Then they will ask why nobody wants to use their payment cards
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Sorry my phrasing was bad and made it confusing. Let me explain it in detail.
They correctly choose a unsigned int for the time but they based it on Unix time, and Unix time is signed. So they choose a system that would require an conversion from Unix time to Bitcoin time (or the other way around) anyway. But you don't need to be able to have a timestamp for 1970, which their timestamp system supports, because instead of counting from 2008 (the invention of Bitcoin) they count from 1970. Wasting 38 years and as you know Unix time is hitting a limit in 2038, 68 years after its start, Bitcoin time is unsigned and so it gets to 2106. 2106-1970= 136 years. And they are wasting 38 years!!! Why? You need a conversion between both after 2038 anyway. And if they really care for cheap conversion, a signed 64bit value would be much better, because after 2038, that will probably be the standard. So they chose to waste 38 years for compatibility which will break after 2038, instead of choosing compatibility after 2038 for 292 billion years.
And if size was the reason and 64bit timestamps would have been too big, just start counting from 2008 (or better 2009 when the network started) and get all those juicy 136 years instead of 98 years.
It is stupid.
The choice of a
uint32_tfor time saves 4 bytes per transaction. That doesn't sound like much, but with 1.2 billion transactions recorded, it adds up to almost 10 GB of space saved.They could, ultimately, just replace it with a
uint64_tsome time in the 22nd century without much fuss. In the late 2000s when Bitcoin was created, storage space was at a significant cost, but now it is quite cheap and in the 2100s it will undoubtedly be even cheaper. -
Crypto is also accepted as a means of exchange. There are plenty of merchants willing to accept it as payment, but they are just not geographically concentrated in one location like banknote-accepters are. With a banknote, you have a very high concentration of merchants who will accept that as a means of payment in one geographic area (i.e. the country or region whose central bank issued that banknote), while it is not accepted anywhere else. With most cryptocurrencies, they will be acceptable worldwide, but the concentration of people willing to take it in any given geographic area is low.
It is important to note that you can't take properties of the smaller coins (the ones which you are probably thinking of are derisively referred to as "shitcoins" and most are deserving of that epithet) and apply them to every cryptocurrency. Just like you can't use properties of the Zimbabwean dollar to smear all fiat currencies in general.
Bitcoin transactions on its Lightning Network are typically instantaneous, and fees are lower than most credit cards (usually on the order of 0.1%). An on-chain Bitcoin transaction currently has a fee of about 1 USD, which would make it competitive to credit cards for transactions greater than 40 USD. Bitcoin fees, despite being notorious for being the highest among all cryptos, are actually very competitive with most traditional payment methods. This transaction from the most recent block at the time of writing paid about 117 USD to move over 411 BTC worth 48.5 million USD. That means they paid about 0.00024% in fees and this is the highest-fee transaction in this block (meaning they paid the highest fee rate of any transaction in this block). The going rate for this block was actually much lower; whoever sent this transaction overpaid by about 50 times.
It's accepted almost no where. And the list of issues go on. Crypto is easily stolen, very difficult to secure. Difficult to use for most people. Proof of work crypto is still in the majority and wastes absurd amounts of energy, etc. But the biggest issue is that it doesn't solve any problems that were not solved long ago unless you are conducting criminal activity (which I do have to acknowledge as it's one stand out use case).
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It's accepted almost no where. And the list of issues go on. Crypto is easily stolen, very difficult to secure. Difficult to use for most people. Proof of work crypto is still in the majority and wastes absurd amounts of energy, etc. But the biggest issue is that it doesn't solve any problems that were not solved long ago unless you are conducting criminal activity (which I do have to acknowledge as it's one stand out use case).
The notion that "crypto is easily stolen" is completely false. It's definitely harder to steal than, say, cash in a wallet. That it is "accepted almost nowhere" is also false. Look hard enough, and you can find someone who will sell you almost anything for crypto.
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The notion that "crypto is easily stolen" is completely false. It's definitely harder to steal than, say, cash in a wallet. That it is "accepted almost nowhere" is also false. Look hard enough, and you can find someone who will sell you almost anything for crypto.
It depends greatly on how it's stored. Most people just keep it in an exchange, which are robbed fairly often. Which wouldn't be a problem with real cash as there are laws in place to protect you. With crypto you have no recourse.
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Your point is valid for new, immature blockchains. Censorship/access restrictions are possible and it's very easy for PoS to turn into nothing at stake.
In practice mature PoS chains don't require any human consent.
Yes, they do.
In order to acquire the token, where does it come from in PoS?
You want to mint the token? It requires the token.
You want to buy the token? It requires someone that already has the token to sell it.
You want to trade the token? You need to find someone that has the token and wishes to perform that trade.
It requires acquiring a counterparty that consents to you acquiring a stake no matter how "mature" a PoS chain is.
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The main reason I don't care for bitcoin is I have to count a bunch zeros after the decimal point, before reaching a useful number.
$1 = 0.000006128921 btc? Really? Screw those zeroes. Bitcoin is inefficient in so many ways.Monkey brain no like small numbers. Monkey brain like big numbers.
But for real, Bitcoin was the first decentalized currency to solve the Byzantine Generals Problem. Its worth something because its transparent, unmutable, and the original digital currency. It was birthed via grassroot origins in depths of the housing crash. It calls out the Federal Reserve (and any other human institution that seeks to expand their money supply).
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I really like Taler
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I honestly never understood how Lemmy, a privacy and decentralisation focused community, is so vehemently anti-crypto. It's worse than genAI. Every time it is mentioned, everyone goes "crypto is a scam". I don't think I've ever seen any good faith discussion around it, just "scam", "pyramid scheme", and "only criminals use it".
Let's get something out of the way immediately: shitcoins are a literal pyramid scheme and a scam. Anyone can make their own cryptocurrency in an evening, and anyone who throws money at them is either a fool or a gambler.
But I really don't understand what people mean when they say Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or Monero are a scam. Sure they can be used to scam you, just like Amazon gift cards can. Maybe it's about the price volatility, but the price of all 3 mentioned before is up on a day, week, month, 6 months, year, and 5 year scale. It's volatile, but is not a scam. If you bought and sold at two random points in time, it's more likely you made a profit than "got scammed".
You know what actually is a scam? Credit scores, overdraft fees, having to pay to check your balance, and so many other fucked up practices in the US banking system."Criminals use them" is just the worst fucking argument, especially in a space like this. Are PGP, VPNs and TOR for criminals too? Do you think getting rid of crypto would stop crime?
And yes, proof of work fucking sucks. The energy consumption of Bitcoin mining is a problem. I am not a cryptobro who spends all his time making trades and is here to tell you that crypto is the salvation. They are far from being "good" for everyday use. I just wanted to point out how it seems that critical thought gets shut down at the sight of those 6 letters, and I hope someone can explain to me what they find so terrible about crypto (aside from environmental concerns and shitcoins)
The entire concept is fundamentally flawed
You are basing a economy with real economic stakes on something that is massively unstable and very resource intensive.
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totally agree re bitcoin, and also am very sceptical of crypto as a mass-adopted currency in general
however there are plenty of networks that don’t use proof of work to validate their chains, and they aren’t bad for the environment to nearly the same degree
They are still very unstable and rely on some sort of consensus. It is flat out a bad design. It would be safer to pay with stocks.
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- You're a criminal who wants to evade tracking by law enforcement
- You live in a country subject to sanctions and need to move a large sum of money transnationally
- You are the tinfoil-hat type who doesn't trust Government-issued money for one of many real or imagined reasons
- You want to make digital purchases while staying relatively anonymous
- You're a gambler who went all-in on crypto and are hoping it will increase in value later on
- You just think it's more fun to pay with futuristic magic Internet money (yes, some people actually do it for this reason)
- You are a business in a (the) country whose laws legally require the acceptance of Bitcoin
- You want to get rich
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No bank or goverment can control it. It is the benefit of being able to send money to anyone around the world while maintaining ownership of your money as if it were cash in hand.
wrote last edited by [email protected]That is exactly the problem. It has no real value as the entire thing is propped up by chaos. It could be worth a trillion dollars one day and then nothing the next.
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And specifically bad for this.
Only way out is communism. Pick yoir flavor.
wrote last edited by [email protected]What...
The only way out of crypto is full blow communism? Those are the two options?
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Oh sure, now Lemmy wants to embrace crypto instead of calling it a scam, all because your porn was threatened.
I had to put up with so much abuse here just because I always say positive things about crypto. You people suck.
Crypto AI porn sounds kinda hot
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If you're gonna pick a cryptocurrency, go with the one that actually keeps your identity encrypted, and is intentionally designed to make it unfeasible to farm with a huge crypto mining operation:
Monero.
It is extremely inefficient
The entire model behind crypto is flawed and actually pretty centralized. (Consensus and value propped up by hype)
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They are still very unstable and rely on some sort of consensus. It is flat out a bad design. It would be safer to pay with stocks.
consensus is basically what all modern databases rely on… it’s not unstable; it has properties that need to be well known and accounted for
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consensus is basically what all modern databases rely on… it’s not unstable; it has properties that need to be well known and accounted for
The problem is using that for something world wide with no backing by anything material.
It is unstable by nature
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Well, gold might be a little bit different. It derives its value not because of a government mandate but because monkey brain like shiny
The value of gold, silver and platinum is determined by two factors: there is little of it in nature and you cannot take more at will and it does not oxidize, which ensures good storage.
I really don't know about you, but in my country you can't take gold out of the bank. You buy gold from a bank and it stays in the bank longer without the possibility of taking it out. What a joke. Guess what happens to the bank and the gold in it when the economy collapses.
And now look at Bitcoin. there is a little of it, you can't increase it at will, and it's convenient to store. Does it remind you of anything? And it's always with you.
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Bitcoin may not be a scam per se, but its main usage is to facilitate scams. The biggest of which is being a market that speculators can manipulate to make the currency they actually want.
Even if bitcoin isn't a scam, people still use it to fuck people over. When bitcoin gained popularity, the forum entries were insane. It was all people telling other people to hold. Please hold guys, bitcoin is the future. Use your bitcoin like you would money, guys we're all in this together.
At the same time, they made fun of people who used their bitcoin to pay something and go: haha that loser bought a 20k pizza.
And they would all fuck eachother and sell all their bicoins when they were high enough. And when it dropped, they started again. Guyyyys, remember to hold. -
What...
The only way out of crypto is full blow communism? Those are the two options?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Crypto has all the same vices as government and corporate currencies, just arranged a little differently. It's not the revolution.
You can do various flavors of anarchism or centralism or the weird shit in between, but the only way for someone to not be able to say what you can spend your money on is to abolish money or get rid of all the people who could tell you what to do.
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The choice of a
uint32_tfor time saves 4 bytes per transaction. That doesn't sound like much, but with 1.2 billion transactions recorded, it adds up to almost 10 GB of space saved.They could, ultimately, just replace it with a
uint64_tsome time in the 22nd century without much fuss. In the late 2000s when Bitcoin was created, storage space was at a significant cost, but now it is quite cheap and in the 2100s it will undoubtedly be even cheaper.wrote last edited by [email protected]10gb, on a 670gb big Blockchain. Those 10gb are super important.
And again, size would an ok argument if they didn't go for uint32 instead of int32. Because they broke compatible with Unix time for no reason at that moment. Unless they wanted to min/Max every bit and then why did they start with 1970? And not 2008/2009?
It makes no sense.
Also in 2008, 10gb would have cost you around $1. Ofc, each node would have required the 10 additional gb, so each node would be $1 more. Of course, there weren't that many transaction in the chain and it wouldn't actually cost that much, but ok.
