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Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

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Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#141

Post by forum_ghost »

Nursie wrote: post #138
forum_ghost wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An open and permission-less global monetary network that does not exclude anyone at all, is about as valuable to you as malformed viagra emails? 4 billion people today live under less than ideal circumstances. Spending a fraction of a percent of global electricity is absolutely worth it. It provides those 4 billion people with access to the financial services that they would otherwise never get. Nigeria alone has 34+…

> It provides those 4 billion people with access to the financial services that they would otherwise never get. It demonstrably does not, and with its transaction rate limitations, it cannot.

are you open to new information?

1. Nigeria has 30 MILLION people that use it. Most of the usage is for cross-border transactions. 2. transaction rate limitations only apply to the settlement layer. retail does not need to use it, only very large transactions that need high settlement guarantees.

Lightning network has essentially unlimited tps, currently has close to 1 million (!!) live nodes, and even sub-penny transactions are perfectly viable because fees are even tinier or can be even nil.

Live LN stats: https://1ml.com/

If you truly do care about lives of 4 billion people on the planet, you should at least internalize these basic facts, as you are simply repeating misinformation: tps are low, no traction. it is simply not true.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#142

Post by forum_ghost »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #16
hardmoney99 wrote: post #13

Bitcoin is the solution to the fundamentally broken debt-driven economy. Critics don't get it because they lump it together with "cryptocurrency". While technically a cryptocurrency, Bitcoin does not exhibit any of the ponzi, scam-like shenanigans that are easily observable in shitcoins. Yes, there is a lot of crazy stuff happening with wash trading - but this is a byproduct of lack of regulation and has nothing to d…

> fincial freedom tool for billions of people, the likes of which do not browse Hacker News. Citation needed (to put it mildly). How is Bitcoin improving on e.g. M-Pesa? Is there much adoption compared to M-Pesa, outside of fantasy? If you're not familiar with M-Pesa, then you don't know this subject at all. > Those people get Bitcoin instantly. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jun/17/jay-z-bitcoin-...

Nigeria, just one country, has 34 million crypto users. mpesa has 30.

34 > 30

is that much adoption?

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#143

Post by inter_netuser »

Nursie wrote: post #140
forum_ghost wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very disturbing to read comments on an allegedly techie forum that insist the expansion of energy capacity is somehow bad. What, we will be the first spacefaring, Kardashev Type 2 civilization that is powered solely by windmills? Why is energy demonized so much? There will be 100x, 1000x more energy use in the future in the entire economy. You are worried some tiny fraction of a percent is an issue?

> You are worried some tiny fraction of a percent is an issue? YES. Adding a whole new country to the map right now, when we don't have enough clean energy to go around, and we are killing our environment with emissions from energy generation, is a BAD idea. Far from helping to increase demand for clean energy, as is the meme, cryptocurrency mining is incentivising the return of fossil fuel power plants to service (a…

>when we don't have enough clean energy to go around,

so you are telling me renewables can't even handle 0.5% increase in demand?

What a dead end technology. Can't wait until we upgrade to nuclear instead.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#144

Post by ephbit »

hnews_account_1 wrote: post #127
ephbit wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do not comprehend the literal scale of the problem. Phew, OK, if you write so. > You have to replace every fucking bank employee with a govt employee .. No, all it needs is a reasonable tax system without loopholes and where taxes are well balanced and of course reasonable services provided by the state funded by these taxes.

Ok so I’m going to start making up theories by assuming the second law of thermodynamics is false and we can have infinite free energy.

Do I get this right?

You have a rather pessimistic view of the world that leads you to believe that while such tax systems might be possible they allegedly haven't ever been observed in the real world. So you go on to infer that what hasn't been observed is not possible.

I think it's a stretch to draw a parallel here to the unyielding character of physical laws.

I assume the world has seen reasonable tax systems in the past but since politics/science/tech/societies/culture is constantly evolving this "state" was not stable. That it wasn't, doesn't prove it's not possible. Future societies with more knowledge on the whole subject (of creating beneficial equilibria in society) might find ways to keep desirable states over long periods of time.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#145

Post by Nursie »

hardmoney99 wrote: post #139
Nursie wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're confusing money with currency. No, you're using nonsense distinctions that come from the 'Austrian school', that you think make you smart and you believe gives you an understanding of economics denied to most people, even those who study economics to a high level and make careers in that space. Unfortunately it's a patchwork of old and poor ideas that don't really hold up. By the way I love the condescending…

> No, you're using nonsense distinctions that come from the 'Austrian school', Do you have an actual rebuttal to anything I've said or will you resort to emotional and ideological attachment to what others have decided for you? >By the way I love the condescending addendum, sure, the only reason that anyone could possibly be negative about Bitcoin is that they haven't learned enough about it. LOL. Another reason peop…

> Do you have an actual rebuttal

I don't need to. Actual mainstream economics is that rebuttal. The Austrian school is a discredited joke.

Most of your points are emotional and idealogical - you call other cryptocurrencies "shitcoins", despite them being technically identical in many cases and superior in some.

> Another reason people might view Bitcoin negatively...

It's funny, you can't even conceive that someone could understand it and come to the conclusion that it's not a perfect miracle handed down directly from saint satoshi, and then you call identical cryptocurrencies "shitcoins", perhaps you don't understand them well enough?

BTC is the same as the others, it just has the big name. They're all shitcoins, I simply understand that about one more coin than you do.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#146

Post by Nursie »

forum_ghost wrote: post #141
Nursie wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It provides those 4 billion people with access to the financial services that they would otherwise never get. It demonstrably does not, and with its transaction rate limitations, it cannot.

are you open to new information? 1. Nigeria has 30 MILLION people that use it. Most of the usage is for cross-border transactions. 2. transaction rate limitations only apply to the settlement layer. retail does not need to use it, only very large transactions that need high settlement guarantees. Lightning network has essentially unlimited tps, currently has close to 1 million (!!) live nodes, and even sub-penny tran…

1) You claimed it provided services for 4 billion people. 30 million != 4 billion.

2) Lightning requires BTC transactions to establish channels and for funding, no? While the TPS when funds are on lightning may be impressive, in order for 4 billion people to set up and fund lightning channels, at 7 TPS the bitcoin chain is going to take ~18 years to process that.

3) Are these 30 million people in Nigeria using BTC on the main chain? Are they using lightning? Or are they using one or more custodial, centralised wallet services/exchanges?

(I see 'sidecar channels' are a thing which may help onboarding speed, skipping the bitcoin blockchain entirely, but it all sounds hideously complex, with a bunch of fees in different places to a variety of service providers. It really all points to a failure in the L1 solution)

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#147

Post by Nursie »

inter_netuser wrote: post #143
Nursie wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are worried some tiny fraction of a percent is an issue? YES. Adding a whole new country to the map right now, when we don't have enough clean energy to go around, and we are killing our environment with emissions from energy generation, is a BAD idea. Far from helping to increase demand for clean energy, as is the meme, cryptocurrency mining is incentivising the return of fossil fuel power plants to service (a…

>when we don't have enough clean energy to go around, so you are telling me renewables can't even handle 0.5% increase in demand? What a dead end technology. Can't wait until we upgrade to nuclear instead.

No, actually, that wasn't a point I was making, nor is it even adjacent to one. Thanks for playing though.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#148

Post by ephbit »

hnews_account_1 wrote: post #110
ephbit wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safedean Ammous isn't 100 % studied economist. But according to his CV he studied at London School of Economics, also gave economics lectures and was/is assistant professor of economics at Lebanese American University (Beirut). [1] I'd recommend listening to his interview with Lex Fridman. [2] [1] https://capitalism.columbia.edu/files/ccs/person/cv/2015/amm... [2] https://lexfridman.com/saifedean-ammous/

Do not read idiots like Ammous. I don’t like to restrict people’s reading choices but this is equivalent to reading Deepak Chopra for economics. Between that and someone like Lee Smolin who is also extremely anti establishment, only one of them is an incredibly deep thinker. People’s appearance on Lex Fridman shouldn’t be used as an indicator of anything. He interviews very widely and he does it well. But he isn’t ve…

A comparison of Safedean Ammous to Deepak Chopra isn't useful IMO. Chopra does likely have views on economics but it's not the focus of his work. Ammous' work is about economics.

Thus it appears you're merely trying to discredit one person by comparing them to another person whose views (on a totally different topic) are ridiculed/controversial (for potentially legitimate reasons).

As to Lee Smolin .. he appears rather off-topic to me in this discussion. I like his view on "There is only one universe." though [1]. Makes him stand out from the many many people who handle the meaning of words with insufficient rigor and then come up with useless conclusions.

> People’s appearance on Lex Fridman shouldn’t be used as an indicator of anything.

I was just linking to this interview because it's reasonably well done and Ammous' views come over, not because it was done by Fridman.

> But he isn’t very selective about guests.

Which is IMO a good thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin#Views

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#149

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

yeahsure wrote: post #81
piva00 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the future I expect to see BTC to mainly utilized for these types of financial transfers and less as a long-term store of value. I have, in Sweden, the options of Swish and SEPA to transfer money. Swish is internal to Swedish residents, so to anyone who has Swish tied to their bank account I can instantly send money knowing their phone number. With SEPA Instant Transfer I can send money anywhere in the EU, up to…

Not all of us have the privilege of having been born un Sweden. Your comment reeks of privilege and dissociation with the rest of the world, where things work very differently.

Dude, it's a real world example - a personal experience - of how this problem can we well solved, and of how crypto is not the solution. That's what it is. Sorry you don't like it, but that's not relevant. What you might do is try to bring those systems to where you are.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#150

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

macinjosh wrote: post #68
Nursie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US Problem identified.

Hateful much? Sorry I was born here and not the super awesome perfect place you are from.

A: "The USA's banking infrastructure lags global best practices, and many commenters here do not realise that, assuming that it must be the same or worse elsewhere, and that their proposed solutions or upgrades are relevant, when they are in fact often not. Proof by example of a better way forward exists."

B: "Why do you hate America!!"

This is of course, the kind of reasoned response that you typically get from someone with a strong logical argument.

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