If bitcoin was an AI and doing math gave it pleasure there'd be a reason.
Why is the Ars community so negative towards Bitcoin?
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I think it's unbefitting of these polarized times to agree with you or other people I usually disagree with. This is a slippery slope. One day we agree on crypto, next we'll be listening to each others arguments? Being civil? Recognizing each other as worthwhile individuals with more depth than internet discussions?
No, no. Let's just find some sliver of crypto to disagree about and then magnify that dissonance into discord.
Hmm...should crypto be banned or taxed for externalities? No, I just want to ban it. Umm...help me out, here.
Cram it! You cheese squeezer!
Is that better?Seriously though, I wish people could agree on things more often and at least see each other's viewpoints and compromise. It's nice.
Scraping the barrel to defend crypto, but here goes:
1. Cryptocurrency is competing with the fine art market, and other high-end collectibles markets, as both a money laundering tool and a speculative investment. Banning cryptocurrencies drive those activities back into fine art and other collectibles, and make art and collectibles even less accessible for those who enjoy them for their own sake.
2. Cryptocurrency promoters might otherwise be engaging in even more socially harmful get-rich-quick schemes. Yes, the carbon footprint of bitcoin is huge, but is it necessarily worse for society than every motivated cryptobro selling something like raw water instead?
1. Cryptocurrency is competing with the fine art market, and other high-end collectibles markets, as both a money laundering tool and a speculative investment. Banning cryptocurrencies drive those activities back into fine art and other collectibles, and make art and collectibles even less accessible for those who enjoy them for their own sake.
2. Cryptocurrency promoters might otherwise be engaging in even more socially harmful get-rich-quick schemes. Yes, the carbon footprint of bitcoin is huge, but is it necessarily worse for society than every motivated cryptobro selling something like raw water instead?
That's a reasonable defense of NFTs. I'm not planning to buy any NFTs, but I'm also not planning to buy any baseball cards. As long as the sellers aren't making outlandish claims about future value, collectibles are fairly benign. I'm not sure it's applicable to the currencies though.
IMO that's less persuasive. Only a tiny fraction of people investing in crypto speculatively are going to go the effort of creating a company to sell real, if ill-advised, physical goods.
Pocky Is God
Ars Legatus Legionis
I don't even know any positives. The negatives outweigh the non-existent positives. Its a useless waste of electricity.
Ethereum has at least gone to proof-of-stake, which massively reduces its carbon footprint. Its extensible contracts on the blockchain method actually has practical applications beyond just currency. But even with that, I would never use Ethereum for its own sake. If I had a use-case for the functionality crypto/blockchain brings to the table, it would be my first port of call, because unlike Bitcoin, it actually has real value.
Name one blockchain contract implementation in production that is more than marketing fluff. I don;t see any value in a slightly less bad useless technology that is set up to favor haves over have-nots.
Walmart egg tracking. There's potentially lots of good upside of blockchain implementations for logistics and supply chain management. Basically, anywhere you need to cross borders, control schemes, or the like, implementations of blockchain that have no relationship to "coins" and high CPU utilization offer good choices for traceability. The biggest hurdle isn't technical there, it's political. Corporate political.
Why is this not done more easily and efficiently with a regular database?
And BTW, the shine is off the egg... err apple.
https://www.pymnts.com/blockchain/2022/walmart-puts-pricey-blockchain-food-tracking-platform-on-ice/
None of these systems were ever more than marketing demonstrators.
And BTW, the shine is off the egg... err apple.
https://www.pymnts.com/blockchain/2022/walmart-puts-pricey-blockchain-food-tracking-platform-on-ice/
None of these systems were ever more than marketing demonstrators.
I'll give it to what's his face that runs Etherium - he's a true believer and the move to proof of stake is to be applauded for reducing carbon footprint. Unfortunately, though, this returns to a situation where those that have eth are able to mine eth, and those that don't cannot. Seems like a division of classes between the haves and have nots that furthers the magnification of power to me. Maybe the requirement to post for proof of stake is low enough that it doesn't scale so poorly?
Proof of stake basically turns mining ETH into mini lottery winners and the people selling the pickaxes. If I were to invest, I would take $40k and make myself a stakeholder with a node that can prove stake. I get paid a little on every transaction for the work of proving the transaction is real. That basically turns people with means into the pick sellers of this gold rush.
So yes, it 100% advantages people with means of one sort or another. It is in every way less bad and has a lower stake threshold than Bitcoin. I am not trying to write an apologia for ETH, just pointing out that where Bitcoin has no redeeming value, there's a real conversation that can be had for other practical applications of crypto and blockchain.
Do we want to unilaterally disarm in the war to steal each other's crypto wallets?
If crypto is banned, only criminals will have crypto.
BRB, launching BearCoin. It uses a Distributed-Individually-Validated-Trust-Based-Geographically-Hyper-Localized-Transactions model, and is mined using a Proof-of-Printer protocol.
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Maybe we can turn this thread a bit positive. However, on fine art I'm not too convinced. The fine art market doesn't just exist because of the direct (financial) industry around the art itself, but also because legislation - with pinpoint precision - allows for this kind of money laundering. There are very particular carve-outs in both international and local laws that make all this possible. Likewise, a lot of political capital is spent to keep this avenue of wealth accumulation free of obstacles. Crypto relies heavily on being unregulated to attempt to do the same, but this won't last and is just not a good way to sustainably keep hold of and increase your wealth.
Also, I have to add that the true solution to this is simple taxation. Reduce wealth inequality. This whole market evaporates when generational wealth mostly goes away - at least the excessive type ($100M+).
My wife doesn't understand why I read so much Ars and get so much of my news and analysis from here. I'd like to enter this thread as exhibit A.
Also, I would like to say that the soapbox is not bullish (or bearish) on crypto. I think what I observed here was you being bulldogish on crypto. Sic em!
Also, I would like to say that the soapbox is not bullish (or bearish) on crypto. I think what I observed here was you being bulldogish on crypto. Sic em!
Bitcoin: Should I try it?
I think we all need to commend uno2tres for attempting to make an actual counter-argument to the prevailing winds, even if just as an intellectual exercise, because that's pretty much the SB equivalent of covering oneself in honey and lying down on a termite mound.
That's a disservice. The poster sees a delicious argument and gorges with disdain for any pathetic response
The honey badger
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64245669
Here we can see how cryptocurrency is a healthy alternative to traditional addictions, with far fewer physiological consequences. If, as a society, we can convince individuals predisposed to addiction to choose cryptocurrency as their preferred addiction, we can dramatically reduce the long term health consequences, and addicts will be able to recover rapidly through cost effective, evidence based treatments:
Here we can see how cryptocurrency is a healthy alternative to traditional addictions, with far fewer physiological consequences. If, as a society, we can convince individuals predisposed to addiction to choose cryptocurrency as their preferred addiction, we can dramatically reduce the long term health consequences, and addicts will be able to recover rapidly through cost effective, evidence based treatments:
I regret that I have but one "like" to give uno2tres for that post.
I've been handed a lot of examples of "actual commercial implementations of the blockchain" as arguments but every single one of them (once you drill past the hundreds of "news" about them on blockchain pimping sites) they always always turn out to be a Merkle tree hosted on a server that people log into like any other service. Basically Git!
Well I got a a spiel by an Oracle rep once around some product that uses blockchain for part maintenance. Boss's ears popped up at the work blockchain which sent me on a week long task of research to explain how it didn't do anything special.
It strikes me that a better question would be "is there anything useful for blockchain to do?" When I first started trying to understand it I was impressed with and loved the idea of the the tech. And it would be disingenuous for me to say it was a solution looking for a problem. It was created thinking that it could do some cool things for money in more volatile areas. However, it's failed at that (IMO) and I've yet to see a real good use case for it since. People have mentioned inventorying systems, voting, egg tracking, NFTs and all sorts of crap, but none of that seems actually practical or a situation that isn't solved better through some other means. So was it destined to be abused in ponzi-scheme-like pyramids, defacto gambling, and money laundering, or if in a different universe it had stabilized without abuse (beyond what we see regularly with other currencies) would it have ever been a useful thing to begin with? Or is there actually an alternative use for blockchain outside currency?
I still think the tech is neat. It's nerdy and fun. But is it effectively a solution in search of a problem (in practice, even if not in intent).
I still think the tech is neat. It's nerdy and fun. But is it effectively a solution in search of a problem (in practice, even if not in intent).
I've personally never understood the technical value of a trustless public blockchain. If you conceptualize it as essentially a database (a ledger), it violates pretty much every corner of database design. It's not fast, it's has no broad utility and it's not compact. If you conceptualize it as a transaction network, it violates every corner of design of that too (it's not fast, it's not secure and it's not versatile).
In programming, a big meme is sorting algorithms. Most are never used and a lot of it is really esoteric nerding out over cool algorithms. Blockchain is like the bogosort of databases.
In programming, a big meme is sorting algorithms. Most are never used and a lot of it is really esoteric nerding out over cool algorithms. Blockchain is like the bogosort of databases.
There is some genuine utility to cryptocurrency adjacent topics like Merkle Trees. These are used in areas like certificate transparency, where there's been a problems with, for example CAs issuing certs for names to someone other than the proper domain owner. The append-only property of Merkle Trees makes it possible for a cert to contain a reference to a transparency log that would be obvious if it were ever modified. But that's not really a consensus algorithm between multiple parties, it's a way for a single party to attest they are behaving in a certain way such that it is obvious if they ever violate that.
Currently I think the monitoring and auditing of those logs could be improved, and one possibility would be for multiple independent logs to contain checkpoint hashes for each other. A sophisticated way of tweeting a cryptographic hash to provably backdate a statement you can make later. But that's still not cryptocurrency.
That's because Git solves the practical basic problem that blockchain-type algorithms are actually useful for: non-repudiable audit trails, which, of course, are only 10% or so of the problems related to audit trails (because people lying on the records as they create them is much more common than people modifying the records to lie after the fact).
OP,
I've read this thread, and no one has put forth any good problem for which Bitcoin is a good solution.
What does it offer? It's a currency, much like what we already have that's safe, fast, efficient, and cheap. It's an ideal, fine, but the business world doesn't care about that one lick.
I've read this thread, and no one has put forth any good problem for which Bitcoin is a good solution.
- Regulations matter, especially around currency. You can't simply ignore the massive public failures Bitcoin and related crypto have had here (MtGox, etc). Given the design of these decentralized systems, this is a bug that isn't going away. This already disqualifies it from being the default currency for anything serious.
- It's incredibly slow. The throughput is wholly unacceptable for commerce.
- It's incredibly wasteful. If you have any concerns at all about climate change, then choosing a currency whose entire basis of value is based on using massive amounts of electricity is a really bad idea.
- The transaction costs are laughably high.
What does it offer? It's a currency, much like what we already have that's safe, fast, efficient, and cheap. It's an ideal, fine, but the business world doesn't care about that one lick.
I just got advertised a Lifehacker article via social media that's specifically intended to show normies how to refute Crypto when they get engaged in an uncomfortable conversation with someone praising the virtues of crypto.
https://lifehacker.com/what-to-say-to-someone-pushing-crypto-at-you-1850084439
I thought of this thread
https://lifehacker.com/what-to-say-to-someone-pushing-crypto-at-you-1850084439
I thought of this thread
No Hope In Crypt... ope
Say No To Crypto
Crypto: Not Even Once
Will You Turn On Crypto - Or Will Crypto Turn On You?
Say No To Crypto
Crypto: Not Even Once
Will You Turn On Crypto - Or Will Crypto Turn On You?
We have a cryptobro at work that is convinced that crypto currencies will be the answer following the collapse of society as we know it. So you better get it on it now while you can.
He ignores questions he can’t answer. Like, how do you access it in this apocalyptic future? He likes to hand wave that one away as quickly as possible before spouting off utter nonsense about how the blockchain is going to save us from reverting to neo-barbarism.
He ignores questions he can’t answer. Like, how do you access it in this apocalyptic future? He likes to hand wave that one away as quickly as possible before spouting off utter nonsense about how the blockchain is going to save us from reverting to neo-barbarism.
Yeah currency that requires the internet and more power than Sweden to use sounds less useful than canned goods or 5.56mm ammo if things go all Mad Max.
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