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On anti-crypto toxicity

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Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#291

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

trutannus wrote: post #229
II2II wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, what would the world look like without democratic governments? Look at history, and you will notice that it is rarely better. Those who seek wealth and power aren't created by governments, nor will they magically disappear if governments disappear (or if their power is neutered). At least democracies have some checks and balances, even if they are nowhere near as effective as we need them to be.

> On the other hand, what would the world look like without democratic governments Nobody here is advocating against democracy. People are just pointing out that blind trust in state institutions is equally as illogical as blind trust in the EVM. States have a track record of serving the powerful first, and sometimes exclusively. Trusting apparatus with a track record like this masks a sort of flawed optimism, just l…

Why are you so insistent that the trust necessarily be blind? Having legislation is the first step to getting banks to comply with how we think they should work. What's the alternative method of coercing their behavior?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#292

Post by Traster »

sneak wrote: post #198
Traster wrote: post #46

I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's some promise in some places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises. Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stup…

> None of their claims have materially panned out. Well, I can send arbitrarily large amounts of money across the planet, to any country with internet access, for tiny sums, safely, irreversibly, to anyone. Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine, for example. Transnational, permissionless internet money is quite handy. That wasn't possible before, and that's pretty useful, so I think the basic claim (that cry…

Okay, provide some evidence for that claim. Because again, that's the claim of "Well crypto is doing amazing things" but it needs actual evidence. I know it theoretically could happen if you ignore all the glaring problems in practice. But does it actually happen?

What has cyrpto provided that you can't provide via Paypal or bank transfer? Hell - here's a paypal address for a bunch of guys who want to buy Ukraine a fighter jet - info@buymeafighterjet.com . Here's the donation page for the Kyiv school of economics https://kse.ua/support/donation - you may notice a small bit of text right above the crypto addresses for you donation - that small bit of text is a form for card transactions, 8 different ways of doing a bank transfer and a paypal address.

So what has Cryptocurrency acheived here? You donate crypto to these charities, and then what happens? They convert it back into fiat currency to actually spend it. You've literally just added more steps to something that was already solved.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#293

Post by bena »

rvz wrote: post #64
simias wrote: post #13

The problem is that while these topics are interesting (and even crucial these days) they're often used in bad faith by people who are just in it because of the get-rich-quick scheme. You'll often see people push some cryptotoken using a thin veneer of political activism, saying that it's about taking control back or redistributing wealth etc... but it's rarely more than that. In my experience if you attempt to push…

Your whole four paragraphs can be simplified to: 90% of projects out there are scams and have a crypto-token attached to it with a pyramid scheme on it and there also exists a 10% of projects somewhere that it is not purely a 'get-rich-quick-scheme', or a 'web3' crypto project that doesn't require a crypto-token attached to the product that has utility? Thus, it also must mean that it is not going away 100% guarantee…

That's not what his four paragraphs sum up to.

He said 90% of discussions about crypto descend into shouting shallow catchphrases. And it's been that way since at least 2017.

He seems to believe that 100% of the projects are scams.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#294

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

raspberry1337 wrote: post #237
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any fix for a failure in human organization(s) is going to come from ... humans. There are no hall monitors here, and there's also no magic wand. When things are of a large enough scope, the way that humans tend to organize to get things done, or get things fixed, is called "a state". Just like all human efforts, the outcome will likely not be perfect. But there actually isn't another way. Sure, you can suggest the i…

Quoted post unavailable.

Nice work omitting the start of that sentence:

> When things are of a large enough scope

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#295

Post by Tainnor »

trutannus wrote: post #177
keskival wrote: post #175

"How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?" The same as national health insurance. You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy.

Use the state to fix failures of the state? There's a weird cyclic optimism here that I don't think can really be supported by the facts. After all, those who write a law can just as easily add addendum to that law, or remove it all together. Even with equal banking laws, there's always going to be an individual who the state deems as less equal than others. That's just how it's always been. Its bizarre that this is…

> There's a weird cyclic optimism here that I don't think can really be supported by the facts.

That's a pretty American, libertarian take. As somebody who grew up in Western Europe, I'm not disillusioned by "the state" per se, and I think that the facts rather support that privatisation doesn't always make things better (e.g. railways). None of us may be "right" (it always depends on your experiences), but it's worth considering that "using the state to fix society" isn't a completely ridiculous take for everyone.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#296

Post by shkkmo »

trutannus wrote: post #220
ModernMech wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law isn’t magic though. It’s a system we designed for this purpose and we know how it works.

Except that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is: 1. Bad laws got us into this place 2. There's a lot of inertia in government 3. There's a lot of stake holders in government who don't have citizen's interests at heart 4. It's illogical to think you can, in light of this, just pass a law and fix it. Yeah, we designed the law, and we know how it works. Sadly, we know also that the way it works is generally…

And crypto isn't dominated by the wealthy and being used to serve their ends? Open your eyes my friend. There is far more corruption and disfunction in the average cryptocurrency org than the average government.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#297

Post by cestith »

trutannus wrote: post #223
djbusby wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's asking society to correct itself via legislation (we've done that before). It's slower and less sexy than new-tech and has a better track record.

I'm not advocating for crypto. I'm advocating against blind trust in the government to "pass a law" and fix it.

How about we don't put blind trust in either, but see where both might actually deliver?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#299

Post by lukeramsden »

pid-1 wrote: post #148
brianolson wrote: post #53

I'm grumpy about Visa/MC taking 3% of every transaction. I want a technofix for that. There are new blockchains that cost less than a penny per transaction use about a millionth of the wattage of bitcoin and I hope they turn out to be non-BS. I just want an efficient low-cost barrierless payment network.

If you think about blockchain fundamentals, they will always be expensive. How does a global network of peers can have transactions verified by majorities while being cheap? Basically you could say crypto fees are the price you pay for not trusting anyone. Using crypto is only a good alternative if you live in a society so fucked up citizens can't trust any bit of the contingent financial system.

In the most abstract sense, with a blockchain you’re paying for the _consensus_, not the _computation_ to handle transactions - and there are projects (such as Starkware) aimed at taking that to its logical conclusion, using computation proofs to reduce the cost of transactions by orders of magnitude.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#300

Post by falcolas »

koonsolo wrote: post #234
malthaus wrote: post #183

Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How…

> society won't be worse off in the end. That is most definitely a political question. I think the article has a strange reasoning about crypto trying to "save the world". For me it's pretty clear: individuals can now store and transfer value on the internet using a consensus algorithm. Plenty of you claim that it's enough to have a democracy that controls a central bank. That way you also have some kind of consensus…

> But it's clear that cryptocurrencies try to live outside of governmental control, which is of course where most of the benefit comes from.

I believe it’s naïve to expect that it will remain outside of government control. That it won’t get slammed with the same laws and regulations applied to fiat currencies.

Governments live on money. As alternatives gain traction, the governments take notice and start regulating. There’s a fair bit of historical precedence around this.

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