11 ms·

Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe

88 points by enkiv2 9y ago

grabcocque 9y ago
Asset bubbles always create an unholy mess when they burst, but in this case the kind of people will lead the fallout from it are going to exacerbate the problems. A toxic mixture of naive technolibertarians, money launderers, and far right extremists have all stumbled into the same bubble at the same time, and when that cesspool burst open, everyone is getting covered in it.
jstanley 9y ago
> At that point, the incentive for mining [...] will disappear The intention is that by that point, the transaction fees alone will be sufficiently high to incentivise mining.
- pdog 9y ago
  The protocol can also be changed to Proof of Stake (PoS).
  - tfha 9y ago
    I don't think any serious bitcoin developer considers that a reasonable option. Most very strongly believe that PoS is fundamentally less secure.
    - EGreg 9y ago
      Why not eliminate global consensus altogether: https://intercoin.org/technology.pdf https://intercoin.org/technology.pdf
    - maneesh 9y ago
      Uh Vitalik of ethereum released his white paper on Casper PoS protocol and publicly announced his intentions to switch. What makes you think "No" developer believes it's viable?
      - Anderkent 9y ago
        No bitcoin (presumably bitcoin-core) developer thinks it's viable.
      - VMG 9y ago
        his intentions were there from the beginning, results not so much also I've never seem a response to this paper here from the Eth crew https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf
- edf13 9y ago
  The high transaction fees will also becoming a limiting factor in BTC growth... it is already a problem for it being a useful cryptocurrency
- ecopoesis 9y ago
  And if they aren't the miners will just fork Bitcoin to a version without the coin limit. The real question is what future do the miner's choose? I see three options: 1) The new Bitcoin supply is tightly managed and the miners maintain the current deflationary pressure, ensuring a continued rise in Bitcoin's value. 2) The new Bitcoin is tightly managed, but with the aim of some modest amount of inflation akin to what most central banks aim for. In this model, transaction fees dominate mining profits since Bitcoin's value will stabilize or drop. 3) The new Bitcoin goes into hyper-inflation Weimar Republic-style, eventually becoming worthless. I think it will be number 3. There is too much money to be made by attempting to time the inflationary spiral, and miners essentially acting as Bitcoin's central bank are in a perfect place to take advantage of it.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    Miners can't unilaterally fork Bitcoin without consensus in the community. They tried this already this year with Segwit2x. Unless a critical mass of actual users want the fork, it will never succeed, because the fork will not have enough value to be worth mining.
- saalweachter 9y ago
  So here is the problem. The security of a Proof-of-Work network is proportional to the amount of work you put into it. You can call the work electricity or computation, but ultimately the work is money. And the money spent securing Bitcoin will be basically the mining rewards. Right now, at $10,000 / BTC, that's about $6.5 B / year (10k$ / BTC * 12.5 BTC / block * 144 blocks / day * 365 days / year). If you want to maintain the current level of security on the Bitcoin blockchain, you need to continue to pump $6.5B / year into mining rewards. You could spend less, but then you get less security. Right now BTC is pumping that money in through inflation and investment in the currency through exchanges. If you wanted to put that money in through transaction fees, then you need to have $6.5B worth of transaction fees per year. That is a lot. VISA has a yearly revenue of $13B, and a lot of that is interest charges and bullshit fees, not transaction costs. Mastercard and Paypal have yearly revenues of $10B. It's still not impossible. If Bitcoin processes a similar number of transactions to one of the major credit card companies at a similar fee level, that would probably work out. It would need to process significantly more transactions to make a lower fee work, and if it can't match the transaction volume, it needs a significantly higher fee. If the fees are insufficient, the size and security of the Bitcoin network will fall to match. How much security are you comfortable with? $1B / year? $100M / year? $1M / year?
  - jstanley 9y ago
    Actually transaction fees already pay a significant part of the mining reward. And with the development of 2nd-layer technology like Lightning Network, fees for on-chain bitcoin transactions can go very high indeed without significant adverse effects on bitcoin users.
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      Transaction fees are currently 11% of the mining reward, which isn't nothing. If the non-transaction mining reward went away tomorrow, you'd expect the mining power to decrease 10-fold, and the work securing the Bitcoin network to be about $700M / year. By itself, I'd say $1B / year might be enough security. Any malicious nation-state wanting to attack the network through mining power would need to spend on the order of a billion dollars, which is a lot even for a large government. On the other hand, if you did have a sharp discontinuity, and not a gradual turn-down in spare capacity over many years as the mining reward gradually decreases, you would have a unique opportunity for attackers: a huge amount of mining equipment would likely be dumped on the market at once, and an attacker might be able to build up their own capacity quickly and cheaply. The Lightning Network helps with scaling the number of transactions, but it doesn't change the need for an adequate amount of work to be done to secure the core network; you still need to spend a large number of dollars (or Bitcoins, if you prefer) each year mining, so that attackers cannot afford to attack the network through that venue. The Lightning Network gives you a larger tax base for this security tax to be levied on, but it doesn't change the fact that when you ask the question "How much money should we spend mining Bitcoin?" the only secure answer is "As much as we possibly can.".
IIAOPSW 9y ago
I'm commenting because I can't downvote. I don't want to downvote because I dislike what it says. I want to downvote because its poorly researched and full of hyperbole.
- Synaesthesia 9y ago
  But expand on your argument too. I think some of what he says is correct. Not as anti-bitcoin as him but I do think it is due for a crash.
  - skgoa 9y ago
    Sure, bitcoin is going to become more or less worthless in the not too distant future. But this article is just bad on so many levels.
- knieveltech 9y ago
  Is it? While you can easily eye-roll the nazi stuff out of the conversation there are several assertions embedded in the essay that are going to require more than a handwave to dismiss effectively.
VMG 9y ago
> Bitcoin isn't just popular among libertarians, it's popular among folks with green frog/Kek user icons and anti-semitic views. ("Are you a Jew?" asked one egg.) You have got to be kidding me. After druglord/pedo/(eco-)terrorist money, now it's the Nazi currency. Is there a Bitcoin smear left that we haven't used yet? Edit: Somebody also alert Olaoluwa Osuntokun to what he's getting involved in. He promptly should go back to `foo/bar` instead of `kek/kek`.
- beat 9y ago
  Just because it's a smear doesn't mean it isn't true.
  - VMG 9y ago
    You also shouldn't extrapolate from twitter trolls
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    It's a useless ad hominem.
  - YouAreGreat 9y ago
    His argument boils down to "someone on the internet asked me if I'm a Jew, therefore... I'm right!" But we don't even have to follow him on his "BTC-->another Holocaust!!1!" route to see he's nuts. That's because "don't use BTC because it's less efficient than VISA" is already nuts. BTC and VISA aren't performing equivalent functions, so he's comparing apples to oranges. For those who prefer decentralization, the only relevant comparison is between systems that deliver decentralization.
    - beat 9y ago
      I wouldn't say it means he's nuts. Even if you ditch the right-wing politics commentary, there's a problem with decentralized currency - it's directly in opposition to the interests of governments. Which makes it questionable whether it will ever succeed. That's not nuts. That said, as I've pointed out elsewhere, bitcoin does not currently behave even remotely like a useful medium of exchange. The price needs to be be rock-solid stable, the way the dollar or the euro or the yen is stable, and it needs to be extremely liquid, usable for most transactions. When bitcoins are generating 500% annual returns relative to stable currencies simply by existing, spending them is actually irrational (although unloading and getting out while the getting is good might not be). Until it's stable, forget government interference... the banking system won't accept bitcoin.
jerianasmith 9y ago
Dystopic fiction where everybody is dead. YA cherish triangle described completely in the subjunctive. No characters, despite the fact that there unquestionably could have been.
sremani 9y ago
He lost me with the overuse of word "neo-Nazi" and taking simple hoops from libertarian to neo-Nazi using one persons/trolls comment. Either put a cogent article without innuendo to make a point or nothing. To quote a wise man, "this is not an argument, its a slur".
- buttcoinslol 9y ago
  The unchecked greed of libertarian ideology is potentially as destructive as fascism, luckily libertarian ideas will never be politically palatable.
  - Anderkent 9y ago
    > potentially as destructive as fascism This is meaningless; you can substitute any other ideology you dislike (socialism, conservatism, anarchism, liberalism, whatever) and it makes just as much sense.
    - buttcoinslol 9y ago
      Except it isn't meaningless, libertarianism is morally and ethically bankrupt, not to mention wildly impractical. Most of these other ideologies account for collective effort for the greater good and a social safety net, which are two of the hundreds of things that current governments have that libertarians would like to dismantle.
      - Anderkent 9y ago
        You confuse anarchocapitalism with libertarianism. Something like 90% of libertarians I speak with are in favour of social safety nets (guaranteed basic income comes up a lot) and progressive taxation. Everyone believes in collective effort for the greater good. People just disagree about the best way to achieve this collective effort.
        buttcoinslol 9y ago
Synaesthesia 9y ago
I also feel that there will come a day of reckoning between the US and other world governments and Bitcoin, will governments really tolerate an alternative to their currency?
- sdenton4 9y ago
  Most countries on earth tolerate the US dollar as an alternative currency within their borders. It's not so unusual...
  - zabana 9y ago
    Fear of military invasion is a massive motivator in some cases.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Good god! I'm sick of bitcoin, too, but this guy is way off his rocker. Maybe while your opponents are taking "red" pills you could take a few chill pills.
beat 9y ago
The bitcoin mining industry will end once the electricity (and hardware) becomes more expensive than the value of mined bitcoins - it stops being economically feasible. If we're already breaking .1% of the world's energy consumption, then we're probably pretty close. Bitcoins will continue to be valuable, short of some security flaw wrecking them, simply because of scarcity and functionality. But if they can't be used for a majority of (legal) financial transactions, the value will be limited. And as long as the exchange rates are highly unstable and exchanges are unreliable/untrustworthy, mainstream banking won't touch it with a ten foot pole. They don't want the risk.
- VMG 9y ago
  > The bitcoin mining industry will end once the electricity (and hardware) becomes more expensive than the value of mined bitcoins You do not understand mining difficulty adjustment
  - beat 9y ago
    Apparently not. Care to enlighten me? Because seriously, .1% of global electricity consumption, if that number is accurate, is expensive. Are we going to go up from there, or down, and how does it relate to a long-term stable bitcoin exchange rate, relative to mainstream reserve currencies? If we're in a speculative bubble (we are), it justifies the mining. But bitcoin will never, ever be a viable global currency if it's deflating 500% a year, like it is right now. Mainstream reserve currencies are designed and carefully regulated to inflate at 1-4% or so, slowly losing value - inflation encourages investment, because sitting on cash hurts. What could someone invest their bitcoins in that could justify giving up the possibility of a 500% annual return just for the techno-equivalent of stuffing them in a mattress? Bitcoin mining, apparently. See where I'm going with this? Investing outrageous sums in bitcoin mining makes sense when it's a massive deflationary bubble. It makes almost no sense at all when it's slowly inflating like a grownup currency does.
    - ianai 9y ago
      There’s not a currency out there that costs .12% of co2 to print. Pretty sure the former currency backers (gold, silver) don’t either. That factor alone is reason enough to not use it.
thanatropism 9y ago
The first sentence of "Accelerando" is transcendentally beautiful, something to be quoted for generations to come. The rest of the first chapter is pretty interesting. The domme/sub relationship thing is well written although the sex act depicted sounds implausible. The second chapter also has an interesting scene where Macx is rescued by Anette with the recording earrings. Not long after we have a rant by an Italian politician that already showcases most of the Strossian School of economics. Then the book gets muddled but that's arguably part of the concept. Basically people keep listening to Stross for this sublime sentence: "Manfred is on the run, making strangers rich."
agentultra 9y ago
The Nazi connection is interesting and there do seem to be echoes of that moment in the past in our current situation. I'm anti-BTC. The energy consumption is increasing on a linear curve at best. And we're at a point in our history where we need to reduce our atmospheric carbon drastically... BTC is only increasing it based on the speculation of a very small portion of Earth's population and provides little value to us in any meaningful way. Also I'm not a free-market libertarian so there's that.
mothayrongbay 9y ago
Đoàn kị sĩ 20 người di động lan tỏa bao vây đỉnh Anpo. Mấy ngày trước đây, một kẻ thần bí đã rút khởi thanh kiếm Tiệt Long khiến phong ấn Rồng Đen xuất hiện kẽ nứt. Hai mươi danh kị sĩ được nhà vua điều động chuẩn bị trực chiến với rồng. Kị sĩ trưởng ra hiệu, những vị khác hiểu ý sôi nổi rút ra bảo vật. Người cầm kinh thánh niệm bảng cửu chương, người cầm vở ghi chép tọa độ, người cầm máy tính hỗ trợ suy tính thời gian phong ấn vỡ,… Hai mươi vị bàn tính đi bàn tính lại chưa cho ra phương án thống nhất. Đất dưới chân đại chấn. Oành. Phong ấn vỡ. Không lưu bất kì ai thời gian định thần. Rồng đen phóng xuất. Bay lên cao lượn một vòng, cả người tràn ra tà khí. Đuôi rồng nhẹ phẩy hất bay hai mươi danh kị sĩ, đất đá tán loạn. Eng. Tôi giật mình mở mắt. Màn hình vi tính hiện “Game Over”. Thì ra là mơ, mơ thấy rồng đen bay. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nam-mo-thay-rong-nguyen-duy-anh/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nam-mo-thay-rong-nguyen-duy-a...
trynumber9 9y ago
If you tweeted, in English, "ban imports from Japan" you'd get a swarm of frog/kek avatars among all the anime girls. Does that mean that Japan is a Nazi-aligned country?
- lmm 9y ago
  Japan is largely ethnonationalist, a strong believer in traditional gender roles, has a culture that individuals should be subservient to the system, has close ties between corporations and government, is highly environmentalist, has a powerful police with few checks on them... while I'd reserve the term "Nazi" for those actually engaging in genocide, it's pretty fascist. There's a reason those people see themselves as aligned with Japan.
  - rgrieselhuber 9y ago
    Environmentalism is fascist now?
droopybuns 9y ago
>>The longer BTC persists, the worse the eventual blowout—and the more angry people there are going to be. Angry people who are currently being recruited and radicalized by neo-Nazis. How does anyone reach adulthood and clutch this kind of fear of Internet assholes? Embarrassing.
tom_mellior 9y ago
I'm a bit disappointed by this. I knew that Charles Stross is fiercely against Bitcoin, but I thought he understood the technology better. I'm surprised he writes this: > we're going to run out of new BTC to mine sooner or later as it's not a question of "sooner or later", the supply schedule is fixed and well-known. But even more: > At that point, the incentive for mining (a process essential for reconciling the public ledgers) will disappear and the currency will ... will what? ... will be driven by mining fees. Or maybe it won't, which is also a reasonable guess. But suggesting that we have no idea and no plan is disingenious. Also: > if, as I think, BTC doesn't deliver, then the bubble will eventually burst. It's not necessarily an all-or-nothing thing. Is 10'000 USD overvalued? Maybe, but that wouldn't mean that the actual value is 0 USD, only that it's somewhere between 0 and 10'000. And: > A working distributed cryptocurrency model is inimical to the interests of billionaire monopolists who want to get rich by imposing rent-seeking practices [...followed by regulatory phantasies] I also think this argument is mistaken. The easiest way of rent-seeking for billionaire monopolists would be to buy Bitcoin and just wait and reap the rents.
- nwah1 9y ago
  >will be driven by mining fees. Or maybe it won't errm. >The easiest way of rent-seeking for billionaire monopolists would be to buy Bitcoin and just wait and reap the rents. Pretty much all of them realize that the speculative bubble is built on nothing.
  - tom_mellior 9y ago
    > errm. Please elaborate your objection? I'm happy to reiterate that it's clear that we can't predict the future, but that it's intellectually dishonest to suggest that we don't have plans when in fact we do. (It's fine to criticize the plans, but that's not what Charlie did.) > Pretty much all of them realize that the speculative bubble is built on nothing. That's no reason not to profit from it while it lasts, if you're a rent-seeking billionaire who can afford to lose their investment. It's strange to suggest that greedy rent-seekers would not be greedy in this one specific instance.
sp4ke 9y ago
It's quite fascinating to observe disruption and fear in society at the age of the internet. It most have felt the same for all the technologies the bitcoin haters use everyday ( phones, cars, electricity, internet ... )
Nokinside 9y ago
Two comments on two follow-on questions about BTC. 1. 'bitcoin delivering' and bitcoin value crashing are orthogonal concepts. Store of value and hoard-speculative aspects of bitcoin are probably the worst parts of bitcoin. 2. Non regulated cryptocurrencies are not exactly anti-oligarchs. Absence of regulation would set them free to prey the weak. Goldman Sachs and all of the finance innovators who participate in disaster capitalism would love cryptocurrensies if they take off.
rrggrr 9y ago
This BTC indictment I found elsewhere. I'm not the author, but it spoke to me. ----------- Two friends, Bob and Satosh are sitting around after an evening of consuming copious amounts of some especially wicked dank. Bob says to Satosh: Hey Satosh... I have a genius idea Yeah, what is it? You know that app you coded...the one that churns out the useless SHA algorithms? Yeah? LOL...lets sell them as digital currencies! Dude...you are fucking wasted, here, have another bong No, seriously. We get that graphic artist you know create a slick image of a 'gold' coin, and then we can further confuse the rubes by telling them their 'coins' have to be "mined", as if they were real, physical metals! Dude... you are insane! What kind of moron would buy something like that? Bob: Oh... I dont know. Remember that now worthless token you paid stupid money for on WoW? They sit there and stare at each other for a moment, and then both burst out into torrents of tear stained laughter They are still laughing today. The rest is history
GenericsMotors 9y ago
> What I wasn't expecting was the alt-right/neo-Nazi connection. Bitcoin isn't just popular among libertarians, it's popular among folks with green frog/Kek user icons and anti-semitic views. ("Are you a Jew?" asked one egg.) Garbage blogpost. I dislike the bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry & communities in general, but this is just ridiculous.
chroem- 9y ago
Whether you agree with their content or not, it's a losing proposition to fight a war against memes.
jstewartmobile 9y ago
Nazis! Anti-war nazis who would follow Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell off the bridge, into the lake, and to the ends of the earth... Why the hell did this even make it to the front page???

88 points by enkiv2 9y ago

Asset bubbles always create an unholy mess when they burst, but in this case the kind of people will lead the fallout from it are going to exacerbate the problems. A toxic mixture of naive technolibertarians, money launderers, and far right extremists have all stumbled into the same bubble at the same time, and when that cesspool burst open, everyone is getting covered in it.

jstanley 9y ago

> At that point, the incentive for mining [...] will disappear The intention is that by that point, the transaction fees alone will be sufficiently high to incentivise mining.

pdog 9y ago
The protocol can also be changed to Proof of Stake (PoS).
- tfha 9y ago
  I don't think any serious bitcoin developer considers that a reasonable option. Most very strongly believe that PoS is fundamentally less secure.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    Why not eliminate global consensus altogether: https://intercoin.org/technology.pdf https://intercoin.org/technology.pdf
  - maneesh 9y ago
    Uh Vitalik of ethereum released his white paper on Casper PoS protocol and publicly announced his intentions to switch. What makes you think "No" developer believes it's viable?
    - Anderkent 9y ago
      No bitcoin (presumably bitcoin-core) developer thinks it's viable.
    - VMG 9y ago
      his intentions were there from the beginning, results not so much also I've never seem a response to this paper here from the Eth crew https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf
edf13 9y ago
The high transaction fees will also becoming a limiting factor in BTC growth... it is already a problem for it being a useful cryptocurrency
ecopoesis 9y ago
And if they aren't the miners will just fork Bitcoin to a version without the coin limit. The real question is what future do the miner's choose? I see three options: 1) The new Bitcoin supply is tightly managed and the miners maintain the current deflationary pressure, ensuring a continued rise in Bitcoin's value. 2) The new Bitcoin is tightly managed, but with the aim of some modest amount of inflation akin to what most central banks aim for. In this model, transaction fees dominate mining profits since Bitcoin's value will stabilize or drop. 3) The new Bitcoin goes into hyper-inflation Weimar Republic-style, eventually becoming worthless. I think it will be number 3. There is too much money to be made by attempting to time the inflationary spiral, and miners essentially acting as Bitcoin's central bank are in a perfect place to take advantage of it.
- jstanley 9y ago
  Miners can't unilaterally fork Bitcoin without consensus in the community. They tried this already this year with Segwit2x. Unless a critical mass of actual users want the fork, it will never succeed, because the fork will not have enough value to be worth mining.
saalweachter 9y ago
So here is the problem. The security of a Proof-of-Work network is proportional to the amount of work you put into it. You can call the work electricity or computation, but ultimately the work is money. And the money spent securing Bitcoin will be basically the mining rewards. Right now, at $10,000 / BTC, that's about $6.5 B / year (10k$ / BTC * 12.5 BTC / block * 144 blocks / day * 365 days / year). If you want to maintain the current level of security on the Bitcoin blockchain, you need to continue to pump $6.5B / year into mining rewards. You could spend less, but then you get less security. Right now BTC is pumping that money in through inflation and investment in the currency through exchanges. If you wanted to put that money in through transaction fees, then you need to have $6.5B worth of transaction fees per year. That is a lot. VISA has a yearly revenue of $13B, and a lot of that is interest charges and bullshit fees, not transaction costs. Mastercard and Paypal have yearly revenues of $10B. It's still not impossible. If Bitcoin processes a similar number of transactions to one of the major credit card companies at a similar fee level, that would probably work out. It would need to process significantly more transactions to make a lower fee work, and if it can't match the transaction volume, it needs a significantly higher fee. If the fees are insufficient, the size and security of the Bitcoin network will fall to match. How much security are you comfortable with? $1B / year? $100M / year? $1M / year?
- jstanley 9y ago
  Actually transaction fees already pay a significant part of the mining reward. And with the development of 2nd-layer technology like Lightning Network, fees for on-chain bitcoin transactions can go very high indeed without significant adverse effects on bitcoin users.
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    Transaction fees are currently 11% of the mining reward, which isn't nothing. If the non-transaction mining reward went away tomorrow, you'd expect the mining power to decrease 10-fold, and the work securing the Bitcoin network to be about $700M / year. By itself, I'd say $1B / year might be enough security. Any malicious nation-state wanting to attack the network through mining power would need to spend on the order of a billion dollars, which is a lot even for a large government. On the other hand, if you did have a sharp discontinuity, and not a gradual turn-down in spare capacity over many years as the mining reward gradually decreases, you would have a unique opportunity for attackers: a huge amount of mining equipment would likely be dumped on the market at once, and an attacker might be able to build up their own capacity quickly and cheaply. The Lightning Network helps with scaling the number of transactions, but it doesn't change the need for an adequate amount of work to be done to secure the core network; you still need to spend a large number of dollars (or Bitcoins, if you prefer) each year mining, so that attackers cannot afford to attack the network through that venue. The Lightning Network gives you a larger tax base for this security tax to be levied on, but it doesn't change the fact that when you ask the question "How much money should we spend mining Bitcoin?" the only secure answer is "As much as we possibly can.".

IIAOPSW 9y ago

I'm commenting because I can't downvote. I don't want to downvote because I dislike what it says. I want to downvote because its poorly researched and full of hyperbole.

Synaesthesia 9y ago
But expand on your argument too. I think some of what he says is correct. Not as anti-bitcoin as him but I do think it is due for a crash.
- skgoa 9y ago
  Sure, bitcoin is going to become more or less worthless in the not too distant future. But this article is just bad on so many levels.
knieveltech 9y ago
Is it? While you can easily eye-roll the nazi stuff out of the conversation there are several assertions embedded in the essay that are going to require more than a handwave to dismiss effectively.

VMG 9y ago

> Bitcoin isn't just popular among libertarians, it's popular among folks with green frog/Kek user icons and anti-semitic views. ("Are you a Jew?" asked one egg.) You have got to be kidding me. After druglord/pedo/(eco-)terrorist money, now it's the Nazi currency. Is there a Bitcoin smear left that we haven't used yet? Edit: Somebody also alert Olaoluwa Osuntokun to what he's getting involved in. He promptly should go back to `foo/bar` instead of `kek/kek`.

beat 9y ago
Just because it's a smear doesn't mean it isn't true.
- VMG 9y ago
  You also shouldn't extrapolate from twitter trolls
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  It's a useless ad hominem.
- YouAreGreat 9y ago
  His argument boils down to "someone on the internet asked me if I'm a Jew, therefore... I'm right!" But we don't even have to follow him on his "BTC-->another Holocaust!!1!" route to see he's nuts. That's because "don't use BTC because it's less efficient than VISA" is already nuts. BTC and VISA aren't performing equivalent functions, so he's comparing apples to oranges. For those who prefer decentralization, the only relevant comparison is between systems that deliver decentralization.
  - beat 9y ago
    I wouldn't say it means he's nuts. Even if you ditch the right-wing politics commentary, there's a problem with decentralized currency - it's directly in opposition to the interests of governments. Which makes it questionable whether it will ever succeed. That's not nuts. That said, as I've pointed out elsewhere, bitcoin does not currently behave even remotely like a useful medium of exchange. The price needs to be be rock-solid stable, the way the dollar or the euro or the yen is stable, and it needs to be extremely liquid, usable for most transactions. When bitcoins are generating 500% annual returns relative to stable currencies simply by existing, spending them is actually irrational (although unloading and getting out while the getting is good might not be). Until it's stable, forget government interference... the banking system won't accept bitcoin.

jerianasmith 9y ago

Dystopic fiction where everybody is dead. YA cherish triangle described completely in the subjunctive. No characters, despite the fact that there unquestionably could have been.

sremani 9y ago

He lost me with the overuse of word "neo-Nazi" and taking simple hoops from libertarian to neo-Nazi using one persons/trolls comment. Either put a cogent article without innuendo to make a point or nothing. To quote a wise man, "this is not an argument, its a slur".

buttcoinslol 9y ago
The unchecked greed of libertarian ideology is potentially as destructive as fascism, luckily libertarian ideas will never be politically palatable.
- Anderkent 9y ago
  > potentially as destructive as fascism This is meaningless; you can substitute any other ideology you dislike (socialism, conservatism, anarchism, liberalism, whatever) and it makes just as much sense.
  - buttcoinslol 9y ago
    Except it isn't meaningless, libertarianism is morally and ethically bankrupt, not to mention wildly impractical. Most of these other ideologies account for collective effort for the greater good and a social safety net, which are two of the hundreds of things that current governments have that libertarians would like to dismantle.
    - Anderkent 9y ago
      You confuse anarchocapitalism with libertarianism. Something like 90% of libertarians I speak with are in favour of social safety nets (guaranteed basic income comes up a lot) and progressive taxation. Everyone believes in collective effort for the greater good. People just disagree about the best way to achieve this collective effort.
      - buttcoinslol 9y ago

Synaesthesia 9y ago

I also feel that there will come a day of reckoning between the US and other world governments and Bitcoin, will governments really tolerate an alternative to their currency?

sdenton4 9y ago
Most countries on earth tolerate the US dollar as an alternative currency within their borders. It's not so unusual...
- zabana 9y ago
  Fear of military invasion is a massive motivator in some cases.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

Good god! I'm sick of bitcoin, too, but this guy is way off his rocker. Maybe while your opponents are taking "red" pills you could take a few chill pills.

beat 9y ago

The bitcoin mining industry will end once the electricity (and hardware) becomes more expensive than the value of mined bitcoins - it stops being economically feasible. If we're already breaking .1% of the world's energy consumption, then we're probably pretty close. Bitcoins will continue to be valuable, short of some security flaw wrecking them, simply because of scarcity and functionality. But if they can't be used for a majority of (legal) financial transactions, the value will be limited. And as long as the exchange rates are highly unstable and exchanges are unreliable/untrustworthy, mainstream banking won't touch it with a ten foot pole. They don't want the risk.

VMG 9y ago
> The bitcoin mining industry will end once the electricity (and hardware) becomes more expensive than the value of mined bitcoins You do not understand mining difficulty adjustment
- beat 9y ago
  Apparently not. Care to enlighten me? Because seriously, .1% of global electricity consumption, if that number is accurate, is expensive. Are we going to go up from there, or down, and how does it relate to a long-term stable bitcoin exchange rate, relative to mainstream reserve currencies? If we're in a speculative bubble (we are), it justifies the mining. But bitcoin will never, ever be a viable global currency if it's deflating 500% a year, like it is right now. Mainstream reserve currencies are designed and carefully regulated to inflate at 1-4% or so, slowly losing value - inflation encourages investment, because sitting on cash hurts. What could someone invest their bitcoins in that could justify giving up the possibility of a 500% annual return just for the techno-equivalent of stuffing them in a mattress? Bitcoin mining, apparently. See where I'm going with this? Investing outrageous sums in bitcoin mining makes sense when it's a massive deflationary bubble. It makes almost no sense at all when it's slowly inflating like a grownup currency does.
  - ianai 9y ago
    There’s not a currency out there that costs .12% of co2 to print. Pretty sure the former currency backers (gold, silver) don’t either. That factor alone is reason enough to not use it.

thanatropism 9y ago

The first sentence of "Accelerando" is transcendentally beautiful, something to be quoted for generations to come. The rest of the first chapter is pretty interesting. The domme/sub relationship thing is well written although the sex act depicted sounds implausible. The second chapter also has an interesting scene where Macx is rescued by Anette with the recording earrings. Not long after we have a rant by an Italian politician that already showcases most of the Strossian School of economics. Then the book gets muddled but that's arguably part of the concept. Basically people keep listening to Stross for this sublime sentence: "Manfred is on the run, making strangers rich."

agentultra 9y ago

The Nazi connection is interesting and there do seem to be echoes of that moment in the past in our current situation. I'm anti-BTC. The energy consumption is increasing on a linear curve at best. And we're at a point in our history where we need to reduce our atmospheric carbon drastically... BTC is only increasing it based on the speculation of a very small portion of Earth's population and provides little value to us in any meaningful way. Also I'm not a free-market libertarian so there's that.

mothayrongbay 9y ago

Đoàn kị sĩ 20 người di động lan tỏa bao vây đỉnh Anpo. Mấy ngày trước đây, một kẻ thần bí đã rút khởi thanh kiếm Tiệt Long khiến phong ấn Rồng Đen xuất hiện kẽ nứt. Hai mươi danh kị sĩ được nhà vua điều động chuẩn bị trực chiến với rồng. Kị sĩ trưởng ra hiệu, những vị khác hiểu ý sôi nổi rút ra bảo vật. Người cầm kinh thánh niệm bảng cửu chương, người cầm vở ghi chép tọa độ, người cầm máy tính hỗ trợ suy tính thời gian phong ấn vỡ,… Hai mươi vị bàn tính đi bàn tính lại chưa cho ra phương án thống nhất. Đất dưới chân đại chấn. Oành. Phong ấn vỡ. Không lưu bất kì ai thời gian định thần. Rồng đen phóng xuất. Bay lên cao lượn một vòng, cả người tràn ra tà khí. Đuôi rồng nhẹ phẩy hất bay hai mươi danh kị sĩ, đất đá tán loạn. Eng. Tôi giật mình mở mắt. Màn hình vi tính hiện “Game Over”. Thì ra là mơ, mơ thấy rồng đen bay. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nam-mo-thay-rong-nguyen-duy-anh/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nam-mo-thay-rong-nguyen-duy-a...

trynumber9 9y ago

If you tweeted, in English, "ban imports from Japan" you'd get a swarm of frog/kek avatars among all the anime girls. Does that mean that Japan is a Nazi-aligned country?

lmm 9y ago
Japan is largely ethnonationalist, a strong believer in traditional gender roles, has a culture that individuals should be subservient to the system, has close ties between corporations and government, is highly environmentalist, has a powerful police with few checks on them... while I'd reserve the term "Nazi" for those actually engaging in genocide, it's pretty fascist. There's a reason those people see themselves as aligned with Japan.
- rgrieselhuber 9y ago
  Environmentalism is fascist now?

droopybuns 9y ago

>>The longer BTC persists, the worse the eventual blowout—and the more angry people there are going to be. Angry people who are currently being recruited and radicalized by neo-Nazis. How does anyone reach adulthood and clutch this kind of fear of Internet assholes? Embarrassing.

tom_mellior 9y ago

I'm a bit disappointed by this. I knew that Charles Stross is fiercely against Bitcoin, but I thought he understood the technology better. I'm surprised he writes this: > we're going to run out of new BTC to mine sooner or later as it's not a question of "sooner or later", the supply schedule is fixed and well-known. But even more: > At that point, the incentive for mining (a process essential for reconciling the public ledgers) will disappear and the currency will ... will what? ... will be driven by mining fees. Or maybe it won't, which is also a reasonable guess. But suggesting that we have no idea and no plan is disingenious. Also: > if, as I think, BTC doesn't deliver, then the bubble will eventually burst. It's not necessarily an all-or-nothing thing. Is 10'000 USD overvalued? Maybe, but that wouldn't mean that the actual value is 0 USD, only that it's somewhere between 0 and 10'000. And: > A working distributed cryptocurrency model is inimical to the interests of billionaire monopolists who want to get rich by imposing rent-seeking practices [...followed by regulatory phantasies] I also think this argument is mistaken. The easiest way of rent-seeking for billionaire monopolists would be to buy Bitcoin and just wait and reap the rents.

nwah1 9y ago
>will be driven by mining fees. Or maybe it won't errm. >The easiest way of rent-seeking for billionaire monopolists would be to buy Bitcoin and just wait and reap the rents. Pretty much all of them realize that the speculative bubble is built on nothing.
- tom_mellior 9y ago
  > errm. Please elaborate your objection? I'm happy to reiterate that it's clear that we can't predict the future, but that it's intellectually dishonest to suggest that we don't have plans when in fact we do. (It's fine to criticize the plans, but that's not what Charlie did.) > Pretty much all of them realize that the speculative bubble is built on nothing. That's no reason not to profit from it while it lasts, if you're a rent-seeking billionaire who can afford to lose their investment. It's strange to suggest that greedy rent-seekers would not be greedy in this one specific instance.

sp4ke 9y ago

It's quite fascinating to observe disruption and fear in society at the age of the internet. It most have felt the same for all the technologies the bitcoin haters use everyday ( phones, cars, electricity, internet ... )

Nokinside 9y ago

Two comments on two follow-on questions about BTC. 1. 'bitcoin delivering' and bitcoin value crashing are orthogonal concepts. Store of value and hoard-speculative aspects of bitcoin are probably the worst parts of bitcoin. 2. Non regulated cryptocurrencies are not exactly anti-oligarchs. Absence of regulation would set them free to prey the weak. Goldman Sachs and all of the finance innovators who participate in disaster capitalism would love cryptocurrensies if they take off.

rrggrr 9y ago

This BTC indictment I found elsewhere. I'm not the author, but it spoke to me. ----------- Two friends, Bob and Satosh are sitting around after an evening of consuming copious amounts of some especially wicked dank. Bob says to Satosh: Hey Satosh... I have a genius idea Yeah, what is it? You know that app you coded...the one that churns out the useless SHA algorithms? Yeah? LOL...lets sell them as digital currencies! Dude...you are fucking wasted, here, have another bong No, seriously. We get that graphic artist you know create a slick image of a 'gold' coin, and then we can further confuse the rubes by telling them their 'coins' have to be "mined", as if they were real, physical metals! Dude... you are insane! What kind of moron would buy something like that? Bob: Oh... I dont know. Remember that now worthless token you paid stupid money for on WoW? They sit there and stare at each other for a moment, and then both burst out into torrents of tear stained laughter They are still laughing today. The rest is history

GenericsMotors 9y ago

> What I wasn't expecting was the alt-right/neo-Nazi connection. Bitcoin isn't just popular among libertarians, it's popular among folks with green frog/Kek user icons and anti-semitic views. ("Are you a Jew?" asked one egg.) Garbage blogpost. I dislike the bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry & communities in general, but this is just ridiculous.

chroem- 9y ago

Whether you agree with their content or not, it's a losing proposition to fight a war against memes.

jstewartmobile 9y ago

Nazis! Anti-war nazis who would follow Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell off the bridge, into the lake, and to the ends of the earth... Why the hell did this even make it to the front page???