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On anti-crypto toxicity

blog.mollywhite.net

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Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#91

Post by egeozcan »

stavros wrote: post #76
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?

I wasn't specifically giving a btc example, qr code can also be apple pay or anything like that.

It's just that in the case of btc, there's no central authority to cancel the transaction. You need a court order to force the bar to manually send the money back to you. The bank cannot freeze the funds. Enforcement is crippled. If this is not a reputable business (unlikely for a bar and very unlikely for a small sum like that but bear with me), it's way more likely to lose your money.

This is one of the reasons why money transactions are hard and costly. You cannot pretend that a blockchain fixes all that.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#92

Post by lekevicius »

k__ wrote: post #3
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…

Depends on the people you hang with. I'm currently at devconnect in Amsterdam and it's full of people who care about tech. Really nice a crowd and even a bit more diverse than the rest of IT.

I had a fantastic experience at DevCon V. Ethereum developer conferences attract all the technical folks and almost none of "money" people.

I haven't gone to any Bitcoin conference, but I can't see it being the same. Bitcoin's aversion to change means mostly demagogues are left, and all the talk is money talk.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#93

Post by ekianjo »

Steko wrote: post #49
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…

> mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias The whole movement came out of monetary crank-ism, those people were always there. Let me know when there’s a mainstream non-scam MiltonCoin or KeynesCoin that isn’t deflationary and automatically models semi-optimal central bank policy.

> that isn’t deflationary

So you believe inflation is a good thing?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#94

Post by greybox »

Regarding the list of questions that are presented here EG - "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?"

Can anyone explain to me how crypto is uniquely suited to solve this problem? I'm not in principal against crypto currencies existing, but more and more I just see people trying to apply it to problems that they think exist because "the financial system is over regulated" - without providing any argument for why regulation is causing the unfairness in the first place?

I have yet to see anyone define a single problem in the financial system that crypto is uniquely placed to solve (besides funding criminal activity and bypassing sanctions), that wouldn't be better solved from better competition between banks.

Not every country in the world has a banking sector that serves it's customers as badly as in the US.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#95

Post by Crosseye_Jack »

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…

Same could be said about paying in cash. Order a beer, hand over a 20 expecting change, bartender gives you 5 beers and no change. In that case you can convince the bartender (who allready said no can do) or call the police (though it might be a civil issue rather than criminal, so calling the cops won't produce any results and you will have to take it up with them via the civil court system).

BUt I get your point, I used some automated "pay by crypto" checkout system a few months ago, their automated system never picked up the transaction even though the coins where in their wallet, they first blamed me and said they would refund if I paid the fee's which were not in a coin I had on hand so had to do some giggling about to get this small amount (was like NOW they did return all the funds I transfered so maybe that 2nd email was just a canned message but it was still a jab to the gut them saying "yeah, our system messed up and we want you to pay to fix it".

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#96

Post by ekianjo »

rzwitserloot wrote: post #28
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.

The amount of time the internet took to show it is a solution to real problems, as well as the time it took for the internet to 'grow up' beyond the grifter stage (which was about the same time, and probably that is not a coincidence) is far shorter. Already - and bitcoin/crypto shows no sign of growing beyond the grifter phase. What, something like 1/3 of everybody who bought Bieber's NFT thing got it grifted? That'…

Internet was around for a very long time before we got the www... And even when the www came around it could not do much. people have short memories.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#97

Post by conqueso »

wun0ne wrote: post #15

TIL: Being critical of a technology whose fundamental implementation promotes extreme negative externalities is "toxic"

The author is well known for being an outspoken critic of crypto. She is speaking to the toxicity of cyber bullying, not criticism itself.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#98

Post by twic »

k__ wrote: post #8
yu-carm-kror wrote: post #5

> Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots I had trouble reading beyond that in the second sentences. You can’t just retroactively assign a political affiliation to the origin of an algorithm application.

To me it had leftist anarcho roots, but whatever floats their boat, I guess.

Left anarchists are mostly pretty down on the concept of money full stop. Magic cypherpunk money is no different to state-backed fiat money in that respect.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#99

Post by maccard »

brianolson wrote: post #53

I'm grumpy about Visa/MC taking 3% of every transaction. I want a technofix for that. There are new blockchains that cost less than a penny per transaction use about a millionth of the wattage of bitcoin and I hope they turn out to be non-BS. I just want an efficient low-cost barrierless payment network.

Where are you located that visa and MasterCard are charging 3%?

In the EU the fees are limited to 0.3%, and in other areas (e.g. the UK) it's 1%. As a card holder I'm pretty happy to pay a ~0.3% service fee to know that I have recourse with a merchant, for example.

> I just want an efficient low-cost barrierless payment network.

Whats low cost to you then?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#100

Post by stavros »

egeozcan wrote: post #91
stavros wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this different from cash?

I wasn't specifically giving a btc example, qr code can also be apple pay or anything like that. It's just that in the case of btc, there's no central authority to cancel the transaction. You need a court order to force the bar to manually send the money back to you. The bank cannot freeze the funds. Enforcement is crippled. If this is not a reputable business (unlikely for a bar and very unlikely for a small sum lik…

Yes but all these things are features to me. I like cash for small purchases, and I like, say, Monero for the same reasons.

If I lose 50 € to some unscrupulous merchant, that's worth it to not have to ask the bank for permission for and tell them about every transaction.

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