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

theguardian.com

181–190 of 377 posts

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

#181

Rather than collapsing, Ethereum sought to reduce the energy footprint and they did. Now Nvidia is angry that nobody wants to pay a premium for a 4090 that catches fire.

Nvidia has (essentially) 100% market share in ML and 50% greater market share than AMD in desktop/gaming[0].

First, a top of the line card like the 4090 blows away everything else in terms of perf. Second, it (and other Nvidia hardware) is actually usable for something other than driving a display/gaming.

In the end a 30% (or whatever) premium for cards that offer better performance and can actually do stuff results in the obvious (buy Nvidia).

Nvidia isn't angry about anything.

[0] https://overclock3d.net/news/gpu_displays/amd_s_gpu_market_s...

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

#182

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…

Since when is anything having to do with the accumulation of wealth "punk"?

Taking initiatives to protect your life from government meddling seems to track.

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

#183
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.

Cryptocurrencies enable people to do so much more than speculate on price and trade pictures of apes.

https://cryptome.org/ap.htm

https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_org...

https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/09/crypto-remittances-are-a-l...

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

#184

> “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.

I will have to disagree.

They enable people to buy medicine that is otherwise too expensive to get from official channels.

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

#186

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…

Check out the cosmos ecosystem/IBC. It's all ran by DAOs

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

#187
post #22

Who is "society"? Users of cryptocurrencies obviously find them useful, or hope they will be in future. The alternative to cryptocurrency and blockchain contracts are global alliances that make trading in dollars easy in all important markets and enforce contracts across jurisdictions. Billions of people who are not part of these alliances are left out and the rest are reliant on US/Europe remaining leading superpowe…

“user of cryptocurrencies”. It’s scammers, ramsomers, speculators and illicit drugs all the way down.

What an entitled, uninformed and privileged thing to say. People who live under oppressive regimes use monero to gain access to information or to pay evade government spying.

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

#188

Nvidia should stick with what they know - producing AI hardware and AI pipelines. This is how Intel got disrupted - by trying too much beyond what they were fundamentally innovating in. There are many useful applications in cryptocurrency tech. We are only at the beginning stages of R&D in this space.

I don't know how anyone can say "we're still early" or "we are only at the beginning stages of R&D in this space" considering crypto is 14 years old and has had marquee VC and other investment to the tune of tens/hundreds of billions of dollars for at least half a decade.

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

#189
post #150

Two banks with a lot of exposure to risky cryptocurrency startups collapsed and the cryptobros immediately used that to push FUD that all banks will soon collapse and everyone should move their money to crypto. And it worked. Not a single popular movement lies as much as the cryptobros and repeatedly get away with it.

Those banks collapsed because they held a lot of long duration bonds which lost value because of the recent rate hikes + there was a bank run.

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

#190

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…

Couldn't your same argument be applied to stocks?

One idea of capitalism, is that there are indirect benefits to everyone, from the actions of private self-interested parties. If crypto somehow allows more people to work together (I don't have an opinion if this is true or not), then that alone should be enough for it to fit into the western ethic.

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