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On anti-crypto toxicity

blog.mollywhite.net

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Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#261

Post by theamk »

c0mptonFP wrote: post #241
malthaus wrote: post #183

Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How…

Quoted post unavailable.

"We must do something. This is something, so we must do this"

There are costs and benefits to every action. If former are bigger than latter, we should be dismissed the action.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#262

Post by Jach »

Capira wrote: post #156
guywhocodes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largely crypto seems to fail at being distributed internet money. If a project is fast and cheap enough for it that correlates with being too niche to be viable. We have seen BTC and ETH lose their function as internet money as transactions and prices have gone up.

You can use the Lightning Network to send Bitcoins instantly and almost for free.

"Can" is doing a lot of work here. I finally got around to playing with Lightning recently, my sense was it's quite a ways away from being ready unless you've got a decent amount of frequent income + spending going through btc. The worst part is it seems poisoned by nodes that want to extract a %-amount fee rather than a flat or bytes-dependent fee. It was actually one US penny more expensive to send a ~$50 lightning transaction via ACINQ (a recommended node that would actually accept opening up a channel) than just sending a normal blockchain transaction, where recently you can pay the minimum 1 sat/byte and get confirmed in not too long.

Lightning has promise but the regular chain is still just fine for many use cases especially for normal people, barring those rare periods of exceptionally high transaction fees. A transaction will typically show up in the mempool "instantly" and for many vendors that's good enough; much like the classic written checks system they can trust the purchaser isn't going to try any funny business before the transaction is fully confirmed/settled and you can let them go on their way with their groceries or coffee or whatever. If they do try something (successfully), well, you're out a small amount (maybe, an intermediary like bitpay may tank those for you), and you ban them from your business. For many other types of transactions, even waiting for at least one transaction but not expecting that for 24 hours from now is fine and impacts nothing. My hope is the effective minimum of 1 sat/byte will be decreased because right now it's 9 cents to send the median sized 224 byte transaction and if btc doubles again to $80k USD then the minimum fee doubles to 18 cents without anything changing, that's like an extra pack of ramen. Well it's still not that bad, especially since it's not amount-dependent; my whole state recently mandated grocery stores start charging 8 cents per plastic bag when they used to be free, many people are just personally tanking it and still throwing them out, but everyone would rather pay no fees if they could.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#263

Post by pgorczak »

malthaus wrote: post #183

Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How…

I mean, it’s great if crypto makes more people think about these questions, even if it’s not the answer. OTOH we’re also seeing it mess up problems for which perfectly valid solutions already exist. In Germany a couple “digital government” projects had a pretty bad start because they used blockchains where they likely didn’t have to.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#264

Post by trutannus »

giaour wrote: post #256
trutannus wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not advocating crypto here, I'm just pointing out that saying crypto is bad because you can "just pass a law" is just as illogical as saying "internet blockchain money will give us freedom".

> saying crypto is bad because you can "just pass a law" I think you're misconstruing the original suggestion, which was that a legal solution to the problem of the unbanked would be viable. You could pass legislation mandating that banks turn no one away, you could establish a publicly run bank of last resort, etc. I believe those measures would be "easier" solutions to the problem than replacing the entire financia…

Not suggesting we replace the banking, just pointing out how this path you suggest is still not going to be an easy fix. There's no easy fix. Again, not advocating for crypto as a solution. Just asking people to consider more deeply the issues of saying "use the government to solve it!".

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#265

Post by bombcar »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #61
Traster wrote: post #46

I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's some promise in some places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises. Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stup…

>It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. Agreed. For me it was the NFT'ing of a fart that was the jumping the shark moment that drove me from being merely a crypto skeptic to being vociferously anti-crypto and advocating against it at every turn.

NFTs really seem to have been the sharkjump - for whatever reason that seems to be the point where anti crypto started to really take off.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#266

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sneak wrote: post #198
Traster wrote: post #46

I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's some promise in some places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises. Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stup…

> None of their claims have materially panned out. Well, I can send arbitrarily large amounts of money across the planet, to any country with internet access, for tiny sums, safely, irreversibly, to anyone. Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine, for example. Transnational, permissionless internet money is quite handy. That wasn't possible before, and that's pretty useful, so I think the basic claim (that cry…

> Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine, for example

Far more has been sent over traditional rails [1]. Once you consider state aid, e.g. the billions the Congress has authorized, crypto's contribution is irrelevant.

Given Ukraine had to convert 80% of its crypto into hard currency before it could use it, crypto was also the most expensive donation vector. If we consider crypto’s likely role in softening Russian sanctions (also almost negligible, but we’re comparing two small things), the net contribution could be a wash.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/crypto-aid-ukraine...

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#267

Post by danaris »

stavros wrote: post #149
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that banks are looking out for poor people. That should be obvious. But poor people do use banking services and in both countries I've lived in (US and Norway), there are built in consumer protections. They aren't perfect, but they are stronger than you get with crypto. You can often resolve a payment issue, for example. FDIC protection in the US covers most folks (most folks don't save more than whatever th…

But cryptocurrency is the same as with cash. Yes, we need to teach people that they shouldn't send cryptocurrency to some shady "investment" company, just as they shouldn't give cash to a guy in a van promising them returns, but the risk profile is exactly the same as with cash, which people have been using successfully for centuries.

The risk profile is, currently, not the same as with cash, for the reasons some people further up the thread mentioned (no or nebulous ability to freeze/seize assets of bad actors).

To the extent that the risk profile is or will become (with expanding regulations) the same as with cash, cryptocurrencies provide no meaningful improvement over cash, but have significant drawbacks.

So why should we take all this effort to get to "just like cash, but with extra steps"?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#270

Post by bena »

logifail wrote: post #217
sneak wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of their claims have materially panned out. Well, I can send arbitrarily large amounts of money across the planet, to any country with internet access, for tiny sums, safely, irreversibly, to anyone. Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine, for example. Transnational, permissionless internet money is quite handy. That wasn't possible before, and that's pretty useful, so I think the basic claim (that cry…

In one corner we have types who want to send > arbitrarily large amounts of money and in the other corner we have the types who know about and enforce AML and KYC legislation. How is this possibly going to end well for the first group?

For those who may be unfamiliar with the acronyms.

AML is Anti Money Laundering

KYC is Know Your Customer

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