Then they will ask why nobody wants to use their payment cards
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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.
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It's wasting useful energy, and you think that's a good thing?
Nope not what I’m saying
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The problem is using that for something world wide with no backing by anything material.
It is unstable by nature
wrote last edited by [email protected]i tend to agree for mass-adopted currency, but mass currency is only 1 use case for blockchain
things like bank to bank transfers (think a replacement to swift: with semi trusted entities like a big group of banks, the proof functions can be both extremely efficient and fast whilst remaining scalable and distributed so nobody has control… of course this would be a private network, but every bank involved can audit and sign off on transactions)
blockchain at its core is an immutable log between untrusted parties… it can be used to prove a particular thing happened at a particular point, in situations where people don’t even trust governments etc to maintain accurate records
it’s too big and cumbersome to be used by everyone in the world for payment, but it’s a good facilitator of some niche things that most people won’t have any idea about
the technology is solid; it’s just very limited, and the most “profitable” and marketable uses are also the most ill-suited
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You're so right, environmental impact has not been assessed by any cryptocurrency ever made. Literally zilch. None. Nada.
? And that makes bitcoins waste disapear?
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Such as?
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Bitcoin for market cap
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Solana for transactions, throughput and scalability
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Polkadot or Cosmos for interoperability
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Ethereum for everything else (developer, activity, economic activity, regulatory, governance, decentralisation etc.)
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
Sure, lets replace a regulated scam with an unregulated scam, that will solve things /s
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Bitcoin for market cap
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Solana for transactions, throughput and scalability
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Polkadot or Cosmos for interoperability
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Ethereum for everything else (developer, activity, economic activity, regulatory, governance, decentralisation etc.)
Cool, ty!
I also hear alot about Monero from the privacy crowd.
Any thoughts?
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You speak of Gresham's Law, which is "bad money beats good money". For payments, people would rather part with an inflationary asset than deflarionary because of future value. Definitely the thing that has settled the argument over Bitcoin's primary use case.
Agreed re: the faux anticapitalism. I mean, ideologically I think of myself as anticapitalist. But I have to afford things to not be destitute within this economic regime, so I "play the game". But I wouldn't delude myself into thinking that advocating for one sort of money over another is in any way a stance against capitalism. In most cases it isn't even a stance against status quo.
It cool to know there is a term for currency people don't want to spend. That was a fun read.
