- cross-posted to:
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sigh
Once again:
Blockchain is not synonymous with cryptomining
Blockchain does not require proof of work
Cryptocurrency and NFT grifting does not devalue blockchain as an immutable distributed ledger
I swear to god people just copy paste whatever makes them feel good without any effort at understanding
True… But Satoshi did invent Bitcoin, which is proof of work, and is everything in OP
Elon musk popularized the electric car.
It had dumb handles that killed people. It lied about having self-driving capabilities. It had terrible manufacturing tolerances.
The “technically true” nature of it reads like propaganda against electric cars as a whole, does it not? I’d argue that applies here too.
“Popularized” the electric car, maybe?
There were electric cars since there were cars
Popularized it is. I was careful to not put invent, but morning brain not work good.
Fair enough, I forgot that OP said “blockchain,” instead of “bitcoin.”
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most electric cars are teslas so like a statistical analysis would be mostly correct.
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propaganda against electric cars is generally just propaganda against cars in general, for example:
if full self driving becomes a thing you can expect traffic to become MUCH worse as like one minivan for a parent with 3 kids is replaced by four self driving cars that drive each kid around and one for the parent. This could lead to traffic jams at every subburb
Doesn’t have to be cars.
I’m just saying the original post is conflating criticisms against a particular implementation of blockchain with all blockchain.
“The wright brothers invented a useless machine they called the airplane. It only held one person and could fly for only a limited duration. It was also extremely dangerous.”
That’d be a silly sentence, would it not?
Well that’s very different than anything happening in the thread so yes its very silly.
The old newspapers are full of critiques of the ford model T and conflating them with all cars, most of those criticisms apply only to early cars. I think that’s what you’re getting at here.
But realistically in context the criticisms make sense. I would go as far as to say its more a problem that enthusiasts havent renamed bitcoin as a “cryptoasset” since its not useful as currency and apply “cryptocurrency” only to proof of stake designs.
Or as an analogy, it would be like calling a motorcycle a type of bicycle, which is more or less true, but its so goddamn different in use they had the sense to rename it so normal people would be able to tell them apart.
What are the differences that you see?
I think its mostly for most people “crypto” = “cryptocurrency” = “bitcoin” even though there’s some categorical umbrellas there and I don’t think there’s a way to fix it without redefining cryptocurrency to only include currencies and specifically exclude bitcoin and similar coins. Blockchain has a similar problem because its used as a synonym for crypto.
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Your example is not even close to technically true.
Sure. Sure. Insert your own example of applying the sins of a particular implementation of a technology to a hierarchical supergroup. That was an example I came up with in a few minutes on the shitter, not a deep philosophical argument.
_ is bad, because (specific implementation) has these flaws!
That’s the issue being discussed here. It’s misleading without precision.
Except it says blockchain in the toot?
Immutable so long as no one party or group owns more than half of the coins on a given blockchain… then the ledger is whatever they say it is and it propagates down because they can manufacture their own “consensus”.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp
and most use cases around things like “smart contracts” end up still requiring a trusted third party at some point
https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/the-inevitability-of-trusted-third-parties/
It’s not 51% of the coins, it’s 51% of the computing power on the network. Both of which are virtually impossible in the case of Bitcoin, though not entirely impossible. I just wouldn’t consider a 51% attack even remotely a threat to the network compared to something like government crackdown
You are making my point. Blockchain is not crypto. Blockchain can be useful in private, internal use cases (like a transaction ledger for bank branches) where trust is largely implicit.
If you have trust, why do you need a blockchain?
Distributed / immutable databases are not solely a feature of blockchain either.
It’s a very interesting thing in a vacuum. Basically any application of it so far (with the possible exception of the original one, if it weren’t just a speculation investment machine at the moment) runs into the problem where it has to interact with reality at some point. And most of the problems Blockchains solve are already solved by a variety of other systems, for less time/currency/hardware investment.
Because it’s an immutable ledger, not just a database. It maintains a history of every previous transaction/entry. Blockchains are used by banks and in the supply chain because it makes backtracing and identifying discrepancies trivial. For things like cryptocurrency, blockchains allow “don’t trust, verify” but for something where you already have trust, they allow “trust but verify”
Cryptographically immutable append only ledgers (aka merkel trees) have existed since at least 1979. A blockchain is different because it has distributed consensus. If your consensus algorithm is trust, then it’s not a fucking blockchain.
A blockchain is nothing more than a data structure. It’s essentially a linked list using the hash of the previous block. Distributed consensus is something blockchains are useful for, but it doesn’t define it
Nah, you can pretty easily define a Blockchain as a special case of a Merkel tree with a distributed consensus method.
No, that’s a Merkel tree. Been around since 1979.
Here, I provided a bunch of examples months ago of other ways blockchain is being used: https://lemmy.world/post/36683795/19677963
I swear to god people just copy paste whatever makes them feel good without any effort at understanding
Why do you think LLMs are so popular?
This is a good comment that makes all good points. But I just wanna say let’s stop saying “blockchain” singular and with no preceding article like we’re tech CEOs and it’s some immutable god. They’re blockchains, plural, like any other data structure there can be more than one and there are. eg The blockchain of ethereum is distinct from the blockchain for bitcoin but they are both blockchains.
Valid point! But then how do you refer to the data structure/architecture/model concept? Sometimes we want a concise term (like bittorrent or ActivityPub) for the abstraction
It’s a novel data structure, we can refer to it like we do other data structures: Linked lists, hash tables, primitives. The branded implementation of these things is what we typically make singular: Bitcoin, ethereum, monero (bittorrent, activitypub…)
Bittorrent implements a torrent swarm, activitypub implements a federated social network.
The only alternative to proof of work is proof of stake. And if the world ever ran on proof of stake crypto, it would make today’s wealth inequality look like a Marxist paradise.
Why? If the rewards are fixed and independent of the amount staked then there is no issue.
What matters is whether or not there’s any significant profit - the reward being bigger than the cost. PoW minimizes this with difficulty adjustment flushing most profits down the toilet. PoS must always have a return competitive with other investments.
Profits should be low, or else it promotes inequality.
PoS must always have a return competitive with other investments.
No. It needs to offer a reward enough to pay the minimum number of validators needed to establish a secure network.
2x the number of stakers means 1/2 the return for each validator, but the network doesn’t care about that.
With too low a return they just invest elsewhere.
You get one asset with worse interest that can be spent (like dollars), and one asset with better interest that can’t be spent (like bonds). The poor hold the former, the rich hold mostly the latter.
Low returns and people leaving is not a problem.
There will still be enough validators to secure the network. The remaining will get a higher return.
What’s the minimum you mentioned earlier?
If there’s a low barrier to entry then you’re just reinventing POW because someone can run as many nodes as possible with minimal stake in order to maximize returns. Can you give an example of one successful “fixed rewards” Crypto coin?
Ethereum.
The overall network issuance rate is fixed and currently roughly 4.5% per year. If more people stake then less is received per person.
Minimal stake is is $75k per validator.
This stake is slashed if you are dishonest.
You are exactly the type of person I’m talking about :\
Crypto is not the only use case for blockchain.
Blockchain can be useful in inherently trusted, closed ecosystems.
Depending on the use case, proof doesn’t even need to be anything more than a valid certificate (not work, not stake)
Consider a bank that develops its own blockchain ledger for internal use only, replacing their branch ledgers (which require daily reconciliation and propagation).
An immutable, distributed ledger has plenty of valid, valuable use cases without looking like crypto.
“Internal use only” blockchain is an oxymoron. If all contributors are trusted entities, then what does it matter if the data is stored in a blockchain vs any other data structure? If anything the amount of extra work to maintain and modify the blockchain in the case of errors just makes it unnecessary.
If that’s the best example of its many “valid, valuable use cases”, then it’s still a pass from me, dawg.
I have a large number of examples in this comment from four months ago. Please read them: https://lemmy.world/post/36683795/19677963
Literally the first example you gave was shut down a year later: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoReality/comments/1mpeh9z/when_crypto_bros_are_asked_for_a_blockchain_use/
Pretty obvious that its use in the first place was some FOMO executives trying to get in on “blockchain” technology, just like they’re doing with AI and LLMs now. Funny how BTC and ETH both plateaued a year ago, right around the time AI became the new thing.
I’m not going to bother reading the rest, I already wasted too much time arguing with a true believer. GL with the crypto that you say you don’t have.
Lol you’re a judgemental prick. I have zero crypto because that shit is absolutely moronic.
It’s like you talked to someone who supports nuclear power and responded “good luck with the nuclear bombs you definitely don’t have, true believer”
Sounds like you just want to hate on shit you don’t understand. Go on with your bad self though 👍
EDIT: LMAO from the article you linked they even point out that the tech itself isn’t the problem, but the willingness of businesses to invest in the improvements (which is, like, an incredibly common problem in business that does not in any way make the tech bad)
Its plan to digitize global supply chains hasn’t received sufficient cooperation and support to remain viable.
That is the downside of corporate blockchain projects. They need everyone to share a mindset and commit to a long-term plan. Unfortunately, businesses face ever-changing conditions and financial problems. Few can warrant the cost of buying into such systems under the current market conditions.
You probably preach about how nuclear power is terrible, how if it were so great there would be more of it, and people sticking to coal is proof that coal power is better.
Big brain you’ve got there 😂🫡
If all contributors are trusted entities,
This is not true, even inside a bank. Employees commit fraud. Branches don’t trust each other.
the amount of extra work to maintain
Once built, maintaining is easy.
and modify the blockchain
Er. The whole point is that blockchains are immutable.
But as long as you can have a trusted central authority, you don’t need blockchain without needing to trust all the clients. The central authority can enforce authentication and authorization for what each client can do, combine with proper logging it is already sufficient. Blockchain is only needed if there’s absolutely no central authority (which is not the case for any traditional business as by nature they already have a hierarchy where the top would act as the central authority, therefore any business that implements blockchain internally is just BS-ing).
Then why hasn’t a better blockchain based currency gained any popularity? If they don’t have critical mass then your distinction is meaningless. It turns out there is just zero real world need for an untrusted distributed ledger. Databases and governments solve the problem much better.
Questioning the technical virtues of an alternative product based on lack of critical mass adoption is pretty funny, when you consider we’re on the fediverse. I know that doesn’t defray your argument, but just an amusing observation.
I see why you might draw the comparison, but I actually don’t think the comparison is valid at all. Forums/communities can still be useful and fun with only a few people. Discord is also massively popular with a small community model, for a more successful example to compare with the fediverse. However a currency that nobody uses or accepts is entirely useless until mass adoption happens. That’s why they typically get mandated by force by governments.
Or if you need it for some other particular application, like drugs on the dark web.
Great points!
Two points:
Then why hasn’t a better blockchain based currency gained any popularity?
https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/categories/proof-of-stake-pos/
Etherium and virtually the whole rest of the crypto scene that is “not bitcoin” has pretty soundly rejected the wasteful Bitcoin design. There was even a fork of Bitcoin that would have used the much more efficient proof-of-stake, but since that would be bad for everyone with a proof-of-work “mining” rig it didn’t take over.
It turns out there is just zero real world need for an untrusted distributed ledger
An “untrusted distributed ledger” is literally the backbone of modern software development. While you could plausibly split hairs and assert that git requires “trust”, I don’t think you’d wind up in a spot that both supports your assertion and a cognizable difference for anyone but mathematicians and security nerds. (And even if you did, the exact same sort of non-scam usages of blockchains are ones that operate like git, with the ledger used for something else.)
Blockchain is not synonymous with crypto. Why are you bringing up crypto specifically? Crypto is garbage. But Blockchain is not crypto
People bring up crypto because it is the only use of blockchain that isn’t worse than already established methods. And crypto is only “better” because it’s unregulated and allowed a bunch of scams to be pulled.
If [other applications of the blockchain, which has now existed for an extremely long time] don’t have critical mass then your distinction is meaningless.
Critical mass is not required for internal systems. Not all implementations of blockchain are intended for public use.
I’m really tired of this. Blockchain. Is not. Crypto.
Here’s the research I did for everyone four months ago: https://lemmy.world/post/36683795/19677963
I’m not convinced there’s any internal use for blockchain. Internal implies under a specific umbrella, some overarching organisation, who can then be the central trusted server that makes blockchain unnecesary.
That said, non-public but open uses, such as tracking dealings between companies in markets with little trust and no single governments (the shipping example in your referenced comment) is indeed the thin slither of a plausible use-case.
Another limitation is that blockchain loses its benefits if anyone tries to design over the complexity of using it directly (using a ui that under the hood uses blockchain is no different to using a ui that talks to a central database, you’re trusting the central ui provider, you need to (at least be able to) build your own interface to realise the benefits of blockchain.
That means blockchain basically will never benefit individuals, it can’t. Sure, you could have multiple compatible uis shared around, but that’s no different security-wise to multiple central banks with an interoperable transfer system.
The only place blockchain has real benefits is when multiple large corporations/governments are interacting and don’t trust eachother/anyone.
See the link in my other replies for some examples of internal uses that still benefit from immutable, distributed ledgers.
Large organizations still have loss and risk from individual bad actors. Operating a central authority that validates every single transaction in a ledger, and validates ledger history and consistency, can be prohibitively complicated. A well designed blockchain implementation can resolve most of these issues.
A great example is a pharma/healthcare company that wants to manage medicine batch and expiration tracking, as well as distribution/patient assignment. With a traditional infrastructure every participant needs to phone home to a central authority. In a blockchain setup, peers can report ledger events one hop up and propagate it through the chain.
That’s a very simple example but I hope it gets my point across
Identifying anomalous behavior from bad actors is already a solved problem with databases and governing bodies.
Cryptocurrency development makes a whole bunch of arbitrary value-guided decisions during creation, all of these decisions have tradeoffs such that nobody has figured out a way to feature them all at the same time, or would they want to.
For example, bitcoin is fully auditable. Anyone with a copy of the bitcoin blockchain can review every single transaction in bitcoin’s history, and trace the flow of every last satoshi from it’s mining to today. This is because the developers of bitcoin place a high value on verifiable auditability and security. Conversely monero was developed for the purpose of being a completely untraceable, unauditable currency that still has a knowable supply. And ethereum was created in a manner that intentionally supported scripting, so that it could be used as a platform for novel applications and contracts. None of these primary features could be ported to either of the other two without breaking them completely, because of the deep programmatic implications of the requirements.
It’s not really a question of better or worse, but of use case. The fact of the matter is that the reason these three examples are the leading currencies for their use case is literally because nobody has yet been able to do a better job. And for bitcoin at least, at this point it’s security rests just as much in it’s wide adoption and interest as it’s design intent, so it’s unlikely that anyone ever will.
Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up
Don’t ruin a good thing we’ve got going on here
First my buy order at 100K CAD just missed executing before the bottom bounce, now this?
What can I say? I woke up this morning and chose violence 🤷♀️
GNU Taler is a far better decentralized payment system (although it’s still in beta)
payer is anonymous, but reciever is known, so it’s unsuitable for ransomware; this design is so that it is taxable and thus more suitable for everyday usage by the masses
deleted by creator
It being taxable makes it more suitable for governments to make official, and makes it, as I said, more suitable for everyday usage by the masses
To be clear there is nothing “more” taxable about taler than crypto, it’s just integrated with the traditional banking system by design while crypto is self-reported. Also since taler is a payment processor and not a currency, that tax is presumably sales tax rather than capital gains tax. I don’t know if this qualifies as “better” than crypto for payments, I’d say really depends on what your use case is, but I appreciate that taler tackles the problem of paypal by simply doing open source paypal, rather than invent a whole self-sovereign currency.
Yeah but without anonymous payments (xmr) there’s no good way to easily pay for diy estrogen or hosting for piracy services, or to anonymously pay my mullvad account.
Granted if society wherent setup as a giant fucking fascist capitalistic panopticon we wouldn’t really need any of that.
Any who, I mostly agree with the sentiment though. “Career” investors and venture capitalists belong against a fucking wall IMO.
How do you anonymously pay for things when the ledger is public?
xmr is a cryptocurrency which aims to make reading transactions from the chain impossible. Iirc the main mechanism of this is that they bundle a lot of transactions together and send out coins from that pool only once it is large enough, without preserving each specific coin. This repeats for a few proxies. You could trace a coin from origin to endpoint, but this would be pretty much useless as you cannot know whether the endpoint was the intended one or not.
Interesting! So at best you could narrow down the purchaser to one of many possible sources.
My first thought is that a large enough organization trying to demask you could do so by looking at repeat subscription purchases over time coming from the same wallet. You know, like a monthly fee for a VPN. The first month you’re one of a thousand people. The second month. Maybe you’re one of 500. Eventually they get you.
But I know nothing about XMR, they probably solved for this. I just can’t be bothered to read :-D
I believe the way they deal with this is by having the recipient create a one-time address for every sender, so it is not possible to recognize patterns between senders and recipients. Another thing is that every wallet has two associated keys. There is a “spend key”, which is a write-only key that can spend money from the wallet, and a “view key”, which can be used to view the contents of the wallet. You can publish the view key if you want that to be public information, but you don’t have to.
How does the mechanism know who to send the coins to? How can I be sure the coins I put in go to where I intended them to go? And can the sender prove to the receiver it was their transaction?
As I understand it, this happens cryptographically. Send keys can be added to form a larger key, which gets used to sign the pool of transactions. Because the signature used your key as well, the recipient can verify that they have received your coins(from a pool you signed). The important part is that it is impossible to tell who signed what part of the pool, just that one of the people in the pool did. Because all money is pooled together and sent at the same time, it is not possible to read from the amounts sent which transaction belongs to who.
I think I get it (in theory). As much as people shit on crypto, it really is a cool implementation of math and economics.
XMR uses some really cool cryptography actually. Zero-knowledge proofs and shit.
Not all crypto is the same. ZCASH uses an encrypted ledger. Monero combines transactions and redistributes to obfuscate.
Okay, politely, fuck off. Its 2026 and I absolutely refuse to believe anyone educated on crypto enough to know what a blockchain is and how it works, even if just a basic understanding, doesn’t know about encrypted blockchains or XMR.
You get to post this comment like once in your life, and after that we both know its in bad faith. I really doubt its the first time.
There’s actually a surprising new discovery coming out of East Asia this year. After years of research, they’ve discovered that you can educate someone online without being a total dick.
I too thought it was impossible. But I can’t argue with science.
Normally I’d agree but this gets posted anytime anyone says something about anonymous crypto payments like some magic gatchya, and Its getting really hard to believe its not in bad faith at this point.
Insert 10000 xkcd. If you see it so often, just have a text ready to copy+paste anytime anyone says something about it
Zcash has opt in anonymization. So it really doesn’t work because any offramp can just not accept any zcash that has been obfuscated. With monero, its all obfuscated by default.
If a diy hrt seller doesn’t accept obfuscated cash they are 100% a fed, but point taken
Admittedly I’m not a hardcore crytography nerd, but I know they’ve been improving things for years, and that message on that mailing list looked like it was 10 years old.
Not saying your wrong, but Id take it with a grain of salt. Anytime I see a newer encrypted block chain I see it and think whatever improvements have been done here, will eventually bleed into monero because of that. And that unlike the other encrypted blockchain, people will still actively be using xmr for real transactions.
You might be right, I have not followed xmr closely. You might also notice that this vulnerability is unlikely to deanonimise you, but the point was more that it is a mistake they shouldn’t have made. Their last audit looks fine, though it was made by a blockchain auditing company which I don’t know. I don’t think there is much harm in using xmr for this, groups who would be capable of exploiting vulnerabilities in this kind of project are unlikely to do so, unless an issue of national security becomes associated somehow
I’m not sure I’d trust whatever that link is as a source that XMR isn’t secure… I mean, what even is that link?
I don’t know what a mullvad is, but now I want one. I HAVE CASH
Good news! Put that cash in an envelope and post it to them and they’ll give you VPN time: https://mullvad.net/en/pricing
also no delivery drugs. people would have to go out to get their drugs
Dude was just bored and wanted to implement his idea from his University paper. He was long gone before Bitcoin became a trading commodity instead of a novel currency.
Of which Bitcoin did it to itself which is why we got hard forks like Bitcoin cash that barely reached $2k when bitcoin was at $70k.
Not to mention that plenty of superior cryptos came out to replace bitcoin like xrp, monero, etc.
These posts are often very dumb and never understand that most of these tech innovations are novel ideas from University research that happend to become the latest trend.
Even LLMs and AI have excellent use cases, yet you’ll see idiots like this crap on it 24/7 like its the antichrist.
It’s like blaming Einstein for the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima.
I have always been fascinated honestly by how reductive public discourse often becomes the larger its activity is. And it honestly is rather simple to explain: If an opinion becomes popular, it has no link with its veracity or validity, all it has to do with is how it appeals to common sense and how easy it is to swallow because for it to be popular, it needs to be approachable by all types of humans no matter their social, economical and personal backgrounds.
It is just like how academic or legal documents often seem classist by the language they use to approach real and proven phenomenons, but the reason their vocabulary is not accessible is because it needs to be nuanced to allow proper human abstraction the reality around us. Whereas the popular vocabulary is common since it’s very nature is to allow exchange with all people.
Ha, Einstein yeah right.
Thanks, Obama
the Einstein files
Now compare that to how much damage billionaires and banks are doing to this planet and all the people? At least btc blockchain is not controlled by the 1% of greedy fucks.
This is literally the propaganda that banks and billionaires want you to keep parroting.
You’re completely wrong! This tweet by this very specific person is just a front to distract us from the Epstein files! /s
It is possible two hold two thoughts in ones head and even think both are bad, at the same time!
What a dumb take. You don’t have to go anti-technology in order to be anti-capitalist. The technology itself is not the problem, it’s the capitalist capture that’s the problem. You don’t have to throw the baby with bathwater.
Problem is I don’t see a baby whatsoever…
People have looked at it from all sorts of directions and tried to propose use cases but none have come up with any particular use for this concept that isn’t just as well or better served by a different approach.
Without the crypto-bros, sure, no one would be especially ‘anti-blockchain’ and it wouldn’t have the negative impacts it does today, it just would be a forgotten concept that didn’t go anywhere.
Trust this comment. This guy knows what he’s talking about.
This is going to be an unpopular take here, but its true
Not all technology improves human life. There are torture devices, etc. The problem isn’t just that corporations see an uncomfortable toilet or addictive app and see dollar signs.
Drugs have been a major problem for society since it began and there’s still no real solution for them. Some things just inherently cause problems and need some degree of restriction.
And banks could continue having a monopoly on controlling money and transactions.
Spot on! And diluting your income and savings by money printing and inflation.
I really don’t care about the legal form the oligarchs give themselves, but at least the state can impose statutory requirements on banks, even if they’ve always been too lax.
Impose what? Have you hear about fractional reserves?
2008 financial crisis that resulted in zero accountability and tax payer bailouts for the banks?
History is plagued with examples on how banking fucked up the plebs.
Not to mention half of the world is outside the banking system.
At least Bitcoin is money with clear rules engraved in code, no bailouts and accesible for everyone.
The most pathetic system? You can criticize crypto without resorting to petty insults, which just makes your position appear weaker.
Wah~ pls no bully
Does anyone know I’d proof of stake ended up being better than proof of work? I dont follow crypto but kept hearing that was supposed to improve things
Crypto is a big deal because it enables grifting and crime, but with how shit payment processors are and their tendency to use their position for censorship, crypto actually would be a potential way of solving that problem IF it werent ludicrously volatile and wasteful. But I have no idea if those problems could really ever be solved, or any progress has been made on those fronts
Proof of Stake and Proof of Work are two different ways of electing who should append the blockchain with new transactions.
Proof of Work: the one who can waste most energy fastest is most likely to be elected.
Proof of Stake: the one with most money is most likely to be elected.
It’s a bit oversimplified, but that’s the general idea.
Proof of Stake: the one with most money is most likely to be elected.
This is misleading. Winning the validation election doesn’t give you more power.
The one who is most dishonest gets their stake burned.
How is that misleading, they said nothing about power or being dishonest?
Also, proof of stake sounds like rich get richer scheme (but that was already true for proof of work for a long time)
How is that misleading
The word elected implies power. Having more money staked doesn’t give you any more abilities over a capital poor user.
proof of stake sounds like rich get richer scheme
Like all capitalism. An interest bearing bank account is a rich get richer scheme.
In PoS you do still have to do a bit of work for your money (hardware, power, network connection, verification).
Yes, Ethereum has been using PoS successfully for over three years and they’re not the only major blockchain to do so. PoS works great these days, still using PoW in 2026 is a deliberate choice.
IMO xmr kinda saved proof of work by optimising their algo for consumer grade CPUs.
CPU mining is much less econimcal than GPU because you can’t fit as many CPUs on a single system. Plus server grade CPUs with lots of smol cores instead of a few big ones hurts it too.
Makes it hard for anyone other than nerds with am extra PC to make money mining, and most of those guys won’t be purposely picking a geographic location with the cheapest/most environmentally harmful electricity source. (More nerds live off of nuclear/solar than datacenters full of miners do)
I think the technology itself has great potential, though capitalism using it for the worst reasons imaginable and making it as inefficient as physically possible will never show us the true potential of this technology.
Under different social structures, it could possibly be a pretty great foundation for new kinds of monetary systems
Perhaps Americans don’t see the point of crypto since USD is the world reserve currency for now, but cryptocurrency has been a great way to have economic non-cooperation with authoritarian regimes.
When the government can inflate the currency at whim to pay out their billionaire friends while leaving the common man to suffer, crypto is a nice escape hatch since it has a fixed inflation rate. You don’t have to worry about government supression of funds for journalists either.
Bitcoin’s proof-of-work blockchain is to usable crypto-currency what tulips futures are to fiat currency.
And while the literal supply of bitcoin is predictable, it’s also as a store of value extremely deflationary by intent. Which makes it far closer to a bond or stock than it does a usable “currency”.
I agree. Bitcoin has become more of a store of wealth than an actual currency. Similar to gold. If you live in an authoritarian and corrupt regime and need to use money, I’d suggest Monero (XMR).
Yeah, but now you can buy drugs online way easier.
This guy’s feed is sad. It’s fine to oppose bitcoin, but if you’re an anti-capitalist IMO there are many more valid targets to spend literal years tweeting against daily. Dude cares a lot about the externalities of propping up a currency yet he hasn’t said a peep in all this time about the US military.
Bitcoin’s network draws a negligible amount of energy considering the amount of financial transactions it allows.
Do you think all the extremely complex (and corrupt) existing financial system is more energy efficient?
Also miners gravitate toward regions with cheap, renewable electricity, and market pressures continuously push the ecosystem toward greener power mixes, so the energy profile is improving over time.
Are you really gonna smear Bitcoin with financial missbehaviour? Do you know what’s the currency most used for ilegal purposes? No? It’s the dolar.
Trillions of dollars fuel narcotrafic, human trafficking and other crimes against humanity.
This post also fails to consider that Bitcoin serves a vital purpose as a savings mechanism, in the face of government that are not fiscally responsible (inflation).
Housing prices, stock market manipulation, over investments and more and more shenanigans are only incentiviced by the fact that people cannot save in any currency, when the best of it lost 90% of its value in the last 70 years.
BTW, don’t get me started on the big dumpster fire of energy and capital that is the AI bubble…
If you are going to hate something you might as well take 10 minutes to understand what you hate, otherwise you are a zombie.
Do you think all the extremely complex (and corrupt) existing financial system is more energy efficient?
it is.
If we’re comparing against the energy cost of securing Bitcoin, then wouldn’t we need to evaluate the energy cost of securing the legacy financial system - its military?
I’m not sure how much of this is accurate, but I have to agree it’s been a bane to humankind. Maybe, just maybe, we should learn to stop, pull our heads out of our asses and think very carefully about potential consequences before we do things.
