Phone calls became cheap because telephone monopolies were broken up.
No it became cheaper because we started flooring more fiber optic cables along the ground + sea bed.
Data became more dense, and more of it was able to cross with the same amount of effort.
In your definition Microsoft should be dirt cheap, but yet, everything across the board is way more expensive including cost of inflation even after they got broken up.
Technology allowed things to become cheap, not the breaking of monopolies.
You have 5G 4G and most places in the US have retired out 3G was it was too expensive to maintain including copper land line wires at home.
"Money on the internet" already exists in the form of bank transfers, PayPal, Venmo, zelle, and any other currency transfer system. Other countires or currencies may have their own systems. Sweden has Swish, which is tied to the swedish banking system
Are you really comparing those to crypto?
Really?
How uninformed in crypto are you to be comparing those to crypto?
In that case, the Credit Card utilized the first type of web transaction over phone modem.
The credit card predates everything you listed, but everything you listed including the credit card has to go though the government via a banking system.
Crypto was to circumvent that process and bypass the banking system entirely with the concept of Proof of Stake, where each transaction was not centralized by spread out amongst everyone on the network.
Now, let's look at this from an investment perspective. You go out and buy a top of the line PC. Let's say your costs are $3500.
This is now, but lets look back in 2019 when that same GPU netted you way more.
Yes now GPU mining is trash, its all because of Eth.
Eth wanted to preserve its whale holders and screwed everyone else over.
This is why i really want Eth to burn and die.
The Whales are to blame for controlling Eth, its like the how the US says we need to preserve our currency... Great lets stop printing more money, and allow the millions of americans to suffer so the rich who have all that capital can profit even more.
Also Satoshi did not intend on bitcoin to ever be a hedgefund 2000 master portfolio piece.
He visioned a decentralized banking system that didn't relay on one source, and instead would have thousands of ledgers spread across its users.
Its human greed that has inflated the BTC and ETH to what its worth today, not the conception of what it was intended for.
So mining would be about -$5/month. Or in other words, unprofitable with no ROI. Ever.
It is literally a waste of money and resources. You're burning up your money, and the planet, for nothing.
*sigh*
I can really feel your hate with crypto, and i understand.
It wrecked us Gamers hardcore on GPU sources.
It wrecked electricity prices thoughout countries.
People who invested in it lost there entire portfolio's via Celsius + Voyage + FTX.
But you need to step back and look at what BTC was intended and how its not BTC's fault, but the fault of people who thought they could capitalize on it and ended up screwing a large portion of the people along with the sinking of its ship.
Would i still buy BTC?
Yes probably... but im very scared at where to put my eggs at the moment.
I still have funds locked up in Celsius and FTX, which i expect i will never see again, but hey, if worse comes to worse i can write them off as a loss when i trade out the BTC i had in coinbase, and not pay any taxes on them if they ever appreciate again.
Will i blindly invest in it?
I never did, nor do i ever intend.
I just had extra GPU's laying around gathering dust, that i just threw on mining duty for fun, and a little pocket change, and watched as that pocket change took a explosive return of interest on back in 2015 to 2021.
Do i mine now?
NOPE... i have a lot of used GPU's sitting gathering dust, but hey, that's what they used to do anyhow before i started to mine. I may donate them to my cousins who need PC's for there children and don't want to spend too much money.
I may raffle them off at church for a fund raiser to the Sunday school i teach at, and take my kids to magic mountain with the proceeds.
Who knows... yet anyone in 2023 who mines on a GPU is what i would agree with you "S T U P I D". You ASIC mine as its far more efficient and you get better capital of returns on it, but that is also answering your first statement. Technology has allowed for things to get cheaper.
Will i mine in the future?
Sure... if something is profitable, and can give me a decent amount of pocket change i can buy games on steam or pay for my VPN with, while still being cheaper then the cost of electricity spent, then a big YES.
If i can spend 5 dollars in electricity and get a greater then 8 dollar net of return, I'm all in for it, but as of right now, that's just not possible.
There were some important confounding variables this cycle, which you totally overlooked, like:
1) A world-wide pandemic
2) lockdowns
3) supply-chain shortages, including delivery-chain holdups
4) Gov't money-printing. (They printed something like more money in 3-4 years, than the entirety of the country's history before that, or something similarly crazy, I've read.)
Actually Larry in 2016 when crypto had its first major spike, it halted gamers getting gpu's.
I remember looking for my 1080ti only to see it majorly hiked at 200%+ msrp.
There was no covid... there was no lockdowns, there was no EDD payouts.
Only supply shortages because people wanted to mine as much as they could.
I do blame crypto for gamers not getting the 3000 gen gpu's.
I also blame crypto for the electricity hikes, and also how they are trying to kill solar in California by changing the net metering structure.
But i was part of that reason, so i can't say i don't understand that greed, expect, i was actually putting those GPU's to work intended by gaming on most of them. 100% of the high end cards i had on my farms were trickled down to mining duty. I only actually bought a few efficient cards when mining took a big boom, but 0 high end ones for the pure intent of mining.
Wow. I pay about 15 times that rate, currently.
Holy cow, you pay $1.05/kWH?
And here i thought me paying $.23/kWH was excessive when they raised rates starting next year.
And on top now they want to mess up my net meter rates, because solar people are "entitled"... who do you think provides the grid power in reverse during peak working hours? like from 11am-4pm.