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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

#231

Post by tptacek »

frereubu wrote: post #148
twic wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think there's a good argument - made very well by Viv Albertine of The Slits in her autobiography Clothes, Music, Boys - that people outside the scene took punk too seriously. They weren't great crusaders for truth and justice, they were the court jesters who pointed out the emperor had no clothes but were mostly just having fun provoking people. Which includes John Lydon pissing people off by issuing NFTs and prai…

The Sex Pistols were a boy band, Lydon had a brief window of authenticity with PIL but has, in the last decade or so, become a caricature of himself, to the point of endorsing Thatcherism. Lydon today overtly rejects what he ostensibly "stood for" in the era of the Lesser Free Trade Hall show. You couldn't come up with a better illustration of how un-punk crypto is than a Johnny Rotten NFT.

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

#232

Post by permo-w »

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…

I was under the impression that the crypto industry—and by extension the mining of it—went into a skid when China (re)banned its use

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

furyofantares wrote: post #49
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…

You're kinda right but it's also kinda right that after a decade+ crypto found like 1.5 useful applications and generative AI is finding some mind blowing product launch or demo something like once every 8 hours.

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by menzoic »

echelon wrote: post #179
everfree wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 limi…

> I'd wager both fields have had roughly the same human capital afforded to them Highly unlikely. AI received massive government funding. Digital cash not so much. There are thousands of labs studying AI, not so with digital cash. Also digital cash is just one use case, there wasn't efforts towards a generic blockchain in those days.

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

#235

Post by menzoic »

jboy55 wrote: post #204
unvx-n-banned wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If bitcoin was the only crypto, maybe, but there is an infinite number of possible crypto coins.

Why is that relevant? Anyone can create crap. That doesn't change the tech.

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

#236

Post by yieldcrv »

> Crypto, by contrast, was more like high-frequency trading, an industry that had led to a lot of business for Mellanox, the company Kagan founded before it was acquired by Nvidia.

Yes, its financial services, which is the biggest sector on the planet. That's never been controversial except to individual contributors that put their head in the sand to financial services.

The same arguments of lacking "usefulness" and "utility" are the same ones that some people choose to have against all financial services, which is very far divorced from any reality that matters.

Yes, 99% of the financial services sector and all currency has nothing to do with using it as regular money. The same distribution as seen in crypto.

It often feels like like people don't know that they are relying on a standard that applies to things they respect. Like, they're criticizing "crypto" while describing the thing they appreciate.

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

#237

Post by menzoic »

altairprime wrote: post #155
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…

Wasn’t Nvidia trying to block cryptomining a year or two ago so they could sell to their core target markets in peace? It seems difficult to reconcile “we’re actively trying to stop cryptominers from buying our product” actions with “we’re against cryptomining only because they’re not buying our product” views.

thats because they couldn't keep up due to the disruption of the supply chain. No corporation avoids money

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

#238

Post by weaksauce »

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…

100% agree. this is like the internet in 1996 or the model T or the printing press... the bottle is now open and we have no idea what it will do but there's no way to put that genie back in. I'm not a bullish person but it seems the impact this will have on society is immeasurable. what happens when a large chunk of the workforce suddenly becomes unneeded? what happens when the propaganda becomes so sophisticated that even trained people can not distinguish it from fiction? in a short timeframe we went from ai generated finger colors to having to check the hands to see if it's ai to having to really struggle to see if it's ai. i don't know. I am a techie and i am not a ludite but feel that just like social media that this will be a net loss for society.

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

#239

Post by JUNGLEISMASSIVE »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #37
hfsygcf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hey, at least people who buy drugs with bitcoin are actually getting tangible goods. Despite everything, TSR might have been the most "legitimate" use of cryptocurrency to date.

[dead]

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

#240

Post by amjnsx »

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…

The “it has no value” argument against crypto currencies is flawed in my opinion because value is subjective.

When you say “it is worthless because it has no value”, you’re saying “it has no value to me therefore it couldn’t possibly have value for anyone”.

There’s plenty of value in something like Bitcoin for example (e.g. as a store of value, or low fees for large transactions, crossing borders without having your money seized).

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