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Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#111
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first comment is a very common crypto talking point that isn't really borne in reality IMHO. It takes decades to see the impact. It almost never takes a decade to see the use, and that's what people are deriding. Crypto doesn't really solve a problem that needed solving and it is often the wrong solution for many things it's used for. All at a very high cost. Cryptocurrency hasn't really brought much in the way…

"no use case" and "no new tech" are just vague opinions that are typical anti-crypto talking points. Whether you personally like the use cases or not, obviously they are there as it's been on fire for more than a decade now, and continuing to grow in popularity. And regarding tech, there is no doubt that the advent nakamoto consensus algorithm is an absolutely breakthrough technology that will be seen as a pivotal mo…

As someone else said, this argument is tautological.

You're saying it's useful because it's in use because it's useful.

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#112
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, if you had made any declarations on the printing press a decade after it was invented, you'd have missed pretty much its entire impact. There are clear use cases for blockchain which have been laid out ad infinitum by other people. There are also downsides. This makes it pretty much the same as any other technology, e.g. the combustion engine.

What is an appropriate time according to you then? There are only two periods of time that can be commented on. From inception to the present. From the present to future predictions. The former hasn't shown a use that can't be solved better by other methods. The latter hasn't shown any either. The printing press on day 1 had a mission statement that had no equal. So did the combustion engine. It did the current thing…

I'm not suggesting "an appropriate time" in which an invention can be deemed impactful, because that isn't how history works. This is the point I am trying to convey. If we look at other inventions and broadly speaking, "knowledge," it's quite common for the real impact to not be seen for quite a long time. E.g. the Renaissance and re-interest in / rediscovery of classical sources.

I don't know why this is so controversial, but I suspect it's because of #2 in my original comment.

Again, I didn't say that crypto will become extremely useful and important in the future, but simply that declaring it useless or unimportant now is foolish and unlike virtually every other technology.

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#113
post #67

'"Tokens align network participants to work together toward a common goal — the growth of the network and the appreciation of the token." That's great if what you're trying to do is create an ecosystem of tokens that appreciate in value all the time. What percentage of systems can be modeled that way?' That's the problem. "An ecosystem of tokens that appreciate in value all the time". The perpetual motion machine of…

Ubisoft Quarts had 15 sales for 50$, total revenue: 745$ - https://objkt.com/collection/ubisoftquartz And only 0.665 % earns money on OpenSea. Concentration of it is way less, you can just crawl the collections. 5 collections dominate all the rest and only the first 266 collections earned > 0 eth. The other 40 k. earned 0 eth. It's obviously not a way for an artist to earn any money. https://pastebin.com/NyLMcs7c Scr…

That number seems off by a few orders of magnitude.

I tried searching for familiar collections and couldn't find any of them:

- Corruption(*s) - Bored Ape Yacht Club - Lonely Aliens Space Club - NFT Worlds

You also have neither entries for the major Art Blocks series (Curated/Playground/Factory) nor any of the hundreds of individual artist collections contained in them.

So, I think your crawl might be off.

Additionally, individual artists tend to not use OpenSea but instead use Rarible, Foundation, and SuperRare (or skip ethereum altogether and use something on Tezos like fxhash).

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#114
post #87

Easily the best take posted here in a while. These are money games. And if you think this will be a minor sector of the economy, look at Wall Street - there is huge demand for these types of games, and that's when only people with $1+ million in net worth can really play. Now anyone can play, at the same time that traditional paths to wealth are stagnating or closing off completely.

How does this enable new people to play? The rich can still gamble the most and come in early to earn the biggest rewards. The poor still take the highest risk. As the poor buy more into it , the rich get richer as well. Maybe the poor get richer but how much money can they lock away? What stopped them from investing that money in the stock market before crypto was around? I fail to see how this creates a new economy…

Parent is referring to the accredited investor definition in the US [0] specifically ($1M+ in assets as one test), but more broadly to similar financial gatekeeping.

I'm skeptical it's an overall social good to remove guard rails that prevent sophisticated sellers from fleecing unsophisticated buyers (say what you want about the SEC, but they do enforce some rules), but I agree the current scheme prevents all people from equally freely investing in all opportunities.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/accreditedinvestor.asp

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#115
I don't understand how any take on crypto can not mention that it is now the de-facto currency of online black markets, from pornhub to silk road 9.0 or whatever version we're up to.

This is crypto's utility and the only thing I've seen crypto being used for seriously that isn't speculation. Cryptocurrency is disrupting the black markets the same way amazon/ebay/online shopping disrupted the retail markets.

Crypto isn't a solution looking for a problem, the problem was found back in 2011 - it's just that nobody wants to admit it. It reminds how everyone used to say that BitTorrent was used for downloading Linix ISOs, but with less self-awareness.

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#116
post #87

Easily the best take posted here in a while. These are money games. And if you think this will be a minor sector of the economy, look at Wall Street - there is huge demand for these types of games, and that's when only people with $1+ million in net worth can really play. Now anyone can play, at the same time that traditional paths to wealth are stagnating or closing off completely.

How does this enable new people to play? The rich can still gamble the most and come in early to earn the biggest rewards. The poor still take the highest risk. As the poor buy more into it , the rich get richer as well. Maybe the poor get richer but how much money can they lock away? What stopped them from investing that money in the stock market before crypto was around? I fail to see how this creates a new economy…

> How does this enable new people to play? The rich can still gamble the most and come in early to earn the biggest rewards.

So far this stuff has circumvented the accredited investor regulations.

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#117
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube and Twitch already pay users so what does crypto add?

I am assuming they pay users who have USD/EUR/GBP denominated accounts. Not sure how they go about paying in Vietnamese dong.

Looks like Twitch might be banned in Vietnam: https://twitter.com/freshminhtea/status/1083718396410097664?...

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#118
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a good thing. Secure money is pretty much one of the most important thing we have invented in this age. The energy today is nothing to the energy can harness tomorrow. The planet burners ain’t the energy buyers // it’s the energy sellers. Fix production to be green and grow grow grow.

Just like that, “fix” production? Wow, glad to know you have the global carbon emissions problem in hand! Back in the real world, until we have actually got that problem in hand, PoW cryptocurrencies are a huge extra amount of consumption, where we already have more consumption than green energy producers can keep up with. And now crypto miners are bringing decommissioned fossil fuel plants back on line in some place…

I’m not a fan of the fossil power plants coming online, but this is one small example. Many fossil fuel plants actually increased production during the pandemic too. Nuclear plants were taken offline too. But this is not cryptocurrency to blame. The fundamental disconnect here is that you want to tell people how they can and can’t use energy. That’s authoritarian nonsense and I reject your wishes. I am saying use it how you wish, but optimize it to be green. Ideally, the use will drive it to be more green as that is the cheapest and more sustainable way to generate power in the long run. Do you see the difference in position?

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#119
post #83

I've gotten this feeling, ever since about 2008 or so, that the map that is asset prices is slowly, inexorably becoming uncoupled from the territory of the physical world. This economy-scale decoupling is the dual of each and every one of our very own psychological uncoupling from our own physical worlds, which has occurred because of the computerization of work, socialization, and life itself (the shimmering neurali…

Being able to transfer value across the internet without the permission of a middle man, is valuable in the real world.

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#120
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFTs don't have to be (are not) the asset, just parameters/stats and the graphical representations can look different according to the game.

Even that doesn't necessarily translate. What does +5 attack sword do in farmville?

Nothing, this wouldn't make sense.
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