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Money corrupts; Bitcoin corrupts absolutely

13 points by CynicusRex 5y ago

BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
This is a treatise against ‘greed’ that flows into wanting UBI. There’s also this snippet that I found out of place and pretty jarring: “... it having a multitude of popular proponents with extreme viewpoints such as “animals have no rights”, or the right to bear arms which strikes me as vile, unethical, and borderline insane” Wow.
- CynicusRex 5y ago
  “Wow” for some US-citizens, “whew” for the rest of the world. “Only a few countries recognize an individual right to keep and bear arms and protect it constitutionally, with more classifying it as a statutory privilege granted to some segment of the population.” —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms
  - BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
    I’m not interested in having a discourse about rights vs. privileges and the debate about gun control. You have a lot of passionately held beliefs and I think this is the downside of placing asides like animal rights and gun control in the middle of your piece about Bitcoin. Because the focus has shifted away from the core subject you wrote about and people are tempted to argue about topics that society just can’t decide on.
Bluestein 5y ago
Found this thought provoking: "[...] immutable smart contracts that spread wealth in proportion to the number of people, accounting for basic needs and disproportionate wealth disparities? But even then I'd suppose blockchain wouldn't be the most efficient way to do it." Edit: Or, maybe, it would?
- captn3m0 5y ago
  >immutable smart contracts that spread wealth in proportion to the number of people, accounting for basic needs and disproportionate wealth disparities remove the smart contract bit, and that's same as taxation->UBI no?
  - Bluestein 5y ago
    It would seem ... (Only that it would behave as a more coherent whole ...)
  - CynicusRex 5y ago
    Thanks for your comment; added it to the article. Sometimes the solutions are so simple they're hiding in broad daylight.
Animats 5y ago
It's an unfocused rant. He should have picked one target. He mentions NFTs. Those are starting to worry me, because they may kill off the virtual world business. Two more crap virtual worlds were announced in the last week. I'm not going to name names, but here's some of the hype: Blockchain! NFTs! Token presale! Golden Tickets! Rewards Pool! 20% Annual Return! Owned by the community! Upcoming VR Blockchain Conference! Open for Make Money Fast now, actual VR world scheduled for Q2 2022. Vaporware. There are some blockchain-based virtual worlds that already exist - Decentraland and Sominium Space. As virtual worlds to visit, play, or work in, they suck. "The metagame (trading land) is the game", one reviewer wrote. Also, despite all the hype about these crypto-based virtual worlds being "decentalized", few if any let you run a server. That would allow others to create land, breaking the monopoly of the promoter. Most of these have very limited land area, both to pump up the land price and to minimize operating cost. Something that's not well understood: NFTs are very pumpable. Because each one is different, there's no real market price. A few fake transactions can push what seems to be a price way up. That seems to be happening now. It's not like you can actually sell something at that price. With a fungible item, such as a stock or a currency, there's a market, a market price, and some buyers. In those, you can't keep the posted price up unless you have buyers This time-limits market manipulation for fungible items. NFTs, like collectables, lack that property. NFT markets don't crash, they become illiquid and stall. You see high posted prices, but nobody is buying. Look at collectables on eBay to see this. You can still try to trade Beanie Babies there, but see how many have zero bids. The real reason for NFTs is that, not being commodities, they are not regulated by the CFTC, and not being securities, they are not regulated by the SEC. So hyping is legal.
- CynicusRex 5y ago
  >It's an unfocused rant. I agree with the gist of this statement, but not the severity. >He should have picked one target. If it wasn't a blog I would agree, but everything that's mentioned led to the decision of opting out, which is what I wanted to communicate.

13 points by CynicusRex 5y ago

This is a treatise against ‘greed’ that flows into wanting UBI. There’s also this snippet that I found out of place and pretty jarring: “... it having a multitude of popular proponents with extreme viewpoints such as “animals have no rights”, or the right to bear arms which strikes me as vile, unethical, and borderline insane” Wow.

CynicusRex 5y ago
“Wow” for some US-citizens, “whew” for the rest of the world. “Only a few countries recognize an individual right to keep and bear arms and protect it constitutionally, with more classifying it as a statutory privilege granted to some segment of the population.” —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  I’m not interested in having a discourse about rights vs. privileges and the debate about gun control. You have a lot of passionately held beliefs and I think this is the downside of placing asides like animal rights and gun control in the middle of your piece about Bitcoin. Because the focus has shifted away from the core subject you wrote about and people are tempted to argue about topics that society just can’t decide on.

Bluestein 5y ago

Found this thought provoking: "[...] immutable smart contracts that spread wealth in proportion to the number of people, accounting for basic needs and disproportionate wealth disparities? But even then I'd suppose blockchain wouldn't be the most efficient way to do it." Edit: Or, maybe, it would?

captn3m0 5y ago
>immutable smart contracts that spread wealth in proportion to the number of people, accounting for basic needs and disproportionate wealth disparities remove the smart contract bit, and that's same as taxation->UBI no?
- Bluestein 5y ago
  It would seem ... (Only that it would behave as a more coherent whole ...)
- CynicusRex 5y ago
  Thanks for your comment; added it to the article. Sometimes the solutions are so simple they're hiding in broad daylight.

Animats 5y ago

It's an unfocused rant. He should have picked one target. He mentions NFTs. Those are starting to worry me, because they may kill off the virtual world business. Two more crap virtual worlds were announced in the last week. I'm not going to name names, but here's some of the hype: Blockchain! NFTs! Token presale! Golden Tickets! Rewards Pool! 20% Annual Return! Owned by the community! Upcoming VR Blockchain Conference! Open for Make Money Fast now, actual VR world scheduled for Q2 2022. Vaporware. There are some blockchain-based virtual worlds that already exist - Decentraland and Sominium Space. As virtual worlds to visit, play, or work in, they suck. "The metagame (trading land) is the game", one reviewer wrote. Also, despite all the hype about these crypto-based virtual worlds being "decentalized", few if any let you run a server. That would allow others to create land, breaking the monopoly of the promoter. Most of these have very limited land area, both to pump up the land price and to minimize operating cost. Something that's not well understood: NFTs are very pumpable. Because each one is different, there's no real market price. A few fake transactions can push what seems to be a price way up. That seems to be happening now. It's not like you can actually sell something at that price. With a fungible item, such as a stock or a currency, there's a market, a market price, and some buyers. In those, you can't keep the posted price up unless you have buyers This time-limits market manipulation for fungible items. NFTs, like collectables, lack that property. NFT markets don't crash, they become illiquid and stall. You see high posted prices, but nobody is buying. Look at collectables on eBay to see this. You can still try to trade Beanie Babies there, but see how many have zero bids. The real reason for NFTs is that, not being commodities, they are not regulated by the CFTC, and not being securities, they are not regulated by the SEC. So hyping is legal.

CynicusRex 5y ago
>It's an unfocused rant. I agree with the gist of this statement, but not the severity. >He should have picked one target. If it wasn't a blog I would agree, but everything that's mentioned led to the decision of opting out, which is what I wanted to communicate.