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Very good points and nicely written. Are you involved in these techs? I should make it more clear I'm far from a no-coiner and in fact I'm deeply familiar with
by JofArnold 4y ago
Very good points and nicely written. Are you involved in these techs?
I should make it more clear I'm far from a no-coiner and in fact I'm deeply familiar with the tech and ecosystem - e.g. i've written my own Ethereum ZK Rollup, written smart contracts, traded, made on-chain NFTs... I've been toying with blockchain technologies for a couple of years now, and transacting with cryptocurrencies for considerably longer across many L1s and L2s.
I mention that because whilst I find these technologies fascinating, as I say I think it's crucial to recognize the following:
- Bitcoin has failed to achieve its objective of being a new form of cash
- Bitcoin has failed its objective as a fair alternative financial system; in fact people are far more exploited
- Bitcoin has failed its objective to be truly decentralized
- Bitcoin is astonishingly bad for the environment
- Bitcoin advocates are incredibly toxic
- Bitcoin has facilitated illegal acts like no other technology
- Bitcoin has failed to prove it has any intrinsic value as proven by its 0.95 correlation with risk assets like tech stocks; people speculate with it and that's its only "use".
The only thing it's good for is taking money from people who want to escape their financial oppressors and putting it into the pockets of the rich. It's a negative sum game and on the whole it's the poor and disillusioned who lose.
Are those true of other cryptocurrencies too? More or less, I'd say. Can cryptocurrencies ever fix all their problems? Personally I doubt it but in theory it's doable. Do we even need these technologies? Most of the time not... but I recognize a need in some niche areas. Are these technologies even simply superior to the ones they replace? Largely that seems like not to be the case. Are there some good use cases? I personally think so, but they certainly don't justify the market caps and are the subject of another debate.