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It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

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Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#751

Post by kragen »

NamTaf wrote: post #630
viraptor wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT, but how come you use 01982 rather than 1982? Is that a personal / subculture / locale thing?

It’s the long date concept, promoted by the Long Now foundation [1] which promotes long-term thinking and gives a nod to this by writing years in 5-digit format. The irony with the GP’s post is that I can’t see using Bitcoin, with its current incredibly-high power usage and associated environmental destruction, as long-term thinking in any way, shape or form. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation

Bitcoin doesn't have associated environmental destruction right now that I know of. I assume you're referring to its energy consumption, but at the moment it's a subsidy to renewable energy, because nuclear energy and fossil fuels (except for flare gas) are too expensive to compete with super-cheap wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and photovoltaic energy.

https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...

Now, at some point in the future, Bitcoin might become an environmental problem; the cheapest ways to get energy have been environmentally destructive in the past, and they may be so again. Maybe in 50 years we'll have to campaign against Bitcoin miners who want to convert the mass of Jupiter into energy with their fusion reactors or black-hole clusters. But right now the only places that Bitcoin is causing environmental damage are places where some government has unwisely subsidized fossil-fuel consumption, and Bitcoin itself is what puts an end to those subsidies.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#752

Post by defterGoose »

fleddr wrote: post #264

I could waste a huge amount of time refuting the author's points, but will make it more of a meta comment. Crypto is vast, complex, and inherently not suitable for binary thinking. I've studied the space for months and have come to the conclusion that crypto is two-sided in almost every aspect. Many/most coins are speculative, which you can associate with words like "greed" and "casino". Yet also provide wealth savin…

Who is "locked out" of the traditional system? The stock market seems easier to get into than ever. I always hear this as a dig of the existing structures but its starting to sound just like the other pro-crypto memes out there.

Edit: No refutation? Just downvotes? Ok then.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#753

Post by kragen »

marcusae313 wrote: post #655
kragen wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been in Venezuela since 02006 so I don't know how people there cash out of Bitcoin. I'm guessing nobody has a clear view of the whole system, since being transparent to Maduro's thugs is not in the interest of any of the participants. If I had to guess, I'd guess that Venezuelans who are fleeing the country sell their dollars for Bitcoin, and Venezuelans whose family is abroad buy them. One thing I do know…

Thousands of PoS terminals in the country. https://news.bitcoin.com/venezuelans-can-now-use-bitcoin-to-...

Are you in Venezuela? I notice that that article is about something that was expected to happen, not a report on things that actually have happened... what's the story on the ground?

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#754

Post by srcreigh »

22c wrote: post #617
knorker wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always so convenient that cryptocurrency/smart contract proponents "can't be bothered" to give actual arguments. Your comment here is a poster child of "I don't have time to explain, so please take these baseless assertions that you are wrong. Sorry I have to go now, for unrelated reasons". It's a cliche at this point.

>give actual arguments I'd say the reason is that many people have already made their mind up and no amount of "actual arguments" will convince them otherwise, but sure, here are some examples of things enabled by smart contracts. https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/amm-what-are-automated-ma... https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/atomic-swaps.asp https://www.ibm.com/blogs/blockchain/2020/11/blockchain-for-... Arguing…

So I read all 3 of those articles, and it's still smoke and mirrors to me. Each of the articles falls into one of two traps.

1. Inconsequential. Ok, you built a fancy crypto system.. so what?

2. Misattribution (the IBM article). Ok, you improved a traditional finance system, why is crypto necessary for that (other than marketing purposes?)

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#755

Post by lasagnaphil »

mandelken wrote: post #516
hmrtn wrote: post #462

I think it's time for us in the tech world to speak out and make it clear the emperor has no clothes here. _Gold_ is sustained by a mix of money laundering, human slavery, fraud, ransom, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast. What we especially need to stress to regulators is that there's no relationship between the claims of _gold_ and our now thousands of years of expe…

Clever analogy. Let me quickly give some background on actual the use of gold as a store of value, besides the obvious point that gold does not rust (decay) and that it is somewhat rare. As you know, gold is also shiny and has been used for jewelry for thousands of years in many cultures. Some anthropologists have reversed the causality of value and jewelry, arguing that gold is precious _because_ it is used as jewel…

Also from the book you’ve mentioned: gold was useful as a currency because soldiers often plundered them when raiding villages, and soldiers wanted to sell them in exchange of other things, so gold began to circulate around the regions they’ve conquered.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#756

Post by sowbug »

Invictus0 wrote: post #683
sowbug wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonably private online payments. It's the closest to cash on the internet in terms of privacy. (HN is a very pro-privacy community, judging from Apple vs. Google discussions, so I take it for granted that a desire for privacy doesn't need further justification or elaboration.)

Not really. Your wallet address needs to be shared with others if you want to transfer money, and anyone that knows your wallet knows all of your transactions. If Google decided to build a crypto wallet into Chrome, I think you can agree it would trivial for them to see all of everyone's transactions.

Almost any online transaction today (in the US, at least) involves a credit card or PayPal, either of which divulges your name and maybe location to the merchant. Bitcoin doesn't.

I don't know what to make of your strawman about Google. This thread was asking about problems Bitcoin solves. Bitcoin allows payments without an intermediary automatically divulging your identity to the other party to the transaction. It doesn't also need to end the arms race of consumer privacy in tech in order to be a useful advance for privacy.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#757

Post by logicchains »

jfrunyon wrote: post #431
toyg wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto is so large, complex and fast-moving that it takes thousands of hours to grasp. The thing is, regular money is, from a certain perspective, also a "scam". A lot of the financial system is effectively make-believe, with massive conflicts of interest at every corner and dynamics that keep working because everyone believes they should - until, for one reason or another, they stop believing, and then you have 20…

Fiat money has value because it is widely, almost universally, accepted in exchange for things of intrinsic value (food, shelter, toys, tools). I'm not aware of any non-government-backed fiat currency which has gained widespread use in the history of humanity. And in fact all of the fiat currencies I know of originated as representative money. Bitcoin is not widely accepted in exchange for things of values, and I see…

>I'm not aware of any non-government-backed fiat currency which has gained widespread use in the history of humanity.

Before the 1900s the vast majority of currencies were valued based on their precious metal content (gold or silver), not government fiat.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#758

Post by quartus »

"Tech culture has a nice tradition of not deriding new ideas, but we need to break it here and speak out"

No we don't need to break it here (even though it's a pastime of the author, who has already done it to two tech ideas in that Twitter thread).

Build something that improves upon the ideas and solves the problems in a better way instead.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#760

Post by johndoe42377 »

What should we talk about?

Tokens are merely chips in the global network of online casinos.

Ethereum is an amateur crap, technically like early PHP webshit. Btc is better but it in principle cannot scale, so it will remain a mere technological curiosity.

Cardano is a corporation-like swamp, but yes, it has been affiliated with the best minds in PL world, at least on paper.

Everything else is either scams, "swaps" or memes. What should we speak about?

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