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On anti-crypto toxicity

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Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#681

Post by pjc50 »

reedjosh wrote: post #548
pjc50 wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that the value of my bank account has been far less relevant than (a) my salary and (b) my mortgage. And I suppose my pension, but since that's a government tax exempt deferred income mechanism it's not "mine" in quite the same way. It always feels strange talking to people for whom the hoard of cash is the important bit. For many people it would be far more useful to stabilize house prices - which are affecte…

I think this is because the hoard of cash is obviously useless today due to inflationary pressures. Today you get a loan (if you can) to start a business. It used to be you saved to start a business. But today savings is literally penalized. This debt based system makes you depend upon it. I wouldn't need a home loan (or at least not such a large one) if the government didn't subsidize loans and cause inflation.

> used to be

When?

While we've just hit an 8% inflation spike that may not persist, the past 20 or so years have been uniquely low inflation.

Please describe how loans are "subsidized", other than various countries' first-time-buyer schemes? Is your explanation US-specific?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#682

Post by loup-vaillant »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #675
loup-vaillant wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so redistributive pension systems are pyramid schemes… I’ll just note that this is a highly debatable interpretation of such systems. Now if we think about it for a moment: social security need money for 3 major things: unemployment, retirement, and health care. At any given point in time, you can divide the population in 2 categories: those who are currently working, and those who are not. And those who are curr…

> So okay, I understand the pyramid analogy there. There’s a problem though: the boomers will die. Well, after the boomers have died, Generation X and the Millenials will demand their retirement package. The population age distribution will not become a pyramid with the next generations. > just raise contributions a little bit A little bit. Lol. In Germany the contributions are quite unpopular, too (and rightly so wi…

> No. You have a weird notion of how capital markets work

My point is, you can't eat money. You can only exchange money for food. You can't heat your home with money. You can only pay for energy. You can't drive with money… well you get the idea.

So you're saving now so you can retire later. From an accounting perspective, sure, you increase a number there now, so you can decrease it later. What you cannot do is store actual food for several decades, accumulate enough energy for several decades, or store all the material you'll need several decades from now.

What you'll eat 20-30 years from now will not be taken from the current economy, it will be taken from the economy we'll have 20-30 years in the future. If there's no food there you will not eat, and that's the end of it. Maybe you'll have your money all right, but food will just have become too expensive for you to buy enough of it. (Now I talk at the individual level, but this is obviously a scale thing: some people will eat all right, just not everyone.)

Hence my argument that even capital markets ultimately are a form of redistribution. Because at some point, either the young work so the old can enjoy retirement, or we leave the old to fend for themselves. Or something between the two ends of that spectrum.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#683

Post by bertil »

ea550ff70a wrote: post #603
bertil wrote: post #25

The largest and easiest argument against crypto is the environmental impact. It’s completely ignored in that piece.

Environmental impact is only an issue if the energy source is dirty (which is becoming less of an issue as cost for renewables goes down and green energy mix in the grid increases) and or if you see no value in it. I agree with the former but at the same time I think the issue is not crypto in specific but ANYTHING whose energy source is dirty. The latter is obvi subjective and at the end of the day irrelevant as, li…

You are confusing speculative investment and adoption.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#684

Post by ulzeraj »

sofixa wrote: post #680
ulzeraj wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what I’ve wrote. I’ve wrote about exporting goods and ideas to their _people_ not buying gas from their government.

And do you think the people didn't get ideas, services and stuff imported? They had McDonalds, IKEA, YouTube, iPhones, Netflix, etc.

And they don't have it anymore. Those people who _actually_ protested and got beaten and arrested by _real_ tyrannical governments are being told by their government "see I told you they hate us" while also being criticized for "not doing enough" by people like you who probably never experienced what is to live outside of the privileged 13% humans who are born in stable democracies.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#685

Post by rglullis »

dmitriid wrote: post #679
rglullis wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Goalposts: shifted. Not at all. It was you and OP who asked for some kind of "killer app" from web3 as a way to justify its existence. My response is to say that this is an absurd ask. Not only is absurd, it already exists, you just prefer to ignore it. I may agree that Bitcoin as a currency is a failed experiment, there is no denying that the possibility of sending value across borders is the killer app already. "…

> Not at all. It was you and OP who asked for some kind of "killer app" from web3. My response is to say that this is an absurd ask. No. Your response is literally "you wouldn't ask Unix people to create VisiCalc instead of compilers", but they did, to which you responded "but it isn't free". > it already exists, you just prefer to ignore it. I may agree that Bitcoin as a currency is a failed experiment, there is no…

No post body was provided.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#686

Post by Quindecillion »

the_only_law wrote: post #249
Quindecillion wrote: post #122

It's unfortunate that Bitcoin has become so mired in partisan politics. For me its purpose is simple. If my money is a representation of my time and effort, why should I accept the central banks' inflation "target" of even 2%, due to money printing? I don't see why anyone should be okay with that, particularly given that central banks rarely meet that target for long and more often than not overshoot by a significant…

> Why is that acceptable to people? Because I can’t make 99% of my transactions with Bitcoin. Sure there’s a handful of vendors online that take BTC and a BTC ATM in the gas station in the shady part of town, but for majority of pitches, money is probably going to have to be converted to USD and go through a bank.

I can store the majority of my wealth in Bitcoin over the long term and know that my share of the total supply won't be significantly diluted, because it's disinflationary with a max supply hard cap.

This is not possible with fiat. You can't have any confidence how much fiat will be produced by central banks at the press of a button. Millions? Billions? Trillions? Who knows...

Whenever I need liquid cash to buy things I can quickly and easily convert to fiat at anytime, and gain the benefit of price appreciation over the long term (+4 years).

The only problem with that at the moment is capital gains tax, but I believe that will be addressed eventually.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#687

Post by regisg »

oliwarner wrote: post #572
rvz wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you are downvoted since here on HN, a bad egg soils the bunch. The logic with them is as follows with an example of a fallacy with cars and the environment: 'The majority of cars worldwide are not electric. They are all petrol and diesel cars. That means that ALL cars are bad for the environment and that will not change and thus should be all banned.' Not all cryptocurrency projects are scams, just like…

> I'll tell you that both extremes are incorrect. Okay, I'll bite. What's incorrect at the anti extreme? In other words, what crypto-currency isn't a) burning down our planet and b) disproportionately rewarding early adopters?

Cardano : https://twitter.com/ctrl_alt_joe/status/1478206223422038018/...

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#688

Post by Kbelicius »

trutannus wrote: post #264
giaour wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> saying crypto is bad because you can "just pass a law" I think you're misconstruing the original suggestion, which was that a legal solution to the problem of the unbanked would be viable. You could pass legislation mandating that banks turn no one away, you could establish a publicly run bank of last resort, etc. I believe those measures would be "easier" solutions to the problem than replacing the entire financia…

Not suggesting we replace the banking, just pointing out how this path you suggest is still not going to be an easy fix. There's no easy fix. Again, not advocating for crypto as a solution. Just asking people to consider more deeply the issues of saying "use the government to solve it!".

GP said "easier", not "easy". Number of people that display an inability to read a few sentences and parse them correctly is frightening.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#689

Post by ShamelessC »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #592
peterth3 wrote: post #586

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…

There are upgradeable smart contracts. https://docs.openzeppelin.com/upgrades-plugins/1.x/writing-u... There is also the concept of a standard upgradeable proxy contract. https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1822#motivation This is an area in which someone could build useful tools and libraries to facilitate this need even more.

If it is upgradeable and only one party has to agree to it, could be ripe for abuse.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#690

Post by hypertele-Xii »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #483
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing politicians to get rich by leveraging their positions is still better than the alternative. What's the alternative, by the way? What do you suggest we replace democracy with?

You can have democracy with less corruption. There is no reason why politicians should be in politics for the money.

So... how? You speak as if you have solved corruption. Let's hear it.
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