The anti-crypto thread

[BFG10K]

Great news, crypto's collapsing across the board: https://www.techpowerup.com/282380/...ions-in-less-than-24-hours-did-the-bubble-pop

Also China's banned crypto, though individuals can still have it: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-financial-payment-bodies-barred-122712260.html

The sooner this cancerous parasite is wiped out, the better.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I saw an interesting episode of the "Rich Dad Radio Show", and he had on a guest, that was explaining, the REAL thing killing the environment, is the current (FIAT) inflationary money supply / policy, that demands ever more growth to sustain itself, on a planet with (apparently finite) resources. THAT's what's killing the planet.

Bitcoin, being a deflationary currency, and with increasing renewable energy production growth, is actually MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY. Let that sink in.

 

[coercitiv]

he had on a guest, that was explaining, the REAL thing killing the environment, is the current (FIAT) inflationary money supply / policy, that demands ever more growth to sustain itself, on a planet with (apparently finite) resources. THAT's what's killing the planet.

Oh, if the guest said it it must be true. After all correlation is causation, so if businesses seek continuous increase of their profits then surely a deflationary coin would stave people's thirst for more income. Wealth for everyone, alchemy perfected.

Anyway, good thing we only have one crypto coin. It would be a nightmare to have multiple coins with billions of dollars in market value and even more gaining in value every year. That would be like inflation on steroids. /s

 

[DrMrLordX]

It would be a nightmare to have multiple coins with billions of dollars in market value

Too late! Ironically, it's a lot of the overprinted fiat going towards the purchase of crypto that's allowing token prices to go so high.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

I saw an interesting episode of the "Rich Dad Radio Show", and he had on a guest, that was explaining, the REAL thing killing the environment, is the current (FIAT) inflationary money supply / policy, that demands ever more growth to sustain itself, on a planet with (apparently finite) resources. THAT's what's killing the planet.

Bitcoin, being a deflationary currency, and with increasing renewable energy production growth, is actually MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY. Let that sink in.

Glo made the same argument several pages back, and frankly it doesn't make any more sense now than it did then.

• How does a deflationary currency make companies stop wanting to sell goods to make money? Apple isn't gonna stop selling iphones. Hell, if the supply of coins is finite and the price keeps going up, wouldn't that give companies more incentive to sell goods and acquire more coins?
• How does a deflationary currency remove consumer demand for goods? Are we all gonna spend our days living in the woods worshipping at Bitcoin rai stones?
• Major currencies (including the US dollar) have gone through deflationary periods before. Why didn't they reach this magical happy state?

I mean, there's already counter-examples to this nonsense. People are literally operating fossil fuel power plants purely to mine bitcoin, a currency that chokes at a fraction of the transactions Visa can handle!

 

[trungma]

I saw an interesting episode of the "Rich Dad Radio Show", and he had on a guest, that was explaining, the REAL thing killing the environment, is the current (FIAT) inflationary money supply / policy, that demands ever more growth to sustain itself, on a planet with (apparently finite) resources. THAT's what's killing the planet.

Bitcoin, being a deflationary currency, and with increasing renewable energy production growth, is actually MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY. Let that sink in.

I let it sink in and still think bitcoin/crypto is a waste. It is a bit delusional in thinking that bitcoin/crypto is somehow an answer to the problems you have stated. We're killing the planet because it is human nature. Not sure what's that got to do with fiat currency. It would be the same if we were using bitcoin or any other fictitious currency. To spin it that crypto is more environmentally friendly is frankly, grasping for straws.

BTW, I do mine for a few extra bucks but it is not because I think Bitcoin or crypto is of any use or a better alternative then our current system. I have a server that's always one so might as well mine with it.

 

[fleshconsumed]

I saw an interesting episode of the "Rich Dad Radio Show", and he had on a guest, that was explaining, the REAL thing killing the environment, is the current (FIAT) inflationary money supply / policy, that demands ever more growth to sustain itself, on a planet with (apparently finite) resources. THAT's what's killing the planet.

Bitcoin, being a deflationary currency, and with increasing renewable energy production growth, is actually MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY. Let that sink in.

Others already chimed in, but you really shouldn't be listening to "rich dad/poor dad" anything. Those enterprises are a bunch of junk, much like snakes oil salesmen, designed to steal money from unsuspecting suckers.

In general, it is true, our economies and market valuations are have built in expectation of continued infinite growth, more people buying more products every year, which is obviously impossible. Sooner or later we will either hit some kind of resource limit, or population will stop growing - once most of the countries move into developed stage, people will stop having children which will put a major damper on the infinite growth valuation model. That is true. However, this has nothing to do with inflationary policy. Nothing. While I obviously haven't listened to the show I suspect the inflation argument was used to market "inflation protected" assets such as gold (ha!), or real estate (ha!ha!), or managed ETFs with high fees (ha!ha!ha!).

 

[psolord]

I saw an interesting episode of the "Rich Dad Radio Show", and he had on a guest, that was explaining, the REAL thing killing the environment, is the current (FIAT) inflationary money supply / policy, that demands ever more growth to sustain itself, on a planet with (apparently finite) resources. THAT's what's killing the planet.

Bitcoin, being a deflationary currency, and with increasing renewable energy production growth, is actually MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY. Let that sink in.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I, for one, welcome our new sink overlords.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Too late! Ironically, it's a lot of the overprinted fiat going towards the purchase of crypto that's allowing token prices to go so high.

That was his point...

I'm not sure you understand what irony is (he's not the one making the argument about deflationary crypto being the messiah up against "OOOOOOHHHH MYYYYYY GAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWDDDDD" inflation boogeyman)?

I also trademark All-a-nis More-a-set, cryptocurrency. "Its like ra-a-aaaaaaaaaainnnnnnnnn on your wedding day!" Sign up now for the Free ride when you've already paid promotion! Free Coin, the only coin that lets you throw off the shackles of banks and financial institutions and let's you exist entirely digitally! Be free, with Free Coin (Terms and Conditions: exchange rate of any and all currency to Free Coin 1:1, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000:1, Infinite:1 all transactions net 1 Free Coin, Free Coins not transferrable to any other currency ever).

 

[darkswordsman17]

I saw an interesting episode of the "Rich Dad Radio Show", and he had on a guest, that was explaining, the REAL thing killing the environment, is the current (FIAT) inflationary money supply / policy, that demands ever more growth to sustain itself, on a planet with (apparently finite) resources. THAT's what's killing the planet.

Bitcoin, being a deflationary currency, and with increasing renewable energy production growth, is actually MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY. Let that sink in.

Ah yes, if we all just make imaginary economies where no real goods are bought and sold but rather entirely fictional ones are, then as processing power needed for that gets more efficient then less energy is spent for it and we can reduce our environmental impact until it is less than that for an ant colony.

So, what you're saying is, Dwarf Fortress is the most efficient economic system that will ever exist?

Also, I trademark AntCoin! And I'll sell it to investors as you know like in Ant-Man how they get like super small and stuff? But then he also can get big? Well so you put in a small amount of money, and then after applying my patented ray, it becomes a very big coin. Or if you put in a large amount of money it becomes a very small coin. (Terms and conditions: size of coin does not correlate to value of coin.)

 

[Leeea]

The infrastructure bill could threaten the privacy of crypto.

Crypto advocates and digital rights activists are not pleased with the infrastructure bill.

qz.com

The bill’s authors focused on closing the crypto “tax gap” to pay for some of the massive spending plan, but critics say it falls short of appropriately regulating the budding industry. The bill requires any crypto “broker,” defined as anyone “responsible for and regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person,” to report users’ names and addresses. That leaves all sorts of players in the crypto space including miners and software developers on the hook

Looks like my days as a hobby miner are coming to an end quickly.

On the flip side this will have an immediate benefit of reducing video card demand. I was one the fence on whether I should send in the robots to buy a 6600xt tomorrow at msrp, and now I have decided not to bother.

 

[aigomorla]

The problem with the bill is it will create winners and losers in crypto.
Essentially unless your tethered to winner, your loser crypto wont hold any value.
This will obviously make the losers even more losers, and the winners even more winners.

But isn't that how the credit card came about?
Everyone is mind set that VISA / MASTERCARD are the winners, and the loosers are discovery and Diners Club card which ultimately is disappearing and probably wont last the next century.

And guess who crypto will tether up with soon?
https://crypto.com/cards

 

[beginner99]

The problem with the bill is it will create winners and losers in crypto.

Losers = US Citizens
Winners = everyone else

If the bill passes as-is, mining and also staking will become impossible to to legally correctly. Which is essential kills mining and staking. Which means there will be less miners and stakers and hence everyone not in US will get a bigger part of the cake.

Just shows how stupid the bill is. This part won't lead to more taxes but less. If the burecratic hurdles is too high or in case of mining and staking technically impossible to meet, then people will stop doing it and tax income from it will be 0. So better to have half of people evading taxes and the other half paying them than no one paying. And it's not even taxes. Any earings from staking or mining will at some point be spend on purchasing products which means better economy and indirect taxes even from those evading direct taxes.

 

[DrMrLordX]

That was his point...

I didn't take that away from his statement.

edit: also looks liike pool miners won't be affected by the infrastructure bill since the pool would be the broker. Or you could just mine XMR. They'll never know you're doing it.

 

[coercitiv]

I didn't take that away from his statement.

You... missed the /s at the end?

 

[Leeea]

dit: also looks liike pool miners won't be affected by the infrastructure bill since the pool would be the broker. Or you could just mine XMR. They'll never know you're doing it.

Well, that has no effect on my mining activities then.

Always been a pool miner. Makes me feel like an idiot for missing out on the 6600xt's this morning. Ah well.

Or you could just mine XMR. They'll never know you're doing it

There is no money in XMR mining, just power bills.

 

[DrMrLordX]

You... missed the /s at the end?

Nah. My take on it was that you were just making fun of VirtuaLarry without making any particularly salient point (like that overprinted fiat is bloating crypto prices).

Well, that has no effect on my mining activities then.

Always been a pool miner. Makes me feel like an idiot for missing out on the 6600xt's this morning. Ah well.

That's just my take on it, but if you look at the way pools work, the pool actually servers as the txn validator on the chain. It assigns blocks to pool miners and the pool miners return the results to the pool itself. I'm pretty sure that, at least based on how people are framing the bill (and the specific language that has been discussed publicly), that the major pools that are located in the US will hire some lawyers and announce to their miners that they don't have any new reporting requirements. Pools located outside the US will naturally be immune.

There is no money in XMR mining, just power bills.

I think it can be profitable CPU mining, but it's certainly not the best token to mine. The major problem is that you're competing with malware miners.

 

[Ninjak]

There's a guy that does $15MM per year selling collectables through his Patreon account. Goods are prepaid and shipped by mail, these are transactions between a trusted seller and mostly trusted buyers. Paypal just raised his rates in the middle of the night with no recourse. He's started to accept Cryptocurrency over the past few years and is going to push it hard going forward because Paypal is collecting 3%+ for doing almost nothing useful. So that's a real-world use case for Cryptocurrency that's happening right now - facilitating goods transactions with a remote trusted seller. "This is exactly why i believe Crypto Currency is going to change the world." Quote from Patreon guy.

 

[Hitman928]

There's a guy that does $15MM per year selling collectables through his Patreon account. Goods are prepaid and shipped by mail, these are transactions between a trusted seller and mostly trusted buyers. Paypal just raised his rates in the middle of the night with no recourse. He's started to accept Cryptocurrency over the past few years and is going to push it hard going forward because Paypal is collecting 3%+ for doing almost nothing useful. So that's a real-world use case for Cryptocurrency that's happening right now - facilitating goods transactions with a remote trusted seller. "This is exactly why i believe Crypto Currency is going to change the world." Quote from Patreon guy.

If Paypal is getting 3% for doing almost nothing useful, why didn't he just use another payment method (before he started accepting crypto)? There are other options out there. . .

 

[coercitiv]

My take on it was that you were just making fun of VirtuaLarry without making any particularly salient point (like that overprinted fiat is bloating crypto prices).

I wrote two paragraphs, one point per paragraph:

1. Fixed currency supply does not limit the need for growth. I hope it is quite obvious that neither population growth or human desire for more wealth are caused by inflation. More (greedy) humans = more growth.
2. Bitcoin is not a deflationary currency, not when it shares market cap with multiple other coins which continuously dilute it's value. New coins gain popularity every year, and to make matters worse some of them are inflationary by design. The fact that overprinted fiat may act as a catalyst for this reaction is only the cherry on top of a much bigger issue. Imagine US would have a fixed supply of dollars... but also a few other alternative currencies

So my "salient point" was that everything VirtualLarry wrote is false, except for the fact that there is indeed a "Rich Dad Radio Show" and the guest did manage to convince Larry that a deflationary currency would make the world a better place. I like the idea behind a decentralized currency, I like the idea of a deflationary currency (or one with a predictable and known increase in supply), I'm even partially sold on the idea that mining is a necessary intermediary step to achieve this, but it takes some special kind of mental gymnastics to ignore obvious truths about the human kind and blame unsustainable growth on inflationary money supply.

I could go on but the doorbell rang, gotta' let that sink in.

 

[aigomorla]

Paypal is collecting 3%+ for doing almost nothing useful.

This is so wrong...
You get stiffed if your the seller, yes.
But buyer, you have an insane buyer protection that pisses off the sellers half the time on how unfair it is for the seller.

I use paypal for just that.
Its so the seller doesn't even think twice to screw me over, because if its even the slightest bit off from description, which a lot of sellers tend to kindly miss or overstate, I can try to first mediate, and if the seller doesn't like it, i can then just report it to paypal and get a full refund.

Also if your friend is doing 15MM he would be going though ESCROWS on some of the sales, unless its very small sales at large vol.
You think paypal is bad.... wait til you see ESCROWS and fee's associated with ESCROWS.

So please don't tell people that paypal is all evil, the buyer is heavily protected, the seller is exposed, and if the seller wont accept, good luck getting the buyer to trust.

 

[Hitman928]

This is so wrong...
You get stiffed if your the seller, yes.
But buyer, you have an insane buyer protection that pisses off the sellers half the time on how unfair it is for the seller.

I use paypal for just that.
Its so the seller doesn't even think twice to screw me over, because if its even the slightest bit off from description, which a lot of sellers tend to kindly miss or overstate, I can try to first mediate, and if the seller doesn't like it, i can then just report it to paypal and get a full refund.

Also if your friend is doing 15MM he would be going though ESCROWS on some of the sales, unless its very small sales at large vol.
You think paypal is bad.... wait til you see ESCROWS and fee's associated with ESCROWS.

So please don't tell people that paypal is all evil, the buyer is heavily protected, the seller is exposed, and if the seller wont accept, good luck getting the buyer to trust.

Sellers have benefits going through Paypal as well. As a seller, I can understand wanting to accept crypto as you then not only have complete control over refunds, but the transaction fee is pushed onto the buyer which some in crypto are probably willing to pay because the value has spiked so much from when they mined/purchased it, it seems like free money, but that certainly wouldn't be the case if it went mainstream. As I mentioned above, there are other options for accepting payment outside of Paypal, it's just that once you start looking into them, Paypal starts seeming like not such a bad deal after all. If he is doing large volumes of transactions totaling in the millions of dollars, he'd probably be better off with a proper payment system though. There will be some up front costs but he'd save money in the end.

 

[blckgrffn]

Sellers have benefits going through Paypal as well. As a seller, I can understand wanting to accept crypto as you then not only have complete control over refunds, but the transaction fee is pushed onto the buyer which some in crypto are probably willing to pay because the value has spiked so much from when they mined/purchased it, it seems like free money, but that certainly wouldn't be the case if it went mainstream. As I mentioned above, there are other options for accepting payment outside of Paypal, it's just that once you start looking into them, Paypal starts seeming like not such a bad deal after all. If he is doing large volumes of transactions totaling in the millions of dollars, he'd probably be better off with a proper payment system though. There will be some up front costs but he'd save money in the end.

I ran an ecommerce site doing about that much in payments annually. I was responsible for both the tech and finance/marketing side of things.

We accepted all major cards through Authorize.net, also PP and Amazon Payments.

Firstly, you accept what your target demo has to pay with. You need friction at checkout as low as possible, so many resources have been expended to get them to the finish line. You shunt everyone to any one payment method and you might shed 50% or more of potential shoppers. It's hard to filter those folks out of your sales funnel before they are costing you money in terms of clicks.

Secondly, while you can maybe get a more nuanced set of rates (ie, hammered by Amex, lower Visa fees) they all are suspiciously similar. Almost like they publicly advertise their rates and tiers for those rates and they all go up at once. It's weird, huh? (no it's not given that the network overlords behind anyone that allows you to accept Visa are the same)

It's not like magic options open up when you scale up to even $15M. Amazon probably can do more to dictate rates, but you know why.

If you aren't in the top 100 or so of merchants your rates are going to suck.

The real business to be in is payment processing, obviously. Selling widgets is hard.

 

[Hitman928]

I ran an ecommerce site doing about that much in payments annually. I was responsible for both the tech and finance/marketing side of things.

We accepted all major cards through Authorize.net, also PP and Amazon Payments.

Firstly, you accept what your target demo has to pay with. You need friction at checkout as low as possible, so many resources have been expended to get them to the finish line. You shunt everyone to any one payment method and you might shed 50% or more of potential shoppers. It's hard to filter those folks out of your sales funnel before they are costing you money in terms of clicks.

Secondly, while you can maybe get a more nuanced set of rates (ie, hammered by Amex, lower Visa fees) they all are suspiciously similar. Almost like they publicly advertise their rates and tiers for those rates and they all go up at once. It's weird, huh? (no it's not given that the network overlords behind anyone that allows you to accept Visa are the same)

It's not like magic options open up when you scale up to even $15M. Amazon probably can do more to dictate rates, but you know why.

If you aren't in the top 100 or so of merchants your rates are going to suck.

The real business to be in is payment processing, obviously. Selling widgets is hard.

My saving money comment was more relative to what most people use Paypal for (as a seller), the occasional used item or some low volume side hobby. For those people, it's not worth the time/cost to go with anything else. But if he's doing high volume with millions in sales, it's probably worth it. Even if he can only shave off 0.5%, at $15M in sales, that's still $75,000 per year savings.

Edit: I agree with your accept what people want to pay with though. If not accepting Paypal costs you 20% of sales or more, then it obviously doesn't make sense to not accept it.

 

[Ninjak]

This is so wrong...
You get stiffed if your the seller, yes.
But buyer, you have an insane buyer protection that pisses off the sellers half the time on how unfair it is for the seller.

I use paypal for just that.
Its so the seller doesn't even think twice to screw me over, because if its even the slightest bit off from description, which a lot of sellers tend to kindly miss or overstate, I can try to first mediate, and if the seller doesn't like it, i can then just report it to paypal and get a full refund.

Also if your friend is doing 15MM he would be going though ESCROWS on some of the sales, unless its very small sales at large vol.
You think paypal is bad.... wait til you see ESCROWS and fee's associated with ESCROWS.

So please don't tell people that paypal is all evil, the buyer is heavily protected, the seller is exposed, and if the seller wont accept, good luck getting the buyer to trust.

This is a real example, I'm not making this up. The guy has a well-known YouTube channel (in this collectable niche), he makes money by buying large volume of product wholesale, breaking it down, and selling it off to hundreds or thousands of patrons in order sizes around a few hundred dollars. There is absolutely no need for buyer protection, this guy is not going to lose his name, his business, his empire trying to stiff you over a few hundred dollars. His buyers themselves are semi-vetted as he only sells to his Patreon subscribers, they know what they are getting, they don't need Paypal hand-holding. Paypal provides almost no value in this transaction, it's a perfect application of cryptocurrency.