Feels like we argue this here every week. It’s a dumb article and he could start by reading any of the previous posts around here but that would take effort.
Crypto is an unproductive bubble
251–260 of 539 posts
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#252Cryptocurrencies have a valid but very specific use-case: being able to transact in a hostile environment. It does so by making certain trade-offs such as an energy-intensive verification process. This is a very valid use-case when you need to transact against the will of a powerful adversary such as governments. It needs to be there and needs to be protected just like free speech needs to be protected. However, day-…
Seems like wishful thinking to me. Unless crypto becomes actually useful for real world transactions, it has to be converted to fiat currency for use, and all the exchanges or technologies that do that conversion are subject to the will of governments. There was literally a post on HN today in which a government proposed to curtail crypto transactions for entities it considers hostile: https://www.coindesk.com/policy…
And even if so (that it can be converted to the fiat currency of your choice), does it have the liquidity to make it useful at national-scale economies? Putin has been finding that it doesn't.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Banks won’t protect you from wire fraud either. I’ve written this elsewhere when this topic routinely comes up and crypto is dismissed, but the capability of self-custody is the thing to pay attention to. Nothing else has this capability to the same extent. Today we store most of our wealth in assets (market index funds, stocks, real estate, etc.) and some (typically very little, and rarely outside of a bank account)…
> Banks won’t protect you from wire fraud. They will if you didn't initiate the wire. If you typed the wrong account number then you are SOL, but that's true of BTC too.
They also might be able to help if you were conned into sending the money. The money might be freezable.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#254No post body was provided.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#255Cryptocurrencies have a valid but very specific use-case: being able to transact in a hostile environment. It does so by making certain trade-offs such as an energy-intensive verification process. This is a very valid use-case when you need to transact against the will of a powerful adversary such as governments. It needs to be there and needs to be protected just like free speech needs to be protected. However, day-…
The irony in this is that the Citizens United ruling, at least in the US, affirmed that spending money is speech. It's actually one of the reasons why I'm an ardent supporter of postal banking. Since the USPS is an arm of the federal government, it must work within the confines of the First Amendment[0]. As it stands, I remain pretty unconvinced that cryptocurrencies writ large solve this kind of (at least, what I ca…
I want you to pay attention to this very carefully:
https://www.openssh.com/releasenotes.html
* ssh(1), sshd(8): add the sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.com hybrid
ECDH/x25519 + Streamlined NTRU Prime post-quantum KEX to the
default KEXAlgorithms list (after the ECDH methods but before the
prime-group DH ones). The next release of OpenSSH is likely to
make this key exchange the default method.
This might not require a full application of Shor's algorithm, as studies continue with statistics from quantum annealers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurherman/2021/06/07/q-day-i...
If this happens, cryptocurrency as currently designed collapses.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crypto is the evolution of money. It's early days now. The one thing I know is that people are greedy and it's that greed that will make crypto function as part of society. It reminds me of the early days of the personal computer. Early PC's were useless to most people. But they were the greatest tool/toy to some. They couldn't get enough of it. Now it's crypto. It's mainly useless to most but some people can' t get…
Growing organically through collaboration for the sake of it is very different then how computers proliferated. People were exposed to computers in school and work beforehand to them being introduced into every mainstream activity like internet banking and Amazon. Crypto is still stuck in a separate bubble universe where innovation only occurs within.
PCs also seemed to have a ton of uses. More with everyday.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. >> With crypto, a software flaw used to steal crypto can kill an entire company. They're largely powerless to stop it once the tr…
> How is this any different than what we have, just with extra steps? It's declarative. There's no vagueness about the state of the transaction, and settlement can be cryptographically proven. This creates transparency and accountability. It's also sovereign. Not every transaction NEEDS this level of customer protection. Paying in person at a restaurant or supermarket can be done with a simple transaction. Also, some…
> It's declarative. There's no vagueness about the state of the transaction, and settlement can be cryptographically proven. This creates transparency and accountability. It's also sovereign.
What's to stop network effects from this just ending up with a bunch of centralized verifiers that in practice make it impossible not to use them for most daily things?
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're trying to build a functional currency, you can't really afford to say that the majority of people earning and spending money are "not the target audience." That's not how currency works, people have to want your coins for you to spend them. At best, having this perspective relegates Bitcoin to be nothing more than a speculative asset/investment. But if you want it to be more than that and you're just scoffi…
Currencies dont really work at the "may the best one win" level, especially with so much political power behind it. You have a dominant one which stays dominant till it implodes. Then people fall back to the next best thing. You dont need to be attractive, it just has to work.
How global currencies work past, present, and future by Eichengreen has a good history of currencies (from a European perspective). There were a few times when there were multiple currencies being used, and the ones used were the ones related to the countries who had the largest trade networks / 'colonies'. Of course credit was used a lot as well over long distances so folks didn't have to lug things around (Debt: the first 5,000 years by Graeber). Various cities vied between each other for the most transactions and business; Capitals of capital by Cassis has a modern era history.
Before that, gold and silver were often used as lowest common denominators internationally. See The power of gold: the history of an obsession by Bernstein for that. However metals weren't used everywhere: e.g., China used paper currencies for many years, and giant rocks where used in Micronesia:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones
Money: the true story of a made-up thing by Goldstein has a good pop-history overview.
Power often didn't come into play for currency choice, and neither did things "implode" as opposed to a gradual shifting in preference amongst currency users.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Crypto has no intrinsic value, it pays no dividend and doesn’t give you proxy rights, just like all the tech equities. Tech companies return money to their investors via buybacks. Most investors prefer this as they get to choose when they get taxed.
Buybacks? If you're running a company profitably you're supposed to invest your cash to expand the business, not inflate the share price. The share price is supposed to be a reflection of your future profitability, not your future buyback schemes.
Buybacks are optimal when your share price is undervalued or when the Business has plateaued, which is commonly done for value stocks. In which case Buybacks becomes the best way to return value to share holders by purchasing under valued shares of themselves, trading their excess capital to reduce the supply of company shares that also improves dividend yield given its paid out to fewer outstanding shares.
It's the optimal way to return value to share holders when your share price is undervalued and you have excess capital. If the company ever needs to raise funds for a strategic M&A investment in the future they're always able to resell their shares again.
Some companies are content with maintaining a healthy business and not go after growth at all costs, which is a totally fine operating strategy.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rust is an incredibly difficult language to be productive in and I don't think it will stand the test of time. C has been around for half a century and is a perfectly fine language to use today. Rust is popular because people these days are too risk averse, "unsafe" code is really not that bad.
Not all heroes wear capes. :)
I like how I had 6 upvotes, then the lemmings started regurgitating pro-Rust propaganda in the replies, and now I'm at 0.