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It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

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Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#381

Post by kragen »

Tarq0n wrote: post #322
kragen wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point (programming work for overseas clients), and I haven't gotten scammed yet. I'm not engaged in money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, or gambling, and only the usual amount of delusion. And I don't even buy illegal drugs! And, yeah, 13 years after the internet's invention was 01982; not only couldn't you get so much as a weather report on…

Reminds me of the old adage about technical solutions to social problems. Cryptocurrency isn't going to un-fail these states, all it does is enable the wealthy to evade currency controls and reinforce the downward spiral. If someone lives in an oppressive regime it's governmental change they need, not worldwide abandonment of financial regulation just so the lucky few can escape.

The wealthy can already evade currency controls; that's what it means to be wealthy, at least in a place that has them. Bitcoin and similar systems enable the poor to evade currency controls, as well as frankly confiscatory regulation like the bank-deposit-conversion episode I mentioned, precisely because it's accessible to everyone, not just the lucky few.

I've already addressed your point about governmental change.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#382

Post by delaaxe »

idlewords wrote: post #268
delaaxe wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really are a refugee and suffered inflation then this should begin to change your mind: https://reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/nobj1h/real_mai... Otherwise I don’t know what else to say

If you look at that thread, people are relying on a company called Reserve, that essentially issues its own currency (a 'stablecoin'). This is the part that I don't get—how is it cryptocurrency when you are relying on trusted third parties?

Yeah that’s a good point, even the DAI stable coin which is touted as the most decentralized is actually backed by a lot of USDC

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#383

Post by lamontcg »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #347
titzer wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The early Internet was infinite times more fun. Holy crapballs, yeah it was! I remember when I learned HTML in 1996 and put up one of those blinkety animated GIF homepages on the hosting space given (for free!) by my local dial-up ISP. They had a local chatroom and I spent hours and hours chatting with locals from the same city--even met some of them! I read the hacker's manifesto and about phreaking and all of tha…

The early internet was overrun with this stuff too. Remember Bonzai buddy? Or the ad serving tools that’d claim to pay you for every hour you’re connected to the internet?

I remember Usenet before Eternal September and before Canter and Siegel, when the backbone was NSFnet and before the National Information Infrastructure Act of 1993.

If someone was doing anything commercial over e-mail or usenet you could contact their "sysop" or their upstreams and have them removed.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#384

Post by jedberg »

hervature wrote: post #335
dadoge wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to people in Nigeria, Venezuela and Argentina that have no control over their money. In Venezuela there is absolutely absurd inflation number there: like over 1,000%. Argentina it’s over 30% each year for several years. Bitcoin is a tool against oppressive governments

You should actually talk to people from those countries. The minority of them are doing anything substantial in crypto. Only those fortunate enough to transact with a foreign entity. The others use the much more robust system of bartering.

Or just using black market USD or EUR.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#385

Post by seibelj »

mondoveneziano wrote: post #376
seibelj wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can send unlimited amounts of money, anywhere on earth, for (at most) dollars in a few seconds. I don't need to rely on any government for any reason, and no government can stop me.

The Internet provided solutions to technical problems, regardless of any societal/political considerations. They may have resulted, but as a secondary effect. When theorizing about societal/political benefits, take into account the societal/political problems cryptocurrencies created by inventing a machine that allows converting resources directly into money of miners' digital wallets without regulation. Your sending…

Proof of Stake coins eliminate the electrical cost of mining yet maintain decentralization. ETH2 is live now but not fully in control of the network https://beaconscan.com/

Many other Proof of Stake blockchains like Cosmos have been live and working fine for years.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#387

Post by miles »

mandelken wrote: post #363
kragen wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point (programming work for overseas clients), and I haven't gotten scammed yet. I'm not engaged in money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, or gambling, and only the usual amount of delusion. And I don't even buy illegal drugs! And, yeah, 13 years after the internet's invention was 01982; not only couldn't you get so much as a weather report on…

Thanks for sharing your point of view. What is unclear to me, is how these remittances work in practice. I get that in the US you can exchange USD to Bitcoin with a credit card and then send that to a person in, say, Venezuela (or share the wallet password). But how is it converted back to Venezuelan Bolivar? I can't imagine you buying a pizza with bitcoin in Caracas. Side question, why do you write your years with a…

> why do you write your years with a leading zero? I've never seen that before and it has quite a cognitive strain for me.

Not OP, but I had the same question and did a few seconds of cursory searching to no avail. But rather than cognitive strain, I found it opened up a much larger vista on the perception of time and our seeming place in it. While I am unlikely to adopt it, perhaps the experience would be even broader with a few more zeros tacked on! ;-)

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#388

Post by jfrunyon »

kragen wrote: post #285
idlewords wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with your point hard enough. Really useful nascent technologies all have this pattern—they grow incrementally more interesting and constantly gain applications. Bitcoin followed this pattern for a while. But then at some point it started to regress on that axis. You could no longer buy a pizza with it, you could no longer mine it, and it got too flooded by scammers to use safely. There's nothing to real…

I've been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point (programming work for overseas clients), and I haven't gotten scammed yet. I'm not engaged in money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, or gambling, and only the usual amount of delusion. And I don't even buy illegal drugs! And, yeah, 13 years after the internet's invention was 01982; not only couldn't you get so much as a weather report on…

> I've been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point

How do you turn your Bitcoin into food, housing, utilities, and other necessities?

> And, yeah, 13 years after the internet's invention was 01982

The Internet was not available to virtually anyone in 1982 much less 1969. Nor was the ARPANET of 1969 even remotely similar to the Internet. TCP came about in 1974. IPv4 in 1982.

> So why does Bitcoin have tens of millions of users

It doesn't. It has a lot of speculators, and a handful of users. And no one knows or could possibly know how many there are.

etc.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#389

Post by lamontcg »

skrebbel wrote: post #50

These two resonated with me: > A lot of intelligent observers look at cryptocurrency, see that it makes no sense, and reasonably infer that they must be missing something profound on the technical level. Tech culture has a nice tradition of not deriding new ideas, but we need to break it here and speak out > [non-tech people] don't see the huge silent majority of tech people who know it's a scam. That's on us It is o…

> But yeah he probably knows it's a scam too, what was I thinking.

Doubt it. He's another Libertarian and certainly hates the existing system.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#390

Post by dopidopHN »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #347
titzer wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The early Internet was infinite times more fun. Holy crapballs, yeah it was! I remember when I learned HTML in 1996 and put up one of those blinkety animated GIF homepages on the hosting space given (for free!) by my local dial-up ISP. They had a local chatroom and I spent hours and hours chatting with locals from the same city--even met some of them! I read the hacker's manifesto and about phreaking and all of tha…

The early internet was overrun with this stuff too. Remember Bonzai buddy? Or the ad serving tools that’d claim to pay you for every hour you’re connected to the internet?

They did pay! I was how I was paying for the dial up cost to my parents!
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