and electricity? NVIDIA doesn't take BTC as a form of payment. So money is constantly leaving the BTC network to pay for electricity and…

Every sale is also a purchase. The market price of something is precisely the equilibrium price at which inflows and outflow are matched. Think hard about this.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#674

Post by prepend »

oblio wrote: post #549
prepend wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting it’s like meta money laundering. It allows regular folks to make money off the illegal economy. In some ways this was the extra profits banks made off illegal activities but that was largely held within the bank, not available to normies.

Is it regular folks, though? I imagine it's mostly big whales who are probably also doing shady stuff, too. We're talking about people doing money laundering, so financially savvy. Few outside people get rich off the mafia.

My random lawyer is buying crypto. So they get to have their value increase as all the shenanigans goes on.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#675

Post by rjbwork »

shkkmo wrote: post #253
Kevin_S wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RS was the perfect game for me and dramatically changed my life. Started when I was 12, played for YEARS slowly getting better. Discovered staking and scamming at the duel arena. Invented a new scam and made bils. Made a sizeable chunk over a couple years (enough to pay all my bills in college and a LOT of beer money). Got into botting with some friends, made a little money doing that too. My experience with RS led m…

> Discovered staking and scamming at the duel arena. Invented a new scam and made bils. Made a sizeable chunk over a couple years (enough to pay all my bills in college and a LOT of beer money) Do you feel any remorse or regret about scamming people out of thousands of dollars? I am a bit surprised that you are bragging about this sort of unethical\illegal behavior on an account directly tied to your real world ident…

Scamming in games is part of the game. Eve, Runescape, Path of Exile, Ultima Online, etc. These all add friction to trade and uncertainty to in game interactions and allow people to attempt to carve out a scammer career in the game. If it is allowed by the rules of the game then it is part of the game. A part of which players ought to be wary.

In Ultima and Eve various groups kept/keep tabs on the scammers and criminals. In Path of Exile, there is a group called The Forbidden Trove that helps the community reduce the risk of being scammed, along with providing dedicated high-reliability traders to get extra income by showing their reliable non-scammy behavior over a long period of time. These are all interesting interactions and systems that developers could totally short circuit with other design choices, but have chosen not to.

On the other hand, being scammed definitely sucks.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#677

Post by jallen_dot_dev »

oblio wrote: post #548
jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It took a staggering number of real hours to achieve this [woodcutting] level, we're talking several hundred hours minimum. [laughs in agility] Anyway I agree with Runescape teaching some real world skills. Runescape (and some other multiplayer games) also taught me about scams and I think trained me to be skeptical whenever something seems too good to be true. For a really basic example, that opportunity to double…

> For a really basic example, that opportunity to double your BTC that Elon Musk is always offering his followers is literally the gp doubling scam, the most common Runescape scam from 2 decades ago. Isn't this kind of thing illegal with real assets?

I'm fairly sure all scams are illegal regardless of the asset because a scam is by definition fraud which is illegal.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#678

Post by d1lanka »

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…

From https://medium.com/loom-network/blockchain-games-the-biggest...:

> "I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007–2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell.

> I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit."

— Vitalik Buterin, Creator of Ethereum

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#679

Post by arbitrary_name »

digitailor wrote: post #650
acdha wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Digital assets aided in stopping a predatory crime this year. I saw you make that claim but that's too vague to evaluate whereas what Nagle described has been well covered for many years and even the Bitcoin salespeople rarely argue that it's commonplace. Even with the extra two paragraphs you added later there's no way to know what this meant, what fraction of the total Bitcoin usage it accounted for, etc. > These…

I agree with most of your points. If something as real-life meaningful as the stopping of a predatory crime does not satisfy you as a legitimate usage example against people claiming there is essentially none, I'm at a loss and am unsure of what we're actually discussing. As you may imagine, it's impossible for me to provide the 1,000 page+ documentation trail of an in-progress federal investigation here in order to…

I'm sorry but as an observer to this thread: there is nothing even remotely compelling to your argument. 'stopping a predatory crime' - one instance? That you can't refer to? Not compelling.

In fact, the sheer number of predatory scams being performed using crypto would surely outweigh the alleged single incident in which Bitcoin had a positive influence?

Your inability to meet any other requests for evidence (businesses that legitimately use and depend on btc) is downright damning.

I hold btc, but every booster simply fails to demonstrate any actual utility for Bitcoin beyond being a speculative vehicle.

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