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Crypto is an unproductive bubble

alexkolchinski.com

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Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#411

Post by throwaway290 »

gonehome wrote: post #40
jmcgough wrote: post #19

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. If someone steals my credit card, I have my credit card company to give me some level of protection. They can block transactions if…

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)…

> The closest alternative would be having cash [...] and cash is vulnerable to government stupidity (see: Russia)

For the record, The Current Thing at the moment is to recommend citizens hurting from their government's stupidity to overthrow said government (and if you are averse to dying, then it's only fair that you suffer).

I'm being facetious, but there's a grain of truth in that notion.

If your government robs you with its economic policies you could, of course, invest in croins or other hard to sanction assets -- or you could instead take action to make your government better, more transparent and reliable.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#412

Post by nl »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #377
nl wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the Boba airdrop if you are familiar with that debacle. There was a L1 and L2 Boba address and and OMG address and the claim process instructions were... less than ideal. There were a bunch of people on the discord who did the same as me. > I’d your Let the person who has never made a typo be the first to throw stones.

I was being rude. I am sorry for making a bad assumption about that. I’m not familiar with that one. I am pretty much a BTC maxi.

> I’m not familiar with that one. I am pretty much a BTC maxi.

Wait.. you are being critical of me and you are stuck on BTC? To put it simply, people who BTC Maxis in 2022 are like those people on HN at the Facebook IPO who didn't understand why it was profitable.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#413

Post by [deleted] »

danShumway wrote: post #388
cf141q5325 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can buy drugs and apparently some food deliveries. I get your point but thats just a question of adaptation. To the other point, i described the mechanism of adaptation. If the current mechanism of transfer stops working people historically fall back to anything else that works. They have to use something, trade must go on so they choose the next best thing till something better emerges. The involuntary pressure on…

> I can buy drugs and apparently some food deliveries. It's not completely clear to me that Bitcoin would even work for drugs or ransomware if those people weren't then converting Bitcoin into local currencies. This argument really undervalues the role that exchanges play in this process. I can earn a dollar, spend it on something, and the person I give it to as payment can spend that same dollar somewhere else. It n…

[deleted]

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#414

Post by throwaway76587 »

Judge by yourself. In the past month I made the following transactions, many of which would be impossible, dangerous, expensive or complicated without the crypto.

- Refilled my sim card in a foreign country for 0.0004 Lightning BTC

- Bought a VPN account for my friend in a country with heavy censorship for 0.0015 Lightning BTC

- Sent 100 and 150 USDT to my friends in a sanctioned country

- Donated 0.026 to EFF

- Donated 0.29 BTC to Ukrainian defense

- Donated 0.22 ETH to Navalny team

- Took my savings out of a country that forbids outwards money transfers

So it's been pretty productive for me. In addition, I protected my savings from inflation.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#415

Post by koonsolo »

pavlov wrote: post #311
wraptile wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Decentralized systems by nature suffer for slow adoption (just look at decentralized networks like Mastodon which are objectively better than alternatives yet lag behind in adoption). Finally, bitcoin is a financial product, I really don't know any other financial systems that we're adopted quickly other than maybe payment processors. We still struggle to adopt centralized systems…

The EU created and deployed instant zero-cost 24/7 bank transfers while crypto was twiddling its thumbs talking about “early days” and puffing out PoW carbon. If even the European Union moves faster than your cutting-edge decentralized system, maybe you have a problem.

I'm in the EU, doing a lot of bank transfers. I would love to see 24/7 instant bank transfers. The theory is nice, the practice however is very poor.

With nano, I do actually have instant, 0 fee, 24/7 money transfers.

Sorry, but your claim is just not true in practice.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#416

Post by winternett »

pavlov wrote: post #302

Crypto people love to say “it’s the early days.” But it’s not. Bitcoin is 13 years old. At that age, Windows was on >90% of the world’s computers. Java at age 13 had taken over enterprise software and was about to conquer mobile via Android. Cryptos are used by maybe 0.1% of computer users (if we’re very generous about what exactly constitutes usage). Considering the amount of investment they are an expensive failure…

Even the concept of celebrity is wearing thin... People you've never heard of before now have larger followings (yet not quite more money) than many of the movie stars of the past... This is why some major stars are literally having public melt downs and hawking dances on TikTok and shilling NFTs...

Twitter hocking NFTs to everyone for their profile pics is like a Costa Concordia-level move, which pretty much serves as a huge sign that the ship is sinking...

It's a car accident in process to be honest, and only the people who read alt-news sources get the right dose of pessimism. On the flip side, I'm still confused but pleased that my email inbox is still only flooded with bank transfer scheme emails rather than crypto/NFT news and scams... Ahh... The quiet life... :P

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#417

Post by winternett »

wraptile wrote: post #309
pavlov wrote: post #302

Crypto people love to say “it’s the early days.” But it’s not. Bitcoin is 13 years old. At that age, Windows was on >90% of the world’s computers. Java at age 13 had taken over enterprise software and was about to conquer mobile via Android. Cryptos are used by maybe 0.1% of computer users (if we’re very generous about what exactly constitutes usage). Considering the amount of investment they are an expensive failure…

You're comparing apples to oranges. Decentralized systems by nature suffer for slow adoption (just look at decentralized networks like Mastodon which are objectively better than alternatives yet lag behind in adoption). Finally, bitcoin is a financial product, I really don't know any other financial systems that we're adopted quickly other than maybe payment processors. We still struggle to adopt centralized systems…

Or one could easily say on the inverse, Crypto is like Chuck-E-Cheese tickets... All promise big possibilities, and it looks flashy at the top, but then you realize you've invested $1000 to make $100...

Social media is the last thing left in pushing this lottery brigade... Social platforms have already demonstrated that most frankly can't succeed in their large oceans of popularity and in competing with wealthy influencers, the same holds true for crypto. It is far too easily influenced by tweets, wealthy influence, and popularity to make everyone socially climb the ladder, and far too volatile for people who can't afford to risk money to play with...

Just like regular money.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#418

Post by Tretiotrr »

yanderekko wrote: post #282
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really your selling point that crypto is good because Russians can wage war while circumventing sanctions? The whole point of sanctions is to pressure bad actors to change. You've invented a technology that allows them to continue doing evil? Hurrah?

>Is it really your selling point that crypto is good because Russians can wage war while circumventing sanctions? No, this is a person sending money to their brother, who is presumably not engaged in "waging war."

The timing for such a bad argument is bad and it is still shitty.

Crypto bros telling us how great it is for the poor people in such countries to get money. Now we see the downside of this as well. Oligarchs protecting their assets as well.

Leveled playfield.

No added benefit from crypto anymore.

And yes right now for me, sanctioning is more critical to me to increase the pressure on Russia to stop killing people than Russian people being able to use crypto.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#419

Post by tromp »

jmcgough wrote: post #19

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. If someone steals my credit card, I have my credit card company to give me some level of protection. They can block transactions if…

> With crypto, I have to triple check the address I'm sending coins to because I can't undo it.

This not much of an issue in pure Mimblewimble based blockchains, where sender and receiver interact to construct a transaction, and the receiver essentially has to prove the ability to spend received funds before the transaction can happen.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#420

Post by nl »

webkike wrote: post #339
wraptile wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Decentralized systems by nature suffer for slow adoption (just look at decentralized networks like Mastodon which are objectively better than alternatives yet lag behind in adoption). Finally, bitcoin is a financial product, I really don't know any other financial systems that we're adopted quickly other than maybe payment processors. We still struggle to adopt centralized systems…

You can’t say a social network is objectively better when all of the people you consider to be cool don’t use it.

Yeah, there's nothing at all objectively better in any way on Mastadon.
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