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On anti-crypto toxicity

blog.mollywhite.net

101–110 of 734 posts

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#101
post #42
post #25

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

It's not that easy. Renewable power plants could be setup in areas where it makes no sense due to the logistics of transporting that energy to normal society and that plant could be 100% used to mine crypto which in a way makes crypto a "wireless energy transport technology". Complaining that crypto uses a lot of power is like complaining India is trying to burn fossil fuels which will harm the planet. India wants to…

Your satire is worthy of Gulliver's Travels !

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#102
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…

> The bank cannot freeze the funds

That's a feature, not a bug.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#103
post #25

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

But that’s just an argument against any technology that will increase electricity demand, such as EVs. When the web was growing the electrical demands were similarly criticised: “The current fuel-economy rating: about 1 pound of coal to create, package, store and move 2 megabytes of data. The digital age, it turns out, is very energy-intensive. The Internet may someday save us bricks, mortar and catalog paper, but it…

No: EVs has less carbon footprint than ICE, usually several times less. Digital economy has a carbon footprint, but orders of magnitude less than the alternatives: paper for administration, casettes for music or plastic film for movies.

You need to compare solutions at scale, not just say that a process that serves billions of people is wasteful because it uses as much energy that a process that is serving dozens of people.

Finally, most of the internet is powered from warehouses that are purposely built in areas with carbon-neutral electricity. The operators are actively optimising their consumption and investing in carbon-neutral energy generation that match their needs.

Crypto avocates likes to say they _could_ do it with imaginary wealth, but that are very far from being able to afford it; if they could, it would break their business model. In the mean time, they are settled in the countries with the worst carbon footprint possible. They tried to hide it but you can’t really hide that amount of waste. They have distrupted the energy market of China, Kazakstan so much that thousands of people died in energy shortages. For now, all we have from those people is mountains of unrecycled electronic waste.

So, no, those two are not the same thing.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#104
In my view it is quite difficult to find insightful and civilized long-form discussion on the topic of crypto, compared to most other "controversial" topics I'm personally intersted in (e.g. geopolitics or economics). I might be mistaken – but it is my impression that the blockchain-space is fast growing and attracts a ton of intelligent people. Surely there must be a lot to talk about?

On reddit, the crypto-themed subreddits (that I know of) are almost entirely comprised of doom-and-gloom-sentiment and astroturfing, while subreddits outside of this bubble are reminiscent of HN, where specific crypto projects almost never reach the frontpage and if they do, the discussion is seldomly about specifics.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#105
post #74
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Buy Bitcoin. Everything else is a scam. And if you want to launder money use Dollars just like everyone else.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#106
post #94

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…

I'm 100% onboard with the enabling underbanked people argument for crypto. There's countless people all over the world who can't get a bank account, or if they could, can't get one that is reliable or useful enough for their needs. Eg, maybe the currency is too unstable, or maybe there's too many restrictions on international transfers and commerce etc etc. These people are left with cash and predatory "businesses" like Western Union as their only options. It's not fair and can and should change, but sadly, crypto has spectacularly failed to deliver on its potential here.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#107
post #93
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Inherently deflationary asset guarantees it's going to be used as a speculation vehicle rather than money.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#108

> 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.

While Satoshi certainly had libertarian leanings, I don't see how anyone could possibly assign him to the "right" side of the political compass > “It’s very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly. I’m better with code than with words though.” - Satoshi Nakamoto The impression you get from Satoshi's writing and the people he associated with (e.g. Hal Finney) is that he seemed more left-l…

I don't know about what satoshi thought. I do however know that most of the folks talking about it in the spaces I was in were libertarian (in an american sense).

They were all about gold standards and hard money and auditing the fed as well.

Basically they were the Ron Paul folks.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#109
post #49
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.

I assume by "Monetary crank-ism" you mean scepticism of the dominant economic playbooks. That is very different from investment bubbles which the parent is talking about.

You can call it crank-ism if you want, but the movement behind Bitcoin's properties were born out of very real concerns about current economic models and what their effects are.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#110
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of a bitcoin or Ethereum deterministic wallet being canceled because someone found out its owner is from Iran or Venezuela. That's a huge improvement over the crap that is the current financial system.

Which is also a reason for warmongers and organised criminals to love crypto

Do they? https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59689581

Also have you thought about the novel idea of old school policing to catch criminals instead of collaterally damaging the lives every single human in the world other than the 13% privileged who happen to be citizens of stable democracies?

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