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The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

mollywhite.net

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Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#291

Post by throwawaydroid »

SilasX wrote: post #280
di4na wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None because if it was a high quantity method it would get regulated or banned by society The regulations exist for a reason. The reason crypto do not have them is because there is no quantity. Not because it is magically immune to existing in societies

"Cryptocurrency has no practical use case." 'Yes it does, I got money to refugees when it was otherwise impossible.' "Well... you shouldn't be able to do that."

> more than $60 million of the $100 million was received in the main fund run by Kuna, the Ukrainian crypto exchange.

So the majority of crypto donations were from Ukrainians on Kuna exchange; hardly a prime example of global crypto's good will. Also $100M is kind of small when you consider it next to the $14B congress has promissed to Ukraine. Then consider the total $1.5T sticker price of the congressional spending bill that $14B was a part of and it all seems insignificant.

In short we can and should give more to Ukraine.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#292

Post by SilasX »

throwawaydroid wrote: post #291
SilasX wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cryptocurrency has no practical use case." 'Yes it does, I got money to refugees when it was otherwise impossible.' "Well... you shouldn't be able to do that."

> more than $60 million of the $100 million was received in the main fund run by Kuna, the Ukrainian crypto exchange. So the majority of crypto donations were from Ukrainians on Kuna exchange; hardly a prime example of global crypto's good will. Also $100M is kind of small when you consider it next to the $14B congress has promissed to Ukraine. Then consider the total $1.5T sticker price of the congressional spending…

The $14B is slow and probably won't make it to individual Ukrainians. So, like in the original charge, you're stuck in the position of having to trivialize $100M in aid because ... well, other modes are helping too, and this isn't a "prime example".

>In short we can and should give more to Ukraine.

And this is a way to give direct aid, something you ostensibly want, and yet you're stuck saying crypto doesn't count, somehow.

It seems a less epicyclic approach is to just accept that this is a valid use case rather than finding a way to out-argue it.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#293

Post by uncomputation »

seanhunter wrote: post #254
uncomputation wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You went to my concert, now you can get into a special channel on my discord/get early access to my album etc This is one of those use cases which sounds super cool but when you think about it, doesn’t really make any sense. I mean, maybe I’m just an antisocial person, but why would I want to be put in essentially a group chat for every person attending the Screaming Monkeys Band Tampa 11/23 concert? Early access f…

Lots of people really like this - you're in a fan community where it's ok to be a fan and people aren't going to criticise the fact you like this particular band. The artist can do AMAs direct with their fans without the trolling etc that infect a lot of social media because everyone in that channel is in the same community. As for buying an album you heard at the concert, yes. If you like what you heard at the conce…

You reduced my argument to stupidity by removing the early access part. You said early access to an album, meaning because you bought X token-ticket, you get access to an album which is not released yet, or else it wouldn’t be early access. Of course if the album is already out, then yeah most people at the concert are going to have had bought already. But then you don’t need early access via token-ticket.

Unless you are meaning that the artist performed a new album at this concert, now I get to buy it ahead of its actual release because I attended a concert. This makes more sense logically and is probably what you meant, but it seems like a very specific and even one-off use case. Not to mention that, due to torrents, once this “early access” album is unlocked with a token, it’s practically going to be unlocked for everyone because other people aren’t going to wait and at least one of those token-ticket holders is going to seed it.

> you're in a fan community where it's ok to be a fan and people aren't going to criticise the fact you like this particular band

I suppose this is similar to a forum but membership is gated via purchase of a token-ticket. It’s an interesting use case for sure, but in my opinion is unnecessarily financialized because now I have to buy a ticket to the artist to join a forum/subreddit?

This doesn’t even solve the fact that if the artist doesn’t offer concerts in your area or even country (eg South America), it doesn’t really matter that you have all of this decentralized and distributed technology gating things up because the actual point of centralization, the artist, isn’t touring where you live.

“No not all forums, this would just be an extra VIP forum.”

I guess, sure, this is a technology which enables a VIP forum. I am not sure how useful, popular, appreciated, etc. those are, not to mention the fact that you can already implement that without tokens by requiring unique ticket serial numbers and then you don’t have the problem of everyone’s membership to this VIP forum being public knowledge (as is the nature of the blockchain), but fair enough.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#294

Post by FabHK »

jklm wrote: post #191
FabHK wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Miners are paid some $40m/day, through 1) creating more BTC (called "coinbase" here, "Seigniorage" more generally, leading to inflation) and 2) fees. For now, the $100 miners siphon off per transaction are predominantly from 1), so those costs are not very visible. And then of course the exchanges charging 20 to 120 bp (or more) for a roundtrip against money you can actually use. Coinbase (the exchange) alone takes a…

If that seems crazy, wait until you hear about these companies called Stripe and Visa.

Not sure what you are talking about.

1. Stripe has revenue of $bn 8, Visa $bn 25, and Coinbase $bn 8. Are you suggesting that Coinbase provides as much utility as Stripe?

2. The equity market cap is about $tr 100, so Stripe and Visa together take about 0.03% of that per annum.

Mind you: That is way too much. Credit cards are an inefficient oligopoly, and they've been fined by regulators for their extravagant fees. That's a whole topic in itself. But: Crypto is 10x worse.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#295

Post by hotpotamus »

olalonde wrote: post #284
bawolff wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always say the same thing when someone is critical of crypto. Its too early! I mean after all, we are only 13 years in. Or: there is a lot of bullshit but the interesting things are outside of your echo chamber. But then never link to such counter examples. At best people talk about filecoin, which does pass the bar of not being a literal scam, but still makes no sense from a product-market fit (storage has 3…

> I mean after all, we are only 13 years in. How long did it take for gold to become a store of value? I am guessing millenia.

Probably more like 13 billion years after it was first created.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#296

Post by chrischen »

sneak wrote: post #237
chrischen wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal and bank wire transfers still work in Ukraine, so this not a particularly good example of a crypto use case. Russian hackers demanding ransom payments in bitcoin—thereby circumventing economic sanctions—now that is a legitimately illegitimate use case for crypto.

Try sending PayPal from Russia to Ukraine. PayPal requires identity and permission. I am barred from using it, for example. No barriers to me donating to Ukraine via cryptocurrency.

I just sent money to Ukraine via PayPal and the Ukrainian recipient confirmed they were able to add it to their bank card.

I’m not sure why you are barred but if I sent you crypto you’d probably need verification to withdraw it to fiat as well.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#297

Post by ahtihn »

seanhunter wrote: post #241
Animats wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't make much sense for concert tickets, unless you want to enable scalping. The lifetime of a ticket is short.

There are people starting to use NFTs for tickets precisely to circumvent scalpers and allow a legitimate secondary market to exist in which the primary artist benefits from resales. There are real reasons for a secondary market to exist (eg you've got concert tickets and suddenly get sick and can't go or something) the problem right now is that the existing secondary market is broken so prices are insane for the rea…

How do NFTs circumvent scalpers? Scalpers can still buy the supply of tickets and just sell the private keys directly entirely bypassing any resale fee. And before you say people wouldn't buy private keys because of the risk of the seller giving it to multiple people: that's the same as the current situation.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#298

Post by anchpop »

tasuki wrote: post #258
rvz wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only 'NFT' that has a use-case so far is ENS [0] and domain names on the blockchain. The JPEG NFTs (which don't have a use-case) have captured the hype of the critics and that will likely collapse in the long term and those NFTs are what the critics will just keep talking about. There is a product that is using it for identities already: [1][2] I can see businesses using ENS or similar solutions as a way to repla…

Yes, this is also the only nft use case I've been able to understand so far. I'm a fan of Handshake [0]. The project raised ten million of venture capital money and gave it away to free software developers [1]. It's an attempt at a decentralised DNS root zone, a replacement for icann. It would also obsolete certificate authorities: certificates would be guaranteed by the blockchain, under direct control of the respec…

I’m curious about handshake vs ens. The thing I like about ens is that it’s on ethereum which should make it harder to 51% than handshake (which is a relatively small PoW chain iirc). Of course with ethereum you need to pay gas fees which are out of this world (I paid $55 gas for my ens name). I’m hopeful that in the coming years ens will be able to reduce fees by partially transitioning to an L2 once zk-L2s mature, but we’ll see

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#299

Post by ahtihn »

jimmydorry wrote: post #232
cuteboy19 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of NFTs is that they are decentralised. If you are going to a concert, you are by definition centralizing power in the hands of the organizer, making NFTs entirely pointless for this. You might as well have the concert organizer send out emails with ticket numbers. Supply chain I am not even sure why you would want it. NFTs don't prevent false data being input into the system. it only "protects" again…

Except in your concert example, the number of tickets is not verifiably public with a centralised entity. There is nothing that stops the organizer from printing more tickets than there exists capacity for. On the flip side, a NFT ticket can be demonstratably unique (no counterfeiting or luck of the draw from scalpers), and only a certain number can be printed (otherwise everyone will know that the organizer is not a…

> There is nothing that stops the organizer from printing more tickets than there exists capacity for.

That's not a real problem.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#300

Post by hiq »

sneak wrote: post #237
chrischen wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal and bank wire transfers still work in Ukraine, so this not a particularly good example of a crypto use case. Russian hackers demanding ransom payments in bitcoin—thereby circumventing economic sanctions—now that is a legitimately illegitimate use case for crypto.

Try sending PayPal from Russia to Ukraine. PayPal requires identity and permission. I am barred from using it, for example. No barriers to me donating to Ukraine via cryptocurrency.

> Try sending PayPal from Russia to Ukraine.

Sounds like the real problem is having RUB.

> No barriers to me donating to Ukraine via cryptocurrency.

In this case you're not starting with RUB, so you're solving a different problem.

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