this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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The idea was great, but it was ruined by greed.
It's always been a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
How did you buy drugs online before crypto? I think it's made it much easier. Also for international transactions of large sums I used to pay fees for services and crypto allows for an easy universal standard with no middle men. Micropayments never caught on, but it would be a nice solution for that as well. This argument that we already have money, we don't need different money never flew with me. Crypto has its place, it was just abused as an investment commodity way too early and this massive inflation completely suffocated any practical application.
It's funny cause crypto can totally be traced, like the whole idea is everyone has a copy of a history of the transactions, although wallets can be effectively anonymous with certain caveats. The idea of providing my address for a shipment was the part that always put me off with darknet. Although knowing how the laws work with how police obtain warrants etc, I didn't see a huge risk on that front. Also the things I wanted to obtain weren't necessarily illegal, mostly Shulgin's compounds, spores, certain species of wood bark, and we already had a huge medical grey market cannabis market. Plain old etransfers were always preferred because under $10k its not a red flag and nothing "illegal" is happening anyway in the supply chain.
not Monero.
So the use cases are:
Buying illegal shit
Scummy crypto exchange as middle men
Small payments that never got used
Trying to become rich by sitting on money
The argument is more that we already have better solutions than the one crypto tries to fill. Instead of finding a solution for a problem, crypto tries to find a problem to solve.
Blockchain may have some use case somewhere, but it is definitely not in money.
Buying illegal shit is important. I never would have accomplished the truama recovery I have in the care access desert we lived in without being able to buy psychedelics online. I'm thriving personally because of a few high quality darkweb dealers. I'm great at my job in part because they sent me accurately labeled and carefully grown cannabis when it was illegal, so I was gaining strain knowledge and experience when most of my coworkers were getting the best generic weed they could find in town. If the fascists succeed in making trans care illegal, I'll use it buy my hormones. It pains me to see the intense turn against crypto, because, used for actual commerce rather than as an investment, it kinda saved me. We never used bitcoin unless we couldn't help it. I've always been angry that using the least energy efficient coin as an investment became the norm. The value of crypto, in my opinion, lies entirely in its prompt and regular use as currency. Hodlers ruined things for everyone.
Yeah crypto critics often gloss over the fact that the war on drugs is an example of repressive government policy and that darknet markets where a lifeline for folks using drugs. As an example, psychedelic have genuine therapeutic uses and on the street level, many "research chemicals" with horrible safety profiles are sold as things like LSD or MDMA.
With a darknet market you get access to a community that can help vet sellers through forums, comments and rating that help keep users safe.
Moreover what this shows is crypto can help organizations or people under repressive governments. Another example was a group in Nigeria who was protesting against the police group SARS. The Nigerian government froze their bank accounts but the group was still able to fundraise using BTC.
And you think the companies charging exorbitant fees to remit money aren't scummy? Crypto has its myriad issues, but remittance is one rock-solid example of it disrupting an egregiously predatory industry in a very positive way.
You are just putting a negative spin on things that are not necessarily negative. The last one is not at all specific to crypto.
Let's not forget that monitary structures are currently backed by governments, crypto offers a way out of the risks associated with that structure as well. Of course if crypto ever takes off it will end up controlled by corporations which is not inherently better, but at least it offers a choice / way out from governmental whims.
A lot of technological changes start as things trying to find problems to solve - that's often how discovery works.
I don't share your confidence. Clearly crypto isn't going to sprout in popularity any time soon, but there aren't nails in this coffin.
[greed!] The cause of and solution to all of our problems
I have questioned this ever since I learned that the more adoption there is, the less efficient mining becomes, ergo more power is wasted accomplishing the exact same task for no extra benefit. Difficulty creates a back asswards system that makes adoption a con.
Mining is only one strategy for concenous, but yes it is a pretty rudementary and inefficient version.
And even in mining there are different protocols, Bitcoin is just intentionally inefficient 🤷
Man, try to make maximalists understand that 🤣
My Excel spreadsheet remains efficiency champion!
Pretty sure there are more efficient databases than Excel for the kind of information stored on blockchains 🤪
Sure, but when even Excel is a more efficient database, that should say something about crypto.
My bad joke was that a real world cost is the point.
Well it’s been over a decade and Bitcoin is still PoW, as well as nearly 50% of the entire crypto market.
Ok... that doesn't make what they said any less true?
My point is how great can it be if over a decade later the terrible system for mining is still dominant? The more people participating, the worse it gets. We just had texas power companies paying crypto bros to stop mining it’s gotten so bad - and we aren’t even at .01% adoption yet.
You’re chiming in in a way that ignores nuance and implied meaning. I feel like my intention has been pretty clear but if I need to spell it out so be it.
That's more a question of being first on the scene and the financial impact if Bitcoin maximalists finally accepted that their blockchain is crap compared to other options, that's what keeps Bitcoin at the top, not how good or bad it is compared to the tech's potential...
And no your intention wasn't very clear otherwise I wouldn't have had to reply how I did previously.
I don't know why you're arguing about Bitcoin being PoW and how bad it is, in think I made it pretty clear that I agree with that...
As I mentioned in another comment, blockchains could replace the stock market and actually improve it. Some chains have transactions that are quick enough that it would be perfectly fine for it (except for automated trading systems, but fuck ATS), transactions would be publically visible instead of the mess that's happening now, no more T+2 delay for the transactions to settle... But crypto is fighting tooth and nail not to be recognized as a security when it's probably the only thing it could be good as... 🙄
Otherwise, as you said, blockchains are a solution in search of a problem to solve 🤷
Doesn't need to be using PoW though.
It would improve the stock market by bringing transparency. Right now you've got transactions happening off market so as to not affect the price of stocks by creating a huge spike in demand and the only way you'll know something happened is by paying to have access to level 2 data or by trying to cross reference the big moves that need to be declared by major investors.
Not all blockchains need to me anonymous either, one used for that purpose could be centralized with users needing to be registered with the authority that has control over the chain.
Bitcoin is more religion and cult than anything. Of course they think it's great or at least able to hand wave criticisms.
And yeah, consensus is a hard problem to solve for. Many have taken the route of least resistance and implemented what is known to work.
Ethereum doesn't use mining at all anymore. It can get expensive to use though, which layer 2 chains help with
This sounds like everything ever.
Having a huge penis got worse the greedier I was