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Why I’m Cryptophobic

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Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#321

Post by pbalau »

smoldesu wrote: post #302
engmgrmgr wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a rather myopic view. You could look at L2s as a sort of credit card system, and from a systems and technology POV there’s nothing inherently “scammy” about it. For web3 applications of any meaningful large scale, L2 solutions are necessary. For better or worse, the L2 developer platforms that I assume you’re referring to are essentially low-code solutions to abstract away the actual systems software engineeri…

> Well-staffed tech companies building web3 applications often build their own implicit L2 solutions because it’s just how you connect things in a distributed system with modern L1 blockchain constraints. Sure. The banks do the exact same thing, which is what makes them so goddamn profitable to run. The problem is that the entire cryptocurrency space now has to choose between two destinies: a. Default on the trustles…

> I'd rather have a $20 bill than $20,000 of Monopoly money

All currencies we use are smoke and mirrors. The difference is that that $20 bill is backed by well armed US Marines and an crypto currency is not

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#322

Post by jrm4 »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #279
jrm4 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this feels like "Just using Model T's to transport all of the corn in the early 1900's would destroy the Model T system." Doesn't really say anything meaningful about "the impact of cars and trucks." I don't get why this is a useful argument; BTC and/or Crypto is definitely going to evolve. The question is how.

[deleted]

Honestly, that someone can be this confidently incorrect is really fascinating to me, both in theory and practice.

Even setting aside the fact that you're wrong in practice (i.e. there are already far more efficient cryptocurrencies in existence today) it's just very weird that the sort of person who goes to a site like this will confidently say something that's roughly equivalent to "We've reached the maximum speed of CPUs, they cannot get faster than this."

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#323

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

IncRnd wrote: post #87

> The world has never seen an economic phenomenon like crypto. There is no historical analogous technology trend or investment craze that comes close to capturing the sustained and frenzied momentum of crypto that has engulfed so many and that will continue to do. Never say never. Greed and speculation have a long and robust history. This crypto speculation and greed reminds of of the price of tulips. [1] During that…

Do bubbles, after popping, collect and reconstitute themselves in analogy or reality? Tulips certainly didn't. Bitcoin really is a slow motion multiplicitis analogy to your "muh Tulips."

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#324

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo »

bendtheblock wrote: post #306
TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> re: Greece, worth hearing Yanis Varoufakis on crypto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS0W-Whl0T0 top comment: "How fantastic to let this man expose how incredibly dangerous governments are, without him even realizing [he's] doing it." Also, the entire time he seems to conflate crypto with CBDC which are nothing alike. >what's the problem? On the few times I've lost money to online fraud, the bank returned it to me…

I think you're right about online fraud being much reduced with public private key tech, but if it's such a good idea why has no one been able to do it?

the IMF has no incentive to change the way it's doing things & would require a 'rewrite' of the current infrastracture. Also, public/ private key encryption is not quantum-safe, so eventually we need another way. (There is ton of research being done on quantum-safe cryptographic proofs)

History shows systems rarely 'change'. More likely than not they are replaces. That's what BTC is an attempt at.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#325

Post by IncRnd »

thesausageking wrote: post #161
IncRnd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to your link it was real. "That’s not to say that everything about the story is wrong; merchants really did engage in a frantic tulip trade, and they paid incredibly high prices for some bulbs. And when a number of buyers announced they couldn’t pay the high price previously agreed upon, the market did fall apart and cause a small crisis—but only because it undermined social expectations." In the link I pos…

You were responding to a claim that there have never been other cases of sustained momentum of speculation. The price spike for Tulipmania took place over about 18 months. Bitcoin launched 13 years ago and was first above $1k in 2017. They're not at all similar. I agree with the parent comment.

No, that wasn't the claim I responded to. Twice, my comment explicitly mentioned the novelty of greed and speculation as the claim.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#326

Post by kreetx »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #309
antoniuschan99 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the value in money both in security (eg. Dollar backed by Superpower) and economic transaction? With Bitcoin’s hash rate at an all time high, it’s more secure than ever - can we say it’s the most secure system in the world? Of course the tradeoff for BTC is like insane consumption of power (currently Argentina size). With BTC, I don’t think the use case will ever be to handle small sums of money. Transaction sp…

What sort of security are you referring to?

Expensive to fork I presume.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#327

Post by silentsea90 »

hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #289
silentsea90 wrote: post #269

Imagine a world where you live as a slave with your owner having rights over your time to the extent they'd like. That sucks. Well, fiat is that with the Govt stealing your productive time (since your time was spent on earning money) to the tune of 7-8% (officially) and likely 10-15% unofficially. This is in addition to 40% tax. You effectively spend 50% of your working time serving the Govt. Would you vote yes on se…

Imagine living in a deflationary world where you live as a slave to unaccountable powerful holders of Bitcoin, where a man who holds 20% of the worlds wealth will continue to do so forever into perpetuity, at 0 risk. Do you think this is a world where real wealth creation (goods, intellectual property, etc) is possible?

Nobody holds 20% of Bitcoin, and early BTC whales have been selling to make their profits so we're getting less concentrated[1]. It helps that BTC has taken a decade to rise to this value with plenty of selling and redistribution along the way. I don't see your point but perhaps you don't mind sharing more :) I don't disagree that concentration is a problem but the existing system has enough concentration already. I don't want states printing away to glory, and bitcoin can't be printed so that's a HUGE improvement

[1]: https://ecommerceinstitut.de/bitcoin-wealth-is-becoming-more....

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#328

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

mjburgess wrote: post #4

There needs to be some basic economics here.. Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted. Government-backed currencies are forced to have value in the sense they force people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades. Value is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a "liquifying" of that value, to make it easier…

Bitcoin doesn't need to be money, especially not on layer 1, to have value. USD doesn't get its value as a currency from slow and expensive wire transfers, and it gets very little value at all from being a store of value.

Even if Bitcoin was primarily transferred between custodians between clients, it would still be better than USD (assuming a stable market cap) and give clients far more options while also forcing banks to disclose reserves.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#329

Post by jrm4 »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #318
jrm4 wrote: post #268

A great deal of the discussion here is surprisingly not smart because it's presuming that the current technical landscape is the forever technical landscape (i.e. mostly a presumption that looks like "Crypto, the entity, is just like BTC is today".). I find it very strange because I feel like we've been able to do project out to "better working technology" quite well in the past. Supply and demand, y'all. Will at lea…

There's a reason the mostly unsavvy crypto skeptic hates the idea of crypto improving: they cannot financially capitalize on it. Every new crypto project claims to be the second coming. There are no stable heuristics which don't get exploited by the next wave of marketing. The only way to make good bets in crypto is to deeply understand what teams are working on and make intelligent judgements. What broad crypto skep…

Absolutely. And I know I'll get clowned for mentioning him but gonna do it anyway: This is why I find Richard Heart so interesting if you believe his motives. His claim is "I'm already rich, so it's not about money, I actually want to improve on Satoshi's work and make a good crypto."

(I fully understand why one would absolutely not believe his motives given his appearance, but I'd encourage people to consider it anyway. I actually believe him and am throwing some money in his projects. THAT BEING SAID, I am NOT putting any money in crypto that I can't stand to lose and I personally do not believe anyone should)

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#330

Post by eropple »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #314
eropple wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold's shiny and has industrial applications. What's Bitcoin's inherent value floor?

Doing everything the majority of the economy of gold does (industrial uses can be ignored) better, except being shiny. If 'shiny' is your real argument then reconcile Pokemon Cards without ruining your argument.

"The economy of gold" doesn't do much of anything except extract wealth from a particularly extremist subset of "economic freethinkers" and my generation's parents when they watch too much Fox News, so I'm glad we're in agreement.
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