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On anti-crypto toxicity

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Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#331

Post by topranks »

Capira wrote: post #251
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.

Bitcoin is a groundbreaking invention. All the "cryptos" and NFTs are just scams.

Bitcoin is no different than the other “cryptos”.

Most of them are literally forks of it.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#332

Post by tgv »

k__ wrote: post #38
tgv wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't see how it could ever be a financial system. It would require regulation, control and identification. It requires a central and powerful supervisor per country. It would render the system at most equally accessible, possibly less. If you want a bank with a publically accessible ledger, fine, build it, or have your government publish all banking transactions. But don't pretend bitcoin can be an alternat…

I talked to people from Argentinia, Nigeria, and Venezuela. They have all this tradfi regulation, and it's shit. I think, some people are just a bit blinded by living in the handful of countries that have systems which actually work.

My point is: you won't be able to avoid "tradfi" regulation. It's there for a reason, and it will be implemented. It's one of the government's sources of income.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#333

Post by tiborsaas »

411111111111111 wrote: post #82
tiborsaas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, none of their arguments would make sense if substituted with www. People don't speculate with "web", they don't "pay" with web.

> People don't speculate with "web"

Right, risky startup ideas/investments are not a thing, understood

> they don't "pay" with web

Online payments doesn't exists, TIL

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#334

Post by Jach »

1ris wrote: post #128
Capira wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is good because it helps us move away from the throw-away society mentality. Bitcoin is very effective environmental activism.

>Bitcoin is very effective environmental activism. While using the per-design resource destroying, planet burning Proof-Of-Waste? Are you Kidding? And no, deflation does not encourage more long term investments, it does simply encourage hoarding, not exactly a desirable thing, form any perspective. And of course it is the fatal (and likely never fixed) flaw in bitcoin-as-a-currency.

I find the GP's comment tenuous but I also find the environment-damaging rhetoric you and a sibling (and thousands of others) give on proof of work even more so. If you want to bite the bullet and say people shouldn't be able to pay for energy and do with it what they want, fine, but otherwise, price out the actual energy costs, and realize the purpose of such costs: security. Bank of America alone spends $1bn/yr on cybersecurity, bitcoin mining costs the world about ten times that. It's not that unreasonable. Another comparison is it's about 1/8th the US spending on cigarettes.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#335

Post by danaris »

jack_pp wrote: post #310
danaris wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's not creating energy.

Is buying solar panels and using them creating energy? If so you could do the same thing with your mining proceeds.

But that's not what anyone's doing, or what anyone's going to do, with cryptocurrency.

Even if we assume (which is definitely not a safe assumption) that burning all that oil in the first place to mine the coins produces less carbon than the overall reduction caused by the increase in demand for solar panels and subsequent increase in their production and deployment (because just buying solar panels that were already being produced and going to be deployed by someone does not reduce the overall carbon load of the planet)...

That requires the miners to sink all their profits into buying solar panels, rather than, y'know, making money for themselves, which is the reason they're mining cryptocurrency in the first place.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#336

Post by ulzeraj »

sofixa wrote: post #305
OGWhales wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, the average Russian citizen is excluded from the rest of the world, and will bear the brunt of the impact. As they should, because they're the ones who mostly sat idly and allowed all of this to happen. I have zero sympathy for the average Russian whose inaction made them unable to purchase a new phone or car. What do you expect the average Russia to have done exactly? I’m curious what you would have done in t…

Not vote for Putin and his party for decades? Go out in the streets when opposition leaders or dissidents were assasinated in broad daylight? Something ? Anything ? Because of them allowing Putin to get where he is, now innocent Ukrainians are suffering terrible atrocities. I know which population is more guilty and which deserving of compassion.

Something like the Belarusians who went to the streets to protest against a fraudulent election and got violently crushed by their police state? The same "evil complacent" Belarusians that are also being sanctioned now?

When was the last time you've left the safety of your home to put your life on risk to protest against your government?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#337

Post by topranks »

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.

For some of us the web is more than the million dollar home page.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#338

Post by adolph »

dmitriid wrote: post #222
jiscariot wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is heavily affluent and westerner-skewed, but how about when you have a corrupt government and highly inflationary currency? We often praise projects that morph from their intended purpose in to something else (e.g. a good % of tech out there).

> a corrupt government and highly inflationary currency As a sibling comment said, they move to a separate able currency like dollars or Euro. No one in their right mind will move to a fantasy token whose value oscillates up and down every second, sometimes to within several orders of magnitude. Bitcoin's price fluctuation in the past year is 200% Etherum's is ~300% Monero, 330% It's not as bad as Venezuela's or Zomb…

Volatility!=Inflation

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#339

Post by BLKNSLVR »

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've done some, admittedly relatively shallow, thinking about the end results of "revolution" in various contexts, and the conclusion that I keep coming to is that revolutions only ever end up replacing the bums in the seats, whilst the position and structure of the seats remain.

I dabble in cryptocurrencies, but I can still see the inevitable inequality inherent in the rise to dominance of any one or small group of them.

I do have to say, however, that Vitalik Buterin says all the right things to appear as someone that does want to help the world be better. Separately to his creation which, if it dominated, would also not be a harbinger of equality for all.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#340

Post by OGWhales »

Werewolf255 wrote: post #125
ekianjo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that isn’t deflationary So you believe inflation is a good thing?

I think some inflation is good as it is an incentive to invest in capital projects. If you only have deflation, why shouldn't you hoard your wealth? I mean, since it's always going to be worth more tomorrow than today. Inflation is a shadow that people use to excuse their greed

This is something I’ve thought about and while I agree that a deflationary currency would be detrimental to our constant economic growth, I wonder if that’s actually a bad thing. Do we really want constant growth and pointless consumerism knowing what it is doing to our environment? Maybe a deflationary currency would be good, as people wouldn’t want to spend it on frivolous things and only use it to buy things they really need. I don’t really know where I stand, but I have come to doubt my initial concerns over deflationary money and I wonder what others think about such a radical shift.
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