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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

#311

Post by otterley »

_57jb wrote: post #299
otterley wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny watching crypto boosters realize there are actual benefits to institutional trust that are superior to cryptographic trust. These allow for high liquidity and allow participants to capture gains (or losses) practically in real time.

You misread my statement. The trust of banks is an illusion and actually slower than the consensus. I don't "boost" crypto. I disagree that crypto is how we should buy our lattes. If you live in a country where financial independence and control is not a reality this could be something greater than the corrupt system you are trying to extricate yourself from. There is rampant corruption in crypto and although I feel…

> You misread my statement. The trust of banks is an illusion and actually slower than the consensus.

It doesn't matter. Trust makes the world go round.

Even if consensus took seconds to attain instead of minutes, it would still be too slow to maintain the liquidity of even current financial markets. We're talking 2-6 billion trades per day on NYSE alone, often concurrently - as low as 4.6 microseconds per execution. There is no way we'd be able to achieve that with the consensus state of the art.

Only through offline trust and batch reconciliation can we achieve this kind of liquidity.

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

#312

Post by oarabbus_ »

Nursie wrote: post #99
oarabbus_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you consider the energy usage from GPUs mining cryptocurrency worse than energy usage from GPUs used for playing video games or rendering CGI graphics? Or porn? TV commercials? Why is it considered OK to generate massive amounts of pollution and expend tremendous energy flying beef from Japan to New York for people's consumption, when there are perfectly edible cuts of beef which require at most a short train…

We’ll, firstly the largest contributor, BTC, doesn’t use GPUs. Secondly, many of us don’t think that beef example is really “OK” either. Third, the idea that Bitcoin or crypto in general runs predominantly on green power is bullshit. Fourth, BTC now consumes more power and has more associated carbon output than many mid sized countries, it is not some piddling little thing that we can safely ignore. Fifth, and last -…

Sounds like we should tackle the biggest problems first, of which greenhouse gas emissions from raising and transporting meat is the largest. Much larger than bitcoin. Only those with a medical reason requiring them to eat meat should, and the rest should eat local plant-based food. After all except for people who require meat in their diet to survive (extremely rare) it's a personal choice.

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

#313

Post by oarabbus_ »

squarefoot wrote: post #267
oarabbus_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you consider the energy usage from GPUs mining cryptocurrency worse than energy usage from GPUs used for playing video games or rendering CGI graphics? Or porn? TV commercials? Why is it considered OK to generate massive amounts of pollution and expend tremendous energy flying beef from Japan to New York for people's consumption, when there are perfectly edible cuts of beef which require at most a short train…

> Why do you consider the energy usage from GPUs mining cryptocurrency worse than energy usage from GPUs used for playing video games or rendering CGI graphics? Or porn? TV commercials? Because gamers, graphics designers, porn watchers and TVs don't use piles of thousands GPUs kept at 100% load 24/7. The spike in power demand and consumption after cryptocurrencies became popular speaks for itself. > Why is it conside…

>Because gamers, graphics designers, porn watchers and TVs don't use piles of thousands GPUs kept at 100% load 24/7. The spike in power demand and consumption after cryptocurrencies became popular speaks for itself.

Many blockchains already use or are transitioning to proof of stake cryptocurrencies. Not to mention gamers, porn watchers, and graphic designers in aggregate utilize far more energy than cryptocurrency and also do not use green sources. It seems you just have a personal dislike of crypto and are letting it preclude you from objectivity.

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

#314

Post by squarefoot »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #313
squarefoot wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you consider the energy usage from GPUs mining cryptocurrency worse than energy usage from GPUs used for playing video games or rendering CGI graphics? Or porn? TV commercials? Because gamers, graphics designers, porn watchers and TVs don't use piles of thousands GPUs kept at 100% load 24/7. The spike in power demand and consumption after cryptocurrencies became popular speaks for itself. > Why is it conside…

>Because gamers, graphics designers, porn watchers and TVs don't use piles of thousands GPUs kept at 100% load 24/7. The spike in power demand and consumption after cryptocurrencies became popular speaks for itself. Many blockchains already use or are transitioning to proof of stake cryptocurrencies. Not to mention gamers, porn watchers, and graphic designers in aggregate utilize far more energy than cryptocurrency a…

Actually I would be very interested in it, but I don't see any evidence that it is becoming environment friendly. Energy demand (and therefore cost) increases every day, so are GPU prices. The day I'll see them going back to normal I may change idea about the technology, although I wouldn't touch it as a currency with a 10 meters pole: 3 days of protests for soaring energy prices in Kazakhstan made Bitcoin drop from over $47K down to less than $43K.

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

#315

Post by yed »

lui8906 wrote: post #186
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…

You have a credibly neutral place to store the items, publicly accessible to any other developer to leverage without having to maintain you're own endpoints and documentation. Baked in royalties. Sounds... much easier than the convoluted solution you propose with standard tech.

Except NFTs don't store the item, they only store a creator-defined URL hypothetically pointing to the item or a hash of it's contents. Also nothing guarantees the royalties if you can just download the item. Nothing in NFTs prevents right-click-save-as.

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

#316

Post by yed »

Reichhardt wrote: post #65
yed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments collected taxes on cash and non-fiat for millenia (and still do so), they will have no issues taxing crypto if they need to.

But at much lower rates. Taxes as a % of GDP didn't exceed 10% in the USA until WW1: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Federal%... You can see other spikes related to other wars. Wars sure are great if you want to expand Government power and taxation over your own citizenry!

Sure, but the claim is that crypto magically allows you to avoid all taxes. It doesn't. How much the government chooses to tax you is entirely unrelated.

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

#318

Post by _57jb »

otterley wrote: post #311
_57jb wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misread my statement. The trust of banks is an illusion and actually slower than the consensus. I don't "boost" crypto. I disagree that crypto is how we should buy our lattes. If you live in a country where financial independence and control is not a reality this could be something greater than the corrupt system you are trying to extricate yourself from. There is rampant corruption in crypto and although I feel…

> You misread my statement. The trust of banks is an illusion and actually slower than the consensus. It doesn't matter. Trust makes the world go round. Even if consensus took seconds to attain instead of minutes, it would still be too slow to maintain the liquidity of even current financial markets. We're talking 2-6 billion trades per day on NYSE alone, often concurrently - as low as 4.6 microseconds per execution.…

You are under the assumption I believe that speculation in it's current form is a good thing. Friedman Doctrine never worked, he himself admitted it.

Crypto is not for buying your latte. It's for the people that cannot trust the system that issues the money to begin with. In your country perhaps it's not an issue. I am sure there are plenty of countries you can see that it is.

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