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Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

theguardian.com

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Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, they both seem to be about deliberate and organized defiance of social behavioral norms.

The only social behavioral norms that cryptocurrency is about defying are "people shouldn't be scammed out of their money".

[deleted]

Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#132

I do not own any crypto myself. The grown-up opinion is of course to view all crypto ""investments"" with extreme skepticism, which is an absolutely sane and correct position. With that said, I like the idea of cryptocurrencies simply because they are punk as f*ck, and I'd like whatever leadership in charge to know that they do not have absolute power to run anyone else's life. Apart from magic internet money, I cann…

Maybe at the beginning. Right now they're all just trying to replicate the current system with less regulations and with them at the top, nothing punk about it.

Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, they both seem to be about deliberate and organized defiance of social behavioral norms.

The only social behavioral norms that cryptocurrency is about defying are "people shouldn't be scammed out of their money".

As opposed to the incumbent socioeconomic system, wherein "people should be scammed out of as much money as possible" is the rule of thumb.

Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#134

Wrong. Cryptocurrency demonstrate what electronic payment system should look like: without ability to sell user data and spy on users. Cryptocurrency is the payment system which is designed only for payment without unnecessary features. Today if you pay with card you basically consent to collecting your data by corporations and following you offline and online, creating a detailed history of your activity. Corporatio…

I don't give a f*k about someone following my activities, I'm not doing anything illegal, that's why I don't understand this privacy craze going on. The most they can do is show me some personalized ads and I don't care. But the downside is getting scammed, get money stolen and not being able to figure out who did that.

That's what anonymity feature of crypto promotes which I think is a much bigger deal, especially if you count all transactions it enables on dark web.

Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#135
About 509 years ago the Dutch invented common stock in companies, creating a new way for humans to work together. That had long-term sociological impact in society.

Today, there are people who have created new ways of working together by building on top of bitcoin, where its not a company or a legal entity of any king, but people who may not know or trust each other in meatspace are collaborating and getting paid for their work as they deliver products and services. And their collaboration is governed by humans, not a smart contract, but in a decentralized manner to protect their project. They're developing software, providing customer support, tutorials, project management, etc, and all of it being paid for by the project---all without bank accounts, a corporation, or geographic dependency.

As far as I'm aware, https://bisq.network/dao/ is the only running project that gas built functioning governance on top of bitcoin. I know that the MakerDAO (that runs the DAI stablecoin) and ShapeShift (altcoin exchange) have been built and are running in top of Ethereum or other altcoins. So that's at least three separate projects creating value in historically new ways.

When I explained this to a sociologist friend of mine, she was amazing, asking who's studying and writing about such historically important innovation.

I fail to see how those aren't examples of how this technology benefits society. Its trailblazing, hinting at the new possibilities that combining the Internet with programmable decentralized permissionless censorship-resistant money could bring to humanity. Only time will show which approaches bear long-term fruit here, but there's a lot of potential.

Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#136
post #95

I do not own any crypto myself. The grown-up opinion is of course to view all crypto ""investments"" with extreme skepticism, which is an absolutely sane and correct position. With that said, I like the idea of cryptocurrencies simply because they are punk as f*ck, and I'd like whatever leadership in charge to know that they do not have absolute power to run anyone else's life. Apart from magic internet money, I cann…

It is possible that there is no idea in the history of mankind less punk rock than cryptocurrency.

Can I interest you in a Johnny Rotten NFT? https://www.johnlydon.com/mr-rottens-nfts/

Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#137

I do not own any crypto myself. The grown-up opinion is of course to view all crypto ""investments"" with extreme skepticism, which is an absolutely sane and correct position. With that said, I like the idea of cryptocurrencies simply because they are punk as f*ck, and I'd like whatever leadership in charge to know that they do not have absolute power to run anyone else's life. Apart from magic internet money, I cann…

Maybe at the beginning. Right now they're all just trying to replicate the current system with less regulations and with them at the top, nothing punk about it.

If you look at most of the new projects, this is probably true. It's startup-Chads trying to get lots of bucks quickly.

But if you look at the original, Bitcoin, it's harder to make the same argument, as arguably, there is no "them at the top" for Bitcoin.

Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#138

> “All this crypto stuff, it needed parallel processing, and [Nvidia] is the best, so people just programmed it to use for this purpose. They bought a lot of stuff, and then eventually it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society. AI does,” Kagan told the Guardian. No, the crypto mining industry collapsed because the largest GPU-mined cryptocurrency (Ethereum) removed the ability for people to m…

It's entirely possible for nvidia to be sour and also correct. Crypto currencies have done nothing for society but to introduce scam and money laundering vectors.

Money laundering is a social good, necessitated by corrupt governments who steal innocent people's cash [1], [2].

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-seized-40-000-couple-1515... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_forfeiture

Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#139
post #136
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible that there is no idea in the history of mankind less punk rock than cryptocurrency.

Can I interest you in a Johnny Rotten NFT? https://www.johnlydon.com/mr-rottens-nfts/

Exactly.

Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

#140

Most crypto currencies don't and probably never will. But those such as Bitcoin that are the most decentralized and censorship resistant are crucial to those living under authoritarian regimes and whose currencies are going through significant debasement. The mad rush to make a quick buck and the propaganda from those in power have distorted the original intent behind crypto. Also, corporations such as Nvidia that de…

>But those such as Bitcoin that are the most decentralized and censorship resistant Bitcoin isn't anonymous though, which makes it's censorship resistance dubious. IIRC monero fixed that.

It doesn't have to be anonymous to be censorship resistant or useful in those environments. It takes more work, sure, but it's not a must-have property of the system in order to be resistant to censorship.
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