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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

#161

Post by lolshill »

tptacek wrote: post #95
andersentobias wrote: post #92

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.

[flagged]

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

#162

Post by anonymouskimmer »

nightski wrote: post #106
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The total crypto market cap collapsed because of interest rate hikes. It's constantly been peaking and collapsing since 2013, when there were no US interest rate increases. The 2017 peak happened in the middle of a US interest rate increase cycle. The 2021 peak happened 6 months before the most recent US interest rate increase cycle. I'm sure interest rates were varying in other countries on different schedules, bu…

Yeah but institutional investors were just starting to hold much larger positions within the last few years. They are much more sensitive to interest rate hikes than individuals.

I would assume that as long as the returns are greater than the interest rates, institutional investors are less sensitive than individuals to interest rate hikes.

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

#163

Post by tsol »

andersentobias wrote: post #92

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…

"Punk as fuck" is a good way to describe it, given the punk aesthetic and ethos have both been thoroughly absorbed and internalized by capitalism to become just another pay-to-play subculture controlled by the most powerful.

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

#164

Post by juujian »

jkepler wrote: post #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…

lol

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

#165

Post by everfree »

danaris wrote: post #127
everfree wrote: post #116

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".

The social norm defied is "money is to be regulated by the state". No more, no less.

Anything else is a result of what people project onto it.

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

#166

Post by kiviuq »

nightski wrote: post #109
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The total crypto market cap collapsed because of interest rate hikes. Let's take a deeper cut, why does something collapse when interest rates rise?

Because capital is necessary for growth and the more expensive capital becomes the less growth is anticipated.

We've seen a lot of growth over the past decades, so it should be easy to retire at 30, but we're being told to work longer, be more productive, and die sooner. So where is that all growth? something doesn't add up.

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

#167

Post by boulos »

TheDudeMan wrote: post #152
everfree wrote: post #34

> “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…

"the crypto mining industry collapsed..." It did not collapse. Only GPU mining collapsed (shitcoins). ASIC-based mining is going strong (Bitcoin). Disk-based mining is going strong (Chia).

Hmm? Chia seems to be a clear failure.

The price and market cap both collapsed. https://www.coinbase.com/price/chia-network tells me the latest daily volume is less than $5M USD.

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

#168

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #129
andersentobias wrote: post #92

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…

> Apart from magic internet money, I cannot figure out any other way in which to "make myself heard". Your way of "making yourself heard" is to trade your real dollars for digital dollars? The thing about cryptocurrencies is that you don't need to invest in them to use them as needed. Sure, you could argue that maybe at some future point the governments could possibly all band together and shut down every on-ramp to…

> you don't need to invest in them to use them as needed

"As needed" is an interesting phrase. I'd argue that what we need from cryptocurrency is for it to move past the current phase where the only consensus it bothers with is account balances.

We need consensus about things that will help us collectively act to keep powerful entities like governments in check. As it stands, they're very good at dividing us against one another.

If you end up making some fiat along the way, that's fine, but the return on an investment in crypto is a world where the powerful are well-behaved because they're scared that the rest of us will turn our backs on the abstractions that give them power.

As it stands, that's not a credible threat, so it's reasonable to make investments that'll take things in the direction (which is, sadly, not the effect of most crypto investing).

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

#169

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

DeepYogurt wrote: post #45
everfree wrote: post #34

> “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.

Do we have different definitions of nothing?

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

#170

Post by rkho »

hermitcrab wrote: post #158
cs02rm0 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting out of Russia.

Good for you. But it seems that cryto is a zero sum game. Every dollar one person makes, another person loses.

I have some exciting news to share with you about our traditional financial markets.
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