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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

#251

Post by spadros »

danuker wrote: post #247
nbzso wrote: post #172

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 envir…

> driven primarily by pure greed and wishful thinking. What's wrong about greed? Why not channel it to create a better world? For every trade, both "greedy" sides see themselves better off, otherwise there would be no trade. This increases the quality of life for everyone.

I didn’t realize we had any Ferengi on Hacker News. You’re ignoring his point that it doesn’t justify the waste and damage that’s being done.

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

#252

Post by BeFlatXIII »

aemreunal wrote: post #57
Reichhardt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% of healthcare costs are incurred in the final 5 years of life, and in much of the world private healthcare is accepted and efficient. I'd rather euthanize myself at age 80 and pay much lower taxes throughout my adult life than die at age 85 in a gold-plated Government hospital. Sanitation and public transport can be directly charged to end-users based on usage. Education can be funded with land value taxes. Feder…

> in much of the world private healthcare is accepted and efficient. It is accepted in many parts of the world, unfortunately, but in what part of the world is it "efficient"? Can you give an example? Is "basic medicine costing $500 (see insulin) to the few that can afford it and the rest dying because they can't access it" what you define as efficient? > I'd rather euthanize myself at age 80 and pay much lower taxes…

> I'd rather not. I doubt many people would be okay with that. I like living and being healthy. You can still feel free to do that in either situation.

Part of GP’s point is that you’re not healthy & free for those extra five years when the costs truly spike.

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

#253

Post by jmstfv »

nmaley wrote: post #187

Some remarks from Captain Obvious here. The primary use case for crypto is simple: (1) People buy crypto because it keeps going up in value (2) It keeps going up in value because people keep buying it. (3) For why people keep buying Crypto, see (1). That's the logic of a Ponzi scheme. All previous Ponzi schemes failed because either (a) sooner or later the scheme runs out of new suckers, and/or (b) the authorities in…

> Sooner or later, the founders of BTC

Tell me you don't understand Bitcoin without telling me you don't understand Bitcoin.

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

#254

Post by rufus_foreman »

nmaley wrote: post #187

Some remarks from Captain Obvious here. The primary use case for crypto is simple: (1) People buy crypto because it keeps going up in value (2) It keeps going up in value because people keep buying it. (3) For why people keep buying Crypto, see (1). That's the logic of a Ponzi scheme. All previous Ponzi schemes failed because either (a) sooner or later the scheme runs out of new suckers, and/or (b) the authorities in…

>> That's the logic of a Ponzi scheme

No, that's not the logic of a Ponzi scheme. Crypto is not a Ponzi scheme.

Ponzi promised a 100% return on investment in 90 days. He got money from 15,000 investors. He needed 30,000 investors in 90 days to pay off the original 15,000. By the end of the year he would have needed 240,000 to keep the scheme going. By the end of 5 years he would have needed 16 billion investors. Crypto has been around what, 14 years now? In 14 years he would have needed 1080863910568919040000 investors.

Ponzi schemes don't collapse sooner or later, they collapse sooner. Ponzi started his scheme in January of 1920 and it collapsed in April of 1920.

Crypto is just a normal speculative investment. People buy it because they think someone else will pay more for it later. Same as speculating in gold, Amazon stock, or MTG cards over the last 14 years.

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

#255

Post by ethbr0 »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #234
ethbr0 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Color me skeptical. The cost-security tradeoff of PoW fundamentally relies on using more energy until it becomes expensive (relative to crypto revenue). If energy is cheap ("), someone will consume additional capacity. Solar, geothermal, wind, nuclear et al. are cleaner (from an energy production standpoint, and mostly from a generator production standpoint), but still have fundamental capacity limits. "We're going t…

We will use more and more energy every year as our species evolves. It is the trajectory of every civilization to generate and harness more energy. Cryptocurrency will use more and more energy, and we will seek out new ways to generate it. It is the drumbeat of human progress. Building oligarchical proof of stake ponzi games is not progress. That is when we have given up and just want to stagnate.

The fact that we will scale energy usage does not make the scaling factor irrelevant.

Increasing at 1.5x vs 2x has very different implications for the planet, economy, and international politics.

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

#256

Post by yunohn »

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…

> With crypto, the only thing you give out is your public key

That’s not really true. The service/product provider can and will ask for more details, like name, address, etc - it has nothing to do with the mode of payment.

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

#257

Post by yunohn »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #231
jasongi wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the potential security issues. But the only affect this would have had on you is you would have had to contact your bank to reissue the card and chargeback any fraudulent transaction. Consider a similar hack on a site that accepted Bitcoin instead of credit cards. The fraudulent JS replaces the payment address with the hacker's address and you send your coin to it. There's no getting your money back now.…

Getting new cards is a pain, especially if you are traveling. You are without a card for a bit until it is replaced. And chargebacks are a headache. That is a good point about malware, However I would bet address substitution would be discovered a lot more quickly. Magecart was ripping vendors for weeks before the cc vendors tipped them off. 1 bad purchase flow and the customer complains and the site would investigat…

> Getting new cards is a pain, especially if you are traveling.

Well, if you lose your crypto wallet - you lose your funds. Generating a new wallet is not going to solve that. Whereas losing fiat cards doesn’t result in my bankruptcy.

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

#258

Post by achenatx »

jasongi wrote: post #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 is…

just because something is illegal doesnt make it immoral.

Money transfer across country boundaries is a big use case. Chinese were using btc to get money out of the country which was one of the original big bumps.

the immoral people are the countries that restrict people's ability to move by restricting their ability to move their assets.

The US exerts its will around the world through the banking system. Sometimes for good and sometimes for immoral purposes. Crypto allows good and bad actors to avoid that pressure.

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

#259

Post by yunohn »

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…

> Something I've noticed about cryptocurrency people is that they are very, very plugged in. The evangelists never have a physical job; always a computer job, and they are always online, and believe in being online to the greatest extent possible. And I think, actually, there is a very obvious reason for that.

This is a very important point, that I’ve also been saying for a while. Crypto is purely digital, almost every application that goes popular is fully digital, and almost no ideas have any connection to the real world. That’s gonna cause problems one day…

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

#260

Post by robjan »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #254
nmaley wrote: post #187

Some remarks from Captain Obvious here. The primary use case for crypto is simple: (1) People buy crypto because it keeps going up in value (2) It keeps going up in value because people keep buying it. (3) For why people keep buying Crypto, see (1). That's the logic of a Ponzi scheme. All previous Ponzi schemes failed because either (a) sooner or later the scheme runs out of new suckers, and/or (b) the authorities in…

>> That's the logic of a Ponzi scheme No, that's not the logic of a Ponzi scheme. Crypto is not a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi promised a 100% return on investment in 90 days. He got money from 15,000 investors. He needed 30,000 investors in 90 days to pay off the original 15,000. By the end of the year he would have needed 240,000 to keep the scheme going. By the end of 5 years he would have needed 16 billion investors. Cryp…

Amazon stock represents ownership of a company and gold has both utility and intric beauty. They are demonstrably valuable
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