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On anti-crypto toxicity

blog.mollywhite.net

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71–80 of 734 posts

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#71

Post by gigatexal »

It's hard for me to be sympathtic to cryptocoin maximalists when there are so many in their camp that push "shit" coins and coin-drop scams. Then there's power usage. It's use in aiding fraud and crime (something cash does as well and money laundering with fiat is not new...) as well as it's inability to scale compared to existing solutions to be used as a clearing house (yes, there are other blockchains that seek to speed this up but it's not at parity from what I can tell).

So all of this allows me to not feel bad about reveling in the latest crash, or scam, or exchange hack, or when the price falls or what not because I have no skin in this game and can't care any less than I do. I think the whole thing is a speculative farce that has hit a critical mass of adoption and intertia (at least for bitcoin) that will continue to be a puzzle (at best and a scam at worse) for years to come.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#72

Post by Capira »

It took me quite a while to understand what Bitcoin is about. Of course, decentralised systems are exciting tech, but what's really interesting is that Bitcoin focuses attention onto fundamental questions of society:

- How can we transport value through space at the speed of light?

- How can we transport value through time?

- How can we protect our life savings from inflation?

- How can we develop a free market of currencies which solves the issues of centrally controlled currencies?

- How can we align incentives such that we stop consuming low quality products that produce lots of waste and start valuing high quality products that last for decades?

- In general: How can we, as a society, enjoy the benefits of a low time preference?

Such questions are the reason why I believe Bitcoin is one of the most disruptive technologies of our century.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#73

Post by tiborsaas »

bedobi wrote: post #2

Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was really cool to pay for your beer by scanning a QR code and seeing the transaction come through this public, distributed, tamper proof ledger, like magic, with no need for money, banks or any of the other financial infrastructure we're used to. Sadly, the "crypto sp…

If I replace crypto with "web", your comment still feels the same, yet the WWW is more popular than ever. Maybe look under the rug a bit deeper, but at the same time I'm not saying that the abuses aren't there.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#74

Post by kuschku »

rvz wrote: post #64
simias wrote: post #13

The problem is that while these topics are interesting (and even crucial these days) they're often used in bad faith by people who are just in it because of the get-rich-quick scheme. You'll often see people push some cryptotoken using a thin veneer of political activism, saying that it's about taking control back or redistributing wealth etc... but it's rarely more than that. In my experience if you attempt to push…

Your whole four paragraphs can be simplified to: 90% of projects out there are scams and have a crypto-token attached to it with a pyramid scheme on it and there also exists a 10% of projects somewhere that it is not purely a 'get-rich-quick-scheme', or a 'web3' crypto project that doesn't require a crypto-token attached to the product that has utility? Thus, it also must mean that it is not going away 100% guarantee…

The issue is that with so many more scams than real projects, and so much focus on buzzwords, it’s more likely to fall for a scam than to actually find a real useful project.

And even the not-entirely-a-scam projects, be it NFTs, the entire ETH or BTC sphere, are so full of money laundering, trade front running, people using it as investment vehicle, etc. that you can’t trust these projects either.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#75

Post by DebtDeflation »

igorkraw wrote: post #54
Ekaros wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it is rather hard to separate the Libetarians and Anarcho people... Other one might be right and other left, but there is some weird commonality when it comes to state and control of financial system...

It's really not that hard. Libertarians, minarchists and "anarcho-capitalists" take one of the things which inherently need a state to uphold it (private property) and use it as the conceptual foundation of their social order - while not liking "the state". All other anarchists don't and hence get labeled as "left". That's the main difference, and the reason why "anarcho-capitalist" is inherently paradoxical. There i…

> Libertarians, minarchists and "anarcho-capitalists" take one of the things which inherently need a state to uphold it (private property) and use it as the conceptual foundation of their social order - while not liking "the state".

Very well said. As someone who was a "libertarian" in my high school days, I ultimately abandoned the philosophy after realizing that it was at its root far more about "property" than "liberty" and ought to have been termed "propertarianism". Furthermore, none of it's logico-moral justifications for property rights actually worked for the most fundamental forms of property (land and unproduced natural resources).

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#76

Post by stavros »

egeozcan wrote: post #51

You cannot solve contract/legal problems and wrong transactions through decentralization. You can't also make a democratic system act on every conflict. You assign a central authority to act on them and you select that authority through a democratic process, which is what we already have. - I want to have a beer! - ok, scan this QR, and accept the transaction - there you go! - thank you, here are your 5 beers - oh, d…

How is this different from cash?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#77

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

egeozcan wrote: post #51

You cannot solve contract/legal problems and wrong transactions through decentralization. You can't also make a democratic system act on every conflict. You assign a central authority to act on them and you select that authority through a democratic process, which is what we already have. - I want to have a beer! - ok, scan this QR, and accept the transaction - there you go! - thank you, here are your 5 beers - oh, d…

No crypto software I know makes a transaction based on a QR code scan. It always shows you the address, and then you have to enter the total in the check and then complete the transaction. If you paid 5x more than was asked, have your 5 beers.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#78

Post by K0nserv »

telomero22 wrote: post #68
bertil wrote: post #25

The largest and easiest argument against crypto is the environmental impact. It’s completely ignored in that piece.

That's really irrelevant in 2022, since 90% of blockchains are not Proof of Work anymore.

Maybe 90% by count, but not 90% by volume of transactions, prominence, etc. Bitcoin seems to be entirely resistant to moving away from PoW and Ethereum have been in the process of moving to PoS for years.

Pop quiz: What will happen first, Ethereum PoS or the year of linux on the desktop?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#79

Post by s-lambert »

blamestross wrote: post #26
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I saw this happen with the early internet, and then later with crypto... It took a long time for the Internet to go from 1) only know to geeks to 2) grifters promising the world to 3) wider acceptance. Maybe this will happen too with crypto, but until it sorts out its grifter problem, it will be always be stuck at stage 2.

I don't think the internet has left phase 2 yet either.

If the internet is stuck on phase 2 then telephones are still stuck on phase 2 as well, there's still plenty of phone scams through calls/SMS.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#80

Post by bertil »

brianolson wrote: post #60
bertil wrote: post #25

The largest and easiest argument against crypto is the environmental impact. It’s completely ignored in that piece.

There are new blockchains based on technology a million times more efficient than Bitcoin. Ethereum is trying to upgrade. Bitcoin is terrible, but this is fixable by using things other than bitcoin.

> a million times more efficient than Bitcoin

That is still a million times less efficient than existing solution and still horrifyingly wasteful. Blockchain principle is that if you have as many people as possible waste an astounding amount of computation and energy, you make over-ruling most of them too wasteful to be possible. You are not solving anything that way, just showing off that you have never heard of Kwakiutl.

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