Plus, cryptos are responsible of 1% of world elecrticity consumption. Holy cow.
(According to https://cbeci.org/cbeci/comparisons it's actually 0.6%. It is a tragedy anyway)
It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
991–1000 of 1001 posts
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#992Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I have no idea why you are being downvoted. This is absolutely valid reasons for bitcoin to exist, but you don't have to be a failed state. I'm from Canada, and moved to Australia. I was moving money from Canada to Australia, it was easier, faster, and cheaper for me to move that money via crypto (I used Eth rather than Bitcoin at the time) than going through the banking system.
Doesn't the local government want to tax those digital "currency" sales you used as a transfer mechanism as capital gains income?
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#993Earlier 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…
> " I’m becoming convinced that naysayers are more and more afraid of having been wrong and missing the boat as time goes on. " "Bitcoin value has changed 200,000x in a decade and just halved in a few weeks." "You're envious because you didn't get rich quick." "I thought this wasn't a get rich quick scheme?" "It isn't, how could you suggest such a thing? It's a currency used to buy groceries in Venezuela." "Then why…
I deeply regret that HN's system gives me at most one upvote to bestow upon this.
(Hey, couldn't it be something like one potential upvote per comment I read, in stead? And then I could give several of those from comments I don't deem worthy of upvoting to those I do.)
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#994Earlier 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…
> you'd think Bitcoin breathed fire
That's exactly what it does.
Most electrical power plants are still coal-, oil-, or gas-fired.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#995Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trading on a DEX is free trading on an exchange costs you fees. People are just lazy and use exchanges because they provide easy to use apps and stuff and cash out to fiat etc. but this changes because exchanges are horrible at staying up when the market moves fast and everyone wants to trade. Sologenic DEX [1] is an modern UI for a DEX to trade. Cutting out the middlemen was once a key point of p2p and decentral sys…
Weren't DEX trade fees in the thousands of dollars during the big part of the crash a few weeks ago?
You are using the wrong DEX then.
Pro tip: Dont use one that runs on a PoW system. PoW chant be cheap.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#996Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's nonsense. Bitcoin is not limited to whole coins. The total number of satoshis is crazy big, more than the dollars in the world. Bitcoin is limited by the block size and the lack of working L2 solutions (lightning is permanently broken). But other currencies, like BCH don't have that problem, and can easily represent the whole US economy.
There's 3x10^21 gold atoms in every gram. You might have difficulty measuring out two atoms of gold to change hands, but that's dwarfed by the difficulty in measuring out two Satoshis - given that they aren't a physical thing at all. So, if you can keep track of it with Satoshis, why couldn't you keep track of it with gold atoms? That is, if your position is "Bitcoin isn't limited like gold because of Satoshis" then…
Your argument doesn't work at all, because there's no difficulty counting satoshis.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#997Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's nonsense. Bitcoin is not limited to whole coins. The total number of satoshis is crazy big, more than the dollars in the world. Bitcoin is limited by the block size and the lack of working L2 solutions (lightning is permanently broken). But other currencies, like BCH don't have that problem, and can easily represent the whole US economy.
https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-th... 90% of all bitcoin ever have already been mined. If your solution to the limited number of bitcoins is rampant deflation you probably don't have a viable currency
Deflation is awesome. It's way better than inflation. It incentivizes you to not buy stupid junk that pollutes the world, you only buy the stuff you really need/want.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#998Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah! My brother was an expert in 1990 at 6. Me at 6 in 93-94. Except we most certainly weren’t. You’re giving a completely wrong impression of how the early web was and the early internet. I wasn’t around for that so I won’t personally give my input but for the time, each iteration every few years was great. If domain knowledge wasn’t needed by the 90s. When was serious domain knowledge needed? When did that stop? S…
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Comparing cryptocurrencies to the Internet is about comparing its usefulness, not it's understandability. I won't argue that people in general understood the Internet. Take my example of Fidonet. If you were not a computer expert then you had never heard of Fidonet. BBSs? Maybe you'd heard of it in some news clip about the dangers of computers. Hell, the only time non-experts e…
You probably won’t see this any more so I won’t respond to rest unless you respond.
For your last point. Were you around for the development of Arpanet? I don’t think there are many people who were adults in the 69s in the few places arpanet was developed at.
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So not being around for something doesn’t exclude you from being able to discuss internet related things.
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For understanding internet. I don’t think 99.9% of the population understands the difference between the internet and protocols like the web. Not sure that’s relevant any way tho.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#999Absolutely, I have seriously thought long and hard about cryptocurrencies and have also come to the conclusion that it is a definitive scam. Now is the time we must shut it down. Bitcoin, Ethereum, all of it. Even ponzi schemes have it's limits and this one has been reached and been illegally allowed to run rampant. It was nice when it started, not while it lasted. It didn't work and now it's time for it to go.
In what ways is the technology itself, rather than how it may often be used, a scam?
It’s a centralised system disguised as a currency (Bitcoin) and designed to be a pyramid scheme.
Blockchain is just another buzzword that isn’t actually useful.
Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
#1000Absolutely, I have seriously thought long and hard about cryptocurrencies and have also come to the conclusion that it is a definitive scam. Now is the time we must shut it down. Bitcoin, Ethereum, all of it. Even ponzi schemes have it's limits and this one has been reached and been illegally allowed to run rampant. It was nice when it started, not while it lasted. It didn't work and now it's time for it to go.
What are your arguments for this proposition? How are Bitcoin and Ethereum ponzi schemes?
You have so called ‘whales’ controlling and manipulating the coins, only those who got in early and the institutions can control the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The whole thing is so volatile a single billionaire can say anything causing the entire crypto market to crash, leaving those who got in extremely late holding a huge bag.
Bitcoin is useless and has no usecase at all and Ethereum spurred on the useless energy inefficient and vapid NFT craze which is yet another money laundering scheme. Don’t get me started on ransomware as that is for another story.
This experiment should not have been allowed to run it’s course at all and all of it needs to be shutdown.