51–60 of 210 posts
"A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable", he says, as if its a certainty. I hate energy wasting crypto's and delusional moonboys, shitcoins and NFT's just about as much as anyone else, but saying things like this is just dumb...
Why should others decide if I can run useless hashing functions on my computer? Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible. Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. The real enablers of ransomware are the countries that shelter the R10 groups, raking in millions. There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian languag…
> Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. This meme really needs to die. It's driving me more and more insane every time I read it. Ransomware may have existed previously but it was nowhere nearly as prevalent before cryptocurrencies came around. It is not a mere coincidence of the cosmos that almost every single darn time (I think literally 98% of the time, a…
Two other reasons can explain the increase in ransomware, that merely correlate with the rise of cryptocurrencies:
1) The innovation of encrypting files hadn't occurred to ransomware operators yet.
2) The value of computer systems, and data, itself increased. Massively increasing the likelihood of victims paying the ransom.
Before crypto currencies 'FBI scareware', which held your computer ransom by disabling your standard UI, simply asked you fork over the cash via Western Union.
This increases the friction for consumers, but if the colonial pipeline was ransomed in the same way, and the ransom only payable over WU, then they would have done that instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We need to ban all proof-of-work and generally all resource intensive cryptocurrencies.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe we should in general ban things that are a certain amount less energy efficient (say, 5x more wasteful) than the best technology we've achieved for a similar purpose so far. And progressively tax anything that's moderately more wasteful (say, 2x-5x). It's bad enough that we have cars on roads that are twice as wasteful as they could be, let alone a transaction processing…
The HN headline is a bit alarmist. The headline I see is "CPB director: The Netherlands must ban bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies". This is the opinion of the CPB director in a letter, so it's not binding in any way. > A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable, he says. That is why the Netherlands must intervene. Should the government be banning any speculative investment that appears to be in a bubble?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck banning internet access. Even if you ban crypto exchanges and money transfers to them, you cannot ban a single entity called Bitcoin Co, nor you can ban individuals from possessing it. You could potentially ban crypto miners from using the electrical energy, but that doesn't ban Bitcoin either. Any other ideas? :)
If you can't exchange your crypto currency against fiat it will become worthless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe we should in general ban things that are a certain amount less energy efficient (say, 5x more wasteful) than the best technology we've achieved for a similar purpose so far. And progressively tax anything that's moderately more wasteful (say, 2x-5x). It's bad enough that we have cars on roads that are twice as wasteful as they could be, let alone a transaction processing…
A million? Can you back this up somehow? Did you take in account the infrastructure and offices of our existing "technology"?
The reason we have to go to the trouble of making cryptocurrencies is that busybodies like this guy are endlessly trying to reduce our freedom. They're not trying to look out for people; they're trying to protect their ability to print money and steal. In crypto parlance, they want to remain the VIPs that have centralized special privileged access to create tokens, and force usage thereof. But now we have the technol…
Just to be clear, by "ability to print money and steal" you mean having a central bank and levying taxes? You're making a moral argument against the idea of government controlled currency in general, yes? Can you clarify why you think controlled currencies are morally bad and how cryptocurrencies are better? I'd love to hear a less abstract argument than "more freedom". EDIT: I assume downvotes mean there are people…
These are all massive systemic problems, and the -way- central banking is now organized is the problem. Could states organize this without these problems? sure; "gah states are unfreedom" is not the problem here, the capture of states by global corporate capitalism is. Will states change? no, of course not, not without a massive systemic crash or revolution. Do we need bitcoin to save this? strictly no, but bitcoiners see bitcoin as a sneaky trojan horse to destabilize this system, and -one- hope to overcome this massively cancerous state of affairs, for a host of reasons beyond mere dreaming that would double this already long comment in size. All I'm saying s: like everything, this is much, much more complicated than "bitcoin volatile" or "bitcoin energy bad".
Everyone needs to ban Bitcoin... and likely other cryptocurrencies. Not only are they by far the biggest enablers of ransomware (which we're supposedly taking seriously now), but Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. [1] Bitcoin already consumes 0.55% of energy produced globally. [2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 [2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-a…
The reason we have to go to the trouble of making cryptocurrencies is that busybodies like this guy are endlessly trying to reduce our freedom. They're not trying to look out for people; they're trying to protect their ability to print money and steal. In crypto parlance, they want to remain the VIPs that have centralized special privileged access to create tokens, and force usage thereof. But now we have the technol…