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Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

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Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#451

Post by Retric »

keithtom wrote: post #407
Retric wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN seems wildly pro crypto compared to most places. It’s like Tesla which isn’t universally supported, but still gets a lot more coverage than Ford. People do bring up quite reasonable objections like environmental costs, but it stories get a lot of upvotes and suggesting many people are strong supporters.

Re environmental costs, I have yet to hear anyone make an analysis of the environmental cost of the banking system or an equivalent; that is, how much to warm all the offices, the computers and servers, the transportation costs of cars & planes for all the employees. Also, proof of stake will reduce 99% of the environmental cost.

Comparing the banking sector to crypto is wildly optimistic. Crypto is still smaller than just the Gold market both in number of transactions and total stored value of 9.4 trillion. Gold transactions, mining, and storage still produces significantly less CO2 while also being useful in industry.

That’s not meant as an attack, it’s simply a ballpark comparison. For those pro crypto take it a sign of possible future growth.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#452

Post by pjfin123 »

yks wrote: post #422
pjfin123 wrote: post #408

There's Cheap Eth which is an Ethereum fork with cheaper prices: https://cheapeth.org/ .

Yeah, where author hardcoded himself 25m coins [1] and bans everyone who mentions it from the official discord. Currency of the future indeed. [1] https://github.com/cheapETH/go-ethereum/commit/412c38434d8d8...

Didn't know about that. If the point is to just be able to play around with Solidity and smart contracts it doesn't seem like a big deal. The Discord banning sounds sketchy though so maybe not something to use beyond testing.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#453

Post by jdmichal »

joshspankit wrote: post #341
rmah wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see where your tax dollars go now (except for the classified items, but even there you can see the totals). You can get detailed breakdowns of nearly everything, including salaries. For example, you can see every NYC employee salary here https://www.seethroughny.net/payrolls . If you want, you can scroll through the massive list of federal, state, local gov contracts on a variety of websites today. For exampl…

Very solid points. I personally think the engagement part would come instead from "My $5000 in tax went through the system and was eventually spent on a federal initiative I don't agree with" (or since it's all granular: "only $13 of that $5000 went to anything that benefits my community?"). No, I'm not saying that everyone will care, but I think that more people will care.

I live in Florida, so they only non-federal tax I pay is property tax. (Excluding sales taxes, of course.) Every year, I get a full breakdown of exactly what mils go where with the bill. I bet we would have something similar at the federal level by now, except that stupidly we have to do the whole "guess the number I'm think of" game with the IRS instead of them sending a bill.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#455

Post by megameter »

jordanmarshall wrote: post #439
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #375

The Hacker News community has long been anti-crypto, and as someone deeply involved in the space, these long threads of complaints and diatribes are difficult to handle. Everyone is missing so much context. Ethereum gas prices are astronomical because there's unprecedented demand to use the network: NFT art and collectibles are exploding (NBA TopShot, Foundation, SuperRare, Rarible, OpenSea, etc.) at the same time De…

Help me understand the appeal of NFT art. I love digital art, but I don't see the appeal of spending money to get the token certifying you as the owner. The image/work is still out there and can be viewed/downloaded by other people. You don't even control it, unless the artist agrees to send you all of the files and delete them on his or her system. Your name doesn't even appear next to the piece when people look at…

NFTs are not easy to understand, but sit within the intersection of these two questions:

1. What is the value of art?

2. What is the value of money?

When we look for analogues, they're of the industrial era, things about intellectual property, branding, merchandise etc. This is a way of directly speculating on an idea. Is it a good idea? If so, then other people will want it, right? Then, the token must have value. There are no gatekeepers or enforcers to say otherwise.

We have barely begun to grasp what that means.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#456

Post by shuckles »

bookmarkable wrote: post #443
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #56

Building something useful on something that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument always rubbed me the wrong way. The whole crypto scene is just about making quick dough with a technology, that for some reason remains hyped through and wrapped in mysticism. Face it, there is no sexy killer app for the masses. Wait. There is one: Crypto trading to... make quick dough. And the cryptonerd…

This is really short sighted thinking. The web had no "killer app" in the first 10+ years. It was obscure technology with thousands of naysayers laughing at us "web nerds" because we thought it would change everything. Cryptocurrency is very young. While its hard to say if BTC or ETH or something yet to be invented will be part of the digital money future, it is absolutely reasonable to expect this technology will ha…

Bloomberg and Wired went online 4 years after the invention of the World Wide Web. In the first ten years, Amazon, eBay, Google, and PayPal were all founded. Technology adoption curves have only gotten steeper since then (e.g. iPhone/Android was basically the dominant consumer computing platform 10 years after its introduction).

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#457

Post by Karunamon »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #435
keithtom wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re environmental costs, I have yet to hear anyone make an analysis of the environmental cost of the banking system or an equivalent; that is, how much to warm all the offices, the computers and servers, the transportation costs of cars & planes for all the employees. Also, proof of stake will reduce 99% of the environmental cost.

The banking system _exists_. It's what powers all our daily transactions. It's what has been tried and tested for hundreds of years, and got regulated. Even if Ethereum or coin-of-the-week takes off, this existing banking system will not go away. What you're doing is a well known crypto-lover tactic to distract from the fact that cryptocurrencies are an ecological catastrophe. Meanwhile, we're burning coal to produce…

I strongly disagree with this loaded characterization of mining as "waste". Converting power into value is the opposite of waste, and that's not even addressing the network security that it provides. Mining provides useful work. If you don't like cryptocurrency, fine, but don't pretend that no value is being created or that no purpose exists.

Waste would be an incandescent bulb that throws away the majority of its energy generating heat that isn't used for any purpose.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#458

Post by moron4hire »

jordanmarshall wrote: post #439
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #375

The Hacker News community has long been anti-crypto, and as someone deeply involved in the space, these long threads of complaints and diatribes are difficult to handle. Everyone is missing so much context. Ethereum gas prices are astronomical because there's unprecedented demand to use the network: NFT art and collectibles are exploding (NBA TopShot, Foundation, SuperRare, Rarible, OpenSea, etc.) at the same time De…

Help me understand the appeal of NFT art. I love digital art, but I don't see the appeal of spending money to get the token certifying you as the owner. The image/work is still out there and can be viewed/downloaded by other people. You don't even control it, unless the artist agrees to send you all of the files and delete them on his or her system. Your name doesn't even appear next to the piece when people look at…

NFT art seems like the dumbest/faddiest/scammiest idea to come out of the crypto sure yet, and not just because the art market is super faddy and maybe scammy already.

I know artists that think this is going to be their ticket. But it was never the lack of crypto that kept them from making money. It was the lack of any consumer value to their art.

There are two ways to make money as an artist: you either make a few, huge pieces that sell to very rich people (making your yearly bank on one or two pieces), or you make a huge number of easily reproduceable pieces that sell to the general populace. The difficulty in both is not the creation of the pieces. It's the marketing and sales pipeline. Both rely on selling a purchaser a narrative on what the art will mean to them. Exclusivity in the former, worldliness in the latter.

If you can't crack that marketing problem, you're going to ask equally zero pieces as NFT than as any other medium. And if you can crack that marketing problem, selling it as NFT does nothing for you as the artist.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#459

Post by rmah »

gh55 wrote: post #414
rmah wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central banks do not issue bonds. What they've been doing is buying bonds issued by national governments. Usually on the public markets, not directly. Where do they get the money to buy the bonds? Why they just magically create it. That's their job. Central banks do not care, per se, if they have to "pay incredible amounts of interest to the banks" since they literally create (and destroy) money. Central banks do not…

Thanks, your understanding is better than mine. Its the national governments who would have to pay the incredible amounts of interest, and may fund that by selling the gold they own ( https://www.usfunds.com/investor-library/frank-talk-a-ceo-bl... ). Interested to hear whether you think gold will increase or decrease its value, over the next years.

Rising interest rates will only make new debt more expensive for governments. Existing debt will actually become cheaper as rates rise. If rates rise high enough, they could actually call (buy back) the bonds early for less than face value. This is because most government debt is fixed rate.

To use an example, you issue a 10 year bond with a face value of $100 with a 1.00% coupon (i.e. you need to pay $1/yr for 10 years and then $100 at maturity after 10 years). Fast forward 5 years -- rates have risen for similar risk debt rise to 5.00%. You've paid out $5 so far in coupons... but that bond (now 5 years to maturity) will cost $84 on the open market. So you simply buy it back for $84. That means you spent $84 + $5 = $89 for $100. Woohoo!

One financial strategy for governments would be to 1) issue excessive debt when rates are very low, 2) don't spend all the money, 3) buy back some of the debt when rates go up for less than you issued it, thus further lowering the cost of debt for the portion you did spend. Sadly, most governments have trouble with step #2.

As for gold, I have no idea. Historically, gold was an inflation hedge (i.e. it's price rose with inflation). But so are a lot of other things. At this point, there's nothing special about gold except that it stays shiny forever.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#460

Post by lotsofpulp »

duckfang wrote: post #345
lotsofpulp wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And the only reason why it's not more massively used is because of the US's adherence that it's "terrorism". I don’t think so. A system with clear record keeping, auditable by third parties, and subject to the judiciary is far better than below: > Trust and extensive use of connections are the components that distinguish it from other remittance systems. Hawaladar networks are often based on membership in the same f…

> I don’t think so. A system with clear record keeping, auditable by third parties, and subject to the judiciary is far better than below: And we've learned that record-keeping has its own very strong negative side. It alone can establish ties between people, and serve to eliminate privacy all in the names of "transparency". (And I can hear it now too - "Why want privacy if you have done nothing wrong?"). I think we'…

>And we've learned that record-keeping has its own very strong negative side. It alone can establish ties between people, and serve to eliminate privacy all in the names of "transparency".

Hawala people can establish ties too, unless they are somehow incorruptible. And electronic money transfer systems and SWIFT and whatnot aren't perfect, but my contention is they are more preferable to almost all people than Hawala. I am aware of the corruption with regards to HSBC, but I can't agree with

>billions of $ transferred away from citizens with usurious fines, overleveraging finance side affecting savings/loan

Keeping funds secure and moving money has never been so easy and so cheap for almost all people. Yes, you can get screwed if the government deems you a terrorist, and a more distributed system like Hawala might be more resilient to that kind of attack, but there's other costs to Hawala that the current system doesn't have.

>Point being, is that the Hawala is the last millenium's Bitcoin.. And when compared to BTC or ETH now, is still strictly better. (And we haven't discussed the barrier to entry, wasted electrical power, e-waste, etc.)

I can't comment on this since I don't know enough about BTC or ETH or Hawala.

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