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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

#251

Post by zaroth »

deevolution wrote: post #205
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?

Interest rates in Argentina have been on an upward trend for the last decade [1], yet bitcoin is near its all time high relative to the Peso [2]. How do you explain the contradiction here? [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/argentina/interest-rate [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/btcars:cur

I fail to see the contradiction. The capital has already all fled Argentina, and higher rates aren’t going to entice many dollars back in.

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

#252

Post by everfree »

permo-w wrote: post #232
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

China's 2021 ban didn't affect the crypto industry in any real way. Mining operations moved from China to the USA, a few irrelevant Chinese companies shuttered, and the industry continued business as usual.

The most influential crypto companies were already incorporated in the west.

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

#253

Post by LordDragonfang »

everfree wrote: post #88
furyofantares wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a race. One technology can show its value more quickly than another, and one technology can ultimately provide more value to society than another. That doesn't mean that the other technology is useless, just that it developed more slowly and/or ended up having a lesser overall impact. I think it's worth putting into perspective though that machine learning kicked off in the 60s, whereas there wasn't any nota…

If you're comparing modern machine learning with what was going on in the 60s, the two are so different that you should be comparing crypto to financial exchange technologies in general if you want to make an honest comparison.

Also, if we're starting the counter at the kind of AI that existed in the 60s, there were already hundreds of use cases by the 90s (which is the timeline you're proposing)

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

#254

Post by eftychis »

This statement is full of hypocrisy and sourness.

As I replied to a comment elsewhere on this post: They capitalized to the maximum the demand and ending up seriously cannibalizing their profits, which they hid. They ended up settling with the SEC on the matter. https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/06/tech/nvidia-sec-settlement-cr...

Specifically, Nvidia had to settle for misleading investors, as they hid that Nvidia's specific for crypto-mining series were cannibalizing gaming and ai profits.

Nvidia is also using its monopoly now to dictate what workloads one can run with the hardware they buy. All "to save the world" against distributed protocols, which have left Nvidia behind. I find that disturbing and problematic. At what point will Nvidia demand a subscription model to allow one to use their screen or game or train and host their own LLaMa model?

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

#255

Post by qeternity »

0xDEF wrote: post #199
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #9

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…

>Billions of people who are not part of these alliances are left out and the rest are reliant on US/Europe remaining leading superpowers forever, those in power not developing a grudge against one's business and status quo enforced through military violence. The claim that the only reason the US dollar is the reserve currency of the world is because the US military would invade anyone who uses something else is so of…

> The claim that the only reason the US dollar is the reserve currency of the world is because the US military would invade anyone who uses something else is so often repeated on HN and reddit that is has become canon.

No, it isn’t. Nobody said this, certainly not GP.

What is canon is that US military might gives its economy a level of stability not enjoyed by any other country, and when combined with the size of the economy, makes the dollar an important asset for nearly everyone.

Most countries in the world don’t use the dollar, and yet the dollar remains hugely important to those economies. Who is suggesting the US is going to invade those countries?

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

#256

Post by ThorsBane »

kkielhofner wrote: post #188
ThorsBane wrote: post #120

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.

Cryptocurrency generation mechanics are 14 years old. Run-time and application deployables on top are not 14 years old. This is a brand new space and it's still in its infancy. Ethereum is an amazing technology.

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

#257

Post by ipaddr »

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…

Going the other direction where government controls all aspects of society is what the USSR and China decided was the best system. When the USSR broke up they gave all citizens ownership of previously held state enterprises which was worthless to them and those shares were sold ended up in few players hands.

Crypto is the opposite where miners hold as much power as developers to create a balance.

You can't sue in Canada when the government introduces wartime measures. Like Canada was under attack

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

#258

Post by enjoy-your-stay »

mumblemumble wrote: post #128
enjoy-your-stay wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money flows out of equities and into bonds which yield a higher more dependable return when interest rates are high enough. The equities market was already running at artificially inflated values for some sectors (like technology), which means there isn't much growth potential (if everything is deemed to be already overpriced), and so the outflows were quite significant from those sectors, accentuating the inverse re…

I would argue that cryptos are typically not equities; they're usually either commodities (cryptocurrency) or some sort of non-current intangible asset (NFTs). The exception would be things like shares in the DAO, which, while interesting, is not typically what people have in mind when they say "crypto" these days.

I can't say for sure, but I think cryptos are actually behaving a bit more like precious metals, in that people use them as speculative store of value - so a bit like you say, commodities.

The other thing that surprises me is the sheer number of currencies that currently exist - I had thought there would be a massive shake-out in the market but so far they seem to be multiplying like fungus.

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

#259

Post by tzs »

rvz wrote: post #126
edflsafoiewq wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, crypto's main use is crime. Its supporters have various arguments for why crime is actually good.

> Yes, crypto's main use is crime. It is quite a very poor use with such "crime" happening all on a public and transparent blockchain, making it very easy to trace all of that (even if they use a tumbler / mixer) with the funds certainly seized and frozen as soon as it hits the exchange. In fact criminals and scammers still use banks and Zelle to facilitate their criminal enterprise - [0] [1] in the trillions of doll…

So why do so many ransomware gangs want payment in Bitcoin?

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

#260

Post by ipaddr »

epgui wrote: post #243
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…

Crypto aside, it's difficult to point to a less deserving cause than the trucker convoy that paralyzed Ottawa for no good reason (the reasons are no good outside of delusionland).

Women's right to choose what goes in their bodies is an important right in Canada.

Not to worry the wartime act will be used on something you personally care about but by that time your rights will be gone.

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