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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

#171

Post by lukebuehler »

rland wrote: 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…

Super insightful!

The blog post itself also touches on this, slightly, by asking what the connection between compute and money is. Is compute just a proxy for money? Or, will in the future money become increasingly a proxy for how much compute you have at your disposal. The latter surely seems unlikely, but with what you said here, it is not out of the question, especially if people increasingly associate pleasures with things that require compute.

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

#172

Post by nbzso »

I don’t know. This hype-crypto-machine is not catching up with my “feelings” about the future of the Web. Maybe I am getting old, but aside from some communication protocol usage and some form of authenticity (which is questionable), I don’t see web3.

I would go out on a limb and say that if this is web3, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. This is an outrageous waste of resources and energy with awful environmental impact, driven primarily by pure greed and wishful thinking.

Looking at mindset of the VC’s, which are giving this “things” validation, scares the living sh*t out of me.

More and more, implementation of modern ‘tech’ is pushing me towards abandoning the ship and moving into the woods somewhere.

Don’t let me start with NFT’s. It is horrible. The impact of this thing over a lot of my friends is getting ridiculous. I somehow understand “the money” aspect (ponzi scheme, money laundering), but recently I got “the cult” vibes from some of them and closed the door permanently.

So hard “no” from me. I already have a “Metaverse” in which I feel comfortable, it is called reality.

And Web 2.0 is enough for my needs.:)

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

#173

Post by jasongi »

kmmlng wrote: post #160
jasongi wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto offers zero protection from fraud, as transactions are non reversible however if you pay by credit card goods are not delivered or if your card is used fraudulently, the credit card issuer can and will reverse the transactions. Also due to PCI standards almost all online transactions are done via a third party, PCI compliant payment processor. I don't see the value crypto is adding here. If you did have mispla…

With credit cards, you have to give out your details to whoever you are paying. That party will save them somewhere and then there is a possibility that someone else will gain access to your details and abuse them. You won't ultimaltely lose money here, because your credit card company will reverse the transactions, as you said. Being the victim of credit card fraud is still a hassle, however. With crypto, the only t…

Sure, but I think the risk is overrated. Almost all online shops outsource payment processing to a third party payment gateway, which you can validate pretty easily. They never get access to your details in order to abuse them.

Third party payment processor breaches where CC data is lost are quite rare I don't think I've read about one in a very long time.

Sure, I guess you can't get phished out of secrets with crypto like you could with a credit card, but that's never happened to me, and probably won't happen to you unless you aren't very good at detecting dodgy websites. Also, if you fall for those kinds of scams, I have some monkey jpgs I want to sell you.

The real benefit to crypto here is that you can send money, to anyone, anywhere in the world.

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

#174

Post by saberience »

mantenpanther wrote: post #80
yed wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps to think about this more clearly if you forget the NFT bit and think about just doing this with standard tech. What stops developers today from implementing publicly documented formats for in-game elements? What stops other developers from writing code to import these elements from one game to another? All an NFT adds is a verifiable signature and a pubic database. The signature bit seems completely irreleva…

Being technically a verifiable signature, this brings new incentives for users (emotions, possibly valuable) and devs (monetary, user base) which might change the game. But I agree, until we see more advanced intermediary-platforms only the simplest forms like unique avatars or simple rpg-items will be possible to integrate.

NFT technology doesn't add anything for games that isn't already available using guess what, a database! Using a MySQL or whatever database allows single use only items, one-off items that only player can have, multi-use items, any possible combination of items is possible using simple SQL. It's not rocket science, the only difference (which doesn't really add any utility to games) is the idea of this database being public.

Think about it, you could implement items in a game using NFT tech OR a database: would the players notice anything functionally different in the game? If not: why the big deal about NFTs in gaming?

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

#175

Post by thomasikzelf »

hooande wrote: post #158
thomasikzelf wrote: post #131

Crypto needs to solve a problem. I think cryptocurrencies should focus on making a cheap currency that people can actually use. requirements: - low transaction costs - low volatility - many places where you can pay with it - secure - privacy - no tax problems - fast transactions - handle fraud - scalable If a crypto currency can solve above points by cutting out the middle man and making transactions virtually free i…

You're describing Visa. They've invented debit cards. The only advantage to cryptocurrency is the concept of decentralized trust. A blockchain only has value in situations where no central authority can be trusted. If Nano solved every problem on your list the result would be what we already have, but with a distributed network of coin owners in control of it instead of credit card companies. That just doesn't seem l…

> Unless they can do it for roughly half the cost of what we have now, it doesn't have a lot of practical value. And there's nothing stopping Visa from implementing something similar.

I agree with this. And that is probably what will happen, but that wouldn't be a bad outcome. See it as one way to break a chain of middle man's.

Another (more likely) way to push down prices is with regulation. But to do this on a global scale is also very difficult.

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

#176

Post by hocuspocus »

thomasikzelf wrote: post #168
hocuspocus wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Card payments are expensive for multiple reasons, the biggest one is that it involves multiple trusted peers that will refund your money if anything goes wrong. And to be fair, EU regulations have very successfully brought these fees to about half of the typical market-driven price we see in other parts of the world. I'm not saying they cannot be decreased even further, and the EPI was created specifically for that,…

I Agree that the situation in Europe is not too bad. Still I can see a situation where some cryptocurrency pushes transaction prices down for regular payments (maybe without handling fraud, because it is a smaller problem with smaller transactions?). But none of the cryptocurrencies are there yet, and maybe it will never happen.

If you need marginally free payments, the mobile payment systems that exist in several countries are already doing a pretty good job. We could imagine some EU regulation push to mandate inter-operability [1] and no/low cost to small businesses.

I don't think big businesses can just disregard the cost of fraud and other payment incidents. On the other hand, subsidizing small businesses makes sense: for good or bad, there's an increasingly anti-cash movement in some European countries.

[1] https://empsa.org

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

#177

Post by shard »

grey-area wrote: post #148
rland wrote: 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…

I'd have a slightly different take, recent changes in asset prices and the speculative frenzy are due to changes in monetary and fiscal policy since 2008. I'd include the popularity of cryptocurrencies as speculative assets in that (they don't seem to have any other use-value). Asset prices have seen massive inflation in the last decade due to ZIRP, asset purchases by central banks on an unprecedented scale. The risk…

That's very interesting, could you answer a few questions, or point me to some resource which explains in more detail?

1. How does this story end? 2. Which Fed announcement are you referring to? That rates will be raised? What do you mean the party's over, that speculation will decrease and prices will drop? 3. "This impacts tech stocks which are not making money and not likely to make money" You mean that this will impact stock of tech companies which are not profitable, since their stock values are speculative, and not that tech stocks won't make money, right? 4. So that means the Fed has chosen to crash the stock market and save the real economy, right? And by that statement, you mean that the Fed will curb speculation in order to stop price increases in food and other commodities? 5. How and why does rises in prices of risky speculative assets trickle down to rises in food and commodities prices? Is this because some part of the market gets out of the high risk assets and start bidding up lower risk assets? Is this true in general, that price increases due to too much speculation in one part of the market will eventually spread to everything else?

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

#178

Post by mantenpanther »

saberience wrote: post #174
mantenpanther wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being technically a verifiable signature, this brings new incentives for users (emotions, possibly valuable) and devs (monetary, user base) which might change the game. But I agree, until we see more advanced intermediary-platforms only the simplest forms like unique avatars or simple rpg-items will be possible to integrate.

NFT technology doesn't add anything for games that isn't already available using guess what, a database! Using a MySQL or whatever database allows single use only items, one-off items that only player can have, multi-use items, any possible combination of items is possible using simple SQL. It's not rocket science, the only difference (which doesn't really add any utility to games) is the idea of this database being…

Because of ownership and the idea of digital property. In a MySQL the provider owns all data, with an NFT the key holder owns the data.

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

#179

Post by zulrah »

>Every time I dig into crypto I find things that seem stupid, or useless, or actively bad. But so many people are into it!

During my time in tech I've only knew two people who held crypto. However, I've know a lot of people(myself included) who got into crypto, got dissilusioned by the promises, and after seeing that nothing they promissed actually arrived left.

5 Years ago I've heard how crypto is going to be a killer usecase for e-commerse, banking, and even cloud computing but no actual work was ever done to acomplish these goals

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

#180

Post by 0x0nyandesu »

8note wrote: post #163
randomhodler84 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Green and crypto are incompatible ideas. You don't waste for the sake of wasting when you're looking to be green.

Banks use way more electricity just cooling and heating their offices for the meat sacks that run their business than crypto ever will.
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