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You don't get these tradeoffs for free though. Anyone can make a "crypto currency" that is entirely centralised and has no fees and minimal environmental impact

You don't get these tradeoffs for free though. Anyone can make a "crypto currency" that is entirely centralised and has no fees and minimal environmental impact. Nobody would use it. I think much of the desire of crypto comes from being decentralised, and I am yet to see a crypto that doesn't use PoW that doesn't just favor those who are already rich.

MadSudaca 5y ago
Well, I can honestly tell you such a cryptocurrency exists. Cryptocurrencies are byzantine-fault-tolerant consensus algorithms. These are tricky algorithms to get right, but I can assure you that Bitcoin is not the only viable solution. In fact, I don't understand people's pessimism. In the universe of all possible algorithms of this kind, known and unknown, I find extremely unlikely that Bitcoin-like ones would be the best and only possibility!
- rvz 5y ago
  There you go. Cryptocurrencies are here to stay no matter how much they hate it or continue to waste time on repeating the same old arguments even though there are far better cryptocurrencies out there that already exist. The fact that they are unable to ignore them and continue to spread the same debunked nonsense tells you that it is not going away and it is getting boring. Just look at the first few sentences: > a slow distributed, append only spreadsheet technology which is destroying the planet we live on. So Solana, Stellar and Algorand are destroying the planet? > Blockchain isn't new. It has been around for as long as the iPhone. Look how much the iPhone has changed the world. Blockchains one claim to fame in this period is the creation of $5.2B/year ransomware industry, societal damage in the form of gambling and the loss of irreplaceable photos. The internet isn't new. Its 'killer app' (The world wide web) came decades afterwards and it took decades more for adoption. I don't know why one would try to use ransomware on transparent and traceable blockchains these days, where everyone can see where it is going, unless you are using 'privacy coins' which those are getting banned due to regulations. All of that did not stop Stripe to continue supporting cryptocurrencies for payments [0], did it? It's really getting boring repeating the same old arguments from critics like Stephen Diehl [1] who is unable to ignore the whole thing after his failed blockchain startup venture Adjoint. [2] That's why he is grieving and wasting his energy towards cryptocurrencies. [0] https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto [1] https://twitter.com/smdiehl https://twitter.com/smdiehl [2] https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/1470126927818067969 https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/14701269278180679...
  - samhw 5y ago
    > The internet isn't new. Its 'killer app' (The world wide web) came decades afterwards and took decades more for adoption. The Internet started in the mid 1980s and became available to consumers in about '89[0]. The WWW was created in '90. By '94 it was wildly popular. Netscape IPOed the next year, with millions of users. Generously, you could call that about 5 years from public availability to cultural dominance. Bitcoin has existed for three times that, and still doesn't have a use case that Beanie Babies didn't have. I'm a believer in cryptocurrencies - or, I should say, in decentralised digital cash. But people like you are hurting it, not helping it. We need rational discussion that can soberly evaluate the flaws of a given implementation, not unthinking heavily-emotionalised tribalism. [0] Incidentally, David Chaum founded DigiCash, the first cryptocurrency company, the same year.
    - MadSudaca 5y ago
      The first version of the internet was called Arpanet and it was apparently released in 1969 according to Wikipedia. It only became widespread in its current incarnation much later. Moreover, there was an immense amount of hype around the internet during the 90s that culminated in the dotcom bubble, wiping out most ventures and leaving only few companies which still exist today. If you ask me, the story of the internet and cryptocurrencies seems pretty similar.
      - samhw 5y ago
        Yeah, Arpanet was definitely a wide-area network, but the Internet Protocol was standardised in '82 and that was what created the Internet: a public network that was capable of spanning the globe. (I used the words "became publicly available" advisedly!) Aside from that, I very much agree with you. I think digital cash has great promise - I can't imagine Visa and Mastercard still being a thing in 20-30 years. Some implementation of digital cash - I happen to think Bitcoin and its current siblings are not fit solutions - seems highly likely to proliferate in actual means-of-exchange usage. (In plain English: for buying stuff at supermarkets.) But I think people like the commenter above are the obstacle to progress. We need motivated but rational innovators, who can analyse solutions through clear eyes, soberly and without dysfunctional ego investment in one technology or another. These weird crypto stans are not technologists, they're fanboys, they make real innovators look bad, and they retard real progress by dementedly screaming at anyone who makes cogent criticisms of a given implementation. Those critics are our greatest asset and friend, not our enemy.
DixieDev 5y ago
PoW also favors those who are already rich it's just abstracted by one layer of them having to buy rigs for mining farms, instead of being hard-coded in the same way as PoS.

MadSudaca 5y ago

Well, I can honestly tell you such a cryptocurrency exists. Cryptocurrencies are byzantine-fault-tolerant consensus algorithms. These are tricky algorithms to get right, but I can assure you that Bitcoin is not the only viable solution. In fact, I don't understand people's pessimism. In the universe of all possible algorithms of this kind, known and unknown, I find extremely unlikely that Bitcoin-like ones would be the best and only possibility!

rvz 5y ago
There you go. Cryptocurrencies are here to stay no matter how much they hate it or continue to waste time on repeating the same old arguments even though there are far better cryptocurrencies out there that already exist. The fact that they are unable to ignore them and continue to spread the same debunked nonsense tells you that it is not going away and it is getting boring. Just look at the first few sentences: > a slow distributed, append only spreadsheet technology which is destroying the planet we live on. So Solana, Stellar and Algorand are destroying the planet? > Blockchain isn't new. It has been around for as long as the iPhone. Look how much the iPhone has changed the world. Blockchains one claim to fame in this period is the creation of $5.2B/year ransomware industry, societal damage in the form of gambling and the loss of irreplaceable photos. The internet isn't new. Its 'killer app' (The world wide web) came decades afterwards and it took decades more for adoption. I don't know why one would try to use ransomware on transparent and traceable blockchains these days, where everyone can see where it is going, unless you are using 'privacy coins' which those are getting banned due to regulations. All of that did not stop Stripe to continue supporting cryptocurrencies for payments [0], did it? It's really getting boring repeating the same old arguments from critics like Stephen Diehl [1] who is unable to ignore the whole thing after his failed blockchain startup venture Adjoint. [2] That's why he is grieving and wasting his energy towards cryptocurrencies. [0] https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto [1] https://twitter.com/smdiehl https://twitter.com/smdiehl [2] https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/1470126927818067969 https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/14701269278180679...
- samhw 5y ago
  > The internet isn't new. Its 'killer app' (The world wide web) came decades afterwards and took decades more for adoption. The Internet started in the mid 1980s and became available to consumers in about '89[0]. The WWW was created in '90. By '94 it was wildly popular. Netscape IPOed the next year, with millions of users. Generously, you could call that about 5 years from public availability to cultural dominance. Bitcoin has existed for three times that, and still doesn't have a use case that Beanie Babies didn't have. I'm a believer in cryptocurrencies - or, I should say, in decentralised digital cash. But people like you are hurting it, not helping it. We need rational discussion that can soberly evaluate the flaws of a given implementation, not unthinking heavily-emotionalised tribalism. [0] Incidentally, David Chaum founded DigiCash, the first cryptocurrency company, the same year.
  - MadSudaca 5y ago
    The first version of the internet was called Arpanet and it was apparently released in 1969 according to Wikipedia. It only became widespread in its current incarnation much later. Moreover, there was an immense amount of hype around the internet during the 90s that culminated in the dotcom bubble, wiping out most ventures and leaving only few companies which still exist today. If you ask me, the story of the internet and cryptocurrencies seems pretty similar.
    - samhw 5y ago
      Yeah, Arpanet was definitely a wide-area network, but the Internet Protocol was standardised in '82 and that was what created the Internet: a public network that was capable of spanning the globe. (I used the words "became publicly available" advisedly!) Aside from that, I very much agree with you. I think digital cash has great promise - I can't imagine Visa and Mastercard still being a thing in 20-30 years. Some implementation of digital cash - I happen to think Bitcoin and its current siblings are not fit solutions - seems highly likely to proliferate in actual means-of-exchange usage. (In plain English: for buying stuff at supermarkets.) But I think people like the commenter above are the obstacle to progress. We need motivated but rational innovators, who can analyse solutions through clear eyes, soberly and without dysfunctional ego investment in one technology or another. These weird crypto stans are not technologists, they're fanboys, they make real innovators look bad, and they retard real progress by dementedly screaming at anyone who makes cogent criticisms of a given implementation. Those critics are our greatest asset and friend, not our enemy.

DixieDev 5y ago

PoW also favors those who are already rich it's just abstracted by one layer of them having to buy rigs for mining farms, instead of being hard-coded in the same way as PoS.