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I’ve come full circle on crypto. Crypto is an example of capitalism eating itself. When the value of crypto is high, large amounts of economic output are funne

I’ve come full circle on crypto. Crypto is an example of capitalism eating itself. When the value of crypto is high, large amounts of economic output are funneled into crypto at the expense of other opportunities. NVidia expects supply shortages of its newest line of video cards (released in December and going for $1500+ on eBay from an MSRP of $700) to extend into 2022. Oh yeah, and this happens every time a new generation of chips is released. Hope you didn’t need any to train ML models.

cbozeman 6y ago
The "problem" is with the people who missed out on Bitcoin and can't compete with Chinese miners. I started out mining BTC on a Core2Duo laptop from 2006, in 2010. I upgraded to a Butterfly Labs Jalapeno miner. Then I started to realize Chinese miners were soaking up the mining equipment and many of them were getting industrial power rates. Then people who couldn't afford / acquire BTC ASIC miners made more ridiculous alt-coins that they could mine with GPUs. Cryptocurrency isn't the problem, people butthurt about missing out and wanting to make their own coin are the problem.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  The problem is the industrial Chinese miners. These companies soak up enormous amounts of resources while producing... nothing. It’s horrible for the environment, and it’s a net drain on the economy for what I believe to be ephemeral value largely driven by low interest rates and a lack of high-growth investment options.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    > what I believe to be ephemeral value largely driven by low interest rates This is part of the story, the other part would be central banks printing money nonstop, or in common parlance, "money printer go brrr". Bitcoin can only exist in a post-2008-financial-crash world. Prior to that, there was no reason to consider anything other than the US Dollar. Bitcoin, however, is a solution to only one part of an overarching problem, or at least this is what I think: financial services need to be reigned back in if we have any hope as a species of surviving. Continued worldwide crashes caused by financiers engaging in riskier and riskier behavior in the name of enormous profits will eventually result in a war when one of the nations on the "losing end" decides they've had enough.
CyberDildonics 6y ago
This sounds like you just want to buy a video card for less money.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  I could actually give a shit less about a video card because the one I have is fine (and selling on eBay for $100 more than I paid for it in 2017); the real story is that we’re allocating a meaningful percentage of global semiconductor output to an industry that generates no lasting economic value. It also increases the boom/bust volatility in the semiconductor sector because arbitrage opportunities are time-sensitive, thus miners need them ASAP before the hash difficulty goes higher.

cbozeman 6y ago

The "problem" is with the people who missed out on Bitcoin and can't compete with Chinese miners. I started out mining BTC on a Core2Duo laptop from 2006, in 2010. I upgraded to a Butterfly Labs Jalapeno miner. Then I started to realize Chinese miners were soaking up the mining equipment and many of them were getting industrial power rates. Then people who couldn't afford / acquire BTC ASIC miners made more ridiculous alt-coins that they could mine with GPUs. Cryptocurrency isn't the problem, people butthurt about missing out and wanting to make their own coin are the problem.

wayoutthere 6y ago
The problem is the industrial Chinese miners. These companies soak up enormous amounts of resources while producing... nothing. It’s horrible for the environment, and it’s a net drain on the economy for what I believe to be ephemeral value largely driven by low interest rates and a lack of high-growth investment options.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  > what I believe to be ephemeral value largely driven by low interest rates This is part of the story, the other part would be central banks printing money nonstop, or in common parlance, "money printer go brrr". Bitcoin can only exist in a post-2008-financial-crash world. Prior to that, there was no reason to consider anything other than the US Dollar. Bitcoin, however, is a solution to only one part of an overarching problem, or at least this is what I think: financial services need to be reigned back in if we have any hope as a species of surviving. Continued worldwide crashes caused by financiers engaging in riskier and riskier behavior in the name of enormous profits will eventually result in a war when one of the nations on the "losing end" decides they've had enough.

CyberDildonics 6y ago

This sounds like you just want to buy a video card for less money.

wayoutthere 6y ago
I could actually give a shit less about a video card because the one I have is fine (and selling on eBay for $100 more than I paid for it in 2017); the real story is that we’re allocating a meaningful percentage of global semiconductor output to an industry that generates no lasting economic value. It also increases the boom/bust volatility in the semiconductor sector because arbitrage opportunities are time-sensitive, thus miners need them ASAP before the hash difficulty goes higher.