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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

#361

Post by danlugo92 »

topranks wrote: post #201
mardifoufs wrote: post #37

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anythi…

- It’s not significant in terms of the funds it brings in. - Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption”. So far it’s been fairly pathetic. Organisations who accept it provide a focal point for crypto advocates to point to, legitimising it and luring more retail investors into the Ponzi. - The environmental impact is massive, which makes accepting it ethically dubious and does not align with the Wikimedia…

> Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption”

2018: Only criminals use it

2020: Only fringe websites use it

2022: Only small countries use it

2024: ????

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

#363

Post by throwawaw741741 »

tablespoon wrote: post #359
jdrc wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're wrong. It was definitely made to fill a practical need: avoiding the middle man. Why do you think it's so popular in corrupt authorarian thirld-word countries? And if you live in the US/Europe, you'll get there eventually.

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

#364

Post by SwimSwimHungry »

px43 wrote: post #182
unicornmama wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know nothing about wiring money to Ukraine You go to your bank and ask them to start a wire transfer. The recipient’s bank will provide the instructions. You can even do this entirely online.

> You go to your bank and ask them to start a wire transfer. Haha, or, I can just click a single link from a donation page and send ETH from the wallet in my browser directly to the organization that I want to support, which I did in the case of Ukraine. No need to log in to any third party website, and the transaction was finalized in ~10 seconds with negligible fees.

Sure. But one thing cryptocurrency is terrible at is requiring that you do your own op-sec. Maybe you're good at that sort of thing, but because of the inherent lack of controls to reverse transactions made by mistake or accidental fat-fingering other details, such as the address, it's pretty bad for the less tech-savvy.

Did you ever bother to check that "single link from a donation page" to make sure it's really the correct one?

I love being able to call a bank if my VISA card gets stolen and charged up to high heaven and get that all reversed.

Meanwhile, good luck with that NFT that mysteriously landed in your wallet that has bad coding in it to wreck your day. But yes, mass adoption imminent!

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

#365

Post by LosWochosWeek »

danlugo92 wrote: post #361
topranks wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- It’s not significant in terms of the funds it brings in. - Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption”. So far it’s been fairly pathetic. Organisations who accept it provide a focal point for crypto advocates to point to, legitimising it and luring more retail investors into the Ponzi. - The environmental impact is massive, which makes accepting it ethically dubious and does not align with the Wikimedia…

> Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption” 2018: Only criminals use it 2020: Only fringe websites use it 2022: Only small countries use it 2024: ????

Must be nice living in a fantasy.

First of all, the things you've listed are not building not "one level above the former". The question should be: Are more criminals using crypto now than in 2018? Are more website using using crypo now than in 2020?

For the former: I definitely can't the buy the shit that I used to be able to with the mainstream coins. So I'm not sure how that is going to play out. The market definitely changed for criminals using crypto.

For the latter: I don't have hard data on this, but I'd bet a good wager that the golden time of "You can also pay in crypto!!" is over. Back then crypto was practically only advertised as a means of exchange, which lead to more services offering it as a means of exchange. Nowadays the vast majority of the mainstream crypto (and where most of the "money" is) is used as a storage of value. You could buy all kinds of crazy shit, even with fairly big companies with mainstream crypto. Nowadays? Not so much.

About your 2022 example. I see you've used the plural. Countries. Is that so? Which country, other than El Salvador, is also using crypto as a legal tender? And while you're googling that, please make sure to also google how much the usage for crypto has changed El Salvador since it became legal tender. And how the adoption of it was. I'll give you a little hint: Quite literally not at all.

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

#366

Post by bb88 »

flotzam wrote: post #128
bb88 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a a platform for pump and dumps. and > Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. It seems like the first paragraph you said would be enough of a reason to n…

>> I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam > enough of a reason to not accept it. Not if that's simply another instance of Sturgeon's law ("90% of everything is crap"): https://nitter.net/mycoliza/status/1451992293532004355

Here's a counterexample of Sturgeon's law:

I mean otherwise, sure, illegal drugs are 90% crap, but wouldn't it be stupid to not accept nickle bags if people wanted to use them for trade?

I also have an NFT I'm willing to sell you, I just need 1000ETH. Yes the NFT market is shitty, but 1000ETH is a pittance if you believe in Stugeon's law.

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

#367

Post by Tijdreiziger »

robonerd wrote: post #337
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason might be much simpler. For businesses, cash involves the risk of robbery, and in any case someone must drop it off at the bank periodically, or a pick-up must be arranged (adding cost). If your customers have a card anyway, why bother?

Fear of robbery might motivate a locked cash drawer, or no cash accepted at all. But only one person in the store being able to operate the cash drawer? The most generous explanation for this I can think of is the business fears their own employees are thieves, and want to reduce risk by only trusting a small number of them to handle cash. But this doesn't explain why it's so hard for even the employee with the cash…

Sorry, my comment was in reply to the last paragraph of your comment, about POS systems being designed card-first. (Should've quoted it, but my tablet was acting up :) )

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

#368

Post by phs318u »

roamerz wrote: post #349
ncann wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Core values is just a vague concept. A lot of things considered backwards or even downright evil today used to be core values not too long and vice versa, e.g. racial segregation, LGBT, women's right, etc.

I don’t think it’s vague at all. You know as a person when something internally doesn’t sit right. But I do agree that one’s core values are necessarily ’good’ by other’s standards but they are still core values. For example I have stopped eating at my favorite fast food restaurant because they supported(ed) BLM on their front page. I am an ALM guy because I believe that giving one color preference over another is th…

At the risk of going massively off topic and triggering a flame war, I always thought of movements like BLM in this way - “until lives matter too, then all lives clearly don’t matter”. I.e. if you support ALM you must also support LM, by definition.

EDIT: added the word “too” to clarify my meaning.

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

#369

Post by bb88 »

mandmandam wrote: post #248
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. - Carl Sagan

Block lattice tech is not Bozo the clown, but I won't stop you believing whatever you like.

All ponzi schemes start with smart people. The more complicated it is, the more "magical" it becomes for those that have been swayed. It's a religion for some, a cargo cult for others, and a grift machine for the criminals.

But scratch the surface and peer underneath, and you can see what it truly is.

We don't laugh at the people who started the ponzi schemes. We don't laugh at the people that lost their money and learned their lesson.

No, we laugh at the people who despite the clearest of clear headed reasoning still insist on wrapping their logic tighter than a pretzel. We may not all do it publically -- even though there are those that do -- but we do laugh, and are amazed how people got sucked into a tech cult.

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

#370

Post by w0de0 »

mardifoufs wrote: post #37

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anythi…

I would balk at accusing any charity of "asinine moral purity tests."

A charity explicitly prefers altruism over gain from moral conviction. One can hardly expect them to optimize for financial gain, even if there exists a compelling utilitarian argument that this would allow them to perform more altruism.

Indeed, this in my view is preferable - one need only gesture towards the infamy of "the ends justify the means" to make an argument against strict utilitarian behavior.

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