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On anti-crypto toxicity

blog.mollywhite.net

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281–290 of 734 posts

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#281

Post by adolph »

traceroute66 wrote: post #81

IMHO the problem with crypto is the very thing that its proponents cite as one of its key benefits, its decentralised nature. We are told that crypto is supposedly a way to "stick it to the man", to fight those "evil banks/governments". The trouble is that unlike fiat currency, there is no fundamental means of valuation. Crypto is worth what its worth on the day based largely or exclusively on entirely non-economic v…

> make crypto comparible to emerging world fiat currency of some tiny country

This is my basic viewpoint regarding bitcoin et al. The significance difference is that bitcoin and similar are not territorial countries but free associations of people under particular conditions. This is where it gets interesting.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#283

Post by shkkmo »

raspberry1337 wrote: post #237
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any fix for a failure in human organization(s) is going to come from ... humans. There are no hall monitors here, and there's also no magic wand. When things are of a large enough scope, the way that humans tend to organize to get things done, or get things fixed, is called "a state". Just like all human efforts, the outcome will likely not be perfect. But there actually isn't another way. Sure, you can suggest the i…

Quoted post unavailable.

Calling the person you are responding to a "tankie" is not appropriate discourse.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#284

Post by [deleted] »

crispyambulance wrote: post #280

> If you feel the urge to “cyberbully” someone in crypto, direct it at the powerful players behind crypto projects that are actively taking advantage of the vulnerable. Phrased like that, sure, how can anyone disagree? But what about urging folks to not loose their shirts in a scam? Situations like going to a wedding, meeting up with relatives/family-friends, and finding out they're about to get involved in Amway, bi…

[deleted]

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#285

Post by spiantino »

rglullis wrote: post #240
DebtDeflation wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

This is like saying that you dismissed the web after you saw the 100th clone of the million dollar home page.

Think about how much bullshit you can justify with this argument.

if someone has to defend their tech by using analogy to the early web, it's probably bullshit

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#287

Post by shkkmo »

trutannus wrote: post #223
djbusby wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's asking society to correct itself via legislation (we've done that before). It's slower and less sexy than new-tech and has a better track record.

I'm not advocating for crypto. I'm advocating against blind trust in the government to "pass a law" and fix it.

Who advocated to blindly trust the government? I thought that whole point is that democracy works by trusting your goverent with open eyes and working to correct it when it strays?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#288

Post by JumpCrisscross »

asterix_pano wrote: post #259
codeflo wrote: post #12

I don’t think there’s a bifurcation between “good” and “bad” people in crypto, the real world is a lot more grey, and how people behave doesn’t depend so much on their character, but on culture and incentives. These days, we painfully observe the culture of crypto in every single online medium that isn’t very carefully moderated, for example Twitter. And about incentives, I think it’s very hard not to become some kin…

You have many cryptos with completely negligible environmental impact, thanks to smarter consensus mechanisms. It's a really new tech field, and as almost everything in tech, it improves over time.

> as almost everything in tech, it improves over time

This doesn't describe crypto over the past decade. It's become more pervasive, more corrupt, more destructive (from environmental impact to its role in facilitating hacking) and, with NFTs, more slot machinesque.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#289

Post by stavros »

danaris wrote: post #267
stavros wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because it's cash you can easily carry with you, even if you have millions, you can send to anyone anywhere in the world instantly, they're much more difficult to steal if you have a cheap hardware wallet, etc etc. They have many more advantages.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#290

Post by m0llusk »

Crypto offers nothing but highly volatile securities trading. That can never accomplish any of the positive goals listed in the article. Simple realistic analysis is all that is necessary to reject crypto as currently offered as an agent of positive change. Having noble ideas or goals is no excuse for doing damage with inherently unstable technologies.
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