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How does your categorical criticism not also apply to things like barbie-doll manufacturing facilities? Also, it does not take into account the potential for v

by elif 9y ago

How does your categorical criticism not also apply to things like barbie-doll manufacturing facilities? Also, it does not take into account the potential for value being removed from dollars (denominator and subsidizing currency of big oil, big war, big agra, etc.) and being given irrevocably to the proletariat who are actually concerned about climate change.

JustAnotherPat 9y ago
lol
puranjay 9y ago
> irrevocably to the proletariat Yes, a currency that is so hard to understand that even seasoned technocrats can't figure it out is perfect for the proletariat. Cryptocurrencies are yet another example of wealth transfer from educated elite to another educated elite. There is nothing "democratic" about it. It requires a tech expertise which 95% of the planet doesn't have to even accept/make a payment. Forget about "mining" it - 99.5% of the world's population doesn't have the knowledge or the resources for it.
- verroq 9y ago
  Computers at some point was technology that 95% of the planet doesn't understand.
  - y4mi 9y ago
    Do you consider accessing Facebook as 'understanding computers'? If not, this number hasn't changed that much...
    - rublev 9y ago
      Do you consider having a wallet as 'understanding bitcoin'? If not, this number hasn't changed that much... We can do this all day. You don't need to understand anything other than downloading a wallet, storing your coins there, and being able to send them anywhere instantly.
      - bduerst 9y ago
        Except bitcoins are not instant, and aren't even guaranteed to go through. The transactions are also non-refundable and pseudo anonymous, unlike the payment methods in your wallet. This is not a feature. Making analogies with computers and smart phones and wallets doesn't mean Bitcoin is guaranteed to be successful or mass adopted.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Most people still don't understand computers, but they're easy to use and relatively predictable, although security is still a big problem. The thing about currency is that if people lose their money they might suffer and die. So it should be easy enough to understand that they can't easily be ripped off, and transparent enough that nobody can accumulate system-changing quantities without that being pretty obvious to everyone else. I've been interested in Bitcoin for years but understanding the Bitcoin ecosystem seems like a full-time job. You can't have an economy entirely based on financialization and trading, and if the people who specialize in handling the currency are sure to end up with the largest amounts of it then it's hardly better than what it's replacing. I'm not saying there should be no rewards for specializing in currency work, but I'd like to see some sort of self-limiting mechanism. I'm reminded of a humorous Stanislaw Lem story in which a wicked king is tricked into replacing all the currency in the kingdom with uranium coins, so that his insatiable desire to accumulate as much as possible in the royal treasury eventually leads to criticality and his subsequent destruction.
- shpongled 9y ago
  If you can't figure it out, you're not really a seasoned technocrat, are you? Sure, it requires some tech expertise right now. But so do ALL emerging technologies. Bitcoin will probably not be the dominant cryptocurrency forever. I foresee whichever one is able to be quickly and secured transferred and stored on smartphones changing the global economy. Think about how many people in developing countries have phones and need a way to securely transact and store currency.
drngdds 9y ago
How and why would Bitcoin remove value from real money?
- elif 9y ago
  Basically, because one is being printed faster over time and and the other is being printed slower over time. Also boom/bust cycles and the increasing mainstream sentiment of crypto as a safe-haven asset.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    I read an argument once that an inflationary currency encourages spending and discourages hoarding, and it follows that the reverse would be true for a deflationary store of value like Bitcoin. And are you saying boom/bust cycles are a good thing? For pretty much any average user of money, they're not.
bpodgursky 9y ago
Barbie doll manufacturers don't want to use electricity, and barbie doll manufacturing isn't zero sum. It's fundamentally different. If someone learned how to make a barbie doll which used 1% of the current electricity usage, a couple extra dolls would get created, but electricity usage would drop a lot. If someone learned how to make bitcoins with 1% of the current electricity usage, _miners would just mine 100x what they do now_. Fundamentally, the amount of electricity that will be wasted on bitcoin mining is driven by the price. So as it gets more efficient, it becomes worth it to waste more to match the price in the race for mined blocks. It's horrible, and it's incredibly dishonest to compare it to any other kind of manufacturing.
- elif 9y ago
  I see what you mean, but in reality miners are constrained by mining hardware production speeds, and mining hardware pricing which charges a 10x more for a 10x more efficient machine. It is almost always a margin call whether buying a new machine will pay for itself, so the 100x elastic response you are describing seems unreasonable. There are also 2 factors to control the growth of miners, reward halving and the end of this weird period of high fee transactions. After transaction fees drop down, a lot of older mining hardware will be unprofitable and come offline.
anigbrowl 9y ago
being given irrevocably to the proletariat Really? Where is this mass distribution taking place? I don't think most of the proletariat has ASICs and my attempts to mine bitcoin on a CPU some years ago were fruitless. I think I have half a BTC somewhere on my hard drive but but I don't have any Bitcoin software installed right now because having an active wallet seems to require handling massive blockchain files, and I really don't enough about security to be sure it isn't some kind of explosive payload. I guess I could dig up an older computer, put a minimal operating system on it, and dedicate that to being my bitcoin wallet. Or my Dogecoin wallet. Or my Ethereum wallet. There's >100 cryptocurrencies now and I have no way of knowing which ones are subject to Tulip mania and which (if any) are being created in the public interest; they all seem to be their own raison d'etre (rather than having positive externalities that I'd want to invest in), they all seem to be speculative, they all seem to reward hoarding. At least Ethereum seems aimed at offering utility beyond simply being currency, but so much of the hype is speculative that it's drowning out more proletarian considerations like real-world utility. I'm not trying to be snarky here, I'd love to hear which cryptocurrency you think is best for regular people and why. By 'regular people' I mean people who don't have lots of capital to invest and don't want to restructure their lives around mining or something. I'd be particularly interested to hear of any currency that was designed to limit concentrations of value and instead prioritized transaction velocity.
- stale2002 9y ago
  "Really? Where is this mass distribution taking place?" It happens at the transaction level. You now don't have to pay 30 dollars for a wire transfer. You can send money anywhere in the world, for 1-30cents, depending on your cryptocurrency of choice.
  - Jach 9y ago
    Plus whatever fee (often % based) you're going to pay if you need to convert from your cryptocurrency to another one or to your local currency, but that still may be less than other methods depending on where you live and what those methods are. Here in the US I can't even pay my landlord online without a $3 fee each time (or more if I want it to go through in less than a few days) because we bank at different banks and neither of us is willing to set up an account at the other's, so a check it is, but even that I have to pay the cost of the stamp.
rdiddly 9y ago
And how would that in any way refute the point that Bitcoin itself wastes energy? It's a familiar pattern by now - someone criticizes Bitcoin, and the reply is that some other thing is bad too. You are essentially changing the subject, not addressing the criticism. Are you hoping I'll get distracted, or something? Surely you can't be hoping I'll suddenly start thinking Bitcoin is wonderfully energy-efficient, for example. Reminding me that Ted Bundy was really bad, is not going to convince me that Jeffrey Dahmer was a great guy. (I almost went "full Godwin" here with you-know-who's next-door neighbor as the example, so, you're welcome.) Are there any rhetoric experts out there who can properly categorize this "argumentation technique?" The best I can do is some combination of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evasion_(ethics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evasion_(ethics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque Anyway I call it "A full and glorious admission that you can't argue the point on the merits whatsoever."

by elif 9y ago

JustAnotherPat 9y ago

lol

puranjay 9y ago

> irrevocably to the proletariat Yes, a currency that is so hard to understand that even seasoned technocrats can't figure it out is perfect for the proletariat. Cryptocurrencies are yet another example of wealth transfer from educated elite to another educated elite. There is nothing "democratic" about it. It requires a tech expertise which 95% of the planet doesn't have to even accept/make a payment. Forget about "mining" it - 99.5% of the world's population doesn't have the knowledge or the resources for it.

verroq 9y ago
Computers at some point was technology that 95% of the planet doesn't understand.
- y4mi 9y ago
  Do you consider accessing Facebook as 'understanding computers'? If not, this number hasn't changed that much...
  - rublev 9y ago
    Do you consider having a wallet as 'understanding bitcoin'? If not, this number hasn't changed that much... We can do this all day. You don't need to understand anything other than downloading a wallet, storing your coins there, and being able to send them anywhere instantly.
    - bduerst 9y ago
      Except bitcoins are not instant, and aren't even guaranteed to go through. The transactions are also non-refundable and pseudo anonymous, unlike the payment methods in your wallet. This is not a feature. Making analogies with computers and smart phones and wallets doesn't mean Bitcoin is guaranteed to be successful or mass adopted.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Most people still don't understand computers, but they're easy to use and relatively predictable, although security is still a big problem. The thing about currency is that if people lose their money they might suffer and die. So it should be easy enough to understand that they can't easily be ripped off, and transparent enough that nobody can accumulate system-changing quantities without that being pretty obvious to everyone else. I've been interested in Bitcoin for years but understanding the Bitcoin ecosystem seems like a full-time job. You can't have an economy entirely based on financialization and trading, and if the people who specialize in handling the currency are sure to end up with the largest amounts of it then it's hardly better than what it's replacing. I'm not saying there should be no rewards for specializing in currency work, but I'd like to see some sort of self-limiting mechanism. I'm reminded of a humorous Stanislaw Lem story in which a wicked king is tricked into replacing all the currency in the kingdom with uranium coins, so that his insatiable desire to accumulate as much as possible in the royal treasury eventually leads to criticality and his subsequent destruction.
shpongled 9y ago
If you can't figure it out, you're not really a seasoned technocrat, are you? Sure, it requires some tech expertise right now. But so do ALL emerging technologies. Bitcoin will probably not be the dominant cryptocurrency forever. I foresee whichever one is able to be quickly and secured transferred and stored on smartphones changing the global economy. Think about how many people in developing countries have phones and need a way to securely transact and store currency.

drngdds 9y ago

How and why would Bitcoin remove value from real money?

elif 9y ago
Basically, because one is being printed faster over time and and the other is being printed slower over time. Also boom/bust cycles and the increasing mainstream sentiment of crypto as a safe-haven asset.
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  I read an argument once that an inflationary currency encourages spending and discourages hoarding, and it follows that the reverse would be true for a deflationary store of value like Bitcoin. And are you saying boom/bust cycles are a good thing? For pretty much any average user of money, they're not.

bpodgursky 9y ago

Barbie doll manufacturers don't want to use electricity, and barbie doll manufacturing isn't zero sum. It's fundamentally different. If someone learned how to make a barbie doll which used 1% of the current electricity usage, a couple extra dolls would get created, but electricity usage would drop a lot. If someone learned how to make bitcoins with 1% of the current electricity usage, _miners would just mine 100x what they do now_. Fundamentally, the amount of electricity that will be wasted on bitcoin mining is driven by the price. So as it gets more efficient, it becomes worth it to waste more to match the price in the race for mined blocks. It's horrible, and it's incredibly dishonest to compare it to any other kind of manufacturing.

elif 9y ago
I see what you mean, but in reality miners are constrained by mining hardware production speeds, and mining hardware pricing which charges a 10x more for a 10x more efficient machine. It is almost always a margin call whether buying a new machine will pay for itself, so the 100x elastic response you are describing seems unreasonable. There are also 2 factors to control the growth of miners, reward halving and the end of this weird period of high fee transactions. After transaction fees drop down, a lot of older mining hardware will be unprofitable and come offline.

anigbrowl 9y ago

being given irrevocably to the proletariat Really? Where is this mass distribution taking place? I don't think most of the proletariat has ASICs and my attempts to mine bitcoin on a CPU some years ago were fruitless. I think I have half a BTC somewhere on my hard drive but but I don't have any Bitcoin software installed right now because having an active wallet seems to require handling massive blockchain files, and I really don't enough about security to be sure it isn't some kind of explosive payload. I guess I could dig up an older computer, put a minimal operating system on it, and dedicate that to being my bitcoin wallet. Or my Dogecoin wallet. Or my Ethereum wallet. There's >100 cryptocurrencies now and I have no way of knowing which ones are subject to Tulip mania and which (if any) are being created in the public interest; they all seem to be their own raison d'etre (rather than having positive externalities that I'd want to invest in), they all seem to be speculative, they all seem to reward hoarding. At least Ethereum seems aimed at offering utility beyond simply being currency, but so much of the hype is speculative that it's drowning out more proletarian considerations like real-world utility. I'm not trying to be snarky here, I'd love to hear which cryptocurrency you think is best for regular people and why. By 'regular people' I mean people who don't have lots of capital to invest and don't want to restructure their lives around mining or something. I'd be particularly interested to hear of any currency that was designed to limit concentrations of value and instead prioritized transaction velocity.

stale2002 9y ago
"Really? Where is this mass distribution taking place?" It happens at the transaction level. You now don't have to pay 30 dollars for a wire transfer. You can send money anywhere in the world, for 1-30cents, depending on your cryptocurrency of choice.
- Jach 9y ago
  Plus whatever fee (often % based) you're going to pay if you need to convert from your cryptocurrency to another one or to your local currency, but that still may be less than other methods depending on where you live and what those methods are. Here in the US I can't even pay my landlord online without a $3 fee each time (or more if I want it to go through in less than a few days) because we bank at different banks and neither of us is willing to set up an account at the other's, so a check it is, but even that I have to pay the cost of the stamp.

rdiddly 9y ago

And how would that in any way refute the point that Bitcoin itself wastes energy? It's a familiar pattern by now - someone criticizes Bitcoin, and the reply is that some other thing is bad too. You are essentially changing the subject, not addressing the criticism. Are you hoping I'll get distracted, or something? Surely you can't be hoping I'll suddenly start thinking Bitcoin is wonderfully energy-efficient, for example. Reminding me that Ted Bundy was really bad, is not going to convince me that Jeffrey Dahmer was a great guy. (I almost went "full Godwin" here with you-know-who's next-door neighbor as the example, so, you're welcome.) Are there any rhetoric experts out there who can properly categorize this "argumentation technique?" The best I can do is some combination of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evasion_(ethics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evasion_(ethics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque Anyway I call it "A full and glorious admission that you can't argue the point on the merits whatsoever."