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Moving money internationally
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Re: Moving money internationally
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crypto is a planet-destroying ponzi-scheme, but in a collapsed economy like Russia, I wonder if everyone can just have virtual wallets where you can buy goods by sending the seller some "coins". Which is basically the WeChat payment system, or how the Brazilian Real got established: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-... We already just exchange "coins" electronically, but with the Visa or Ma…
The phrase "ponzi scheme" has been thrown around liberally in regards to cryptocurrency, especially on this forum, but I've never heard a convincing argument that it actually fits the definition.
It's weird because it seems like you can point to various aspects of crypto and maybe identify them as being a pyramid scheme, but I don't feel like that definition holds up as it gets sufficiently large and self sustaining. Otherwise you could point to a number of other very large money machines like the stock market or even money itself and say it is also a pyramid scheme. Maybe it is though. Perhaps the entire economy is a pyramid scheme that is dependent on an infinitely growing population.
As soon as we hit a population limit on the planet there will be no bigger fool to sell to in the future and the economy becomes stagnant.
As for the literal definition of ponzi scheme I don't think it holds up because everyone is fully aware, or should be of what it is they are buying and where the money is coming from if they want to sell.
Re: Moving money internationally
#63Is it just me or is patio11 becoming more and more full of himself? I used to enjoy his writing a lot, but after joining Stripe it seems that something has changed. "I work for the Internet at Stripe" he says without further explanation. Unless "Internet at Stripe" is some internal Stripe group (then please explain what that is), he should have just written that he works at Stripe, full stop. Otherwise anyone could s…
He made a giant ruckus complete with mysterious tweets with hashes of secret documents to claim that Japan was going to have mass casualties from their ostensibly botched covid response. It's okay to make a giant ruckus about something important that you believe nobody is paying attention to. And it's okay to be wrong about that. But it would be nice to see him publicly reckon with how he got it so wrong, and how he'…
From the article linked below, he seems to think that he was largely correct. Is that not the case?
Re: Moving money internationally
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
This discussion itself is of nothing important. However, that doesn't preclude it from being a place where moral relativity exists and can be debated. I am not sure I understand your assumption that the importance of a claim or discussion is related to whether it can be morally judged.
Doesn't mean there's value to it. This is a perfect example of manufactured moral outrage, justified post-hoc. The onus is on the outrage to justify it, not on the accused to defend against it. In this context, someone was expecting another person to exhibit a particular response to earn redemption based on an absolutely benign incident. At a certain point, the yelling just becomes tedious and unproductive regardless…
> Doesn't mean there's value to it.
Well, to bring the concept of "value" into it only drives this further philosophical; I personally consider all debates of moral relativity to hold some inherent value, due to the topic, but I admit some are vacuous nonetheless.
> This is a perfect example of manufactured moral outrage, justified post-hoc.
I don't really understand what is "manufactured" about this. The individual went and published a hefty claim, in the form of a white paper no less, that Japan was about to see a massive outbreak of COVID[0]; they believed so intently in themselves that they were willing to put this content out there and stake some lofty claims on the "work" of the white paper.
Of course those who find the work sloppy and indeed find the conclusions outlined in the paper to have not occurred at all are going to decry the author. It is their inherent right. I will leave it to you to slog through the details of the thing, I personally only joined to wax philosophical about the nature of debate on the internet.
> The onus is on the outrage to justify it, not on the accused to defend against it.
This language is so silly. The numbers forecasted in the paper didn't occur, seems pretty well justified.
> "I'm outraged because someone was wrong and no one was hurt and no harm was done" is just hubris.
Again, your language is very telling of the media you consume, but "no harm was done" is both difficult to quantify and hard to imagine as true if you consider actions of negative moral relativity to be harmful, which is not an unreasonable stance to take against breathlessly whispered, widely published failed psuedoscience.
[0]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2020/04/21/japan-coronavirus/
Re: Moving money internationally
#65Last time I sent money to someone internationally Etherium really was pretty convenient. The Coinbase fees were a little high but otherwise it was near instantaneous, I already had some anyway, and I didn't have to deal with any real hassle.
If your only goal is to send digital value across the planet why would anyone use Ethereum or Bitcoin? There are a ton of alternatives that cost fractions of a penny in transaction fees.
Large cryptocurrencies have more liquidity, meaning it's less likely you'll get large price differences between exchanges in difference countries, and more likely that any given exchange will support trading in that digital currency. For large trades, more liquidity also means less price slippage upon buying or selling the cryptocurrency.
Re: Moving money internationally
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crypto is a planet-destroying ponzi-scheme, but in a collapsed economy like Russia, I wonder if everyone can just have virtual wallets where you can buy goods by sending the seller some "coins". Which is basically the WeChat payment system, or how the Brazilian Real got established: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-... We already just exchange "coins" electronically, but with the Visa or Ma…
The phrase "ponzi scheme" has been thrown around liberally in regards to cryptocurrency, especially on this forum, but I've never heard a convincing argument that it actually fits the definition.
Lyn Alden addresses this characterisation:
https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-ponzi-scheme/
"Bitcoin doesn’t really meet this broader definition of a Ponzi scheme any more than the gold market, the global fiat banking system, or less liquid markets like fine art, fine wine, collectable cars, or beachfront property. In other words, if your definition of something is so broad that it includes every non-cashflow store of value, you need a better definition."
Re: Moving money internationally
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
As soon as I hear something like “planet destroying” within the crypto context, I stop reading because that tells me the person knows nothing about the current state of crypto.
I'm curious about this, I try to stay up on what's going on in the crypto world and it's my understanding that the vast majority of crypto blockchains are still using proof-of-work, which is what I imagine "planet destroying" is in reference to. Per wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake The biggest proof-of-stake blockchains by market capitalization in 2021 were Cardano, Avalanche, Polkadot and Solan…
>>What exactly about the current state of crypto is incompatible with this critique?
Ethereum is by far the most widely used cryptocurrency network, and while it consumes a lot of energy relative to the number of transactions in processes, and a lot of energy in absolute terms, it consumes on the order of a thousandths (0.1%) of the world's energy output.
It will have switched to Proof of Stake long before it grows large enough for it to account for a materially significant portion of global energy consumption. So the rhetoric used above, which makes the generalization that "Crypto is a planet-destroying ponzi-scheme", is entirely hyperbolic with respect to the environmental criticism (and a blatant mischaracterization with respect to the ponzi-scheme allegation).
Re: Moving money internationally
#68Very nice article explaining SWIFT and some other things. Being from a country no one gives a fuck about, I have experienced the sort of "discrimination" described many times. Banks, ISPs, stores, local ad users would just refuse to sell to me. It's a sad reality, but a reality nonetheless. I still remember a needlessly lengthy email from an incorporation service explaining to me the difference between "lawyer" and "…
And if any one ever claims they haven't found any useful purpose for cryptocurrency, the answer is here. The most valuable use-case for cryptocurrency is to financially empower people in predicaments like yours.
A permissioned value transfer network, like the traditional financial system, poses problems that blockchain-based finance doesn't suffer from, and the trade-offs in using it are worth it for some people.
Re: Moving money internationally
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious about this, I try to stay up on what's going on in the crypto world and it's my understanding that the vast majority of crypto blockchains are still using proof-of-work, which is what I imagine "planet destroying" is in reference to. Per wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake The biggest proof-of-stake blockchains by market capitalization in 2021 were Cardano, Avalanche, Polkadot and Solan…
>>What exactly about the current state of crypto is incompatible with this critique? Ethereum is by far the most widely used cryptocurrency network, and while it consumes a lot of energy relative to the number of transactions in processes, and a lot of energy in absolute terms, it consumes on the order of a thousandths (0.1%) of the world's energy output. It will have switched to Proof of Stake long before it grows l…
Ethereum is now estimated to consume energy equivalent to or greater than mid-sized countries like Greece[1]. You can paint it as tiny, but 0.1% of world energy output is still enormous, for providing what is for the most part a highly speculative set of financial instruments to a limited audience.
It's been "about to go PoS" for several years now. The fact is it hasn't. When it does, you can tell people their concerns are out of date. About Ethereum. Bitcoin isn't even going there and its consumption is as bad or worse.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1265897/worldwide-ethere...
Re: Moving money internationally
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
As soon as I hear something like “planet destroying” within the crypto context, I stop reading because that tells me the person knows nothing about the current state of crypto.
How so? Because it looks to me like the current state of crypto is worse than ever - https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-less-green-than-ever-before... Emissions on a par with Greece. And just for one coin. Ethereum is still going to PoS any day now, totally, just a few months off. Like it has been for several years. So what is it about "the current state of crypto" that you think you know better than these?
The ETH PoS chain is already in beta with the expectation of transition (the merge) later this year.
BTC mining is creating new business models for renewable energy [0][1], BTC uses less energy than many other activities that don't get the same flack- AC usage, Data Centers, etc [1]
[0] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/10/11/bitcoin-mining-is...
[1] https://blockworks.co/mining-mutualism-renewable-energy-and-....
Finally, if energy is one of your biggest expenses, you're economically incentivized to reduce those costs as much as possible.