Cryptocurrency is the worst form of currency, except for all the others.
Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
41–50 of 260 posts
Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now do the Federal Reserve. 1955 Tappan Zee bridge: $55 million. 2013 Tappan Zee bridge: $4 billion for basically the same bridge. Due in part to the destruction of the USD caused by the Fed.
“Basically the same bridge” is such a hilarious oversimplification that it makes your blame of the Federal Reserve even more amusing. No, absolutely no improvements in engineering, materials, process, or design in sixty years. No added overhead for environmental studies and other regulations. It’s all the Fed. Hacker News discussing economics is like arguing geopolitics with someone on peyote.
The thing is that "improvements in engineering, materials, process, or design" should make it cheaper, not more expensive. That's how it works in other industries.
Although I don't think it's fair to put all the blame on the Fed. The same thing has happened in the UK and many other places.
Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason the dollar is a currency is because of the existence of a force (in this case, the Fed) that can tamp down speculation and deflation. Cryptocurrency doesn't have this, and that is its central failing.
What's inherently bad about deflation? It's happened routinely throughout most of history until recently. Speculation is a good thing, it's a form of entrepreneurship. Example of historic deflation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Deflation
Deflation causes a positive feedback loop of reducing trade. If it's better to hoard currency so you can buy 10% more things next year, everyone starts hoarding currency and reducing trade, leading to suppliers dropping prices to encourage purchases, leading to further deflation, and so on. Trade grinds to a halt as everyone holds currency in anticipation of buying more later.
Stake: 0.05 BTC, 1.2 ETH
Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. Cryptocurrencies just don't. It's all smoke and mirrors, where everything would be better without the blockchain. Without irreversibility. Without everything about it. There are whole books about how terrible and useless it is. And please do what the article said: How much of your own money is dependent on you selling the lie of cryptocurrency or smart c…
> But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. This is so true: cars have massive externalities but the 20th century was spend rebuilding the world around them because they were useful. You saw that immediately and the true costs only became more apparent years later. Cryptocurrency is as if Robert Moses had redesigned NYC around pet rock warehousing on the theory that someone would later find a us…
Even if the costs had been obvious from day one, unlike cryptocurrencies they also had value.
Many things do. Cryptocurrencies don't.
Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
#45Cryptocurrency is not an abject disaster. Drew is right that proof of work mining is expensive and has serious negative externalities. Drew is also right that cryptocurrency, via its growth, hype, and decentralized and self-sovereign nature, is often an ideal vehicle for certain kinds of criminal activity, including pump-and-dump fraud or ransomware. Drew is right (perhaps indirectly) that many or most well-meaning c…
What are the useful things that are being built on Ethereum?
The PDF you linked was high level and didn't really provide any specific applications.
Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
#46It's in it's infancy. In two decades we will know what it means to us as mankind. Cars were also dangerous, unregulated, expensive and excessively polluting. It got a lot better on all these points, and not all due to the cars: some of it was a mind shift that mankind had to make. Same will hold true for cryptocurrency.
Regulated, cheap, mostly environmentally friendly currencies exist, they're called USD, EUR, etc.
A lot of people are not comfortable with the fact that a secretive club of bankers can produce more of these at will, and give them to who they like. The moral hazard here is off the charts, and it's too much to expect that they won't keep producing more and more until it's worthless as has happened to every fiat currency in history. See the current prices of stocks, bonds, real estate, and education for examples, and yes even the current crypto market.
Crypto may not be the answer, personally I'm sure Bitcoin is not. But the problem is real.
Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
#47Cryptocurrency is not an abject disaster. Drew is right that proof of work mining is expensive and has serious negative externalities. Drew is also right that cryptocurrency, via its growth, hype, and decentralized and self-sovereign nature, is often an ideal vehicle for certain kinds of criminal activity, including pump-and-dump fraud or ransomware. Drew is right (perhaps indirectly) that many or most well-meaning c…
I can't imagine why you're being downvoted, for a well-balanced, educative post with full disclosure. No wait, I can - and it sucks.
Here I thought it was from portraying Ethereum as solving the problems with Bitcoin but hand waving past the part where that’s remained vaporware for years and making the same kind of unspecified claims about innovative useful things Bitcoin salespeople have been making for the last decade. It should be easy to point to something real if it is that different.
Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
#48I think there is a place for crypto, and I say that begrudgingly, ‘cuz ego, since I’ve been calling it all Tulips since a Bitcoin was $8.
The biggest reason why Bitcoin works, and other established coins work, is because of demand from the developing world. If you don’t have reliable banks or governments then Cryptos are at least as good or better than your local banks because even if it collapses you can still access it. For a lot of countries with unstable governments and banking system this is the differentiator. Bitcoin will never be a “currency” but a long-term “store of value” seems quite likely.
It’s pretty clear to me now, long term, Musk knows/thinks that the energy used by the coins’ networks will be free from renewable sources.
I don’t think cryptocurrency is an abject disaster. I think it’s something with a lot of potential to do good and a lot of potential to do bad. I can agree we’re just gonna have to wait to see...
Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
#49This is really a complaint against Proof of Work based consensus protocols. "Cryptocurrency" is also kind of a dumb term. Everyone seems to still think this is about creating new currencies. Really we are talking about tokens that represent some component of a system . Yes that is general because the base for experimentation with tokens is absurdly vast. God we need to move beyond thinking about Bitcoin! Really this…
> This is really a complaint against Proof of Work based consensus protocols.
I wouldn't say so. The multi-level marketing ponzi scheme things would still be present.
> "Cryptocurrency" is also kind of a dumb term.
Yes, but "crypto" means something else.
> Everyone seems to still think this is about creating new currencies.
It's not. It's about greed and creating money for yourself. Currencies are just more direct.
Everything else is just either incidental, or propaganda.
Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster
#50> For my part, I held LOL ouch. Selling prior to 2016 must sting. It makes sense that somebody who made this mistake would be bitter.
This guys take of:
> It has failed to be a useful currency, invented a new class of internet abuse, further enriched the rich, wasted staggering amounts of electricity, hastened climate change, ruined hundreds of otherwise promising projects, provided a climate for hundreds of scams to flourish, created shortages and price hikes for consumer hardware, and injected perverse incentives into technology everywhere.
is so bad and off the mark and missing the reality that is it even worth a well-thought reply? This reminds me of people who would shit on the Internet in the 90's because of porn and scams and this and that. The Internet had and will always have negative components but it's worth fighting for because of all the good. Crypto and decentralization is exactly the same way and in many ways even more important.