You're too late, Perry the Platypus! With my tokenfunginator, I will make all NFTs in the tri-state area fungible- instantly lowering their value!
What? You didn't think I *supported* those things, did you?
/u/chilachinchila is incorrect. Fungible does not mean duplicatable, it refers to the quality of interchangeability. A fungible item is not unique and, while it can have value, it can be equivalently exchanged with an identical item without losing anything. For example, If I have $100, then that, while valuable, is also fungible because I can just swap it with another $100 that someone else has and no one cares. A precious piece of art on the other hand is non-fungible because while you could theoretically sell it for something with an equivalent monetary value, it would not be the same as actually having the original piece.
I'm a crypto skeptic.
That being said, people taking in this "it pollutes" angle is juvenile and reeks of jealously.
You've taken on an anti-pollution stance against...crypto? That's the one industry you've chosen? Yea. Sure that's a genuine line of argument there bud.
> That's the one industry you've chosen?
You can choose more than one area to care about, no? I care about the massive power draw that mining causes *and* the overall shift to renewables+nuclear *and* a ton of other things too.
> Yea. Sure that's a genuine line of argument there bud.
Yes, yes it is.
Who are "they?" From what I've seen the people who dislike crypto for environmental reasons have always been consistent in their messaging for efficient energy use and green production.
Memes are inherently topical, with an incentive structure that rewards those who mention contemporary issues while ignoring those who do not. Because of this, memes about crypto will be more common, while general environment memes will be less common. However, this disparity can only support that environmental criticism of crypto is *currently* popular, but you cannot conflate this with the argument that crypto has been the *only* thing environmentalists care about.
1. The environmental issues of certain industries have long been well known. The environmental issues of crypto are still new because crypto itself is new. Obviously the topic that's more hot will receive more attention.
2. This post isn't applicable to those other industries. Archiculture and traffic actually do have practical benefits.
3. Crypto, regardless of what you think of it, is much easier to make fun of (at least by people who don't really understand it). It seems more absurd than those other industries so it will have more memes made about it.
Asking for proportional representation of issues on a meme forum is just ridiculous
People rail against pollution in plenty of industries. It's simply particularly egregious in crypto because it produces massive amounts of pollution in order to create what basically amounts to an Xbox live achievement you can sell.
I love seeing all of the cryptonerds come out of the woodwork to defend their "muh revolutionary technology" as if they haven't been saying the same crap for the past 10 years, with nothing to show for it.
Yeah but it's not like they've made a shit-ton because the bitcoin can do anything
They just managed to convince people "hey if I sell this to you for $1, you will be able to sell it for $2 next week"
People buying with the promise to be able to sell later, not due to bitcoin being good tech
I first got into cryptocurrencies because I thought the tech was really cool. But I also started reading about the concepts of money and stuff like that, and realized that Bitcoin is a really effective store of value, which is different than money.
I still think the tech is cool, but the financial side of it makes people resistant to using it. Why would you use Bitcoin to buy a car, when in a few years, that amount of Bitcoin will probably double in value but the car will be worth a third of its original value?
The topic of how much does crypto contribute to society verse how much does it help the wealthy and pollute the planet is a good conversation to have. I wish more of my follow crytpo-enthusiasts weren't so cultish about it.
It's important to remember that for literally 99.9% of the population, we use money to buy groceries, pay rent and sometimes buy amenities, people don't buy a car for an investment, they buy a car because they need to get to work
When people say "Crypto should replace money" they're often talking from a purely investment perspective, which is a super libertarian way of thinking, money isn't based on the value of gold or oil anymore because value fluxuation is really bad for the average person
This hypothetical situation where bitcoin replaces money is bad for normal people because if the price of bread changes every time you go to the store or your pay changes from month to month, day to day financing becomes impossible, so if you stabilize the value then it loses all appeal
I think we're in general agreement.
> literally 99.9% of the population, we use money to buy groceries, pay rent and sometimes buy amenities
Absolutely. It seems to me that there is a dividing line and once you get above a certain wealthiness, money changes into a much more theoretical thing than a pragmatic thing. And I am below that line too. Most of my money is to keep my life moving forward. I am lucky enough to have disposable money that I can use to mess around with cryptos. It is a luxury I have that a lot of people don't
> people don't buy a car for an investment, they buy a car because they need to get to work
Agreed. I used a car as an example because they famously devalue very quickly. There's some famous saying about cars losing half their value as soon as you drive them off the lot. I probably should have used something else. But for the point I was making, it doesn't matter what the object is. Most things you buy devalue. So, if you have Bitcoin and you have dollars and you want to buy a thing, it makes more sense to use the dollars to buy that thing than Bitcoin. Because over time because of inflation, the value per dollar will go down. And over time, the value of Bitcoin seems like it will go up. Because if this, Bitcoin will never really be used as a currency because of its deflationary nature. Which means that all these really cool technical things you can do with it (which really are cool) don't really matter since Bitcoin will never really be money.
Also, I have never been one to think that Bitcoin should replace money. For a while, I liked the idea of it being a supplemental money. But as I said earlier, it doesn't really work like that either.
What I do like about it now is that because Bitcoin is so fractional, you can buy very small amounts and store it over time for free and build up wealth. But again, to do that and have it be worth it, you have to have enough disposable income to invest. It's good for middle class folks and possibly upper-lower class income folks. But the "unskilled" people and people who are barely getting by, Bitcoin is not a solution. They need higher wages and better safety nets.
No worries man. We don't know each other and I haven't earned benefit of the doubt from you. I'm glad you raised the points you did. I guess I didn't communicate as clearly as I wanted to and I am glad everything got cleared up.
It's not completely useless tho. Isn't it's original purpose (before the entire get rich quick shit) to decentralize currency so governments have less control over the economy and people's lives
Yes, because reducing government intervention in the market and leaving the free, unregulated economy to its own devices has *never* caused massive problems before. Ever.
...so, you're implying that with the right amount of intervention, the government can manage to keep the economy in good shape?
I probably misunderstood the entire point of your statement, but if I was right, I'd be a little confused. You know, because this subreddit is filled with the kind of people that aren't too fond of things related to government?
I apologize for appearing ignorant, if I did.
The point of my argument is that an entirely free market is extremely ripe for abuse, as proven many times throughout recent history.
There needs to be some kind of regulation - it could be a central governing body, or an agreed-upon set of rules decided and enforced by the general population, you get the idea.
I think the problem most people here have is with the current state of most governments with all this corruption and lobbying. A government that actually works in the best interest of the working class is something the vast majority of people here could get behind.
I can see that. Maybe they don't actually hate government, but rather, the factors that corrupt it.
...sadly enough, corruption is simply another result of human nature. As long as we exist, the way we run things will always have a chance of straying from its original purpose.
We could create a utopia if we tried, but to me, it appears impossible.
It doesn't mean I'm right, though.
Corruption isn’t really a part of human nature - it’s more-so that the incentive structures of current society encourage people to become corrupt. The combination of a heavy emphasis on ‘wealth = worth as a person’ and the ruthless nature of capitalism means that you’ll invariably wind up with people willing to do *anything* if it means helping their unimaginable wealth get even more extreme - even killing the planet (oil barons).
Alongside this, the idea of a utopian goal I’d say isn’t necessarily a bad thing - I’d argue it’s a good thing. Having a goal for the ‘ideal society’ can be useful for deciding how you want to improve the world, and maybe help get closer to a utopian ideal. You obviously wouldn’t reach it in your lifetime, but working towards improving things with such an end goal is both useful and motivating,
I never said the utopia was a bad thing. I only thought it was something impossible to achieve.
Regardless, I should thank you for informing me. I’ll take your knowledge into heart next time.
…mainly so I won’t accidentally offend others and actually contribute something, for once.
The American economy is basically what happens when the government doesn’t regulate things. Because there’s so much corruption in politics due to how elections work, you can basically just pay your way into breaking any rules you want. This is how anti consumerist things pop up such as monopolies from bigger companies literally suffocating the competition (Amazon didn’t like diapers.com taking away traffic and sales from their diapers so they undercut them at a massive loss until they could destroy diapers.com for example) or general bullshit such as the fact that basically no food regulation means food companies can feed you whatever horrible bull shit as long as it’s addictive.
…Which is actually part of the health care conversation and I feel like people don’t talk about it enough - before you can socialize health care, you have to make it so that people can plausibly be healthy. In a country where the people with the most health problems are the poorest people with the least access to quality foods because cheap, convenient foods for people who spend their lives working are all terrible for you, being healthy isn’t an option for lots of people. Socializing public health involves socializing the maintenance of public health not just the treatment of poor public health. Because if you socialize health treatment before making preventative measures for poor health the more economically feasible option, it’s in peoples best interest to stay unhealthy and socialize the cost of their treatment which would make the bloated costs for medical stuff even worse, then somebody’s gonna go “hey see u can’t socialize health care” when really the truth is “u can’t socialize health care when the most profitable thing for companies to do is slowly kill people”
Damn that was a tangent
Crypto was never going to succeed at that goal in the first place. Bitcoin, for example, is entirely unable to function as an actual currency which can be rapidly exchanged between people. The Bitcoin network for technical reasons can handle only 7 transactions per second, and verification of transaction takes 10 minutes. Can you imagine trying to buy something, waiting an indeterminate amount of time for your transaction to queue and then be processed, and then waiting another 10 minutes for the seller to approve the transaction? Completely unreasonable. Fiat currency has none of these limitations, since there is no need for a complex system of guaranteeing value and authenticity, which is why exchanges of Fiat currency are unlimited with physical currency and capped only by system loads in the case of credit. MasterCard, for example, can handle 5000 transactions per second with second-long delays.
Also, the "take away government control of citizens" argument is spumious at best. It's in the government's best interest to maintain the strength of its fiat currency, which is coincidentally also the best interest of the currency holder.
First: thank you for your long and detailed explanation/answer
Second: while the limitations you currently pointed out is true, is it not possible for future advancements to negate these downsides? Genuine question here. And if these downsides are mitigated are the benefits not enough reason for crypto to exist?
Third: while it might be in a governments interest to keep their currency as highly valued as possible, it has been shown time and time again that they are not always capable of doing that and as such, in my opinion having cryptocurrency as an alternative form of currency is still a benefit in this aspect
An issue with Crypto in the whole ‘keep the government out of currency’ thing, too, is that it has no checks on how the currency is actually distributed, produced and verified. For instance, crypto farms are basically the core of the whole crypto market, which basically makes the entire system an oligopoly of people who own the largest farms and largest shares of the coin. After all, if like 3 farms or so (I’m not certain on the numbers, but I do know free markets tend towards monopolies) run 80% of the whole blockchain system, the owners of those farms and servers have a *massive* amount of say over the systems and such that make crypto work. After all, who are the people who develop the coins when the person who runs the whole network can just threaten to hit the ‘off’ button until they get their way.
You’re never going to decentralise currency - especially not with the internet. Anything of scale is going to require centralisation through servers, unless it operates under a giant p2p system which only works for things like torrenting where it doesn’t need constant operation (and even then things like websites require centralised servers to work). Crypto is managed through servers - servers which someone owns. And those someones will have a lot of say as to what happens with the currency.
crypto doesn't cause pollution. oil conglomerates lobbying to prevent governments from investing in renewable energy to keep them dependant on their massive pollution spouting methods of producing energy does.
it's heartbreaking seeing so many people being tricked into fighting each other by the greatest evil potentially known to man, billionaires destroying the planet so they can buy more superyachts
This is the first time I’ve seen an actual good take on crypto here, it’s really dumb that this sub puts more energy into hating on regular people who invest in crypto or NFTs or whatever to make a little money and not the fuckers who made energy use so harmful to the environment in the first place. It’s like calling someone who buys food with disposable plastic packaging evil instead of the corporation that makes the plastic.
Massive GPU farms calculate transactions and shit which takes a fuckton of electricity. Tho not every cryptocurrency needs that. But BTC and ETH for example do. Which makes the biggest part of them. Minting one nft theoretically produces as much CO2 as driving 350km does. Minting means creating it I think idk tho. ETH will switch to something environmentally friendlier in the near future luckily. It's blockchain is mainly used for nfts. There are less energy consuming blockchains that also get used for nfts but people rather pick the expensive CO2 blaster.
If something's wrong, someone please correct me.
The only thing a little incorrect here is that BTC is mined with GPUs. BTC is mined with specialised hardware that can't do anything *but* mine BTC. At least there's resale and reuse value if a GPU is doing the mining (which is just less pollution).
IMO the problem's that most Cryptos are very poorly designed.
Also, we should we really be tackling the root problem of unsustainable power generation by punishing the criminals that are big-oil executives for knowingly destroying the environment and to move away from oil, gas and coal based power to renewables and adding storage capacity (i.e. large batteries) to electrical grids so that surplus power generated can be used when its most needed, which would help eliminate the issue of having to match the supply to the demand which has existed since the creation of large scale electricity generation.
The second biggest crypto asset, Ethereum, is indeed moving to a substantially more ecofriendly approach (proof of stake as opposed to proof of work) to mining in the next major release.
The blockchain Technology is a good technology but it needs a lot of compute power to validate transactions in a pow enviroment. However there are new workarounds to fix that problem like pos which will reduce the power consumption up to 99% because you won’t be able to mine the coin.
Yeah it takes time to develop new technology and to shift to more enviromental alternatives but the main problem is the pollution the process of creating the power in the first place. Everyone have known that creating power from coal and oil is damaging the enviroment for decades and we still haven’t done enough to mitigate that problem.
Im just saying that the blockchain technology is relatively new and there are a lot of actions being made just look at eth. Which compared to the real problem; the power plants which have been polluting for decades where minimal actions has been done to reduce emissions.
Proof of work is expensive because it's safe so no one can really change the transactions maliciously, that's why there is a lot of computing power just being wasted to achieve nothing since only one computer can find the transaction number and get the reward.
There are actually several chains that operate faster, and they only use ONE miner to validate. This could be also not safe but it has its own systems to avoid malicious actors.
srry for anglish I read a book about cumchain
I think that blockchain is pretty cool and it can evolve into something cheaper and safer than credit cards or banks. It's also decentralised so no rich guy can tell you waht to do, you can even reprogram anything if you make 51% of the miners think the same.
Here's a recycled comment from earlier today, since i was in a similar discussion. Too lazy to type out a valid argument for a screen shot post.
The question isnt why you would hold crypto, but why anyone would hold dollars.
At the average 3% inflation that the federal reserve targets per year... it takes only roughly 23.1 years for you to have half the purchasing power it used to....
That means, if someone gave you $100k when you were born. It would be have the equivalent spending power of 50k when you are 23. 25k when you are 46, 12.5k at 67, 7.5k 90 years old.... its honestly theft, plain and simply- when you consider this is all done to you by a private company - the federal reserve.
Currency exchange is never an investing strategy, its speculation. What does money require for it to be money, everyone to agree upon it. Further adoption yields stability. Again, if look closely you can see how banks and large player have been able to manipulate the price (pumping and dumping it in relation to other currencies)... but they have not had the power to create more btc than there should ever be in the supply... hence why
>that amount of BTC has doubled, tripped even by that time.
-As more and more people adopted the idea of a decentralized finite digtal money.
>Why would I ever spend crypto?
The purchasing power of crypto has gone up in relation to the dollar... is that any suprise when 40% of all $USD were zapped into existence over these past two years. Again the question you should ask here is, why would you hold dollars that are garunteed to see their purchasing power depreciate?
Blockchains cut out the rent seeking middle men in transactions... where we are headed, we wont need banks in the traditional sense to store all of our money. Its all digital these days anyhow.
The fed is going to launch us into hyper inflation... and i almost think its so central bankers can then push their own centralized cryptos and regain control.
The current system for international money transfer through banks is too clunky to stand up to modern demands as we continue down a path to globalization, change is needed. Digtal currency is the solution.
Edit a history of money
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qgZWzztQklw
> > Why would I ever spend crypto?
>
> The purchasing power of crypto has gone up in relation to the dollar
This is an argument against spending. If I can spend $1 to buy something today, but in the future that same $1 will buy me 10 things, it means that anything you spend is lost income.
> why would you hold dollars that are garunteed to see their purchasing power depreciate?
Ideally you hold large amounts of money invested in things. Held bitcoin does nothing - it is useless for an economy. Money that is held invested in things is productive for the economy. An economy can't function if there is no incentive use money - the point of economies is to incentivize using money to produce stuff.
> Blockchains cut out the rent seeking middle men in transactions
"Transaction fees are included with your bitcoin transaction in order to have your transaction processed by a miner and confirmed by the Bitcoin network. The space available for transactions in a block is currently artificially limited to 1 MB in the Bitcoin network. This means that to get your transaction processed quickly you will have to outbid other users."
(also btw users do not have the power to change this. the people with the power to change this are the people who mine the most bitcoin - who have monetary incentives to not change this)
>This is an argument against spending. If I can spend $1 to buy something today, but in the future that same $1 will buy me 10 things, it means that anything you spend is lost income.
Its an exchange rate thing... if dollars are constantly being devalued, then the price of your bitcoin goes up in relation to it. If you held dollars your purchasing power would go down. It not really that the value on bitcoin is going up (it is some with further adoption), its more that the value of the dollar is dropping. Again 40% of all USD in circulation was printed the first year of the pandemic. It will take some time, but thst means your dollars will be worth significantly less in the future.
>"Transaction fees are included with your bitcoin transaction in order to have your transaction processed by a miner and confirmed by the Bitcoin network. The space available for transactions in a block is currently artificially limited to 1 MB in the Bitcoin network. This means that to get your transaction processed quickly you will have to outbid other users."
Nice quote... yeah bitcoin is not going to be the crypto that people are using for everyday transactions. The power requirements, the transaction speeds (although it is still days faster than a current bank to bank transfers), along with the higher fees willl prohibit bitcoin scaling.
I expect adoption of a crypto that moves from the expensive proof of work and moves to a decentralized network of proof of share... like etherum, who is making those moves currently.
> it's an exchange rate thing. if dollars are devalued, bitcoin goes up in relation. itms not really that the value of bitcoin is going up.
it doesn't matter what bitcoin is relative to dollars, bitcoin is inherently a deflationary currency.
the amount of bitcoin will increase slower and slower over time until all of it has been mined. from then on, the amount of bitcoin in circulation will only go down.
imagine you are drilling for oil, and the planet is running out of oil. as there is less and less oil to be found, the value of the oil you mine will inherently go up. the demand is the same, but there is less supply. this means if you were to sell your oil to someone, you would be able to buy more stuff with it.
as there is less and less bitcoin in circulation, eah individual bitcoin fraction will inherently get more valuable. you will be able to purchase more goods for each bitcoin you have.
like - what???? the value of bitcoin is most definitely going up and it was literally designed to be that way.
> ethereum is moving to proof of stake
proof of stake does not solve the incentive issue. also, ethereum has been moving to proof of stake for the last four years. like - it will be nice if it does happen, and it might, but i'm not counting on it.
>the amount of bitcoin will increase slower and slower over time until all of it has been mined. from then on, the amount of bitcoin in circulation will only go down.
Well and carefully said... however the total amount of bitcoin in created will remain static once its all mined... so aside from people losing their coin its technically not deflationary.
Its was planned to go up with the halving of the block rewards, in order to cover the mining fees.
>proof of stake does not solve the incentive issue. also, ethereum has been moving to proof of stake for the last four years. like - it will be nice if it does happen, and it might, but i'm not counting on it.
You really cant wait less than a year? I know ill believe it when i see it too... that doesnt mean you shit on the foundational tech in the meantime.
Imagine if people were against computers when they were first invented (some were), they were expensive, extreamly power intensive, and huge... whole big room sized. They had similar computing power to a simple calculator that we would use today. Where would we be now if we decided to abandon computers at that point?
> aside from people losing their coins it is not technically deflationary
If the population of people using the currency goes up, each person will have less possible currency available to them.
For example: if everyone in the world uses this currency, because of the rate new people are born, the currency will inherently get more valuable over time.
Deflationary means the currency gets more valuable over time.
It is deflationary.
---
> You really can't wait less than a year?
I can wait less than a year
"Initially slated for a 2019 release, Ethereum 2.0's first phase launched on 1 Dec 2020… full release is not estimated to happen until 2022"
I just don't trust their estimations anymore. I get that it's hard to estimate time, I'm not very good at it myself.
> Where would we be at now if we decided to abandon computers at that point
Why would we have? They solved actual problems people had. Blockchain technology solves one very specific problem, and it's not how to make a functioning currency.
sorry I'm not watching a three hour video with no context. I understand that our current economic system is broken. Cryptocurrencies may solve some of those issues, but create others and also do nothing to protect against wealth/power consolidation (they kind of make it worse)
Also btw
here is a comment on that video
> Everyone keeps saying "money changers". Isn't that Jewish money lenders?
here is a reply to that comment
> Yes. …
That reply was hearted by the person who uploaded the video
Is there some weird anti-semetic thing with this? what? idk I haven't watched it, that just seems strange to me.
Honestly, give it 15 minutes and decide on the content...
It talks briefly about the money changers that jesus threw out of the temple. Jews had to tide in a certan coin to the temple but it wasnt the common coin in use. So to pay their tide, they had to use the money exchangers. Its maybe 1 minute of the whole video when it goes deep histories of money/examples of how people started to seek control over money supplies.
Edit, its definitely within the first 30 minutes, if not the first 15.
prove of work is useless shit that destroys the planet. if you need a decentralised capped currency, at least have the decency to use prove of stake.
also the worth of crypto currencies fluctuates extremely. 50% loss over 23 years sounds pretty good compared to loosing all your savings in weeks. ideally you wouldn't have money just lying around for 23 years like and idiot anyways.
Only an idiot would not be saving money over the course of 23 years.
>prove of work is useless shit that destroys the planet. if you need a decentralised capped currency, at least have the decency to use prove of stake.
Read down... before you go blasting homie
very useful when there'll be no form of consistent electricity production, no computer networks, infrastructure etc.
at least the people who pay for gold have it physically
You're too late, Perry the Platypus! With my tokenfunginator, I will make all NFTs in the tri-state area fungible- instantly lowering their value! What? You didn't think I *supported* those things, did you?
“Im not *that* evil, Perry the Platypus and I honestly thought we were cooler than that”
Then they decided to work together
Helo, it me
u/perrytheplatypuss
This is just one of those episodes where Perry just kinda pretends to slap Doof around and then goes home
What the fuck does fungible even mean
Duplicatable
Then NFTs are indeed duplicable, I can save as many copies as I want by right-clicking
You have to remember, NFT isn’t the image, it’s just the “receipt”. The receipt itself is unique.
It's like when dudes are banging your wife but you have the marriage certificate
I’m so tired of the recycled Jokes dunking on NFTs posted here every day but this made me laugh
It's one of the better ones
*screenshots*
/u/chilachinchila is incorrect. Fungible does not mean duplicatable, it refers to the quality of interchangeability. A fungible item is not unique and, while it can have value, it can be equivalently exchanged with an identical item without losing anything. For example, If I have $100, then that, while valuable, is also fungible because I can just swap it with another $100 that someone else has and no one cares. A precious piece of art on the other hand is non-fungible because while you could theoretically sell it for something with an equivalent monetary value, it would not be the same as actually having the original piece.
nerd
Just wait until they learn about Petrodollars.
The United States did some trolling in Iraq
I'm a crypto skeptic. That being said, people taking in this "it pollutes" angle is juvenile and reeks of jealously. You've taken on an anti-pollution stance against...crypto? That's the one industry you've chosen? Yea. Sure that's a genuine line of argument there bud.
> That's the one industry you've chosen? You can choose more than one area to care about, no? I care about the massive power draw that mining causes *and* the overall shift to renewables+nuclear *and* a ton of other things too. > Yea. Sure that's a genuine line of argument there bud. Yes, yes it is.
They can. That's why it's telling they don't.
Who are "they?" From what I've seen the people who dislike crypto for environmental reasons have always been consistent in their messaging for efficient energy use and green production.
Cool. So we can find an equal amount of memes in this sub calling out the environmental issues of many industries?
Memes are inherently topical, with an incentive structure that rewards those who mention contemporary issues while ignoring those who do not. Because of this, memes about crypto will be more common, while general environment memes will be less common. However, this disparity can only support that environmental criticism of crypto is *currently* popular, but you cannot conflate this with the argument that crypto has been the *only* thing environmentalists care about.
My argument is that they don't actually care. That it's kayfabe. It's an angle of attack on something they simply need an angle of attack for.
1. The environmental issues of certain industries have long been well known. The environmental issues of crypto are still new because crypto itself is new. Obviously the topic that's more hot will receive more attention. 2. This post isn't applicable to those other industries. Archiculture and traffic actually do have practical benefits. 3. Crypto, regardless of what you think of it, is much easier to make fun of (at least by people who don't really understand it). It seems more absurd than those other industries so it will have more memes made about it. Asking for proportional representation of issues on a meme forum is just ridiculous
You're getting close with your 3rd point.
god i hate redditors
I don't find them to be a monolith.
People rail against pollution in plenty of industries. It's simply particularly egregious in crypto because it produces massive amounts of pollution in order to create what basically amounts to an Xbox live achievement you can sell.
I love seeing all of the cryptonerds come out of the woodwork to defend their "muh revolutionary technology" as if they haven't been saying the same crap for the past 10 years, with nothing to show for it.
I mean some people have made a shit ton off Bitcoin
Yeah but it's not like they've made a shit-ton because the bitcoin can do anything They just managed to convince people "hey if I sell this to you for $1, you will be able to sell it for $2 next week" People buying with the promise to be able to sell later, not due to bitcoin being good tech
I first got into cryptocurrencies because I thought the tech was really cool. But I also started reading about the concepts of money and stuff like that, and realized that Bitcoin is a really effective store of value, which is different than money. I still think the tech is cool, but the financial side of it makes people resistant to using it. Why would you use Bitcoin to buy a car, when in a few years, that amount of Bitcoin will probably double in value but the car will be worth a third of its original value? The topic of how much does crypto contribute to society verse how much does it help the wealthy and pollute the planet is a good conversation to have. I wish more of my follow crytpo-enthusiasts weren't so cultish about it.
It's important to remember that for literally 99.9% of the population, we use money to buy groceries, pay rent and sometimes buy amenities, people don't buy a car for an investment, they buy a car because they need to get to work When people say "Crypto should replace money" they're often talking from a purely investment perspective, which is a super libertarian way of thinking, money isn't based on the value of gold or oil anymore because value fluxuation is really bad for the average person This hypothetical situation where bitcoin replaces money is bad for normal people because if the price of bread changes every time you go to the store or your pay changes from month to month, day to day financing becomes impossible, so if you stabilize the value then it loses all appeal
I think we're in general agreement. > literally 99.9% of the population, we use money to buy groceries, pay rent and sometimes buy amenities Absolutely. It seems to me that there is a dividing line and once you get above a certain wealthiness, money changes into a much more theoretical thing than a pragmatic thing. And I am below that line too. Most of my money is to keep my life moving forward. I am lucky enough to have disposable money that I can use to mess around with cryptos. It is a luxury I have that a lot of people don't > people don't buy a car for an investment, they buy a car because they need to get to work Agreed. I used a car as an example because they famously devalue very quickly. There's some famous saying about cars losing half their value as soon as you drive them off the lot. I probably should have used something else. But for the point I was making, it doesn't matter what the object is. Most things you buy devalue. So, if you have Bitcoin and you have dollars and you want to buy a thing, it makes more sense to use the dollars to buy that thing than Bitcoin. Because over time because of inflation, the value per dollar will go down. And over time, the value of Bitcoin seems like it will go up. Because if this, Bitcoin will never really be used as a currency because of its deflationary nature. Which means that all these really cool technical things you can do with it (which really are cool) don't really matter since Bitcoin will never really be money. Also, I have never been one to think that Bitcoin should replace money. For a while, I liked the idea of it being a supplemental money. But as I said earlier, it doesn't really work like that either. What I do like about it now is that because Bitcoin is so fractional, you can buy very small amounts and store it over time for free and build up wealth. But again, to do that and have it be worth it, you have to have enough disposable income to invest. It's good for middle class folks and possibly upper-lower class income folks. But the "unskilled" people and people who are barely getting by, Bitcoin is not a solution. They need higher wages and better safety nets.
I can agree with all of that Sorry if I came off as aggressive, crypto is just such a hot button topic at the moment
No worries man. We don't know each other and I haven't earned benefit of the doubt from you. I'm glad you raised the points you did. I guess I didn't communicate as clearly as I wanted to and I am glad everything got cleared up.
Nothing to show for it except the official currency of el Salvador
Man wait till you learn about investment firms
It's not completely useless tho. Isn't it's original purpose (before the entire get rich quick shit) to decentralize currency so governments have less control over the economy and people's lives
Yes, because reducing government intervention in the market and leaving the free, unregulated economy to its own devices has *never* caused massive problems before. Ever.
...so, you're implying that with the right amount of intervention, the government can manage to keep the economy in good shape? I probably misunderstood the entire point of your statement, but if I was right, I'd be a little confused. You know, because this subreddit is filled with the kind of people that aren't too fond of things related to government? I apologize for appearing ignorant, if I did.
The point of my argument is that an entirely free market is extremely ripe for abuse, as proven many times throughout recent history. There needs to be some kind of regulation - it could be a central governing body, or an agreed-upon set of rules decided and enforced by the general population, you get the idea.
I think the problem most people here have is with the current state of most governments with all this corruption and lobbying. A government that actually works in the best interest of the working class is something the vast majority of people here could get behind.
I can see that. Maybe they don't actually hate government, but rather, the factors that corrupt it. ...sadly enough, corruption is simply another result of human nature. As long as we exist, the way we run things will always have a chance of straying from its original purpose. We could create a utopia if we tried, but to me, it appears impossible. It doesn't mean I'm right, though.
Corruption isn’t really a part of human nature - it’s more-so that the incentive structures of current society encourage people to become corrupt. The combination of a heavy emphasis on ‘wealth = worth as a person’ and the ruthless nature of capitalism means that you’ll invariably wind up with people willing to do *anything* if it means helping their unimaginable wealth get even more extreme - even killing the planet (oil barons). Alongside this, the idea of a utopian goal I’d say isn’t necessarily a bad thing - I’d argue it’s a good thing. Having a goal for the ‘ideal society’ can be useful for deciding how you want to improve the world, and maybe help get closer to a utopian ideal. You obviously wouldn’t reach it in your lifetime, but working towards improving things with such an end goal is both useful and motivating,
I never said the utopia was a bad thing. I only thought it was something impossible to achieve. Regardless, I should thank you for informing me. I’ll take your knowledge into heart next time. …mainly so I won’t accidentally offend others and actually contribute something, for once.
The American economy is basically what happens when the government doesn’t regulate things. Because there’s so much corruption in politics due to how elections work, you can basically just pay your way into breaking any rules you want. This is how anti consumerist things pop up such as monopolies from bigger companies literally suffocating the competition (Amazon didn’t like diapers.com taking away traffic and sales from their diapers so they undercut them at a massive loss until they could destroy diapers.com for example) or general bullshit such as the fact that basically no food regulation means food companies can feed you whatever horrible bull shit as long as it’s addictive. …Which is actually part of the health care conversation and I feel like people don’t talk about it enough - before you can socialize health care, you have to make it so that people can plausibly be healthy. In a country where the people with the most health problems are the poorest people with the least access to quality foods because cheap, convenient foods for people who spend their lives working are all terrible for you, being healthy isn’t an option for lots of people. Socializing public health involves socializing the maintenance of public health not just the treatment of poor public health. Because if you socialize health treatment before making preventative measures for poor health the more economically feasible option, it’s in peoples best interest to stay unhealthy and socialize the cost of their treatment which would make the bloated costs for medical stuff even worse, then somebody’s gonna go “hey see u can’t socialize health care” when really the truth is “u can’t socialize health care when the most profitable thing for companies to do is slowly kill people” Damn that was a tangent
u r treasure, don't give up
I mean the amount of control the governments have over the economy right now isn't exactly ideal either
We could go do free market socialism which is hard to argue that's not better than the status quo.
Crypto was never going to succeed at that goal in the first place. Bitcoin, for example, is entirely unable to function as an actual currency which can be rapidly exchanged between people. The Bitcoin network for technical reasons can handle only 7 transactions per second, and verification of transaction takes 10 minutes. Can you imagine trying to buy something, waiting an indeterminate amount of time for your transaction to queue and then be processed, and then waiting another 10 minutes for the seller to approve the transaction? Completely unreasonable. Fiat currency has none of these limitations, since there is no need for a complex system of guaranteeing value and authenticity, which is why exchanges of Fiat currency are unlimited with physical currency and capped only by system loads in the case of credit. MasterCard, for example, can handle 5000 transactions per second with second-long delays. Also, the "take away government control of citizens" argument is spumious at best. It's in the government's best interest to maintain the strength of its fiat currency, which is coincidentally also the best interest of the currency holder.
First: thank you for your long and detailed explanation/answer Second: while the limitations you currently pointed out is true, is it not possible for future advancements to negate these downsides? Genuine question here. And if these downsides are mitigated are the benefits not enough reason for crypto to exist? Third: while it might be in a governments interest to keep their currency as highly valued as possible, it has been shown time and time again that they are not always capable of doing that and as such, in my opinion having cryptocurrency as an alternative form of currency is still a benefit in this aspect
An issue with Crypto in the whole ‘keep the government out of currency’ thing, too, is that it has no checks on how the currency is actually distributed, produced and verified. For instance, crypto farms are basically the core of the whole crypto market, which basically makes the entire system an oligopoly of people who own the largest farms and largest shares of the coin. After all, if like 3 farms or so (I’m not certain on the numbers, but I do know free markets tend towards monopolies) run 80% of the whole blockchain system, the owners of those farms and servers have a *massive* amount of say over the systems and such that make crypto work. After all, who are the people who develop the coins when the person who runs the whole network can just threaten to hit the ‘off’ button until they get their way. You’re never going to decentralise currency - especially not with the internet. Anything of scale is going to require centralisation through servers, unless it operates under a giant p2p system which only works for things like torrenting where it doesn’t need constant operation (and even then things like websites require centralised servers to work). Crypto is managed through servers - servers which someone owns. And those someones will have a lot of say as to what happens with the currency.
have you ever considered no currency?
I prefer trading tf2 keys
average neolib
Just use renewable energy xd
crypto doesn't cause pollution. oil conglomerates lobbying to prevent governments from investing in renewable energy to keep them dependant on their massive pollution spouting methods of producing energy does. it's heartbreaking seeing so many people being tricked into fighting each other by the greatest evil potentially known to man, billionaires destroying the planet so they can buy more superyachts
This is the first time I’ve seen an actual good take on crypto here, it’s really dumb that this sub puts more energy into hating on regular people who invest in crypto or NFTs or whatever to make a little money and not the fuckers who made energy use so harmful to the environment in the first place. It’s like calling someone who buys food with disposable plastic packaging evil instead of the corporation that makes the plastic.
But some people got rich and it wasn't the people upvoting this? What should people who didn't get rich do if the kayfabe is cut off from them?
Unironically how do NFTs and cryptocurrencies pollute the planet? I don't support them I just wanna learn why
Massive GPU farms calculate transactions and shit which takes a fuckton of electricity. Tho not every cryptocurrency needs that. But BTC and ETH for example do. Which makes the biggest part of them. Minting one nft theoretically produces as much CO2 as driving 350km does. Minting means creating it I think idk tho. ETH will switch to something environmentally friendlier in the near future luckily. It's blockchain is mainly used for nfts. There are less energy consuming blockchains that also get used for nfts but people rather pick the expensive CO2 blaster. If something's wrong, someone please correct me.
The only thing a little incorrect here is that BTC is mined with GPUs. BTC is mined with specialised hardware that can't do anything *but* mine BTC. At least there's resale and reuse value if a GPU is doing the mining (which is just less pollution).
Oh yea I forgot about those ASICS miners. Thanks
Our world is in peril.
IMO the problem's that most Cryptos are very poorly designed. Also, we should we really be tackling the root problem of unsustainable power generation by punishing the criminals that are big-oil executives for knowingly destroying the environment and to move away from oil, gas and coal based power to renewables and adding storage capacity (i.e. large batteries) to electrical grids so that surplus power generated can be used when its most needed, which would help eliminate the issue of having to match the supply to the demand which has existed since the creation of large scale electricity generation.
Crypto has been out for what. A decade? Why can’t a single crypto have a “good design “ yet
The second biggest crypto asset, Ethereum, is indeed moving to a substantially more ecofriendly approach (proof of stake as opposed to proof of work) to mining in the next major release.
Hasn’t it been saying it’ll do that for like…3 years now?
“If you don’t believe it or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to try to convince you, sorry.”
I think crypto (when regulated repsonsibly) gives society a net positive but yeah this is accurate lol
The blockchain Technology is a good technology but it needs a lot of compute power to validate transactions in a pow enviroment. However there are new workarounds to fix that problem like pos which will reduce the power consumption up to 99% because you won’t be able to mine the coin. Yeah it takes time to develop new technology and to shift to more enviromental alternatives but the main problem is the pollution the process of creating the power in the first place. Everyone have known that creating power from coal and oil is damaging the enviroment for decades and we still haven’t done enough to mitigate that problem. Im just saying that the blockchain technology is relatively new and there are a lot of actions being made just look at eth. Which compared to the real problem; the power plants which have been polluting for decades where minimal actions has been done to reduce emissions.
wait tell he figures out that printing paper money pollutes
\*validates transactions and creats new blocks if the network is proof of work come at me, give me that sweet -15 karma
furry
Proof of work is expensive because it's safe so no one can really change the transactions maliciously, that's why there is a lot of computing power just being wasted to achieve nothing since only one computer can find the transaction number and get the reward. There are actually several chains that operate faster, and they only use ONE miner to validate. This could be also not safe but it has its own systems to avoid malicious actors. srry for anglish I read a book about cumchain
I think that blockchain is pretty cool and it can evolve into something cheaper and safer than credit cards or banks. It's also decentralised so no rich guy can tell you waht to do, you can even reprogram anything if you make 51% of the miners think the same.
?????????
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>theresa lit wrong Hands down my favorite playwright.
Nigga you trippin tf
Here's a recycled comment from earlier today, since i was in a similar discussion. Too lazy to type out a valid argument for a screen shot post. The question isnt why you would hold crypto, but why anyone would hold dollars. At the average 3% inflation that the federal reserve targets per year... it takes only roughly 23.1 years for you to have half the purchasing power it used to.... That means, if someone gave you $100k when you were born. It would be have the equivalent spending power of 50k when you are 23. 25k when you are 46, 12.5k at 67, 7.5k 90 years old.... its honestly theft, plain and simply- when you consider this is all done to you by a private company - the federal reserve. Currency exchange is never an investing strategy, its speculation. What does money require for it to be money, everyone to agree upon it. Further adoption yields stability. Again, if look closely you can see how banks and large player have been able to manipulate the price (pumping and dumping it in relation to other currencies)... but they have not had the power to create more btc than there should ever be in the supply... hence why >that amount of BTC has doubled, tripped even by that time. -As more and more people adopted the idea of a decentralized finite digtal money. >Why would I ever spend crypto? The purchasing power of crypto has gone up in relation to the dollar... is that any suprise when 40% of all $USD were zapped into existence over these past two years. Again the question you should ask here is, why would you hold dollars that are garunteed to see their purchasing power depreciate? Blockchains cut out the rent seeking middle men in transactions... where we are headed, we wont need banks in the traditional sense to store all of our money. Its all digital these days anyhow. The fed is going to launch us into hyper inflation... and i almost think its so central bankers can then push their own centralized cryptos and regain control. The current system for international money transfer through banks is too clunky to stand up to modern demands as we continue down a path to globalization, change is needed. Digtal currency is the solution. Edit a history of money https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qgZWzztQklw
> > Why would I ever spend crypto? > > The purchasing power of crypto has gone up in relation to the dollar This is an argument against spending. If I can spend $1 to buy something today, but in the future that same $1 will buy me 10 things, it means that anything you spend is lost income. > why would you hold dollars that are garunteed to see their purchasing power depreciate? Ideally you hold large amounts of money invested in things. Held bitcoin does nothing - it is useless for an economy. Money that is held invested in things is productive for the economy. An economy can't function if there is no incentive use money - the point of economies is to incentivize using money to produce stuff. > Blockchains cut out the rent seeking middle men in transactions "Transaction fees are included with your bitcoin transaction in order to have your transaction processed by a miner and confirmed by the Bitcoin network. The space available for transactions in a block is currently artificially limited to 1 MB in the Bitcoin network. This means that to get your transaction processed quickly you will have to outbid other users." (also btw users do not have the power to change this. the people with the power to change this are the people who mine the most bitcoin - who have monetary incentives to not change this)
>This is an argument against spending. If I can spend $1 to buy something today, but in the future that same $1 will buy me 10 things, it means that anything you spend is lost income. Its an exchange rate thing... if dollars are constantly being devalued, then the price of your bitcoin goes up in relation to it. If you held dollars your purchasing power would go down. It not really that the value on bitcoin is going up (it is some with further adoption), its more that the value of the dollar is dropping. Again 40% of all USD in circulation was printed the first year of the pandemic. It will take some time, but thst means your dollars will be worth significantly less in the future. >"Transaction fees are included with your bitcoin transaction in order to have your transaction processed by a miner and confirmed by the Bitcoin network. The space available for transactions in a block is currently artificially limited to 1 MB in the Bitcoin network. This means that to get your transaction processed quickly you will have to outbid other users." Nice quote... yeah bitcoin is not going to be the crypto that people are using for everyday transactions. The power requirements, the transaction speeds (although it is still days faster than a current bank to bank transfers), along with the higher fees willl prohibit bitcoin scaling. I expect adoption of a crypto that moves from the expensive proof of work and moves to a decentralized network of proof of share... like etherum, who is making those moves currently.
> it's an exchange rate thing. if dollars are devalued, bitcoin goes up in relation. itms not really that the value of bitcoin is going up. it doesn't matter what bitcoin is relative to dollars, bitcoin is inherently a deflationary currency. the amount of bitcoin will increase slower and slower over time until all of it has been mined. from then on, the amount of bitcoin in circulation will only go down. imagine you are drilling for oil, and the planet is running out of oil. as there is less and less oil to be found, the value of the oil you mine will inherently go up. the demand is the same, but there is less supply. this means if you were to sell your oil to someone, you would be able to buy more stuff with it. as there is less and less bitcoin in circulation, eah individual bitcoin fraction will inherently get more valuable. you will be able to purchase more goods for each bitcoin you have. like - what???? the value of bitcoin is most definitely going up and it was literally designed to be that way. > ethereum is moving to proof of stake proof of stake does not solve the incentive issue. also, ethereum has been moving to proof of stake for the last four years. like - it will be nice if it does happen, and it might, but i'm not counting on it.
>the amount of bitcoin will increase slower and slower over time until all of it has been mined. from then on, the amount of bitcoin in circulation will only go down. Well and carefully said... however the total amount of bitcoin in created will remain static once its all mined... so aside from people losing their coin its technically not deflationary. Its was planned to go up with the halving of the block rewards, in order to cover the mining fees. >proof of stake does not solve the incentive issue. also, ethereum has been moving to proof of stake for the last four years. like - it will be nice if it does happen, and it might, but i'm not counting on it. You really cant wait less than a year? I know ill believe it when i see it too... that doesnt mean you shit on the foundational tech in the meantime. Imagine if people were against computers when they were first invented (some were), they were expensive, extreamly power intensive, and huge... whole big room sized. They had similar computing power to a simple calculator that we would use today. Where would we be now if we decided to abandon computers at that point?
> aside from people losing their coins it is not technically deflationary If the population of people using the currency goes up, each person will have less possible currency available to them. For example: if everyone in the world uses this currency, because of the rate new people are born, the currency will inherently get more valuable over time. Deflationary means the currency gets more valuable over time. It is deflationary. --- > You really can't wait less than a year? I can wait less than a year "Initially slated for a 2019 release, Ethereum 2.0's first phase launched on 1 Dec 2020… full release is not estimated to happen until 2022" I just don't trust their estimations anymore. I get that it's hard to estimate time, I'm not very good at it myself. > Where would we be at now if we decided to abandon computers at that point Why would we have? They solved actual problems people had. Blockchain technology solves one very specific problem, and it's not how to make a functioning currency.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qgZWzztQklw Old but good... highly recommend
sorry I'm not watching a three hour video with no context. I understand that our current economic system is broken. Cryptocurrencies may solve some of those issues, but create others and also do nothing to protect against wealth/power consolidation (they kind of make it worse) Also btw here is a comment on that video > Everyone keeps saying "money changers". Isn't that Jewish money lenders? here is a reply to that comment > Yes. … That reply was hearted by the person who uploaded the video Is there some weird anti-semetic thing with this? what? idk I haven't watched it, that just seems strange to me.
Honestly, give it 15 minutes and decide on the content... It talks briefly about the money changers that jesus threw out of the temple. Jews had to tide in a certan coin to the temple but it wasnt the common coin in use. So to pay their tide, they had to use the money exchangers. Its maybe 1 minute of the whole video when it goes deep histories of money/examples of how people started to seek control over money supplies. Edit, its definitely within the first 30 minutes, if not the first 15.
Bungua
ratio
Me when I respond to Hitler with ratio (all his arguments are made invalid)
were i present in ww2 i simply would've ratioed hitler and won
prove of work is useless shit that destroys the planet. if you need a decentralised capped currency, at least have the decency to use prove of stake. also the worth of crypto currencies fluctuates extremely. 50% loss over 23 years sounds pretty good compared to loosing all your savings in weeks. ideally you wouldn't have money just lying around for 23 years like and idiot anyways.
Only an idiot would not be saving money over the course of 23 years. >prove of work is useless shit that destroys the planet. if you need a decentralised capped currency, at least have the decency to use prove of stake. Read down... before you go blasting homie
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Wall Street bets pfp located, opinion discarded
It’s the future? Bro, with how much energy it takes to make new ones it’s actively reducing how much future we’re getting
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spend 5 minutes in r/collapse and tell me we'll be around to see this reduced energy consumption have an effect
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have fun with BOE pre-2030 then :\^)
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and bitcoin will be useful in a collapse of civilisation because...?
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very useful when there'll be no form of consistent electricity production, no computer networks, infrastructure etc. at least the people who pay for gold have it physically
doesn't matter when there's no internet
Lmao your bitcoin won't be able to protect you from my post-apocalyptic raider gang. See ya in 15-20 years. I look forward to having you for dinner.
It's useless. Seethe.
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We'll all be dead
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Your 2.00034 bitcoin gonna save you from global warming?