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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

#891

Post by whywhywhywhy »

idlewords wrote: post #57
neither_color wrote: post #45

1. Promise a revolutionary technology ("self-driving cars are coming"!) 2. Use that promise as a pretext to ignore all regulation 3. Make a fortune 4. Drop the tech story The author lost me here. Completely subjective take on what Uber has done. They've completely improved ride-sharing and cab hailing within the whole industry, including non uber users. Depending on what country I travel to, Ill be using a different…

I'm the author of the thread. For what it's worth, I grew up as a refugee whose mother had to find incredibly inventive ways to send USD to family back home, where it was illegal to possess. What I don't understand about the crypto remittances argument is how the people sending and receiving them are supposed to convert them into spendable currency. My hunch is that a lot of the value of cryptocurrency in those count…

How did they spend the USD that was sent home if it was illegal?

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

#892

Post by ohgodplsno »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #792
K0balt wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. It’s interesting to note that skeptics seem much more invested in being right about crypto being a scam than proponents are in it being here to stay. The more time passes, the shriller the cries of skeptics become, leading me to believe that skeptics are emotionally invested to the extreme in the failure of crypto. I rarely see any carefully considered, informed opinions just tulips and drugs and money launderin…

They really have cranked up the propaganda against crypto recently haven't they? I've honestly been lukewarm on it for a while: maybe someday it'll be a workable tech, but too many issues at present. But the way these people talk (or are being paid to talk), you'd think Bitcoin breathed fire and had horns. Which begs the question: what are they afraid of? And they ARE afraid of something. You don't launch a propagand…

A shitcoin wasting electricity and causing absolutely massive emissions of greenhouse gases is a first point. I'm not looking forward to the planet I live on being utterly fucked. And I'm even less happy about frat tech bros pumping bitcoin because it makes them money.

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

#893

Post by ashtonkem »

craftinator wrote: post #404
lottin wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about? For a payments system, the fact that all transactions are final is pretty bad. I'd say this, by itself, makes the system unusable in the real world.

I get the feeling that the underpinnings of your argument points are based on not being very familiar or well read with the technology around Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, especially Ethereum. Your coming at it from an end user or armchair quarterback point of view, not someone who actually does development in that space; if you did, you'd know that one of the reasons Ethereum was created was to provide a digit…

> Your coming at it from an end user or armchair quarterback point of view, not someone who actually does development in that space

The slow transition away from “mass adoption soon!” is extremely entertaining to me.

Why, pray tell, for a currency would developers matter more than end users?

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

#894

Post by h0nd »

What most people do not understand, cryptocurrencies do only define the technology itself.

It does (and can) not define how it is used and also abused.

It is, eg. obvious that Bitcoin was made with the idea of representing a coin, a mean of payment. However, it is clear by now, that Bitcoin will never be a mean of payment. In contrast, it is mostly used as investment.

Also, you can not simply ban any cryptocurrency. The technology can not be 'stopped'. The lawmaker could only disallow it for this and that use.

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

#895

Post by h0nd »

lottin wrote: post #325
Graffur wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about? (I assume throughput but I'll wait for your reply). What do you mean by saying people fell for "this"? I assume you mean it's a scam but I will wait for your reply.

> What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about? For a payments system, the fact that all transactions are final is pretty bad. I'd say this, by itself, makes the system unusable in the real world.

Can be solved with reverse payments (yes, there are things to consider!).

That a transaction is final is not a flaw but one of the main features.

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

#896

Post by tim333 »

VonGallifrey wrote: post #554
giaour wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What regulated exchange existed in 2013?

The solution to the problem of not storing crypto on unregulated exchanges is not a regulated exchange. The solution is your own wallet/private key.

That has caused many problems in reality. I feel more confident with Kraken having the keys than me personally.

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

#897

Post by moultano »

kragen wrote: post #285
idlewords wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with your point hard enough. Really useful nascent technologies all have this pattern—they grow incrementally more interesting and constantly gain applications. Bitcoin followed this pattern for a while. But then at some point it started to regress on that axis. You could no longer buy a pizza with it, you could no longer mine it, and it got too flooded by scammers to use safely. There's nothing to real…

I've been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point (programming work for overseas clients), and I haven't gotten scammed yet. I'm not engaged in money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, or gambling, and only the usual amount of delusion. And I don't even buy illegal drugs! And, yeah, 13 years after the internet's invention was 01982; not only couldn't you get so much as a weather report on…

That seems like a compelling use case. The next thing I wonder though is whether that can exist without the ponzi scheme on the side. Is it the remittances, or the ransomware and speculation that funds the infrastructure?

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

#898

Post by paulryanrogers »

josho wrote: post #724
skrebbel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't the tech be neat/super cool and primarily be used to run a scam? I mean bittorrent is neat tech as well but it's still primarily used for piracy. Doing a deep dive into how bittorrent works doesn't suddenly change the fact that 99.9% of torrents out there are violating somebody's intellectual property. All I'm saying is, there's lots of super neat tech out there that's primarily used for not-so-super-neat s…

I like your analogy. I'll add another. VHS. The early adopter to VHS tapes was the porn industry. No longer did people have to watch porn in a seedy movie theater, they could do it privately at home. So, yeh, early adopters may often be driven by the seedy side of culture.

For how long though? Cryptocurrency is almost a decade old, yet the fundamentals of them don't look good (IMO).

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

#899

Post by paulryanrogers »

22c wrote: post #794
srcreigh wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

I guess it really depends on if you think the idea of decentralized finance is inconsequential. If you're happy with the idea of centralized finance, then I guess most of those things would be inconsequential. The argument for decentralized finance is more philosophical, and perhaps that is where most people are at odds with each other. Regarding your second point, I understand what you're saying. I guess the benefit…

Blockchain's biggest benefit is disturbed verification, so trust the community and not one authority. Right?

Yet the cost is distributed externalities like burning nonrenewables or wasting greener energy sources on inefficient or pointless calculations.

Are there any smart contracts or DeFi without the externalities problem?

And even if there are then is it wise to put money into things one doesn't understand? The DAO exploit makes me wonder if the juice is really worth the squeeze.

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

#900

Post by jmcqk6 »

revel wrote: post #540

I've worked in both finance and technology. I think the technical people aren't seeing how amazing this is from a finance point of view. Payments are going to be completely transformed by this. All of fixed income will change to be oriented around crypto. It's just a matter of time. All the main preconditions for crypto to take off are finally in place. If you are a professional money manager or CFO there is no way i…

>All of fixed income will change to be oriented around crypto. It's just a matter of time.

Can you provide one or two technical reasons why this is the case?

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