Surely this is better than the crypto/NFT tech fad. At least there is some output from the generative AI that could be beneficial to the whole of humankind rather than lining a few people’s pockets?
Unfortunately crypto is still somehow a thing. There is a couple year old bitcoin mining facility in my small town that brags about consuming 400MW of power to operate and they are solely owned by a Chinese company.
Crypto currencies are still backed by and dependent on those same currencies. And their value is incredibly unstable, making them largely useless except as a speculative investment for stock market daytraders. BitCoin may as well be Doge Coin or Bored Ape NFTs as far as the common person is concerned.
I hope your coins haven’t seen a 90%+ drop in value in the past 4 years like the vast majority have.
Cryptos obviously have serious issues, but so do fiat currencies. In fact all implementations of money have one problem or another. It’s almost like it’s a difficult thing to get right and that maybe it was a bad idea in the first place.
What do you mean by “backed” here? I think I’m misunderstanding but I thought (and a short google seems to confirm) that currency A being backed by currency B means the value of A is fixed at a certain amount of currency B, and there is some organisation “backing” this with reserves.
Not trying to shill/defend crypto, just confused on terminology :)
I mean that crypto currencies are essentially the same as stocks. They have no worth on their own, and their value is tied to converting them to other currencies.
And this conversion rate fluctuates constantly. What one bitcoin is worth today is not what it will be worth tomorrow. In order to buy something with a crypto currency, companies have to first check how much it’s worth in fiat currency.
But paper currency is backed by a nation state, so I’m betting it’ll be around a bit longer then a purely digital asset without the backing of a nation, and driven entirely by speculation.
I’m not even anti-crypto. It was novel idea when it was actually used entirely as a currency, but that hasn’t been true for quite some time.
But it’s really strange how anti-crypto ideologues don’t understand that the system of states printing money is literally destroying the planet. They can’t see the value of a free, fair, decentralized, automatable, accounting systems?
Somehow delusional chatbots wasting energy and resources are more worthwhile?
You are right, crypto has nothing to do with currency printing. And yes, the environmental side too is a problem (unless it is produced inline with recycled energy) But governments issuing currency is a relatively recent phenomenon. Historically, people traded de facto currencies and IOUs amongst themselves.
Bitcoin was conceived out of the 2008 financial crisis, as a direct response to big banks being bailed out. It’s literally written in Bitcoin’s Genesis block. The point of Bitcoin has always been to free people from the tyranny of big government AND big capital.
Crypto isn’t that popular in developed countries with functioning monetary systems… untill of course those big institutions fail. I am still quite surprised, this side of Bitcoin is rarely discussed on Lemmy, given how anticapitalist it is.
I get it libertarian, bad. And to some degree, there are a lot of problems there. But the extreme opposite ain’t that rosy either.
Are you really using all of human history as a timeframe to say that currency is a relatively recent phenomenon?
Again, I’m not anti-cryptocurrency, but it’s not really a currency anymore than any other commodity in a commodity exchange, or a barter market.
And I don’t care if it’s livestock, or Bitcoin, I’m not accepting either as payment if I sell my home, or car. Not because of principles, but because I don’t know how to convert livestock into cash, and I can’t risk the Bitcoin payment halving in value before I can convert it to cash.
And who was talking extremes? I’m just pointing out the absurdity of the claims that crypto is the replacement for, or salvation from, our current economic system, or the delusion that currency backed by a nation is somehow just as ephemeral as Bitcoin, or ERC20 rug pulls.
You said Bitcoin was designed to free us from the tyranny of big capital, but it’s been entirely co-opted by the same boogeyman. So regardless of the intentionality behind the project, it’s now just another speculative asset.
Except, unlike gold or futures contracts, there’s no tangible real world asset, but there is a hell of a real cost.
I think it’s because of what crypto turned into and the inherent flaws in the system. Crypto currencies are still backed by and dependent on traditional currency, and their value is too unstable for the average person. The largest proponents of crypto have been corporations - big capital, as you put it - and there’s a reason for that (though they’re more on the speculative market of NFTs looking to make a profit off of Ponzi schemes).
In the end, crypto hasn’t solved any problems that weren’t already solved by less energy intensive means.
Actually it does solve some problems of traditional currency, problems for which there are few if any other solutions. It’s both much harder to counterfeit and it can be designed to be more traceable. It just also has its own problems like the stupidly high energy consumption, though this is gradually being fixed. The reason big governments don’t want in is probably because they can’t control it to the same degree they can with government backed fiat.
Generally though money has tons of problems both in concept and specific implementations. As I keep saying maybe we should come up with a better system.
I wouldn’t say that it’s harder to counterfeit so much as that the methodology is radically different due to the untrusted, peer to peer nature of crypto. Because of the way that that works, in order to fake a transaction you need to convince the majority of ledgers that the transaction occurred (even if the wallet that is buying something doesn’t have anything in it). Because the ledger is ultimately decided by majority vote. You can trace the transaction, but wallets are often anonymous, so the trail ends at the wallet. Especially since somebody would use a burner wallet to do such a thing. It’s basically buying something with a hotel keycard with a stolen RFID on it.
I think governments don’t want anything to do with it because its nature causes it to be too unstable in its value. It would be like tying the value of your country’s currency to the value of day trade stocks. One day, your money is worthless; a week later, it’s skyrocketing in value.
At the end of the day, currencies are a system of abstraction to simplify the process of trade - whether between people or countries. We agree that the magic paper is worth the same amount because it’s easier than arguing that the magic rock that gave your wife cancer is worth at least 2 goats, not one. It’s always going to be a flawed system in some way. Crypto’s flaws just make it an ideal system for black market dealings compared to traditional fiat currency in its current setup, on top of the energy and computing costs.
You’re kind of right but also very wrong. You can’t convince the other ledgers that there is money in an empty wallet because all of the money in the whole system is known about. In Bitcoin every single transaction is known, every time a new coin is known. Not just by one or two people, but by every other full bitcoin instance in the entire system.
What you can actually do is something called a 51% attack. This allows you to spend money you do indeed have multiple times over. It’s called a 51% attack because you need at least 51% of the processing power of the entire network under your direct control. So basically it’s like cheating people by buying 51% of a bank and using that control to do dirty dealing. Actually getting to that point is incredibly hard unless you’re a very rich state actor or something. At that point you might as well not bother and just mine like crazy instead of cheating the system and risk getting caught. Someone who has 51% of the processing power of the system would also get the majority of coins mined for themselves. I’ve seen attempts at a 51% attack but they only really work on small cryptos and even then it’s very unlikely to succeed and go unnoticed for long.
I’m fine doing away with physical dollars printed on paper and coins but crypto seems to solve none of the problems that we have with a fiat currency but instead continues to consume unnecessary amounts of energy while being driven by rich investors that would love nothing more than to spend and earn money in an untraceable way.
Surely this is better than the crypto/NFT tech fad. At least there is some output from the generative AI that could be beneficial to the whole of humankind rather than lining a few people’s pockets?
Unfortunately crypto is still somehow a thing. There is a couple year old bitcoin mining facility in my small town that brags about consuming 400MW of power to operate and they are solely owned by a Chinese company.
I recently noticed a number of bitcoin ATMs that have cropped up where I live - mostly at gas stations and the like. I am a little concerned by it.
Do you really think that paper money covered in colonizers and other slavermasters is going to last forever?
Found the diamond hands.
Crypto currencies are still backed by and dependent on those same currencies. And their value is incredibly unstable, making them largely useless except as a speculative investment for stock market daytraders. BitCoin may as well be Doge Coin or Bored Ape NFTs as far as the common person is concerned.
I hope your coins haven’t seen a 90%+ drop in value in the past 4 years like the vast majority have.
Cryptos obviously have serious issues, but so do fiat currencies. In fact all implementations of money have one problem or another. It’s almost like it’s a difficult thing to get right and that maybe it was a bad idea in the first place.
What do you mean by “backed” here? I think I’m misunderstanding but I thought (and a short google seems to confirm) that currency A being backed by currency B means the value of A is fixed at a certain amount of currency B, and there is some organisation “backing” this with reserves.
Not trying to shill/defend crypto, just confused on terminology :)
I mean that crypto currencies are essentially the same as stocks. They have no worth on their own, and their value is tied to converting them to other currencies.
And this conversion rate fluctuates constantly. What one bitcoin is worth today is not what it will be worth tomorrow. In order to buy something with a crypto currency, companies have to first check how much it’s worth in fiat currency.
lol
Forever? No, of course not.
But paper currency is backed by a nation state, so I’m betting it’ll be around a bit longer then a purely digital asset without the backing of a nation, and driven entirely by speculation.
I’m not even anti-crypto. It was novel idea when it was actually used entirely as a currency, but that hasn’t been true for quite some time.
Bullets and toilet paper will be more usable currency than crypto if paper falls out of favor.
I hope this is sarcasm.
I’m crypto neutral.
But it’s really strange how anti-crypto ideologues don’t understand that the system of states printing money is literally destroying the planet. They can’t see the value of a free, fair, decentralized, automatable, accounting systems?
Somehow delusional chatbots wasting energy and resources are more worthwhile?
Printing currency isn’t destroying the planet…the current economic system is doing that, which is the same economic system that birthed crypto.
Governments issuing currency goes back to a time long before our current consumption at all cost economic system was a thing.
You are right, crypto has nothing to do with currency printing. And yes, the environmental side too is a problem (unless it is produced inline with recycled energy) But governments issuing currency is a relatively recent phenomenon. Historically, people traded de facto currencies and IOUs amongst themselves.
Bitcoin was conceived out of the 2008 financial crisis, as a direct response to big banks being bailed out. It’s literally written in Bitcoin’s Genesis block. The point of Bitcoin has always been to free people from the tyranny of big government AND big capital.
Crypto isn’t that popular in developed countries with functioning monetary systems… untill of course those big institutions fail. I am still quite surprised, this side of Bitcoin is rarely discussed on Lemmy, given how anticapitalist it is.
I get it libertarian, bad. And to some degree, there are a lot of problems there. But the extreme opposite ain’t that rosy either.
Are you really using all of human history as a timeframe to say that currency is a relatively recent phenomenon?
Again, I’m not anti-cryptocurrency, but it’s not really a currency anymore than any other commodity in a commodity exchange, or a barter market.
And I don’t care if it’s livestock, or Bitcoin, I’m not accepting either as payment if I sell my home, or car. Not because of principles, but because I don’t know how to convert livestock into cash, and I can’t risk the Bitcoin payment halving in value before I can convert it to cash.
And who was talking extremes? I’m just pointing out the absurdity of the claims that crypto is the replacement for, or salvation from, our current economic system, or the delusion that currency backed by a nation is somehow just as ephemeral as Bitcoin, or ERC20 rug pulls.
You said Bitcoin was designed to free us from the tyranny of big capital, but it’s been entirely co-opted by the same boogeyman. So regardless of the intentionality behind the project, it’s now just another speculative asset.
Except, unlike gold or futures contracts, there’s no tangible real world asset, but there is a hell of a real cost.
I think it’s because of what crypto turned into and the inherent flaws in the system. Crypto currencies are still backed by and dependent on traditional currency, and their value is too unstable for the average person. The largest proponents of crypto have been corporations - big capital, as you put it - and there’s a reason for that (though they’re more on the speculative market of NFTs looking to make a profit off of Ponzi schemes).
In the end, crypto hasn’t solved any problems that weren’t already solved by less energy intensive means.
Actually it does solve some problems of traditional currency, problems for which there are few if any other solutions. It’s both much harder to counterfeit and it can be designed to be more traceable. It just also has its own problems like the stupidly high energy consumption, though this is gradually being fixed. The reason big governments don’t want in is probably because they can’t control it to the same degree they can with government backed fiat.
Generally though money has tons of problems both in concept and specific implementations. As I keep saying maybe we should come up with a better system.
I wouldn’t say that it’s harder to counterfeit so much as that the methodology is radically different due to the untrusted, peer to peer nature of crypto. Because of the way that that works, in order to fake a transaction you need to convince the majority of ledgers that the transaction occurred (even if the wallet that is buying something doesn’t have anything in it). Because the ledger is ultimately decided by majority vote. You can trace the transaction, but wallets are often anonymous, so the trail ends at the wallet. Especially since somebody would use a burner wallet to do such a thing. It’s basically buying something with a hotel keycard with a stolen RFID on it.
I think governments don’t want anything to do with it because its nature causes it to be too unstable in its value. It would be like tying the value of your country’s currency to the value of day trade stocks. One day, your money is worthless; a week later, it’s skyrocketing in value.
At the end of the day, currencies are a system of abstraction to simplify the process of trade - whether between people or countries. We agree that the magic paper is worth the same amount because it’s easier than arguing that the magic rock that gave your wife cancer is worth at least 2 goats, not one. It’s always going to be a flawed system in some way. Crypto’s flaws just make it an ideal system for black market dealings compared to traditional fiat currency in its current setup, on top of the energy and computing costs.
You’re kind of right but also very wrong. You can’t convince the other ledgers that there is money in an empty wallet because all of the money in the whole system is known about. In Bitcoin every single transaction is known, every time a new coin is known. Not just by one or two people, but by every other full bitcoin instance in the entire system.
What you can actually do is something called a 51% attack. This allows you to spend money you do indeed have multiple times over. It’s called a 51% attack because you need at least 51% of the processing power of the entire network under your direct control. So basically it’s like cheating people by buying 51% of a bank and using that control to do dirty dealing. Actually getting to that point is incredibly hard unless you’re a very rich state actor or something. At that point you might as well not bother and just mine like crazy instead of cheating the system and risk getting caught. Someone who has 51% of the processing power of the system would also get the majority of coins mined for themselves. I’ve seen attempts at a 51% attack but they only really work on small cryptos and even then it’s very unlikely to succeed and go unnoticed for long.
I’m fine doing away with physical dollars printed on paper and coins but crypto seems to solve none of the problems that we have with a fiat currency but instead continues to consume unnecessary amounts of energy while being driven by rich investors that would love nothing more than to spend and earn money in an untraceable way.