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.

 

[ozzy702]

Two factors.

1). Inertia. ASIC-vulnerable algos are now dominated by ASICs that have no other practical function. Bitcoin is the prime offender here. The miners will never agree to changing the consensus algo since it means rendering all their present and future mining hardware unrecoverably worthless.

2). Accessibility. PoW's original lure was that everyman can scrape up a few tokens with his home PC. Newer projects like Raptoreum or um one of the even newer ones (yes, there are more!) draw in miners who have small setups as simple as a gaming PC. Proof of Stake or other more-exotic consensus protocols often have a barrier to entry that typically involves money that miners have already invested in their personal PC that they were going to buy anyway. Of course you'd be correct in observing that PoW projects that mature being plutocratic anyway, so the "little guy" gets bumped off eventually regardless. It's just harder to get started with something like PoS when you have little-to-no spare disposable income.

This. Very easy to gain major control over a new PoS coin without some kind of bootstrapping like Ethereum did. Even then, it's not like PoW is perfect and without it's flaws in regards to distribution and accessibility. I wish there were CPU only algos that saw widespread adoption for PoW, that would be best case scenario for distribution.

 

[ultimatebob]

Two factors.

1). Inertia. ASIC-vulnerable algos are now dominated by ASICs that have no other practical function. Bitcoin is the prime offender here. The miners will never agree to changing the consensus algo since it means rendering all their present and future mining hardware unrecoverably worthless.

2). Accessibility. PoW's original lure was that everyman can scrape up a few tokens with his home PC. Newer projects like Raptoreum or um one of the even newer ones (yes, there are more!) draw in miners who have small setups as simple as a gaming PC. Proof of Stake or other more-exotic consensus protocols often have a barrier to entry that typically involves money that miners have already invested in their personal PC that they were going to buy anyway. Of course you'd be correct in observing that PoW projects that mature being plutocratic anyway, so the "little guy" gets bumped off eventually regardless. It's just harder to get started with something like PoS when you have little-to-no spare disposable income.

Yeah, honestly I think that the Ethereum team is trying to stretch this transition out as long as possible because there is still good money to be made from mining crypto and selling it if you already have a ton of hardware.

If I was a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, I would think that they don't really want to do switch to PoS at all and they're just promising it to keep the government from getting involved.

 

[ozzy702]

Yeah, honestly I think that the Ethereum team is trying to stretch this transition out as long as possible because there is still good money to be made from mining crypto and selling it if you already have a ton of hardware.

If I was a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, I would think that they don't really want to do switch to PoS at all and they're just promising it to keep the government from getting involved.

What I don't get is the EF would make insane amount of $$$ and be able to fund Ethereum development easily in perpetuity under PoS if they staked the treasury. I'd think that there would be more motivation. I understand a lot is at stake an up until ~ late 2019 the merge wasn't even possible, but from my limited understanding there are no major roadblocks to the merge at this point and the majority of the heavy lifting was done prior to the beaconchain launch.

 

[DrMrLordX]

This. Very easy to gain major control over a new PoS coin without some kind of bootstrapping like Ethereum did.

That wasn't really what I implied or said though; furthermore, the PRC could have controlled BTC and BCH due to miner consolidation in their country (instead they just banned the practice). Not sure how much hashpower Chinese citizens had over Ethereum as well, but it was (apparently) substantial. PoS just makes it obvious that most existing consensus protocols are vulnerable to control if someone with enough money shows up and throws around their weight.

What people need to understand about PoS is that it is less appealing to the hobbyist nerd/gamer and more appealing to the investor class. You're going to get different people staking. In fact, there's already a term for them: yield farmers.

 

[beginner99]

Erm, huh? What does age have to do with PoW being crap? I'm a millennial, but that doesn't make Bitcoin not use ~1% of the world's power

How much power and pollution do cars make? yet here you are and I bet you drive or ride along in cars. For the rest see below. PoW will soon be gone for everything except bitcoin.

Explain it all away with ageism.

He seems to be one of those "crypto mining is killing the planet" type people. I don't totally disagree with him... the Ethereum team needs to get off their butt and migrate to Proof Of Stake already.

All new blockchains with any kind of traction are already using a form of PoS. Ethereum will fully switch to PoS in June this year (aka "the merge"). This is all public available knowledge. The only offender that really matters will be bitcoin and bitcoin has really no use case vs all the newer blockchains. The only use-case is storage of value. However it's unclear what happens when all bitcoins are mined (or very close to it) and it is simply not worth the effort anymore to mine. Bitcoin will simply disappear in the long run. One can store value by staking (investing) it which is almost always more profitable.

So if you want to complain about cryptos power use, be specific and complain about bitcoin. But of course explaining anything with just a minor nuance takes up 100 tweets and doesn't get any attention or traction. but from a technical person, that is what I would expect and say they should exlude bitcoin and for now ethereum due to energy consumption and not just blindly complain looking like he has 0 clue. that is what I expect from celebrities or politicians and not technical competent people.

Plus I have never seen mozilla being a green hippie foundation. It's about privacy.

Yeah, honestly I think that the Ethereum team is trying to stretch this transition out as long as possible because there is still good money to be made from mining crypto and selling it if you already have a ton of hardware.

If I was a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, I would think that they don't really want to do switch to PoS at all and they're just promising it to keep the government from getting involved.

You are wearing tinfoil and a huge one at that. The plan is public available. Just have to go looking for it. This stuff is obviously hard and involves software development which also means a potential for very, very bad bugs. It is simply not something that can and should be rushed. If it fails Ethereum is pretty much dead and will impact crypto in general as well. There hardly is a second chance.

Test networks for after the merge are already running. You can join them and see for yourself if it works. You can probably also try to break it or attack it if you wish to do so.

 

[ultimatebob]

The Ethereum team keeps pushing back the deadline for the transition, though. At this point, It was originally supposed to be completed years ago.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

How much power and pollution do cars make? yet here you are and I bet you drive or ride along in cars. For the rest see below. PoW will soon be gone for everything except bitcoin.

Indeed, I do occasionally utilize motorized transport for locomotion. I also generate carbon dioxide and other waste products through the process of living.

Bruh.

This argument is stupid and you know it's stupid.

All new blockchains with any kind of traction are already using a form of PoS. Ethereum will fully switch to PoS in June this year (aka "the merge"). This is all public available knowledge. The only offender that really matters will be bitcoin and bitcoin has really no use case vs all the newer blockchains. The only use-case is storage of value. However it's unclear what happens when all bitcoins are mined (or very close to it) and it is simply not worth the effort anymore to mine. Bitcoin will simply disappear in the long run. One can store value by staking (investing) it which is almost always more profitable.

So if you want to complain about cryptos power use, be specific and complain about bitcoin. But of course explaining anything with just a minor nuance takes up 100 tweets and doesn't get any attention or traction. but from a technical person, that is what I would expect and say they should exlude bitcoin and for now ethereum due to energy consumption and not just blindly complain looking like he has 0 clue. that is what I expect from celebrities or politicians and not technical competent people.

So basically he's right, all three cryptos in the tweet he's responding to are currently PoW and you're quibbling because you think it makes cryptos look bad?

 

[stahlhart]

While he is/was a programmer he clearly also is a boomer so pretty much clueless on this more modern stuff.

Not nearly as clueless as you are about what years boomers were born in.

 

[DeathReborn]

Looks like Kosovo has turned on Crypto, time will tell if they go all CCP on it or revert back.

Kosovo bans cryptocurrency mining after blackouts

The Balkan country is enforcing blackouts amid an electricity shortage caused by high global prices.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[DrMrLordX]

Looks like Kosovo has turned on Crypto, time will tell if they go all CCP on it or revert back.

Kind of sad. Yeah PoW is idiotic, but at the same time, it represents (or represented) an outsize opportunity for them to bring wealth into their tiny country. If their utilities aren't healthy enough to sustain blockchain mining, they probably can't power industry reliably either. Or much of anything else resulting in economic activity.

It may appear that mining would be a problem for them, but the reality is, they're being strangled by power shortages.

 

[ultimatebob]

Not nearly as clueless as you are about what years boomers were born in.

Yeah, Jamie Zawinski was born in 1968. That makes him a Gen X'er, like most of the people who post here

He also wrote Netscape, so he's kind of a legend.

 

[BFG10K]

How much power and pollution do cars make? yet here you are and I bet you drive or ride along in cars.

Cars objectively exist and are objectively useful, like taking a plumber to your house when you've got a leak.

Unlike Crypto which is not only objectively useless, but is a figment of peoples' imagination. No more real than fairies and unicorns.

"Crypto has value because enough people say it does!" OK, by that subjective standard flat-earth theory and homeopathy also has "value".

 

[beginner99]

Unlike Crypto which is not only objectively useless, but is a figment of peoples' imagination. No more real than fairies and unicorns.

lol. money is exactly the same. You think the balance you have on your bank account actually physically exists? it doesn't. it's just a number in a database. But I have told you that probably 10 times already in this thread. the only difference is that the bank system is centralized while the blockchain is not (theoretically, some never ones aren't that decentralized).

"Crypto has value because enough people say it does!" OK, by that subjective standard flat-earth theory and homeopathy also has "value".

Again, money/dollars is the same. It only has value because everyone believes it does. Of course it is a system with much more history than crypto and hence you can better believe it will keep some value (with current inflation that value is going down quickly however, a reason many are betting on crypto for savings). Nobody ever claimed it was a super stable and secure investment. It's an investment with pretty high risks but also high rewards. I wouldn't put my live savings in it. diversify applies.

back to the useless part. That is subjective. right know at this time in US the usefulness indeed can be question. Albeit bank fees are ridiculous especially also wire transfers. the right crypto as close to 0 fees and they aren't in relation to the transferred amount. But the more the west goes into censorship like china the more this centralization of your money will be a problem once your social credit declines. Banks might deny access to your money, by law. they can do that right now too. Or a niche case where robinhood blocks trades of certain stock if it is bad for them or their rich investors/owners. The problem is centralization that will more and more control what we are allowed to do at which point in time. privacy matters.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Unlike Crypto which is not only objectively useless, but is a figment of peoples' imagination. No more real than fairies and unicorns.

Eh, the same could be said about other "intangibles", like the copy of Windows that you're running on.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

back to the useless part. That is subjective. right know at this time in US the usefulness indeed can be question. Albeit bank fees are ridiculous especially also wire transfers. the right crypto as close to 0 fees and they aren't in relation to the transferred amount. But the more the west goes into censorship like china the more this centralization of your money will be a problem once your social credit declines. Banks might deny access to your money, by law. they can do that right now too. Or a niche case where robinhood blocks trades of certain stock if it is bad for them or their rich investors/owners. The problem is centralization that will more and more control what we are allowed to do at which point in time. privacy matters.

The cryptosphere's idea of government censorship is as off-base as its idea of security.

Crypto's not a cure of authoritarianism. You're laser-focused on the government taking away your money 'once your social credit declines' but completely ignoring every other implication of authoritarianism. Having more dosh in crypto wouldn't stop Jack Ma from being forced into effective exile or help any other dissident. If they can get to your fiat, they can get to you, and no amount of encryption is gonna stop them from getting to your crypto when someone's taking a power tool to your kneecaps. The best option is to not let this happen in the first place but that's far beyond the scope of cryptocurrency. Also, crypto can just as easily help oppressive regimes

Regarding robinhood, that already happens in cryptoland. I pointed it out on the first page of this thread. All the exchanges go down simultaneously, but still let their special business customers trade.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yay, BTC down to $42K. Who's "buying the dip"? LOL.

Edit: Aaaand, global hashrate dips, as GPU farms get frost-bitten in Russia... (/s)

https://www.reddit.com/r/NiceHash/comments/rxvowp

Edit: GPU rig confiscation in Kosovo

https://www.reddit.com/r/NiceHash/comments/ry47mg

 

[Panino Manino]

Seeing what's happening in Kazakhstan looks like Kosovo is next on the list of "color revolutions" by "peaceful well meaning citizens" financed by NED and incited by the murrican embassy.

 

[BFG10K]

Bitcoin's global hashrate tumbles after Kazakhstan shuts off country's internet

Research by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance last year showed that Kazakhstan had become the second-largest center for Bitcoin mining after China clamped down hard on...

www.techspot.com

“I guess some geeks would say that in theory, you could mine without internet, but in practice, all the machines in Kazakhstan should be turned off because of the internet shutdown,” Jaran Mellerud, a researcher at Arcane Research, told CoinDesk.

Indeed, we were told earlier in the thread that Crypto doesn't need power or internet because you can write passwords on a piece of paper in your pocket and cross the border. LMAO.

Bitcoin’s price has also plunged since the Kazakhstan blackout, dropping from around $46,000 to $41,000.

Local power or internet outages in the (e.g.) EU or US don't impact worldwide fiat, yet somehow an outage in a backwater commie country causes the whole ponzi scheme to buckle worldwide.

Guys, guys, marvel at the robust "de-centralization" and "anti-inflation" properties of Crypto compared to fiat, yo!

 

[ultimatebob]

I wonder if we're going to be seeing YouTube videos with people bragging about the cheap video cards that they scored from an obscure Eastern European police auction soon

 

[VirtualLarry]

I wonder if we're going to be seeing YouTube videos with people bragging about the cheap video cards that they scored from an obscure Eastern European police auction soon

I can see gamers getting their hopes up about getting cards already... just need a plane ticket to Khazistan.

 

[rstrohkirch]

Perhaps also a friend who works in the evidence lockup.

 

[DrMrLordX]

no amount of encryption is gonna stop them from getting to your crypto when someone's taking a power tool to your kneecaps.

I mean

XMR?

If nobody ever knows you have it, nobody is going to take you in for questioning.

Indeed, we were told earlier in the thread that Crypto doesn't need power or internet because you can write passwords on a piece of paper in your pocket and cross the border. LMAO.

There's a difference between accessing a wallet and mining.

Local power or internet outages in the (e.g.) EU or US don't impact worldwide fiat, yet somehow an outage in a backwater commie country causes the whole ponzi scheme to buckle worldwide.

The blockchain's still working, to the extent that it works at all. If you're trying to make a point you whiffed on that one.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

I mean

XMR?

If nobody ever knows you have it, nobody is going to take you in for questioning.

If you never interact with meatspace with it, but then it's not being used as a replacement for traditional currency. If you do, then you're hoping whoever you're buying the stuff from isn't an informant.

This is all beside the point I was making, though. Beginner99's focus on 'I can keep my crypto when I run afoul of the brownshirts!' is ignoring that the brownshirts can and will do far worse things than take your money (and still get your crypto anyway). It's a really, really weird sales pitch, you have to admit.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If you never interact with meatspace with it, but then it's not being used as a replacement for traditional currency. If you do, then you're hoping whoever you're buying the stuff from isn't an informant.

This is all beside the point I was making, though. Beginner99's focus on 'I can keep my crypto when I run afoul of the brownshirts!' is ignoring that the brownshirts can and will do far worse things than take your money (and still get your crypto anyway). It's a really, really weird sales pitch, you have to admit.

Ehh

I think the main point is: so long as you have some cash stashed away in a secure crypto wallet, you can leave the country in the event of unrest and have some reasonably-fungible wealth you could use elsewhere. If you're trying to leverage crypto for wealth while staying in a country that has been seized by a fit of despotism, then obviously you're going to have problems doing anything with it unnoticed.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

Ehh

I think the main point is: so long as you have some cash stashed away in a secure crypto wallet, you can leave the country in the event of unrest and have some reasonably-fungible wealth you could use elsewhere. If you're trying to leverage crypto for wealth while staying in a country that has been seized by a fit of despotism, then obviously you're going to have problems doing anything with it unnoticed.

That's a very generous interpretation, and even then it's still supremely niche.