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Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

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Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#351

Post by duskwuff »

rg111 wrote: post #329
nemothekid wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s used to be widely accepted that all light travelled through a luminiferous aether that encompasses the entire universe. Then we learned about special relativity. Societies learn and adapt.

I will point out that this comment is factually wrong. The concept of luminiferous aether was discarded- not because of the discovery of Theory of Relativity, but becauae of the Michelson and Morley Experiment [0]. It is often joked about in High School and college Freshman Physics circles- Michelson received Nobel Prize in Physics [1] for a literally failed experiment. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson–Mo…

Calling the M-M experiment a "failed experiment" is a bit misleading. The experiment was successful; the result was definitively negative (no aether). Previous experiments had failed to reach a conclusive result.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#352

Post by danamit »

dundarious wrote: post #350
danamit wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main issue with banking is that I cannot use it to its full extent, I am not from a Western country. Also because how bad banking is, clients find all excuses to not buy you sometimes. I lost one month of income because a European startup was claiming all kind of problems with wiring me my salary (3 different ones), with waiting weeks between every "try" and gaslighting me into asking my bank to do some paper work…

I'm not actually in your situation so take this with a hefty pinch of salt, but if I was, I wouldn't like to keep that received money in crypto, unless I was speculating. It's not like you can use it as a currency (in terms of purchase goods or services directly in the currency, and even if you can, prices are never set in terms of crypto because it is too volatile, and therefore there are constant arbs... the proble…

I do not keep my money as crypto, mainly because there is bills to pay, and things to buy, it was money I used to move out, buy furniture slowly, get a car... etc. It was not hard to convert it to the local currency at all, it was instant.

About the bullshitting, it is just interesting that banking does encourage bullshitting.

Even one of my best employers who pay me in time, was always asking me to confirm if I received the money, and sometimes it take way longer, and he sometimes get concerned about it.

The bigger issue with banking is there is no way to debug it, like the CTO of the European startup used to tell me he talked to the accounting people and they are sending me my money, then 10 days later after me being super careful about it being a local issue, he is coming up with some other excuse.

Is there issues with crypto? yes a lot: inefficiencies, scams, gold rush mentality. Some of those can be solved, other will go away with time. But even if so, my point is that crypto has value and change livelihoods of some people.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#353

Post by namdnay »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #319
namdnay wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not "accepting payment with bitcoin" - it's just a link for coinbase to convert your bitcoin to USD before booking. Look at the T&Cs, it's a USD booking underneath Accepting payment with bitcoin means using bitcoin as the currency in the PNR, just like you can use euros or yen or pounds or whatever

... Why does this matter? GP asked about whether you can use Bitcoin to receive goods and services. Nobody asked what Expedia puts in their balance sheet, you're moving the goalposts.

the fact that if you cancel they give you USD means it's not "paying with bitcoin". it's "converting bitcoin to USD then paying with USD". it's a pretty fundamental difference - Expedia aren't making any bets on the stability of BTC, as they are when they accept EUR or USD or GBP or whatever

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#355

Post by Karrot_Kream »

namdnay wrote: post #353
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Why does this matter? GP asked about whether you can use Bitcoin to receive goods and services. Nobody asked what Expedia puts in their balance sheet, you're moving the goalposts.

the fact that if you cancel they give you USD means it's not "paying with bitcoin". it's "converting bitcoin to USD then paying with USD". it's a pretty fundamental difference - Expedia aren't making any bets on the stability of BTC, as they are when they accept EUR or USD or GBP or whatever

It's not about the bets. If BTC can transparently be converted to USD or GBP then it does actually offer value to the person using BTC to buy services. I'm not sure why you're so adamant about insisting that Expedia isn't buying into "bets" or whatever. Having parts of a transaction happen off-chain doesn't constitute a repudiation of cryptocurrency. Not everyone is a Bitcoin maximalist. Demonstrating it has value for people is enough to support the GP's comment, in this case value for people that hold BTC to purchase real goods and services, the same way any other fiat currency is used. It's not like a non-US entity that takes USD as payment is endorsing US political actions, it's just trying to receive payment for goods and services.

I'm tired of these shifting goalposts in crypto conversations. They always go like this:

1. I derive value from crypto

2. There's no value in crypto! Show me a usecase!

3.

4. But that uses Fiat/off-chain/// so crypto has no value!

The claim the GP made is that an individual can derive value from crypto, not that this value is untainted by fiat, off-chain movement, or any of the other incidental claims. When you use USD or GBP to buy a good, the good itself has probably traded hands between many currencies before the final product was sold to you using the fiat you paid. Does that mean USD or GBP are "useless" because input costs for your product were paid for in RMB? No, you still derive value from fiat.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#356

Post by Karrot_Kream »

PufPufPuf wrote: post #354

I'm surprised how many pro-cryptocurrency comments I see here on HN. I would expect people here to see through the hype and technobabble.

? Perform a really quick binomial test on pro-cryptocurrency comments and anti-cryptocurrency comments and you'll find that sentiment here is overwhelmingly anti. If you can't see that, then you just aren't looking. So what percentage of pro-cryptocurrency comments would make _you_ happy?

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#357

Post by ketzu »

sparkie wrote: post #199
ketzu wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what would happen if crypto somehow managed to replace central banks and how the world would change My personal guess is that we would recreate most of the infrastructure on top, but with monetary policy now in the hand of a select few individuals instead of governments. The consequences for the world at large would be interesting to explore.

> but with monetary policy now in the hand of a select few individuals instead of governments Bitcoin's monetary policy is fixed. It is in nobody's hand, but everybody who decides to run a validating node. Monetary policy is controlled by central banks, which are privately owned. On paper, they're regulated by government, but in practice, politicians are easily bought, bribed or have their hands tied. The monetary po…

> Bitcoin's monetary policy is fixed. It is in nobody's hand, but everybody who decides to run a validating node.

My understanding is that bitcoins monetary policy can be changed through code, something a very small group is allowed to do in practice, even though theoretically it could be forked easily. Previous attempts at democratication of decisions have been prevented by various questionable tactics and by measures of share of computer power, something also held by very few people. Maybe this changed since I stopped paying attention to it, though.

> which are privately owned

Again, my understanding is that the reserve banks are some form of private entities but essentially owned by their governments (e.g., profits are transfered to them). Sites like the faq of the fed (https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm) and information about the german central bank seem to confirm that view so far.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#358

Post by lsanger »

So Wikipedia doesn't accept crypto anymore. Who cares? They don't need it!

The Knowledge Standards Foundation does. We're making an open network of all the encyclopedias (http://encyclosphere.org). Contact us: info@encyclosphere.org

Disclosure: I was co-founder of Wikipedia, once upon a time, and the KSF is my project.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#359

Post by tablespoon »

jdrc wrote: post #270
jeltz wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since many years ago. The cryptocurrency movement has always been very ideological.

so has the anti-crypto so we are at an impasse

>> Since many years ago. The cryptocurrency movement has always been very ideological.

> so has the anti-crypto so we are at an impasse

No on both counts.

Also, the "cryptocurrency movement" isn't just regular ideological, it's particularly ideological. Cryptocurrency wasn't made to fill any practical need, it was made to fit certain peculiar ideological obsessions.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#360

Post by nybble41 »

replygirl wrote: post #261
superkuh wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to a normal credit card transaction which takes days.

But not in a practical sense for the user. You don't have to wait 20 minutes for your authorization to clear so you can walk out of Dunkin with your iced coffee

You don't have to wait 20 minutes for a Bitcoin transaction to clear for the price of an iced coffee, either. For low-value transactions with a low risk of double-spending you can just verify that the transaction made it into the mempool and is likely to be included in the next block or two, a process which takes seconds at most. It could technically still be reversed during that window but you could just as easily get a chargeback from a credit card, or a bad check. And with Bitcoin you'll have confirmation within less than 30 minutes that the transaction is fully irreversible, vs. 30 days or more with most other methods. Only physical cash offers a faster clearing time.
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