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Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

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Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is attempting to BE value better than fiat. There is a possibility that we eventually achieve a bitcoin circular economy. In such a scenario, Bitcoin does not go up or down against fiat because there will be no demand for fiat.

There's no potential scenario where that happens (only scenarios with no potential to occur in reality). Governments are not going to give up the critical aspects of economic control and self-determination that come from national currencies, generally. They could already do that with gold, and they overwhelmingly have had absolutely no desire to do it (for obvious reasons). If Bitcoin gets a lot larger and a lot more…

> There's no potential scenario where that happens

Maybe not in your lifetime. But you’re not practicing long-term thinking here. Global, trustless, decentralized networks allow humanity to fundamentally reorganize. Physical, nation-state borders are ignored by such networks. Cooperation for physical resources still does matter but that may also be lessened by technological leaps in sectors like energy and food production. Humanity, if lucky enough to not be oppressed by ultra powerful governments, will likely render federal/central governments much less important and thus much less powerful. Simply put, the value proposition of central governments is now on the decline.

Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in theory, a decentralized framework consisting of smart contracts and NFT’s could work. In such a framework, the NFT would be providing real utility (unlike scammy JPEG NFT’s)

In such a framework how would you solve repossession? inheritance? seizure? How would any state authority be able to handle any case where the person supposed to hold the keys either is unwilling or unable to authorize a transaction that should legally go through? If I lost the keys (as in the keys to my blockchain wallet) to the NFT for my house should that plot of land just be abandoned forever? If a company gets h…

You raise great points and I don’t have all the answers. But I don’t believe it’s impossible to achieve such a framework given the time to work out issues like those you’ve described.

> you have simply reinvented the state

If you could reinvent the state so that it is predictable, testable, and not subject to human corruption then I’d say it’s a good thing! And also quite the experiment haha

Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a genuine question - should anyone take cryptocurrency seriously? To me, the only purpose of it is to make money. It's the stock market, but with less rules, and it's 24/7. I would say no. It's a technology that serves no practical purpose, since the problems it addresses are ones purely created by certain peculiar ideologies. If you're not indulging in one of those ideologies, there's no point. And, like y…

No practical purpose EXCEPT for the ability to easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes, bringing a form of storing assets to the 2 billion or so unbanked individuals of the world, and comparatively cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country. These are just a few of the incredibly practical use cases that quite literally change people's lives.

> easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes

How do you get your assets converted to crypto in the first place, if an authoritarian regime prevent you from having something akin to a bank account?

> comparatively cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country

According to cryptofees.net, BTC transaction fees average 4% and ETH 1.6%. Even the median fees are pretty high when compared for example to Wise.com and there you only have fees when converting currencies.

> bringing a form of storing assets to the 2 billion or so unbanked individuals of the world

This is a fair point, but I would argue that people who are unbanked are not the kind of people who will find it easy to securely manage crypto keys and wallets.

Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#194
NFTs are extensions to the ideas of CCs with subtle fallaciousness and much hype.

Most forms of CC should only be used as a transactional currency to exchange value, never to store it, because of the inherent lack of stable or intrinsic value in CCs.

NFTs are basically the programming equivalent of pointers or references to things, not actual things. They're meaningless when no one else values them and there's no marketplace for them.

You can make money by selling shovels in a goldrush, but you have to know when to exit before peak hype.

Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#195

From another article on the same topic https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/14/twitter-n... : > Man who paid $2.9m for NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet set to lose almost $2.9m > ‘This is the Mona Lisa of the digital world’, says crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi who bought the NFT in March 2021 This is a good example of why so many people don't take cryptocurrency seriously. It full of hype men who spout tr…

This is transparent BS even to those who take cryptocurrency seriously like me. Judging the entire space by the worst of it is stupid IMO. It’s like saying nobody should take any startups seriously because of Theranos or Juicero.

Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#196
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a government wants to freeze your crypto assets, they can do so easily. Lol source?

I'm not the OP, but this from the Matt Levine newsletter last week, which I think is what he is getting at: > 1. If you hold your coins at a regulated exchange, sure yeah the authorities can probably get a warrant and seize your Bitcoins. > 2. If you hold your coins in your own wallet but you write down your private key in, like, your phone’s notes app, and it backs up to the cloud, then the authorities can probably…

This is ignoring that 3 and 4 are still improvements.

This argument is similar to me saying there is no point to encrypted communications because the government can hack it, plant back doors, throw you in jail, etc. That is all true, but making the government’s job harder, even if not theoretically impossible for a nation state, is still something that is worthwhile.

Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, amazing ASCII art! Are you selling an NFT of it?

Here is the link and its sha256 checksum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31072303 b7595f7540b06686a8c810ca2bfbbb967bb355929e2ddeb2aa5e2d062f2a07ba You can say it’s yours if you upvote one random blog post from Paul Graham.

That price is too high, my friend.

Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In such a framework how would you solve repossession? inheritance? seizure? How would any state authority be able to handle any case where the person supposed to hold the keys either is unwilling or unable to authorize a transaction that should legally go through? If I lost the keys (as in the keys to my blockchain wallet) to the NFT for my house should that plot of land just be abandoned forever? If a company gets h…

You raise great points and I don’t have all the answers. But I don’t believe it’s impossible to achieve such a framework given the time to work out issues like those you’ve described. > you have simply reinvented the state If you could reinvent the state so that it is predictable, testable, and not subject to human corruption then I’d say it’s a good thing! And also quite the experiment haha

> If you could reinvent the state so that it is predictable, testable, and not subject to human corruption then I’d say it’s a good thing!

I think you misunderstand my points. All the things you stated are simply not things we can achieve as absolutes in society or the physical world. The current rules of blockchains and smart contracts deal in absolutes, and when they can't they defer to oracles (which interface with the real world, so they have all the problems you stated). The real world is full of nuances, judgment calls and edge-cases which is why we have people who can adjudicate them. The points I listed in the parent comment are just a small fraction of the real world problems that would creep up in the first day of implementing this sort of system.

From here on this is more opinion/political:

If the discussion was about making laws more aligned with those points then the last place to start would be with crypto-tokens that have no real world impact (besides using a bunch of compute/resources). The place to start IMO would be to start removing exceptions from laws/taxes that don't make sense anymore, get the legal code down to a manageable size, introduce better accountability to our democracy and so many other steps. Starting with the tokens is destructive because it focuses energy at the wrong end of the problem and has clearly just led to most destructive parts of society (thieves, criminals, grifters, scammers, MLMs, etc.) to profit. It also makes people who see the obvious problems with it (I count myself among them) unwilling to participate so there is less force behind it even if it (against all odds) was a good idea.

I think it's also clear that a proper system to solve these issues would not be based on the current technical platforms being built since those are incapable on a fundamental level to answer questions like the ones I asked.

Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not going to argue with someone that’s just looking to win rather than actually be curious about stuff. Ah. The inevitable ad hominem argument. > I think you’re probably wrong. See, the difference between you and me lies in this "probably". You believe , with nothing to back your beliefs. I look at reality (including the reality that I worked at a company that worked with memberships, ticketing, "gated communit…

It’s not an ad hominem - it’s a critique of the type of discourse. You’ve already made up your mind as evidenced by this reply (what you claim is “reality as it is”) and will just argue in favor of that conclusion. You’re right the difference is in the “probably”, but you’re wrong about what it means. I’m not so certain, but I at least recognize a new capability when it exists. Perhaps unfair for me to dismiss you as…

> and will just argue in favor of that conclusion

Because reality doesn't care about your "probably"s.

Note how you immediately started calling this discussion "this type of discourse" and "you made up your mind" immediately after I simply listed facts.

> but I at least recognize a new capability when it exists

There's a difference between "recognizing new capabilities" and "wishful thinking". Unsurprisingly, when faced with facts crypto proponents immediately fall back to "you just don't understand", "you're not curious", "future will show you're wrong" etc.

Facts are:

- the absolute vast majority of memberships imply "a central/centralized authority that verifies membership". That's what "gated community" is

- Blockchains make even the simplest act of membership unnecessarily complicated, and makes more complex interactions nearly impossible.

- It's on the crypto shills to show that this tech offers anything new or interesting beyond "oh, this is new tech with wonderful new capabilities". So far, at closer inspection, the people claiming that have precisely zero knowledge on the topic and haven't thought about anything beyond the simplest use cases. Without fail, in 100% of cases this is the case.

- There's a very minor very fleeting possibility that globally verifiable membership in a group is useful, for large enough groups. However, looking at every single global group (largest being football fans, for example), there's literally zero indication that blockchains and NFTs can offer even a sliver of value, no matter how many "probably"s you throw in there. Masons managed to create a global secret society without blockchain, or computers. But do tell me how "I'm not curious" or "probably wrong".

If only wide-eyed crypto enthusiasts were curious themselves.

Re: Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value

#200
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No practical purpose EXCEPT for the ability to easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes, bringing a form of storing assets to the 2 billion or so unbanked individuals of the world, and comparatively cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country. These are just a few of the incredibly practical use cases that quite literally change people's lives.

> easily take assets across borders to leave authoritarian regimes How do you get your assets converted to crypto in the first place, if an authoritarian regime prevent you from having something akin to a bank account? > comparatively cheap remittances for people sending money back to their families in another country According to cryptofees.net, BTC transaction fees average 4% and ETH 1.6%. Even the median fees are…

> According to cryptofees.net, BTC transaction fees average 4%

That site hasn't been updated in almost a year. (Check the prices and recent transactions it links to.)

Here's a more accurate way to estimate bitcoin's fees. Go to mempool.space and look at the current estimated Low/Medium/High priority fees. That is based on current pending transactions and most of the time, unless you are in a hurry, "Low" is enough to get a transaction confirmed in the next hour.

At current writing, and for most of the past year, those fees are a few cents.

And this is the expensive way to transact bitcoin -- on-chain! Nowadays most commerce is moving to the layer-2 Lightning Network, where transactions are instant and typically nearly free via payment channels that are settled on-chain in the future.

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