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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

#191

Post by anigbrowl »

everfree wrote: post #165
danaris wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only social behavioral norms that cryptocurrency is about defying are "people shouldn't be scammed out of their money".

The social norm defied is "money is to be regulated by the state". No more, no less. Anything else is a result of what people project onto it.

Only libertarians are so obsessed with central banking. It seems to me that crypto people willfully ignore previous history where money was not regulated by the state and people were frustrated by instability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907

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

#192

Post by salawat »

pessimizer wrote: post #75
devnullbrain wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there's more to the story, IMO the onus is very much on the person who procures seafood every day to explain when a dish is out-of-season.

People don't make decisions based on "onuses."

Well... That'd explain a lot of sub par results, tell ya what.

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

#194

Post by [deleted] »

stanleydrew wrote: post #156
themitigating wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not a crypto fan, but I think the argument would be that Bitcoin in particular wasn't created as a means of wealth accumulation, but rather as a means of avoiding government interference in "money." That may have been misguided, but I think that's the argument.

[deleted]

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

#195

Post by itake »

EGreg wrote: post #119
itake wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The network is owned by the participants and no shareholder class to extract rents. Dumb question. But if the network is owned by the participants, then why do all the networks have a centralized authority managing them? The participants rarely have autonomy.

I mean, who owns Uniswap for instance? What can they do — start collegting the extra 0.3% fee? That’s about it. The people own the network, and they all rely on the same code. Web3 protocols at their best are like that. By contrast, FTX and Binance are “crypto-adjacent”, they aren’t decentralized or onchain at all.

Uniswap labs owns the GitHub repo, domain name, and discord servers. If their domain, discord, etc disappears, the project would struggle because their smart contracts are difficult to use without the web apps and it would damage the trust in the project.

Uniswap owners can shut down their website. They can introduce a 100% fee. They can deactivate their contracts.

Yes, people can still use their smart contracts in 5 years, but the adoption of those contracts will quickly decline without uniswap labs.

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

#196

Post by codedokode »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #89
psychphysic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online dark net markets would not be possible without cryptos. They are a pretty big win for those who believe in personal liberty.

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

Crypto is a technology that offers just one thing: electronic payments without anything unneessary bundled with it. Crypto is a model of what banking should be.

For comparison, to use a bank card you first need to provide all your details to bank which can share them with anyone they want, and then your application can be rejected for arbitrary reasons. And after this again the bank can share information about anything you bought with the card. There is even an official organization for sharing data about consumers loan history and this is totally not a crime in our weird society.

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

#197

Post by Convolutional »

andersentobias wrote: post #92

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…

> punk as f*ck

Those Sand Hill Road VC investments were definitely punk.

> the gov't adds through decision taken by ombudsman/committee, the more power asymmetry is added

This has nothing to do with whether Bitcoin, or some MLM scheme, or Ponzi's postal reply coupons have value or not. For over a century they've all promoted the scam as power to the little guy.

Also if you're tired of fiat money, there are alternatives - like commodities. Precious metals like gold have had use value for millennia.

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

#198

Post by intotheabyss »

jkepler wrote: post #135

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…

You missed one of the most important DAOs / Exchanges which is Uniswap, which popularized the concept of AMMs and is now doing billions each day in volume.

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

#199

Post by 0xDEF »

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 often repeated on HN and reddit that is has become canon.

It would be interesting to read something that goes deeper into that topic.

In the mean time someone should tell European pension funds that they should not be betting what amounts to the combined GDP of several nations on just the S&P500.

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

#200

Post by EGreg »

itake wrote: post #195
EGreg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, who owns Uniswap for instance? What can they do — start collegting the extra 0.3% fee? That’s about it. The people own the network, and they all rely on the same code. Web3 protocols at their best are like that. By contrast, FTX and Binance are “crypto-adjacent”, they aren’t decentralized or onchain at all.

Uniswap labs owns the GitHub repo, domain name, and discord servers. If their domain, discord, etc disappears, the project would struggle because their smart contracts are difficult to use without the web apps and it would damage the trust in the project. Uniswap owners can shut down their website. They can introduce a 100% fee. They can deactivate their contracts. Yes, people can still use their smart contracts in 5…

So what you're saying is that we need a front-end layer with content-addressable hashes?

Like Beaker Browser with Dat, or like IPFS gateways?

And then we have a truly decentralized ecosystem in which billions of dollars are invested and trading. And no one owns it!

They can't introduce a 100% fee or deactivate their contracts. I read the code. It is impossible.

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