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On anti-crypto toxicity

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Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#581

Post by throwaway82652 »

reedjosh wrote: post #364
gwbas1c wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree, and I must add: Those are all political problems. Technology does not solve political problems. Politics solves political problems. All cryptocurrency does is obfuscate the politics behind its monetary system. As flawed as our monetary system is, the politics behind it are visible and under control of a government. In my country, my government is elected, and I'm an active and informed voter. Thus, I thin…

Politically working in sound money (no printer go brrrr) is governmentally forbidden. Bitcoin subverted the corrupt political process and has brought that choice back.

No it didn't. Cryptocurrency is not "sound money" in any way because it's not backed by anything, in the case of proof-of-work coins it's only "backed" by random people solving random pointless math puzzles. Proof-of-stake is even worse because that's only backed by how much money people have already invested into the system.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#582

Post by danaris »

jack_pp wrote: post #426
danaris wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not what anyone's doing, or what anyone's going to do, with cryptocurrency. Even if we assume (which is definitely not a safe assumption) that burning all that oil in the first place to mine the coins produces less carbon than the overall reduction caused by the increase in demand for solar panels and subsequent increase in their production and deployment (because just buying solar panels that were already…

I never stated that miners are doing this, only that crypto mining could enable this new opportunity that never existed before it. I did not check this but Michael Saylor claims that over 40% of mining is done using renewable energy. Considering solar power by itself is a good investment last time I checked ( around 13% ROI depending on your local energy price) then that number will probably increase as it just makes…

"Cryptocurrency miners could, in theory, buy massive amounts of solar panels with the money they make by mining" is not in any meaningful way a refutation of the criticism that cryptocurrency actually, right now, in the real world, uses an absurd amount of energy and contributes significantly to the greenhouse gases warming our planet.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#583

Post by bee_rider »

mrguyorama wrote: post #565
bee_rider wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of art is pretty dumb, I don't advocate against it because who has time to go advocate against dumb, pointless things? Just avoid it. I'm not into art, not into NFTs, but while bumbling around in the world I've encountered enough genuinely beautiful art that I don't think the field as a whole is a joke. This isn't the case for NFTs. On the other hand, NFTs are pretty new. Maybe someone will make a museum of NFTs…

You literally can't make a museum of NFTs because the jpeg they point to is actually distinct from the NFT itself. A museum of NFTs would just be a giant list of hashes

I dunno. My main point was that I haven't stumbled across many interesting NFTs, but I wanted to at least leave the possibility that the medium just hasn't matured enough to create art that us non-NFT-hobbyist people would find interesting.

I'm not sure how one would curate an NFT museum, I imagine you'd want to display the jpeg and then select for pieces that play with the uniqueness guarantee somehow.

I haven't the foggiest clue how that would work, it if it is even possible, or what it would look like. But people have only been doing them for a couple years. If we made a museum that sampled the NFT population as selectively as an art museum samples the overall art population, that NFT museum would have approximately zero entries, right?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#584

Post by MrMan »

miohtama wrote: post #342
malthaus wrote: post #183

Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How…

Cryptocurrencies might not answer to all of these questions. However there is one question where it gives an answer. It is how to create more efficient financial system. And part of this answer might lead to rebalancing some of distribution of the wealth, mostly by reducing operating costs and profit margins of the current Wall St and other local oligopolic financial institutions. Blockchains do create fundamental va…

as a trader I know defi is not more cost-effective. the fact that most of the alpha in defi is in arbitrage tells the whole story.

the range of possible exploits on centralized equities and futures exchanges is very limited. HFT works, and works well, to drive down costs for retail and institutional traders.

there is no happy path in defi which results in narrower spreads, and less risk of block re-orgs, or other exploits which either drive up costs or massively undermine the entire ecosystem.

once again, trust is a lower energy state which pays for itself. this trustless, decentralized mania only serves a tiny subset of early entrants, arbitrageurs, and VCs. it does not result in a better market system by any way of measuring that I can see.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#585

Post by MrMan »

crypthrowaway1 wrote: post #523
HWR_14 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see the difference between what I said and "Bitcoiners hate NFTs mostly because they give the whole space a bad rap." Anyway, you have your choice of what money to use. I prefer USD and Euro myself. And I really still don't understand any use case for someone in a first world country to use crypto. I grant that 3rd world countries without banking systems may, may need it, but I don't know why we just wouldn…

> And I really still don't understand any use case for someone in a first world country to use crypto. Hi. Here is a use case you can carry on to future discussions. There is a flourishing scene of dark net markets where people can purchase drugs using cryptocurrency. Merchants have reviews, products have reviews, and the whole process is much safer, secure, and convenient than meeting a drug dealer in real life with…

legalization works even better and doesn't destroy society with drug wars and cartel violence

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#586

Post by peterth3 »

The other night I watched the Crypto Startup School video series by a16z on YouTube [0]. It includes presentations from smart people saying that blockchain/ethereum is the computing platform of the future.

One issue with ETH/smart-contracts that is not addressed in the series is how to ship patches to a smart contract. Let’s say there’s a vulnerability in my contract that accidentally leaks ETH.

How do I ship a patch to fix the contract? Could my buggy contract be taken advantage of indefinitely? Maybe I could move all my ETH to a new wallet and leave the bad contract? How is this problem handled today?

[0] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK9Lwn4_TfLS3I9huJjd-k_Fe...

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#587

Post by notch656a »

Traster wrote: post #468
smeea wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC was the only way I was able to pay for hosting/domain for my non-commercial pet-project (~1,5 years of almost daily after hours development) after sanctions raised against the country I live in. This is my anecdotal experience (and no, I don't invest in crypto), but that's enough for me to not consider cryptocurrencies "just scum". P.S. Also I pay for VPN with it, because this is also the only way at the moment,…

I'd be interested to hear who you bought the hosting from, I'm sure the US government would also like to hear who has been helping you evade sanctions. Sanctions are there for a reason.

>Sanctions are there for a reason.

> [] are there for a reason

Slaves are there for a reason. Firing squads are there for a reason. MS-13 is collecting a 'tax' on the local business persons for a reason.

There for a reason.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#588

Post by notch656a »

Spivak wrote: post #508
Traster wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to hear who you bought the hosting from, I'm sure the US government would also like to hear who has been helping you evade sanctions. Sanctions are there for a reason.

Yeah, "crypto is great because it allowed me and my co conspirators to do illegal things" isn't gonna be the most persuasive to governments or above-board businesses -- love the rebellious spirit though.

It's doubtful seeking these hosting services were illegal in his own country. It's also doubtful the host has performed a crime if they had no idea the purchaser was sanctioned. It's questionable a law was even broken, as in many jurisdiction there is an element of 'mens rea' necessary.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#589

Post by tablespoon »

______-_-______ wrote: post #490
tablespoon wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto has addressed real problems for Ukraine's military. >> “In a situation like this, where the national bank is not fully operating, crypto is helping to perform fast transfers, to make it very quick and get results almost immediately,” >> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/technology/bitcoin-ukrain... > Is this BS and marketing? Here are the next two paragraphs after your quote: > But Mr. Bornyakov [Ukraine’s…

You're moving the goalposts. I responded to: > But cryptocurrency doesn't address any real problems. Nobody was comparing the market share of different forms of currency or anything like that. We can discuss the viable rate of market share growth for new forms of currency some other time. This is a high ranking government official saying that bitcoin is helping solve a real problem. Can you at least acknowledge that…

> But cryptocurrency doesn't address any real problems.

...that aren't better addressed by other, existing technologies. There might be some weird corner cases where it makes sense, but that's not anywhere close to the "future of money" hype.

> This is a high ranking government official saying that bitcoin is helping solve a real problem. Can you at least acknowledge that maybe he's telling the truth? Or when the next bitcoin thread rolls around will you just repeat the same tired old complaint about no use cases?

Sure he's telling the truth. I'm not saying cryptocurrency can't be used to solve problems, what I'm saying it's not anything special as a solution and is often a pretty bad one.

If I add some horse-drawn carriages to my fleet of trucks, because I'm so desperate to haul the absolute largest quantity of something that I can that I'll do anything, that doesn't mean horses are the future of transport or are even a good transportation solution in the modern world.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#590

Post by Nevermark »

atchoo wrote: post #533
Nevermark wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you distinguishing equality & inequity? As I understand it, “equality” in a society refers to people’s equal access and treatment in some aspect of society (health, education, financial, legal, …) Whereas “inequity” in a society refers to different outcomes for people (billionaires vs the indebted unemployed, for instance). Outside of scams and fraudulent or deceptive launches, crypto seems to be very equality su…

Inequality leads to inequity. Inequity leads to inequality. For wealth inequality the hair-splitting difference between equity and equality is a matter of the time frame you are looking at. As for Crypto gains being an equal opportunity - no, not in the least - access to capital to invest in crypto schemes is not equal. Even if everyone had equal access to capital, we would still be talking about the equality of rest…

Some inequity is from chance, but of significant inequity comes from many other reasons

People pursue very different paths in life. People dedicate themselves to the paths they do take with varying degrees of effort, thought, etc.

Inequity is going to always be the result. Enforced equity has (so far) simply enabled enforcers to create inequity in there favor.

I think it is a mistake to treat all inequity as “the” problem. Because it isn’t, and because that distracts from solving problems that can be solved. (To a higher degree.)

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