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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

#221

Post by nonethewiser »

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.

They would still be incorrect about the cause, in your example.

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

#222

Post by kkielhofner »

humanistbot wrote: post #144
rvz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, the crypto mining industry collapsed because the largest GPU-mined cryptocurrency (Ethereum) removed the ability for people to mine it with GPUs. Crypto obviously does not "need parallel processing" in the way that Nvidia GPUs provide it, because Ethereum removed that requirement entirely. Absolutely correct. At least cryptocurrencies like Ethereum found an alternative consensus method that is efficient and env…

> unlike what I am seeing in AI and deep neural networks for decades which that still has not changed with the way on how models continue to get larger and require more planet incinerating power and will currently require millions and in the future, billions. As long as they stay inefficient, Nvidia will continue smiling knowing that. What are you talking about? The inaccessibility of the models and the heavy gatekee…

I'm convinced that with the efforts you speak of we're seeing history repeat itself (as it often does).

In the late 90s/early 2000s when the internet/web was really picking up steam powerful and entrenched players like Microsoft were throwing their weight around and trying to dominate the space like they did personal computers. Ditto Sun, etc.

Then the open source community got together and ate their lunch. Who remembers Netcraft statistics for Windows + IIS vs Linux + Apache?

OpenAI, Meta, Google, to some extent Nvidia, etc are doing their best to go the closed/commercial/proprietary/gated/costly route (again) - and open source is already hitting back hard against all of these and as has been shown before, starting to catch-up/outpace them at incredible speed.

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

#223

Post by POiNTx »

To me it's very weird people compare AI to crypto. Except that there's a lot of hype behind them and they're fundamentally a technology (and tend to be run on a GPU), they don't have anything in common.

I can say a lot of bad things about crypto but I don't want to regurgitate all of it. But let's just say I don't know anyone who uses it like regular money, but I do know some people who use it as an 'investment' and hedge against fiat. If the thing doesn't have underlying value, it's worthless. Not saying it will never take off, and there are some third world countries that use it, but the state it's in right now is WAY overhyped and 99% of the usecase is ponzi scheme bullshit, scams and FOMO.

AI is fundamentally different, it's a complete game changer. My wife who is not technically inclined uses ChatGPT daily for her work. Yesterday there was an article about artists who have been made redundant, and are now using AI to genereate the 'art' for them. This thing has a CRAZY amount of value.

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

#224

Post by codedokode »

unvx-n-banned wrote: post #172
hermitcrab wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an interesting observation. Governments officially support inflation, i.e. stealing your hard earned money (as stealing money seem to be better for economy) and you cannot do anything with it.

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

#226

Post by anigbrowl »

thenaturalist wrote: post #212
emsy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people that still have their accounts frozen because they donated to the truckers in Canada. That’s insane. Other countries had or will have similar cases in the future. We absolutely should have a way to exchange money without the governments involvement. The government already has the monopoly on physical force. That ought to be enough. So yes, there is a use case. But you’re correct in that it hasn’t rea…

The repeating theme of crypto fans postulating "free" cashflow without government involvment is the road to salvation is annoying me so much. Cashflow without government involvement is the absolute opposite of democratic freedom. Take literally any autocratic government ripe with corruption, look at Russia, China et al. Look at any large criminal organization which tries to avoid democratically elected governmental r…

They know it. When you dig down under the surface a lot of freedom evangelists favor religious warlordism or monarchy.

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

#227

Post by antibasilisk »

POiNTx wrote: post #223

To me it's very weird people compare AI to crypto. Except that there's a lot of hype behind them and they're fundamentally a technology (and tend to be run on a GPU), they don't have anything in common. I can say a lot of bad things about crypto but I don't want to regurgitate all of it. But let's just say I don't know anyone who uses it like regular money, but I do know some people who use it as an 'investment' and…

Part of the problem with these sorts of analyses is that it looks as 'crypto' as a class rather than specific cryptos. Monero is actively used as a currency, and I'd say a much higher percentage of its userbase uses it for that purpose compared to other cryptocurrencies.

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

#228

Post by permo-w »

POiNTx wrote: post #223

To me it's very weird people compare AI to crypto. Except that there's a lot of hype behind them and they're fundamentally a technology (and tend to be run on a GPU), they don't have anything in common. I can say a lot of bad things about crypto but I don't want to regurgitate all of it. But let's just say I don't know anyone who uses it like regular money, but I do know some people who use it as an 'investment' and…

> To me it's very weird people compare AI to crypto. Except that there's a lot of hype behind them and they're fundamentally a technology (and tend to be run on a GPU), they don't have anything in common.

is that not enough?

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

#229

Post by JonathanMerklin »

cplusplusfellow wrote: post #145
capableweb wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The guy who would have 25-50b worth of BTC “at the top” somehow drifted into the ether. No pun intended.

I was going to correct you by saying "if you didn't intend the pun, you should have used 'aether' (or 'æther' if you're cool)" but in going to the Wikipedia article to copypaste the "æ", I learned that "alternative spellings include æther, aither, and ether", which was enough news to me that I felt it worth commenting. Fair play!

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

#230

Post by POiNTx »

firmnoodle wrote: post #20
simonw wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Users of cryptocurrencies obviously find them useful, or hope they will be in future" Do they hope they'll be useful in the future because they think they're great technology that everyone should benefit from... or do they want them to be useful because they bought in early and want to get rich?

In most cases it's both. Like the people who were early to the Internet, they believe in a better world and they hope their early participation will be rewarded.

I think early adopters more excited about being able to communicate in a fundamentally new way. The internet is more like the invention of the radio or tv.

Crypto is more like the invention of electronic cryptographically secure beanie babies with a semi-fixed supply.

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