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With each new cryptocurrency drama due to flouting AML/KYC regulations, flouting securities regulations, collapsing/exit-scamming exchanges, murders, drugs, se

With each new cryptocurrency drama due to flouting AML/KYC regulations, flouting securities regulations, collapsing/exit-scamming exchanges, murders, drugs, sex trafficking, let's not forget: PoW is an ecologically irresponsible algorithm.[1] Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem, I'm surprised anyone wants to be involved in it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629619302701 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961...

ajconway 7y ago
This one is PoS though.
- schmichael 7y ago
  Supposedly, AFAIK it's vaporware and may never be released. Even if it is functional PoS (which sounds like a codified plutocracy, but I could be wrong), they still managed to botch securities regulations. Even if they sneak past that somehow, it seems likely they'll also fall afoul of AML/KYC regulations. Maybe not! Maybe they're finally the ones who will do it all! Legal and ecologically responsible! If so they're off to a very bad start.
  - zzzcpan 7y ago
    Do fully legal cryptocurrencies even make sense? They have to be legal only to sneak past regulations and gain adoption, but still somehow escape government control, so that AML, etc. cannot be enforced.
austhrow743 7y ago
Isn't all that the stuff that makes crypto exciting? Its the wild west come again. A new frontier. Appeals to the desire to expose oneself to risks for profit. To do something that maybe you shouldn't. To operate outside of the soft, protected existence of mainstream first world society. Bowl without the bumper bars. Absent that emotional fulfilment its just boring old money.
- schmichael 7y ago
  I know "wild west" is a popular analogy, but I fear people may forget it was awful. Native peoples were slaughtered and forced off their land. Natural resources were mined and hunted with no regard for long-term sustainability. There was slave labor, sex trafficking, and endless profiteering based on speculation or downright lies. The rich got richer and maybe some poor people got a leg up? A whole lot of people ended up poorer, sicker, or dead. So yeah, maybe cryptocurrencies are a bit like the wild west. There are ways of taking risks, exploring, and pushing boundaries that don't put vulnerable people at greater risk. As far as I can tell the wild west and cryptocurrencies aren't it.
  - celticninja 7y ago
    Same analogy was used for the internet and look what it gave us? It is also based on the Wild West of the USA and it turned out ok, not without its own problems but I'm not sure we would be saying let's just wipe the USA off the map because when it started things were not perfect.
    - jfk13 7y ago
      > internet ... it turned out ok Did it? The internet I see is largely overrun by bandits and shysters looking to make a quick buck at the expense of every sucker they can find.
  - m-i-l 7y ago
    "I know "wild west" is a popular analogy, but I fear people may forget it was awful." Fair points about the American Wild West and lawlessness, genocide, etc. But I think a better analogy would be the medieval era. The economic similarities between cryptocurrencies and feudalism have been fairly well discussed already, e.g. the privatisation of money creation, proliferation of decentralised currency fiefdoms, the crypto-VCs and crypto-oligarchs the new feudal lords and the "hodlers" the new vassals, etc. But the potential social impact hasn't really been discussed much. If the crypto-lords, supported by their crypto-serfs, do succeed in breaking down the social contract, we do risk returning to an era when life was "nasty, brutish and short". Life in the medieval era, before the Age of Enlightenment, when magic and superstition ruled everyday life, when there was the ever-present threat of plague, pestilence and famine, makes the Wild West sound not so bad after all, and is not something I would have thought many would consider aspirational.
DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
Besides proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, I’m surprised the more ecologically-friendly proof-of-space system isn’t being looked at harder. FileCoin uses it (it’s integral to the system to prove you have the space you’re selling) but it could also be used by other distributed Blockchains to prove that a node’s operator has invested in the ecosystem (by buying lots of storage) - I’d say I’d prefer to run out of HDD supply than destroy the earth through fossil-fuel power plant emissions.
- schmichael 7y ago
  Does Proof of Space work? I seem to remember there being fundamental issues FileCoin hadn't resolved, but I probably last looked into it months or years ago. Maybe this? https://github.com/filecoin-project/research/blob/master/open-problems.md https://github.com/filecoin-project/research/blob/master/ope... I don't have the time/desire right now to figure out how the project is doing and the soundness of the approach.
- avhwl 7y ago
  Proof-of-Capacity schemes would incur ecological cost as well, replacing a constantly escalating energy demand for a constantly escalating rare-earth metal demand.
- davidgerard 7y ago
  Proof-of-space rapidly goes to the price of the cheapest bulk storage, which is who can rent space on AWS cheapest, per David S. H. Rosenthal: https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/proofs-of-space.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/proofs-of-space.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/09/chia-network.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/09/chia-network.html > Note also that it is possible at low cost to rent very large amounts of storage and computation for short periods of time in order to mount a 51% attack on a PoSp/VDP network in the same way that "mining as a service" enables 51% attacks on alt-coins. > For example, a back-of-the-envelope computation of a hour-long Petabyte attack at Amazon would start by using about 7 days of AWS Free Tier to write the data to the sc1 version of Elastic Block Storage. The EBS would cost $35/PB/hr, so the setup would cost $2940. Then the actual hour-long attack would cost $35, for a total of just under $3000. > I'm skeptical that the low-reward approach to maintaining decentralization is viable.
noxer 7y ago
No serious digital asset still uses PoW or at least is on the way to ditch PoW. If you look at the most popular tokens/coins you'll see all the PoW coins are useless and no one is developing anything for them. They are just there to speculate and because people can't let go. TON uses PoS btw.
- spurdoman77 7y ago
  Usually when I visit web shops accepting cryptos as a payment all top coins accepted are pow coins.
  - noxer 7y ago
    Crypto payment in a web shop isn't even a real use case. What they do is send crypto to a third party which sells it for fiat and then the good is paid with fiat. Does that need crypto? No that would work with anything else. The Code on a Paypal PSC for example isn't a crypto coin/token but it can do the exact same thing just better in most cases. The reason you can buy stuff with crypto in web shops is because people wanted to not because it makes sense to do that. It would kinda make sense if there would be a world current with rather stable value. But stable coins are IOUs aka debt so they are not really cryptos.
    - 7786655 7y ago
      The difference is that if a web store accepts crypo they don't need to worry about the payment processor oligopoly cancelling them.
      - noxer 7y ago
        They get fiat whenever someone makes crypto payments to them. The payment can be stooped by anyone in between like the exchange the bank of said exchange or the web shops bank who gets the payment form the exchanges bank. None of these web stores circumvent the payment processor oligopoly.
- Temasik 7y ago
babaeth 7y ago
> Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem, I'm surprised anyone wants to be involved in it. Here are some reasons why people might be interested in the cryptocurrencies ecosystem: - Paying 3% per credit card transactions isn't efficient - Decentralized Finance matters. The DeFi movement is actually really interesting. You should look into decentralized lending protocols with stablecoins. - Decentralized Governance is exciting and can facilitate new experiments like Quadratic voting
pointerpointer 7y ago
> Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem You mean compared to Wall Street, Banks and their virtual money system?
robcohen 7y ago
PoW is arguably ecologically irresponsible, but PoS consensus should fix that issue. Have you read the ouroboros papers? https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/378.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/378.pdf
sanbor 7y ago
The web could also be associated with all those subjects, but despite that there is value in the world wide web. Regarding the environmental impact of Bitcoin, pre-mined coins like Telegram ICO solves that problem.

ajconway 7y ago

This one is PoS though.

schmichael 7y ago
Supposedly, AFAIK it's vaporware and may never be released. Even if it is functional PoS (which sounds like a codified plutocracy, but I could be wrong), they still managed to botch securities regulations. Even if they sneak past that somehow, it seems likely they'll also fall afoul of AML/KYC regulations. Maybe not! Maybe they're finally the ones who will do it all! Legal and ecologically responsible! If so they're off to a very bad start.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  Do fully legal cryptocurrencies even make sense? They have to be legal only to sneak past regulations and gain adoption, but still somehow escape government control, so that AML, etc. cannot be enforced.

austhrow743 7y ago

Isn't all that the stuff that makes crypto exciting? Its the wild west come again. A new frontier. Appeals to the desire to expose oneself to risks for profit. To do something that maybe you shouldn't. To operate outside of the soft, protected existence of mainstream first world society. Bowl without the bumper bars. Absent that emotional fulfilment its just boring old money.

schmichael 7y ago
I know "wild west" is a popular analogy, but I fear people may forget it was awful. Native peoples were slaughtered and forced off their land. Natural resources were mined and hunted with no regard for long-term sustainability. There was slave labor, sex trafficking, and endless profiteering based on speculation or downright lies. The rich got richer and maybe some poor people got a leg up? A whole lot of people ended up poorer, sicker, or dead. So yeah, maybe cryptocurrencies are a bit like the wild west. There are ways of taking risks, exploring, and pushing boundaries that don't put vulnerable people at greater risk. As far as I can tell the wild west and cryptocurrencies aren't it.
- celticninja 7y ago
  Same analogy was used for the internet and look what it gave us? It is also based on the Wild West of the USA and it turned out ok, not without its own problems but I'm not sure we would be saying let's just wipe the USA off the map because when it started things were not perfect.
  - jfk13 7y ago
    > internet ... it turned out ok Did it? The internet I see is largely overrun by bandits and shysters looking to make a quick buck at the expense of every sucker they can find.
- m-i-l 7y ago
  "I know "wild west" is a popular analogy, but I fear people may forget it was awful." Fair points about the American Wild West and lawlessness, genocide, etc. But I think a better analogy would be the medieval era. The economic similarities between cryptocurrencies and feudalism have been fairly well discussed already, e.g. the privatisation of money creation, proliferation of decentralised currency fiefdoms, the crypto-VCs and crypto-oligarchs the new feudal lords and the "hodlers" the new vassals, etc. But the potential social impact hasn't really been discussed much. If the crypto-lords, supported by their crypto-serfs, do succeed in breaking down the social contract, we do risk returning to an era when life was "nasty, brutish and short". Life in the medieval era, before the Age of Enlightenment, when magic and superstition ruled everyday life, when there was the ever-present threat of plague, pestilence and famine, makes the Wild West sound not so bad after all, and is not something I would have thought many would consider aspirational.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago

Besides proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, I’m surprised the more ecologically-friendly proof-of-space system isn’t being looked at harder. FileCoin uses it (it’s integral to the system to prove you have the space you’re selling) but it could also be used by other distributed Blockchains to prove that a node’s operator has invested in the ecosystem (by buying lots of storage) - I’d say I’d prefer to run out of HDD supply than destroy the earth through fossil-fuel power plant emissions.

schmichael 7y ago
Does Proof of Space work? I seem to remember there being fundamental issues FileCoin hadn't resolved, but I probably last looked into it months or years ago. Maybe this? https://github.com/filecoin-project/research/blob/master/open-problems.md https://github.com/filecoin-project/research/blob/master/ope... I don't have the time/desire right now to figure out how the project is doing and the soundness of the approach.
avhwl 7y ago
Proof-of-Capacity schemes would incur ecological cost as well, replacing a constantly escalating energy demand for a constantly escalating rare-earth metal demand.
davidgerard 7y ago
Proof-of-space rapidly goes to the price of the cheapest bulk storage, which is who can rent space on AWS cheapest, per David S. H. Rosenthal: https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/proofs-of-space.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/proofs-of-space.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/09/chia-network.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/09/chia-network.html > Note also that it is possible at low cost to rent very large amounts of storage and computation for short periods of time in order to mount a 51% attack on a PoSp/VDP network in the same way that "mining as a service" enables 51% attacks on alt-coins. > For example, a back-of-the-envelope computation of a hour-long Petabyte attack at Amazon would start by using about 7 days of AWS Free Tier to write the data to the sc1 version of Elastic Block Storage. The EBS would cost $35/PB/hr, so the setup would cost $2940. Then the actual hour-long attack would cost $35, for a total of just under $3000. > I'm skeptical that the low-reward approach to maintaining decentralization is viable.

noxer 7y ago

No serious digital asset still uses PoW or at least is on the way to ditch PoW. If you look at the most popular tokens/coins you'll see all the PoW coins are useless and no one is developing anything for them. They are just there to speculate and because people can't let go. TON uses PoS btw.

spurdoman77 7y ago
Usually when I visit web shops accepting cryptos as a payment all top coins accepted are pow coins.
- noxer 7y ago
  Crypto payment in a web shop isn't even a real use case. What they do is send crypto to a third party which sells it for fiat and then the good is paid with fiat. Does that need crypto? No that would work with anything else. The Code on a Paypal PSC for example isn't a crypto coin/token but it can do the exact same thing just better in most cases. The reason you can buy stuff with crypto in web shops is because people wanted to not because it makes sense to do that. It would kinda make sense if there would be a world current with rather stable value. But stable coins are IOUs aka debt so they are not really cryptos.
  - 7786655 7y ago
    The difference is that if a web store accepts crypo they don't need to worry about the payment processor oligopoly cancelling them.
    - noxer 7y ago
      They get fiat whenever someone makes crypto payments to them. The payment can be stooped by anyone in between like the exchange the bank of said exchange or the web shops bank who gets the payment form the exchanges bank. None of these web stores circumvent the payment processor oligopoly.
Temasik 7y ago

babaeth 7y ago

> Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem, I'm surprised anyone wants to be involved in it. Here are some reasons why people might be interested in the cryptocurrencies ecosystem: - Paying 3% per credit card transactions isn't efficient - Decentralized Finance matters. The DeFi movement is actually really interesting. You should look into decentralized lending protocols with stablecoins. - Decentralized Governance is exciting and can facilitate new experiments like Quadratic voting

pointerpointer 7y ago

> Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem You mean compared to Wall Street, Banks and their virtual money system?

robcohen 7y ago

PoW is arguably ecologically irresponsible, but PoS consensus should fix that issue. Have you read the ouroboros papers? https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/378.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/378.pdf

sanbor 7y ago

The web could also be associated with all those subjects, but despite that there is value in the world wide web. Regarding the environmental impact of Bitcoin, pre-mined coins like Telegram ICO solves that problem.