I'm rather mistrustful of people that are this forthy about being against a new technology. If it really is that devoid of merit it'll die on its own.
I also think it is a rather fundamental failure to see the big picture.
Not efficient? Well neither was the Ford model T. Newer generations are getting better.
Similarly somehow existing systems seem to get a free pass for things that are consider fatal flaws for crypto. Criminal enterprise? What do you think all the drug trade and sundry criminals use? Seashells? No USD. Systemic risk? Fed is printing trillions and history is littered with financial crises. Humans have managed to make everything from CDOs to tulips crash. Its not unique to crypto.
Personally I think crypto is a 50/50 chance of working long term. The people certain it'll be a disaster seem just as silly as those certain it'll take over the world.
I don't really give a crap about what people do or don't do with new technology, ultimately what people want to spend their time and money on is up to them.
However, "Crypto" is different. If all it was was just the unbelievably irritating crypto bros rug pulling, ponzi scheming, wash trading, ugly NFT shilling and hacking all the while claiming to be at the spearhead of a solution to pretty much every human problem in existence then so be it. I would be capable of ignoring it. I would read a different article, do some work or go for a walk, ignored, done.
But "Crypto" (specifically the energy intensive kind) has a different problem, and that's that it has /massive/ externalities that it simply ignores, forcing us, the people who want nothing to do with it, to now deal with it, and with the people in the ecosystem that we find so objectionable. We are dealing with the significant fallout from their hobbies. We are in the middle of 1) a very serious climate crisis 2) a cost of living crisis where people can't afford energy to cook and heat (in the UK at least) and 3) a war that would likely be brought to a stop sooner if we could phase out Russian gas sooner.
All things that could be alleviated if "Crypto" and it's so-far intangible benefits were to dissapear.
That is why I hate "Crypto", that's why I call people out about it, why I'm "frothy".
> Not efficient? Well neither was the Ford model T. Newer generations are getting better.
The Model T allowed people to do something that previously hadn't been done before. So far no-one has been able to point me at a single thing that public public blockchains do that either is worth doing and is only possible using blockchain tech, or is better (more power efficient, faster) than using pre-existing technology.
If people can point me at some of these things then we can at least start having a discussion about wether it's worth spending an entire country's worth of electricity on it.
Once somebody spends $400,000 on an ugly ape and then found they spent their money for nothing, they will become a permanent enemy of crypto. It’s just a matter of time before you join us (crypto haters) the difference is that some of us knew it was a scam right away and others will have to learn it the hard way.
Using privacy coins I can donate money to causes I believe in (eg WikiLeaks) without fear of reprisal and with the knowledge that the funds will reach their recipient. If you have a better way, please let me know.
Grossly inefficient personal transportation and industrial farming have massive externalities forcing people who want nothing to do with it to deal with it. That doesn't seem to be a concern that matters to most people. And they're exacerbating the same climate and energy issues.
Public blockchain can be powered by renewable energy, using its own value to pay for it, and can harness power in areas where it is not feasible to harness that power for other purposes.
Here's a podcast[1] episode with Saifedean Ammous, if you're interested in the value proposition. He claims Bitcoin actually saved his life, so obviously incredibly valuable to him. Lex does a pretty good job at pushing back on his evangelism.
All of these things are the result of bad governing, not crypto. Maybe banning crypto would help them (I don’t believe that) but banning lots of other things would also help. What we really need is better energy policy, better foreign policy, and better regulation of companies destroying the environment and contributing unnecessarily to climate change.
Edit: The vitriol in some of the replies to this is fascinating. Did you all just lose a fortune in the crypto crash or something?
Facilitating certain types of illegal transactions. Ex, Sanctions evasions for the average Moe, online illicit substance transactions between complete strangers. So I would guess the crux of your statement is actually the “worth doing” part.
I respect your position but I respectfully disagree.
1. Filecoin: It was well-motivated from the start, to provide a cheap way to get counterparties (by default, a multiple of six) to pin content in IPFS. I don't regard it as a proven technology yet, but it's usable as it stands;
2. Brave's BATs: Brave annoys me with its cryptocoin boosterism, but in principle this provides an way for content providers to profit from gaining a readership that doesn't involve nasty ad-tech. I don't think the system provides good enough incentives for users to mint BATS as it stands, but I think that in principle the Brave team have a viable solution to this problem.
3. The Stellar payments infrastructure has a cryptocoin used to grease its wheels. I don't see Stellar's choice to mint their own cryptocoin as principled here (they could have allowed nodes to choose), but using some cryptocoin here is driven by use.
None of these coins use Bitcoin / present-day Ethereum style proof of work, so they do not appear to have the negative externalities you deplore.
Are you honestly blaming cryptocurrencies for climate change, inflation and Russia‘s war against Ukraine? That’s crazy.
Climate change is a long running issue that started waaay before Bitcoin even was invented. Still projects other than Bitcoin are working hard to implement staking to use much less energy.
Inflation is an issue brought on us by Western governments drowning in debt for decades: For wars in Afghanistan and the middle east, unsustainable social security systems, stimulus packages.
And Russia … Putin and his supporters have finally come to terms with the fact it lost its super power Status and in a peaceful manner make the most of their vast and empty territory.
This is pretty shallow thinking. I’m sure the traditional banking system uses orders of magnitude more energy than crypto, but you don’t hear about that cause the “studies” about crypto energy use are funded by people who benefit from maintaining the status quo. In fact, you will notice most of the studies critical of Bitcoin focus on how much ENERGY it uses as opposed to its fossil fuel usage and greenhouse gas emissions. This is likely intentional.
Big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter probably use more energy than Bitcoin too, and it is debatable how much of what they do actually creates value in the world.
The U.S. military is one of the largest polluters in the world, and Congress nearly unanimously gives them hundreds of billions of dollars every year with very little debate or scrutiny or oversight.
The waste of natural resources and energy will not disappear just because crypto goes away. If anything, crypto will actually help SOLVE the problem sooner by creating real economic incentives to use cheaper and cleaner energy. Some estimates say that over 60% of Bitcoin mining now uses renewable energy, and it is trending in the right direction [1].
> So far no-one has been able to point me at a single thing that public public blockchains do that either is worth doing and is only possible using blockchain tech
“Worth doing” is subjective so that’s a non sequitur, but I will give you something blockchains do that is only possible using blockchain tech: they allow control over the supply of money without a central authority. Separation of money and state, if you will. Some may scoff at this idea, but currency debasement has contributed to the collapse of many empires and governments in history [2] so the importance of this invention should not be understated.
[1] https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/... I’m aware this study may also be biased in a similar way as the ones mentioned earlier, but it at least includes the methodology and sources.
[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/currency-and-the-collapse-o...
You also have to compare it against what its competing against, all those fancy bank buildings with 24.7 lights and ac, the staff to mantain the paper trail (their commutes, etc), the vast security forces and militaries there to secure it (military being the largest polluter), etc.
From what I understand, the growth of the network, especially when it piggy backs on layer two networks like the lightning network for btc means 99% of the transactions can operate in a non proof of work method costing little more than the servers used to run a popular website.
Its still sooooo early. The tech will evolve and competition is fierce for the best solutions. So long we dont try to regulate it to death and protect the status quo, its going to evolve in ways we are yet to imagine.
So “be calm bro, why so angry?” no longer seems like a legitimate criticism. If you want people to not be angry don’t build technologies that are highly destructive and cause immense harm.
Other arguments seem to be of the form “sure the last 35 cryptocurrencies didn’t do anything meaningful but number 36 and 37 are different I swear”. At some point even radical skepticism is a reasoned reaction.
Bitcoin is literally destroying the world and it’s main proven applications are facilitating illegal transactions. I wouldn’t be opposed to governments banning the thing on account of the fact it intentionally makes it impossible to adequately regulate digital transactions for fraud. This seems like it would be a reasonable response to the excessive firestorm of ransom ware that seems to be the only transaction that can reasonably pay the Bitcoin fees.
You misunderstand me. They can be angry all day long. My point isn't that they shouldn't be angry, but rather that it makes me doubt that their rationale is balanced.
>Bitcoin is literally destroying the world
That's true for damn near everything we do. Everything from cars, to space travel to computing to doing laundry.
> firestorm of ransom ware
And the internet brings an endless stream of viruses, spam, malware, hacking etc yet somehow people can accept that tradeoff just fine.
Few new technologies are pure positive only, or risk free, or awesome straight from the start.
Many bad things don't die on their own; we have to fight them to the end.
(We're slowly coming out of a global pandemic which was quite "devoid of merit", for instance, but it didn't recede on its own.)
The author doesn’t want to wait it out because the cost to society in terms of wasted energy and support of bad actors is too high. He notes that he evolved into this position. At first he th out it was just silly. Then silly and annoying. Now just bad.
There you go. Some cryptocurrencies will survive once the regulatory framework is more clearer and settles in which will result in most the useless ones and non-compliant ones withering away.
That is the most likely outcome rather than the maximalists believing all of them succeeding or the skeptics like the one in this article believing all of them being destroyed. We've have examples like introducing KYC/AML checks for the exchanges, then unregistered ICOs were made illegal in the US (other countries to follow). It still did not put an end to crypto.
Next will be the exchanges delisting privacy coins and the likely regulation of stable-coins.
And in the mean time it's chewing through energy and uselessly adding carbon to the atmosphere. Blockchain's use case is generally the conditions of needing both (a) an append-only log and (b) being distributed/decentralized. I don't think there are that many places where it'd be of use.
I try to raise awareness of NIST's Blockchain Technology Overview, which is a good explainer:
* https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/final
See especially Figure 6 ("p. 42", 53 of the PDF), which is a flow chart to help you decide on whether blockchain may match one's use case. Extracted:
But we unfortunately now also have blockchain tied together with the notion of "money", and so folks are going bonkers over it (à la tulips and Beanie Babies).
An idea can take a long time before people stop practicing it, during which does a lot of damage: it's been 70 years and we're still stuck with car-centric/dependent suburbs.
I believe this top comment reveals the real reason why many technologists actually hate cryptocurrency: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356579#31356857
If cryptocurrencies can even be called "technology".
I have enough skills to implement a crypto currency from scratch. Some building blocks there are impressive and very useful: public key signatures, hashes. _Maybe_ ciphers and polynomial hashes as well. Those things I cannot design though I did implemented from specs (it was a ton of work). But as we all know, those blocks existed long before cryptocurrencies, and have lots of other uses.
Then you have the chained hash, which is basically a degenerated form of Merkle trees (patented in 1979) that look like a Git commit history. Git was first published in 2005, Bitcoin first appeared in 2008. Then you have proof of work (some computation that is hard to do, but easy to verify), which was an established technique before Y2K.
In the end, the one idea Bitcoin introduced that may not be obvious is this idea of a "longest chain", based on proof of work. We have proof of stake as well, but for now I’m waiting for Ethereum to implement it at scale to believe in it (right now most transactions happen in proof of work).
It’s a stretch to call that "technology".
The chance is actually 100%, because future national currencies will be "cryptographic" tokens. Think of it for 2 sec: is there a government on earth that would say no to a financial system where you can track (poor) citizens' money down to the last penny, always and forever? There's your answer...
I'm not certain, unfortunately. But I'm hoping.
I’m not certain it’s a disaster and I don’t hope for its failure. But I’m against it like I’m against best buy warranties or whole life insurance.
They are bad things that shouldn’t exist and no one should buy them.
Bring on the homeopathy! It hasn't died yet so it must have merit.
(Why I support Monero over Bitcoin.)
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is just flat out wrong.
Also sorry I'm not able to provide tangible proof other than I have personally witnessed and been affected by the exact opposite of what you claim.
IBAN transactions big and small are extensively monitored and not on a one-by-one basis but rather used to paint a clear picture of economic actors and their interactions.
I've been using credit cards online for decades and I am yet to encounter anything negative from doing so. I get that my credit card provider knows that I'm buying £X of goods from merchant Y. But unless that merchant is very specific, the card company doesn't know what I've bought.
And, if it did... so what? Perhaps I'm naive, but even if I was hiding (for example) my sexuality - what's the CC company going to do? Try to upsell me a rainbow themed card?
I try to take my privacy seriously, and I don't particularly want my interactions monitored and mined. But what are the actual, non-theoretical problems that this causes?
But, for argument's sake let's say you can be put in jail or killed for your sexuality. You want to buy something from a specific store that caters exclusively to your sexual preferences. The CC company sells that to your government (or another entity wanting to enforce that), then you are arrested or killed, or you family harassed.
When this data inevitable leaks via hacks, or is used to target you when political tides change, suddenly you will be wishing we had all been normalizing alternatives.
I recommend everyone use tumbled bitcoin, monero, cash, or visa gift cards whenever possible. The less data we all give in aggregate to those seeking to sell changes in our behavior the better.
Your data pollution empowers entities that harm us all.
1) Able to donate money without it being blocked (examples: Wikileaks, eight-wing political activism).
2) No trace of activity that can be used against me (examples: WWII, looks like it might happen again in the near future, situation is tense post-COVID).
3) When the next recession hits, want to have protections against government haircuts (a la Cyprus or the bail in mechanisms that were prepared after 2008).
Cryptos fit quite neatly into a threat model where my government going rogue seems to be possible but unlikely. It makes a lot of sense to me to have $1-10k in Monero as a weird emergency fund/political tool. Dunno how it will work out, this isn't really territory that has been open before. If cryptos weather the next recession and hold >50% of their value then I'd start looking to put more serious money in.
its not that the credit card company might sell you a rainbow card, its that you might not even get to exist.
Many things are illegal, but not immoral. You have probably broken the law in your life, most people have. ultimate surveillance is damaging to society as it strips away our ability to change "how things are done around here". I know a few sex workers whove had their bank accounts frozen and forced into cash/crypto, is that fair? are they really causing damage to society? theres many examples of sexism/racism from bank managers giving mortgages/loans with different rates depending on who they are talking to, could we use zkproofs to prove income/assets/liabilities without revealing personal information? amongst all the hype and speculation (caused by desperation in our current systems) crypto is about these issues and is doing real work to address them.
and thats before we even get into how things might change in the future. maybe its fine for a credit card company to know if you are gay today, what about in ten years? what if it becomes a crime again?
Other than the fact that "why do I need privacy, I'm not a criminal" (the battle cry of people who are lucky enough to have been raised in the 5 places on earth ruled by non-abusive governments) has been debunked a million times, you need to consider the fact that - just like the oodles of information gather on you by big tech - this gathering transforms you into a product, not a citizen.
Now, if you don't mind being treated like a shearable beast of burden, then, you're correct, that's not a problem.
First, the data is accessible by credit card provider, but also by several financial and technical intermediaries. Second, there is no way for any of those companies to guarantee that the data will never be leaked.
Then, in terms of consequences, it includes reputional risks, security risks people know your behavior patterns, and to be arrested for being at the wrong place and wrong time. Then is all the track record of governmental overreach that used this type of data, from arresting environmental activists to killings based on sexuality (for example). It happened in everywhere, and it still happens today.
Sure, in the western part of the world, you could think that this is paranoid, but depending on where you are in the world, and what minorities you belong to the risk is real.
Heck, even in the US with the way the SCOTUS is going, this may become relevant sooner than you'd expect.
But the merchant knows and (unless it's a very old mom & pop shop), they didn't do it manually, the itemized receipt is in their computer system. Which the government can easily obtain and correlate with the credit card transaction so now they have both.
As the downstream comments say, if you're any kind of persecuted minority, this is a big problem.
Not even vaguely true of "exactly how does yashg use their credit cards", which many people can answer in as much detail as they care to purchase.
The billions (trillions these days?) online advertising market clearly disagrees with you.
In addition to that, even the few people people who do use Zcash, don't use it's privacy features. 99% of their transactions aren't private and are fully traceable [2]. Why would you want your transactions to stand out?
[1] http://zerocash-project.org/about_us [2] https://news.bitcoin.com/not-so-private-99-of-zcash-and-dash...
Okay, so Mr Weaver can conjure some "ten trusted entities" by simply wishing them into existence.
Either he doesn't understand why one cannot simply create a "trusted entity" out of thin air .. which would mean, he's not actually an expert who anyone should listen to .. or he consciously makes a lazy attempt at formulating an argument that superficially sounds reasonable, while not having any substance.
I have a hard time believing that you're actually trying to understand, which kind of trust the people who created Bitcoin meant and why they thought it's important.
Just claiming banks are in that sense trustworthy either neglects that banks exist in states and can be influenced or is plain naive.
We live in a world where states and central banks are constantly trying to achieve goals by changing money creation.
No matter if you see that as problematic or not, you'll hardly deny that currencies are subject to extreme pressures from economic actors (governments, banks, societies, businesses, ..). Therefore claiming that banks can simply be "trusted" to withstand these pressures (by strictly enacting some agreed upon policy) is a bit like closing your eyes on the real world situation of currencies.
Some problems are super easy to handwave away in theory but actually pretty difficult to solve in practise.
Which is a fine use case. Those are very large and enduring sectors of the economy. But let’s not get confused about why things are as they are.
edit the point here is - getting a "trusted party" is in fact, not easy, and certainly not "a bank" as a universal answer.. find your own copy of this book, it is repeated a hundred times, every decade.
Here’s the facts: there are two types of people in this world, and which you are has nothing to do with intelligence.
You either participate in these types of activities, and you always have and always will, or you don’t, never have, and never will. It’s like it’s some weird quirk in human nature where God said, 50% of the people have to be this way and 50% have to be that way in order for this to play out.
The participants have an extra hurdle to cross though. They have to watch the zero sum gambling game play out where some people win and others lose and the winners paint themselves as financial geniuses. It’s hard to be around that type of company and not feel bad.
Again, I’m not saying anyone _is_ dumb. The crypto community have many fine people who add all sorts of value to society. But if you’re participating in this game, there’s nothing anyone can do to change your mind because you’ll always have counter examples to point to, and no one likes to admit when they’re wrong, especially to themselves.
The byzantine generals problem doesn't apply when you have trusted entities.
Let me make a different point:
I mean think about it for "legal" (legal unrelated to ethical) use-cases a federated systems of banks and maybe some external non-bank validators is good enough, by far.
Not "legal" use-cases are not legal and as such them not being supported is in the interest of the state you use them in.
Many of ethical good use-cases of crypto currency are not "legal", ethical yes but not legal anyway.
Like circumventing suppression in totalitarian states.
The problem is for each state by themself a "Byzantine considering" crypto currency is not in their interest. It can be use-full to help people in totalitarian states, but then this states can also use it to help extremist groups in your state while forbidding crypto currencies internally. So... not necessary the best choice.
Now federated not fully "Byzantine considering" crypto currencies are a different thing altogether. Like use bitcoing but replace PoW with PoS except the validators are predetermined banks with most in your country (or union like the EU, they might still stack money as collateral) and from a state view the problems are mostly gone/manageable (from a legal/state POV) and you get most of the technical innovation you want (I mean it is 99% the same tech minus "Byzantine considering" and maybe minus some privacy protections).
Now I'm not saying it's ethical good (or bad) for states to ban crypto.
But I am saying that from a purely objective non-ethic-considering view for most states it's best to just ban fully "Byzantine considering" privacy protecting crypto.
Plenty of different arguments are offered by the commentariat, some of which have merit. But whether the stated reasons are environmental issues, political implications, scams, ransomware, or illicit trade, the one commonality seems anger and desire to ban and destroy all crypto.
A commenter recently stated candidly that they simply feel envy. They’re bitter about their bro-type friends and acquaintances getting rich overnight and flaunting their wealth. It clicked for me that HN commenters are more likely to personally know such people and feel resentful towards them.
That may sound like ad hominem, but I’m not addressing the arguments (many of which I agree with). I’m speculating about the reasons for the disproportionate level of ire directed against crypto on this forum, and personal resentment feels like a good candidate.
The reason I even care is that I’m hoping to read (even if not always necessarily participate in) higher quality discussions on this topic. The tech is here whether we like it or not. It might fail horribly (as many here seem to be hoping), but what definitely won’t help are the “I hope this Ponzi scam dies soon” one-liners on almost every article on the topic.
I don't personally know any people who became rich on cryptocurrencies and also don't feel any particular envy towards the people who I know of, via the internet, but am pretty vehemently against cryptocurrencies, so I'm a sample-size one counter-example to your thesis.
I obviously don't think that my ire against cryptocurrencies is disproportionate, since if I did, I'd scale it down until I thought it was proportionate, so I think that it's justified by the object-level issues.
If I were to speculate on why classes of people like me are more strongly opposed to cryptocurrencies than other people:
1. We are (or feel we are) more qualified to see many of its technical deficiencies, some of which have been patched over the years, others of which seem fundamental.
2. We agree with the "crypto people" on many topics, such as decentralisation or privacy, but think that their solutions are broken, and worse we feel that their philosophy and approach is a bit of a dark mirror universe of ours (to exaggerate _immensely_ imagine that both groups were religious people who agreed completely on matters of scripture, but they inexplicably decided to worship Ahriman instead of Ahura Mazda). See also "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup"[0].
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
Thanks for reminding me to reread the Scott Alexander outgroup article.
And then the stuff that isn't overtly a scam tends not to make a lot of sense. Bitcoin is a wasteful way to do what it does, and things like that.
But for me this is comparable to other forms of economic criticism. I believe that the path that cryptocurrency and related systems is walking leads to an extreme hypercapitalism where everything on the planet becomes an item for speculation and no behavior is possible without access to some capitalized token. A lot of people will get rich off that process but the reason why I think that this is bad is not because other people get rich off of it. I think it is a harmful system whether or not I get to buy a yacht.
Some are shitty, some are not.
Monero and Algorand are two good examples. The latter carbon negative.
Ironically, it is the central planning of interest rates which created an environment ripe for speculative bubbles. It is the heavy regulation of all things financial which has burdened online transactions. If not for onerous regulatory requirements perhaps cryptocurrencies would not have been popularized.
Then there are the obvious falsehoods and sloppy generalizations used to advance their argument. Not all cryptocurrencies are the same. Even if we accept their characterization of BTC as "wasteful" there are other options which are more efficient.
Their solution, predictably enough is to create more regulations and prohibitions. It is a tone deaf lack of self awareness. All the worse when they celebrate themselves as authorities on the topic.
Perhaps the interviewee is an expert on CS, but does that qualify him to centrally plan financial transactions? This is technocracy at its worst. A self appointed expert steps outside of his bounds to make wide sweeping proclamations.
Then there are the obvious cultural factors. An institutional academic favors institutional and bureaucratic control over markets, disregards the value of market consensus and individual preferences? Cultural bias and group-think or not?
That is simply not true.
As an early bitcoin supporter, my sentiment shifted against cryptocurrency as I worked with more and more companies that have been targeted by ransomware. I kept waiting to be able to pay for real things and instead I saw wave after wave of fraud, grift and extortion but no progress on being a usable currency.
> It is the heavy regulation of all things financial which has burdened online transactions.
Really? Online "non-cryptocurrency" transactions have outpaced cryptocurrency transactions by a massive amount.
Cryptocurrency was a neat idea that failed to realize it's potential due to the complexity of operations in the real world. Instead it has become a cesspit of fraud, theft and self-deluding grifters that lie repeatedly to try to bring in more and more greater fools. There are still se cryptocurrency idealists out there, but it gets harder and harder to tell them from the grifters.
Reminds me of the old adage, "crypto is the thing where those who know tech are in it for the economics, and those who know economics are in it for the tech"
I have to disagree with you here. Algorand requires relay nodes for consensus (and high throughput), and those relay nodes are permissioned and largely centralized.
It’s not accurate to call Algorand a “decentralized blockchain” or assets on it “decentralized assets”.
This is a big issue in the blockchain world - the details of the implementation matter so little to the participants trying to profit, that we have multiple chains in existence with centralized controls and people still think those are better than using an obviously-centralized platform. These platforms tend to have the disadvantages of centralized platforms without the protections they provide, it just isn’t obvious until that centralized control is eventually exercised.
(edit: fix typo)
Things are allowed inside crypto that is not allowed in the normal world of finance.
Ie stable coins: promising people 20% on their savings account by running an obscured ponzi.
Ie pump and dump.
Ie insider information. Insiders on exchanges buying up coins they know are going to be listed.
Etc etc.
(And proof of work of course is the key enabler as it allows those who are running things to hide their identity.)
Are not a real cryptocurrency.
> pump and dump
Is absolutely a regular circumstance. Last what I remember is sawn wood situation on the very early 2022, afaik it is worldwide. I do not recommend you to buy right now a sawn wood from big stores before researching a market in your location, because some of big stores have been dumped after buying some big amounts of sawn wood on huge prices, and their warehouses are still full of this trade offer.
> insider information. Insiders on exchanges buying up coins they know are going to be listed.
All of that coins usually does something opposite to skyrocketing very soon after early birds have received a way to short their tokens (I do not have any counter-example).
> proof of work of course is the key enabler as it allows those who are running things to hide their identity
Some entities just don't have an identity, like an artificial intelligence. What if I want my pet AI to buy or change hosting without absolutely any of my participation or even knowing? (it is not my funds, the pet has earned it without my participation as well).
"The crypto world went into a full meltdown this week"
I don't know. Look at a chart of Bitcoins price on a log scale:
https://twitter.com/JonathanBeuys/status/1524810429884661761
To me, it does not look any different then it has looked for the last 10 years. Its a slowing exponential growth with a certain volatility. Nothing seems to have changed in the last week.
Ethereum makes another quarter and looks similar.
Tether makes another 10% or so and is at $0.998.
I find it hard to imagine that whatever happens lower down on the list of crypto projects can move the needle enough so we can come to the conclusion that "the crypto world" as a whole is in a meltdown.
On a linear scale it is hard to see.
So they see a significant drop in price, but completely within the bounds of previous drops, and they see it as full meltdown and the ponzi scheme popping, because that fits their narrative.
I say they'll lower it again by 2024.
In my experience it feels like people have more hits than misses given enough chance, even those you disagree with /shrug
There have been plenty of double-spend attacks that have happened. For example, ETC has a 6.5 day deposit time on Kraken.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=arxiv+mining+pow
[2] https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/203325283-Crypt...
Forked minority chains aren't expected to be safe, and this is for sure reflected in the market value of the coin. Any time ETH miners want to gang up on ETC, they can.
Cost of refutation is a related rhetorical concept. If this worthless article is going to can a few common critical tropes, all previously addressed, even by other technologies in the same space it aimed at, why should I do anything other than respond with equivalently low effort?
Because you want me to expend the resources? I thought wasted resources were bad? That's the premise of the whining after all, isn't it? Disingenuous, worthless article, preying upon stupidity, fear and moral outrage, which just happened to be filed within days of most cryptos dropping 25% in price, roughly, in the middle of a bear market.
Complaining that crypto is stupid is fine, but lots of things in history were stupidly valued (tulips, beanie babies, bored apes) and eventually the market did or will change. Crypto is worth whatever people will pay for it. It's not inherently evil.
Only one of those things requires enough energy input to drive a massive V8 Landrover for a week every single time you try to exchange it, and it's not tulips or beanie babies.
Baseball cards that have any value aren't pointless. They are kind of historical artifact, and are traded like artifacts or antiques. They have value as long as enough people place value on baseball history.
Newly created baseball cards are effectively worthless, and a vanishingly small percentage will ever have any value.
Crypto has no cultural value like that. There is no sentimental value attached to it.
Eventually in the future when nobody cares about it remembers what baseball is, the cards will have no value, but the fact is that value today comes from both their scarcity and the ownership of a piece of history.
"Anonymous-ish cash, but on the internet" is a very attractive proposition. I'd also add to that "Locking up your money to get more money later" is as well. So much so that I'd strongly bet in favor of "people figure out how to make it more efficient, safer, and less destructive" against "It's just going to fail and go away."
Yes, there is a very simple way of offering that. Unfortunately it's currently illegal to do so in most places outside of crypto, where all of a sudden it becomes kosher as long as you can keep it wrapped in enough technobabble.
It's from author's lecture.
> Why All Of Silicon Valley Should Die in a Fire
Just an extension of the original... and just as dumb.
Also, I get the general sentiment on this site is CRYPTO BAD, mut can we please not jam the front page with links like this? What will be the next "why all x should die in a fire"?
If they provide arguments, even (especially?) if those arguments are refutable, it might be worth reading. There's a lot to criticize about ad-supported Silicon Valley, and even VC-supported Silicon Valley. What's not worth reading is blithe dismissals - like yours - that don't make any argument at all but consist purely of tone-policing.
This is supposed to be a rational reality-based community. There should be zero tolerance for the "just doesn't understand" trope, especially when someone doesn't even identify (let alone explain) what it is that their target doesn't understand. It's blithe dismissal, not curious conversation, and at least nominally (according to the guidelines) not what the site is supposed to be about.
> We’re talking [a measurable percentage] of the world’s electricity consumption, most of that has not been paid for. So the mining companies for the most part have been taking the cryptocurrency and borrowing against the cryptocurrency that they create, rather than sell it, because the market’s actually very thin.
So supposedly, the markets are too thin to support the miners actually selling their earnings to pay their power bills. Let's check the top two against 24-hour volume on coinmarketcap:
BTC volume: 1M BTC
BTC issuance: 6.25 BTC every 10 minutes, or 900 BTC in 24 hours, or 0.09% of the trading volume.
ETH volume: 8.5M ETH
ETH issuance: 2 ETH every 15 seconds, or 11,520 ETH in 24 hours, or 0.14% of the trading volume.
I don't think the miners have any trouble selling their earnings for fiat.
However as any "money" concept rooted on "money is the value" instead of "money is just an unit of measure of some substrate" are no more scam than actual currencies, should face the same fate anyway.
This is the point of having a hardware wallet. Someone has to push a physical button in the real world to sign a transaction.
>And [ransomware] only exists because people can pay in Bitcoin.
The concept of ransoms predates cryptocurrency and would still exist without it.
>And my gain is not just the difference between what I bought it for and what somebody else bought it for, but that plus the benefit of all the dividends and interest.
Stocks aren't guaranteed to just go up. If your stocks even pay dividends that might not even cover your losses.
>So the stock market and the bond market are a positive-sum game.
The stock market isn't positive sum. Someone is going to be holding the bag when a company goes out of business.
>but [Tether] does have the potential for bank runs causing collapse, because it’s unbacked.
This is false. See https://tether.to/en/transparency/
>Tether tokens, loans them to their big colleagues in the cryptocurrency space
See the above link. Their reserves aren't made up those kinds of loans.
>The cost of a transaction in cryptocurrency systemically is the amount being used to protect it.
This isn't true. If I charge $100 per transaction that doesn't mean that $100 of that goes towards protecting it.
>So let’s do programs that cannot be updated that handle mone
This isn't true. Smart contacts get updated all of the time.
>There’s no mechanism to fix problems if they occur. There’s no undo button. In fact, there’s often no way to upgrade at all.
This is just plain wrong. You can even make upgrades which are delayed that you can potentially cancel to prevent from being applied.
