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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

#171

Post by salawat »

WallyFunk wrote: post #160
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If you re-frame money as essentially a form of speech then 'making yourself heard' makes sense. The medium becomes the message. DeFi as the ideal, not top-down government to control the money supply with sketchy all-seeing-eye masonic symbols on the banknotes.

DeFI cannot coexist with either OFAC or AML in the picture.

Those are the fundamental roots of money as a top-down control mechanism. Those functions alone are responsible for making the finance sector a de-facto extension of the United States Government and an effective extension of Law Enforcement.

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

#172

Post by unvx-n-banned »

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.

Bitcoin is trading at 28k. When the dollar is endlessly printed, all you need to do is not sell your bitcoin and eventually you'll come out ahead. Because the dollar supply is infinite, it is not zero-sum.

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

#173

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#174

Post by grumple »

yellowapple wrote: post #133
danaris wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A system that has produced 25 million millionaires in the US alone is doing a bad job of scamming people out of money.

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

#175

Post by everfree »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #124
dheera wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd like whatever leadership in charge to know that they do not have absolute power to run anyone else's life. That, and I'd also like everyone to know that money, markets, and everything are a joke. The value of USD is just what people collectively agree on it to be, not some inherent fundamental value. The same is true for TSLA stock, GME stock, ethereum, or the shitcoin-of-the-week.

Pretending that there aren't fundamentals behind the USD is ridiculous. How do those people collectively agree on the value of the USD? By looking at the fundamentals - the economy of the US, the stability of its government, the likelihood that it will make good on its bonds.

None of those factors establish a fundamental market price for the dollar - you're simply listing the price of admission for any state-backed currency.

The dollar has declined in value by over 90% since 1933. By your metrics that must mean that the US is in catastrophic meltdown, but of course it isn't.

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

#176

Post by wmf »

mepian wrote: post #6

Hilarious, I don't remember them saying this BEFORE their crypto profits evaporated.

They were never particularly pro-crypto. When miners were buying GPUs by the pallet load Nvidia was publicly downplaying mining and saying GPUs were for gaming.

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

#177

Post by anigbrowl »

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".

Oh there are lots of ways, you just have to accept that many people's first response to noticing your existence will be to get mad at you.

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

#178

Post by partiallypro »

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…

> I fail to see how those aren't examples of how this technology benefits society.

Can you list examples of how it has helped society as a whole? Nothing you listed has anything to do with helping society. You've listed things you think are good things, but nothing is a society wide benefit. Building on top of Bitcoin or Etherium is great and all... But how does that help the average person? I've seen no trickle down or benefits from crypto that are anything but pure speculation akin to sports gambling.

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

#179

Post by echelon »

everfree wrote: post #154
furyofantares wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the comparison is useful to folks trying to wrap their head around the hype; it's natural to ask "is this crypto all over again" and the answer is very clearly no.

IMO since crypto is a newer technology than AI, I think it's more relevant to ask whether crypto is "AI all over again". AI has followed the classic Gartner hype cycle [1]. There was the trigger in the 1960s-90s, the peak of inflated expectations in 2000-2010 with every other company bragging about "AI this" or "machine learning that" while having nothing of any use to show for it, then finally the "slope of enlighte…

Modern AI is less than ten years old. Digital money is older than crypto.

PyTorch: Initial release September 2016; 6 years ago

Tensorflow: Initial release November 9, 2015; 7 years ago

> In 1983, a research paper titled "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments" by David Chaum introduced the idea of digital cash.

> The first artificial neural network was invented in 1958 by psychologist Frank Rosenblatt.

In the limit, the dates don't really matter. I'd wager both fields have had roughly the same human capital afforded to them - I'd be happy to be shown otherwise.

Neural networks really only had a scaling problem to overcome, and most people knew it. What's the technical problem with crypto?

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

#180

Post by anigbrowl »

Retr0id wrote: post #99
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…

Why not divert that interest into the world of secure private and/or anonymous chat and networking protocols? The flow of information and ideas is more valuable than currency, and there is increasing pressure to legislate it out of existence.

Secure private chat is about not being heard.
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