Yes, I know that it still exist, and yes, decentralized currency which utilizes distributed, cryptographic validation is not actually a strictly bad idea, but…
Is the speculative investment scam, which crypto substantially represented, finally dead? Can we go back to buying gold bars and Pokemon cards?
I feel like it is, but I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen. Maybe crypto scammers moved on to selling LLM “prompts?” Maybe the rug just got pulled enough times that everyone lost trust.
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As an actual currency, it’s functionally useless. Even if every retailer on the planet were to accept it, the overhead for making the transaction is just a non-starter
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Because of that, it’s entirely just funny money. Even further, since it’s entirely a virtual asset, if the power goes out, your wallet goes with it
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The environmental impacts are horrifying. This fact alone means that it should all be eradicated. Destroying the planet for Internet funny money isn’t an acceptable proposition
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For a decentralized currency, people sure do love centralizing under large exchanges, and the massive losses, thefts, fraud, etc. have shown that no matter how “decentralized” it’s supposed to be, it’s still susceptible to the same bullshit as any other currency
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Its high profile association with grifters, scammers, malware, and dark web shenanigans has completely soured its image in the public mind
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It’s entirely a speculative investment scam now. There’s no way to decouple it from that.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but since ETH moved to a proof of stake model rather than proof of work (i.e. “mining”), isn’t its environmental footprint now a fraction of the wasteful behemoth it was previously?
(Though I 100% agree given the ‘gas fees’ (transaction costs), it’s still absolutely useless as an actual currency.)
Yes, you can now run an Ethereum validator from a Raspberry Pi
Not recommended though, RPIs aren’t really suited for production, plus I think only Nimbus runs well on RPIs?
I think he’s confusing a validator with a node. You can easily run a node on a Pi.
Ah that would be make sense, but most people wouldn’t see the point in running a node. People automatically think of “mining” or “validator”
You’re right about the environmental footprint - proof of stake dropped the energy consumption by 99.95%
Ether (ETH) was never intended to serve as a digital currency. it was only meant to be the fuel or incentive for computational tasks on the Ethereum network. An L2 like Optimism or Arbitrum runs on top of Ethereum and facilitates transactions that are significantly faster (tens of thousands of transactions per second), for a fraction of the cost (pennies or fractions of pennies)
I have a few bitcoin that I got when it was new, and I was playing around with it; then I forgot about my coins until it exploded and made it into the public (non-tech) news. I luckily still had my wallet, and I bought a quite expensive watch with Bitcoin when it was near its price peak. The transaction was no more difficult than using Paypal. I could have bought a lot of things; at one point, I could have bought a car with it. There are many vendors who’ll accept Bitcoin even today. So, regardless of your other points, saying that it’s funny money that you can’t buy anything with is simply false. It’s worth what people will pay for it, just like the American dollar, or gold, or the artificially inflated price of blood diamonds.
I don’t think promoting falsehoods helps any argument. If that one is obviously wrong, what about your other points? Lots of people want cryptocurrency to fail. Lots of people want to maintain the hegemony of the US dollar. Some people even have valid criticisms of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, and the giant farming installations. It’s certainly something to discuss, as long as it’s kept to facts.
The issue with retail is how long it takes for a bitcoin transaction to be confirmed. The overhead simply isn’t feasible. A vendor isn’t going to sit around an wait an hour for confirmation that payment has been received. A private seller might not care. But a company that processes millions of transactions per day isn’t going to deal with that. It has nothing to do with the belief in it and its worth.
And yes, let me be perfectly clear: I absolutely do want cryptocurrency to fail. That’s not about being a shill for government hegemony. It’s about there being literally no inherent good in it, either in principle or in practice. From the fact that it consumes more energy than entire countries and pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere than entire major industries, to the environmental impact of increased mining for rare earths, increased manufacturing strain, and supply chain disruption due to the demand for the chips to drive the miners.
Also I really don’t appreciate your passive aggressive way of calling me a liar
Your position was clear.
I’m not sure how else you’d prefer someone to call out untruths that you’ve posted. It’s either calling you a liar, or some version of saying you’re talking out your ass, or what not. But you’re right, that’s what I was saying. FWIW, I don’t think it’s lying the way Trump lies; I think there’s just a lot of uninformed knee-jerk reactionism. For example, you talk about processing times; have you ever heard of Lightning? It’s a crypto used a lot in Nostr and which has instant transfer times.
My point is that I you’re arguing a point that is easily refuted, when you have other points that are reasonable and justifiable. I could argue against the other points, too; for example, I could bring up proof-of-stake crypto-currencies which do not have huge energy use, and which haveno more energy footprint than the SSL transactions that you’re using constantly, every day. But it would be a harder arguement for me to make because the original cryptocoin, Bitcoin, is proof-of-work and has had a huge eco impact.
And I might not try to argue that unless I thought you were open to discussing the topic in good faith. Which I don’t believe you are; I think you’ve already made up your mind on the topic, and now all that’s left is evangelism.
I do have a question, though: do you understand how blockchains work, and the what the various kinds of proofs are? Not in the “could you program it” sense, but in general, like could you describe how they work to someone over beer? Or have you just read a lot about how bad they are? How much of your opinion is based on your social media filter biases?
That’s exactly what I was gonna say: @davehtaylor must have no idea of the nearly-cost-free Layer 2 network.
Additionally, how much money does it take to power banks? All the staff, the electricity, the Brinks armored cars, the accounting for all that cash, the safety deposit boxes and all of their contents and insurance… Does he think ACH transfers or, worse, checks or money orders, are free on an environmental level? How is USD with all of its nonstop-growing debt safe in any long-term way?
The L2 experience is quite poor at the moment, which is more an indicator of how bright the future is
How so? GameStop’s NFT Marketplace for games has been showcasing Layer 2 tech and it’s smooth as fuck. There are many others that use Layer 2 tech not just Loopring.
Which L2 are you talking about?
I’m talking about Loopring itself
Also I really don’t appreciate your passive aggressive way of calling me a liar
They’re not wrong to do so when most of your points are outdated or crap:
the overhead for making the transaction is just a non-starter
Outdated
if the power goes out, your wallet goes with it
Bullshit
For a decentralized currency, people sure do love centralizing under large exchanges, and the massive losses, thefts, fraud, etc. have shown that no matter how “decentralized” it’s supposed to be, it’s still susceptible to the same bullshit as any other currency
Privacy coins are the best way to live the dream of fungible secure currency, which is why they’re being suppressed. All the others are an experiment in how to monitor transactions more deeply.
Its high profile association with grifters, scammers, malware, and dark web shenanigans has completely soured its image in the public mind
If I may don a tin foil hat, likely left rampant by design. The proof of concept has been done, the tech works and has been in the hands of the public long enough that it’s normalized. This may be to pave the way for countries to replace their currency with “legit” crypto versions in the next decade or two, which requires putting a bullet in the head of the rest.
It’s entirely a speculative investment scam now.
If you talk in absolutes you’re destined to be wrong.
The issue with retail is how long it takes for a bitcoin transaction to be confirmed. The overhead simply isn’t feasible. A vendor isn’t going to sit around an wait an hour for confirmation that payment has been received.
Outdated.
And yes, let me be perfectly clear: I absolutely do want cryptocurrency to fail. That’s not about being a shill for government hegemony. It’s about there being literally no inherent good in it, either in principle or in practice. From the fact that it consumes more energy than entire countries and pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere than entire major industries, to the environmental impact of increased mining for rare earths, increased manufacturing strain, and supply chain disruption due to the demand for the chips to drive the miners.
At some point PoW will probably die a death and PoS will be all that remains. PoS is cheap.
Some of these points are not inherent properties of cryptos, like the environmental impact and the transaction overhead.
it’s not even just that. if you count the number of transactions across all cryptocurrencies that are confirmed by mining, they are absolutely dwarfed by the number of transactions that are not confirmed by mining. same thing with volume of money moved. the environmental complaint applies to a minority of the total activity.
And shouldn’t the environmental cost of “real” currencies be compared as well? It’s not like printing and minting all those bills and coins is zero energy. Even treating it virtually (direct deposit, etc - we rarely handle cash) has some overhead.
I don’t have a horse in this race, but comments that are obviously trying to grind an ace are suspicious to me.
On the tech side of things, the environmental impact of running traditional, centralized services is inherently lower than running any cryptocurrency off of a blockchain. To overcome the technical limitations would be to create another centralized service.
But yeah, there are almost certainly ways that traditional currency can reduce their environmental impact, too.
Funny how people are creating bullshit by taking about things they don’t know.
Hint: Blockchain is more than just currency and when your centralised e-mail server is taken down with all of your e-mail’s, than you will think back at people who did the switch to decentralisation.
Another hint: Ethereum did lower its CO2 emissions by 99%, just by changing its code. Can your 100% virtual currency, parked at your favorite bank in a country like sweden, where there is no cash anymore, do the same?
I’ve found that the same folks who crowed the loudest about cryptocurrencies being decentralized were working the hardest behind the scenes to build the first generation of exchanges and online wallets.
As an actual currency, it’s functionally useless. Even if every retailer on the planet were to accept it, the overhead for making the transaction is just a non-starter
New technologies such as the lightning network will fix this.
Because of that, it’s entirely just funny money. Even further, since it’s entirely a virtual asset, if the power goes out, your wallet goes with it
If the power goes out, your local ATMs and card readers will stop working as well. It’d have to take a global power outage to bring a crypto network down, and at that point we probably have more important issues to deal with.
The environmental impacts are horrifying. This fact alone means that it should all be eradicated. Destroying the planet for Internet funny money isn’t an acceptable proposition
This is fixed by proof-of-stake.
For a decentralized currency, people sure do love centralizing under large exchanges, and the massive losses, thefts, fraud, etc. have shown that no matter how “decentralized” it’s supposed to be, it’s still susceptible to the same bullshit as any other currency
True, but it’s a personal choice. You don’t have to have to store them centralized if you don’t want to. The same cannot be said about traditional currencies, as it’s not feasable to have stacks of cash lying around.
Its high profile association with grifters, scammers, malware, and dark web shenanigans has completely soured its image in the public mind
Also true, but that has nothing to do with the actual currencies. The public image will improve once people learns how it works.
It’s entirely a speculative investment scam now. There’s no way to decouple it from that.
Maturity will make it decouple from that.
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Maybe people understood, that instead of freedom as advertised, crypto brings out even more oppressive forms of capitalism.
I’m not a crypto-bro, but how are they oppressed? It’s just a infinitely more volatile Gold replacement and you don’t have to sell on the big places
“Infinitely more oppressive forms of capitalism,” not “Bitcoin users are oppressed.”
A lot of controversial comments. Here are some of my observations:
- Not a single mention of decentralised finance/DeFi in the comments, which is a game-changer.
- A lot of outdated information or misunderstanding of recent developments in the industry
- A large focus on scams and crypto bros, who are the loudest but definitely not the majority
undefined> DeFi
All governments and API server owners have shown that this is a wish and not reality.
DeFi has added some real value for both project creators and users, not just for myself. I’m not talking about the ‘money making, profit driven’ side of value either, but utility, capital efficiency, flexibility, new financial primitives as well.
All sorts of crazy innovation that you shouldn’t just hand-wave away as a scam or redundant.
Good points for sure.
You mentioned recent developments, what Loopring is doing with Layer 2/3 technology has been game changing within the ethereum space. GameStop’s NFT marketplace, especially the games shines because of it.
Semi-related, this post reminds me of a recent F1 story I came across on squabbles, where they are using w3 improve their ticketing systems to combat certain things that currently cause issues like scalping while also providing a medium for tailored ticket and fan experiences. It has actually been a long time coming, I found this article from ‘21 How Non-Fungible Tokens Are Coming To F1 which goes more in-depth with what their vision is and what they believe they can achieve.
I wouldn’t be surprised if these kinds of applications pop up in other sports down the road if it does well for F1.
Given all the negative press in addition to the unfortunate support from GOP fascists, from the outside looking in it must seem like it’s 90% delusional morons being taken advantage of by 10% scammer assholes.
There are delusional morons and scammer assholes, but it’s a loud minority and does not define the technology and the assoc industry.
I tried to like Loopring, but their L2s were hardcoded circuits rather than zkEVM which the Polygon and Matterlabs team (and Starkware to a lesser extent) are pushing ahead with this year. Allowing the community of third party developers to contribute value (sound familiar Reddit?) is going to make the whole L2 space to gangbusters.
As it stands now you can’t do much with Loopring except what the first party devs have built, which is basically a standard excahnge.
No, twitter just shit the bed is all and thats where the scams were primarily spread, but now that so many people have dropped twitter you don’t hear about it as much.
Pretty much 1/3rd of the ads I get on Reddit, for example, are still crypto scams.
I will agree though that it lost the crypto-bro sheen, thank god, and companies stopped trying to shoehorn it into everywhere it had no use case for.
There are use cases for it but they are extremely specific and most of the time a normal database is the right tool for the job. You need to satisfy multiple conditions for a blockchain to be the right tool for the job over a normal DB.
Furthermore, even if you do satisfy the requirements and use blockchain tech, its annoying to try and market that. Just as an example, how often do you see video game companies or gambling companies or other websites touting the fact they have, I dunno, a Redis mem server on their backend as a “selling point” of their service?
No one. No one does that, no one cares. No one tries to market what database their backend uses as a way to make their product sound better, because no one gives a shit what your backend is built on top of. They care about the actual features and functionality of your product, not the tech your developers used.
So hopefully we have now entered the era where some services do use blockchain on the backend when its the right tool or the job, but they don’t bother to try and market it and no one gives a shit if its MSSQL, Blockchain, Mongo, or whatever else that is used to store data.
Agreed
Nope. I use it on a weekly basis to pay for stuff on the internet. It’s got its uses and the concept is sound. What you’re talking about is the hype train that happens ever so often.
What do you use crypto to pay for on the internet every week?
Nice try FBI
Wouldn’t you like to know, fedboi.
“Did you know if you ask me if I’m a cop that I legally have to answer you truthfully if I’m a cop? So relax! What do you spend it on?”
Servers, VPN, domain names and recurring donations. Mostly donations every week. Servers and VPN on a monthly basis.
Thanks for the response. Aside from the fed responses lol I was wondering what people actually used it for since we can’t deny there is a lack of products you can buy with crypto. I will def start using it for donations and VPN
Actually I’ve had really good success in paying for privacy services with it. I wouldn’t do it any other way, especially for things like a VPN where you don’t want the provider to have to keep your name and address due to legal requirements.
Another great use case is sending money abroad, especially to countries where there’s other sorts of financial restrictions.
I’m glad to see that paying for things is still an option. What I really hope for is that the future of crypto is all payments and the investors fuck off
I know one crypto bro IRL. He acknowledges that it’s all just a pyramid scheme, but he enjoys it because it’s like gambling but with more strategy involved I guess.
Would you also consider GameStop’s NFT marketplace for games part of a pyramid scheme?
Or maybe what F1 is doing to evolve how they handling ticketing? Here’s a recent follow up on F1’s NFT ideas I came across recently.
It’s… just not all a pyramid scheme. To say it’s all a pyramid scheme is missing the forest for the trees. It’s n o t
While I think you’re right in that neither of those seem to be pyramid scheme, I disagree with the implication that they are any better (apologies if that was not the implication).
They seem to just be creating an avenue for monotization of something that, I assume (but I could be wrong here), was previously free by nature, hence the necessity for an NFT to monetize it.
I guess really that’s just what NFTs do, or at least their main use case. But I guess I just fundamentaly disagree with that idea.
I don’t think anyone minds people buying fly crap with a currency that has no credible base. What galls people is when we loose billions of dollars from the world economy from a group of con artist with no restraint in how low they would have gone. Or how we have morons racing to earn cash by running climate killing mining rigs.
Gambling except the expected value is higher than 0
Is it really though? If I were to go and buy my first ever crypto coin today would you really say the expected value is greater than 0?
I have no doubt those who got in years ago or mine coins using other’s resources have an expected value greater than 0 but that’s not the entire market. I hope.
It’s just another kind of MLM right now. It always has been. The superbowl Larry David add was the swan song for crypto mainstream appeal.
And you are right, most of the people that were telling you to buy cryptocurrency for reasons, now are into the “prompt engineering” fad.
Por metaverse, only the really unicorn-chasing and completely clueless about technology marketing “gurus” got into it.
you can’t get a real discussion of crypto here because downvotes are impossible and the simps are legion
You really shouldn’t care about internet points, give your opinion and move on
In the majority of people’s eyes crypto is seen as a scam and something to avoid. The only thing crypto ever did for me was make things I actually care about more expensive.
I think it would take a lot to recover from the bad reputation it has gotten.
It was kinda shocking how negative public sentiment is. I am deep in crypto world so I am used to much more positive feedback on the stuff I am working on, because I guess I mostly hang out with crypto people
That sentiment was earned over time. The original reception of crypto wasn’t bad, and large companies like Valve/Steam would accept bitcoin for a little while. All of that went away as bitcoin turned from a potential “digital money” to “just another pyramid scheme”. Drying up the GPU market and making PC gaming unformidable didn’t help.
This is a great point.
I’ve recovered from my Bitcoin maxi days, so I hope things move forward in the industry (namely, the normies learning about ETH)
No, it’ll never go away, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective.
Crypto scams burnt up all their market, i.e. pretty much everyone who was going to get into the crypto bubble, did. You can tell because crypto went mainstream, buying stadiums and advertising through Matt Damon.
So when the bubble burst that time, there’s no one left to start a new bubble with.
I still know permabulls that at least say they are buying with every paycheque. I doubt there are enough dollars doing that to keep the price afloat, if I were a whale I’d probably be selling, personally.
Well, the irony is hard to miss, right? Crypto was born out of this grand idea of decentralization, but then everyone just rushed over to these centralized exchanges. Kinda sounds like a death knell to me. Seems like the original spirit of crypto got lost in the rush for profits.
I do think the tech and the concept will keep evolving, and eventually, it’ll morph into something new, get a new name or something. Here’s hoping that when it does, people will get that it’s better to trust the collective ‘us’ instead of just a select few. After all, these are often the same folks messing things up. But, what can you do, huh?
This almost sounds like what could happen to the Fediverse. It’s decentralized just like crypto, but the majority of people won’t know or care about how the Fediverse works, they will just want to communicate online.
I mean, most Lemmings (lol) hang out in Beehaw anyway, so centralised fediverse is already here
Now say it again but replace crytpocurrecy with Website aggregation. Its honestly not that different from leaving the big centralized reddit for the Fediverse… only to mostly end up in a few relatively huge alternatives in the name of decentralizing. Its just… human nature.
it should be
It is humming along nicely for those that use it. There could be another speculative pump filled with scams, that would be no surprise.
It will never die. I believe it will wax and wane over the years. Being incredibly anonymous and deregulated means it will always be a great place for the evil doers to manipulate the market and make money off of it. Because of that there will always be some people using it.
I think one of the biggest failings of cryptocurrency in general is that people view it as a replacement for cash or debit cards when in reality with how slow and expensive the transactions are it is more of a replacement for clearing houses. When you get money sent to your bank you can use it right away because the bank trusts you and provides that service but the money isn’t truly there yet. You may have heard the phrase of “the check cleared” or something similar. It takes a long time for those processes to complete and crypto is faster than it.
For certain values of ‘anonymous’, anyway. There are still folks who don’t think that traffic analysis applies to cryptocurrency.
I still don’t understand why the Bitcoin community (in particular) has been so resistant to increasing the block sizes and the transaction rates. As it stands right now, the Bitcoin network can’t push even a small fraction of what the SWIFT network handles every second. The arguments on the old #bitcoin IRC channel made no sense (and got a lot of us k-lined before we even saw any replies!)
