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Have people not realized that crypto is a scam?

beezlewax 4y ago
They've also not realised it contributes very little of value to the planet while consuming enormous amounts of resources. But hey, some crypto bro said you can get rich!
- aortega 4y ago
  Ethereum (which this is based on) do not use PoW anymore, so it consumes very few resources.
  - kkielhofner 4y ago
    Except for the (currently) 5,505 Ethereum nodes[0] that are currently online... If you (optimistically) assume that each of these nodes consumes 10w of power (that's an extremely low estimate - not every node is a Raspberry Pi) that's 55,0000 watts - or 55 kilowatts, all for a network that can process a maximum of 30 transactions per second and is used by a tiny portion of the population. That's still absolutely abysmal efficiency. Nowhere near the estimated 150 terawatt hours of power consumed by PoW bitcoin but still completely unacceptable and ridiculous for a network where the ATH for daily active addresses was roughly 1.5m and the daily average hovers more around 500k. 481,000 kWh per year and again, looking at node stats the vast majority are amd64 so the real number is at least 5-10x this. [0] - https://www.ethernodes.org/ https://www.ethernodes.org/
    - yokem55 4y ago
      55 KW is a few racks in a datacenter. Figure 300w per u in a 42u rack, and 4 full racks will use the same amount of power.
      - kkielhofner 4y ago
        Precisely. How many users and traffic can be served by that infrastructure, and with what functionality (outside of blockchain)? A lot more than 500k daily users interacting with smart contracts or updating a ledger at 30 tps... The old version of the Netflix OpenConnect Appliance uses 650 watts of peak power to store 360TB of content and stream at 96 Gbps[0]. Assuming an average bitstream of 4 mbit/s (relatively high) that's 24,000 video streams on 650 watts. Over 2m people STREAMING VIDEO inside of 55 kW. The new version is 190Gbps on 400 watts - at least 5-6m people streaming video inside of 55 kW. [0] - https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/
        yokem55 4y ago
        Those 30 transactions per second settle multiple billions in value per day. Even in a bear market folks are spending about a billion per year in transaction fees to have those transactions settled. And a good chunk of that power usage is just the value folks get out of being able to read the state of the chain without writing any transactions to it. I get that you don't see the value, but plenty of other people do.
        kkielhofner 4y ago
        I see and hear this a lot (and the data clearly backs up your numbers) but what I can't figure out is - billions of dollars in transactions per day for what realized real-world value, exactly? A billion dollars in fees for what utility? With > 5 billion internet users as a TAM overall adoption for crypto other than trading on exchanges (which is almost completely off chain and essentially has nothing to do with blockchain, really) is miniscule. Every block explorer, DappRadar, MetaMask stats, etc - literally any data shows completely insignificant user adoption (active addresses, number of transactions, etc) when compared to the billions of users that could become blockchain users by installing a piece of software in a few clicks. I know it sounds like I dismiss it completely but I've been active in this space for the better part of a decade and I still can't figure out where the use case is -or- better yet, the killer app that would lead to user adoption resembling anything even close to the web in the 90s. It's been 8-15 years (depending on your starting line). Where is it? Where are the millions (really should be billions by now) of Joe Everyone daily active users? Absent anything approaching a semblance of widespread adoption (from the data I referenced) the cynic in me says most of the "value" you reference is overwhelmingly from wash trading and a lot of other unproductive activity with no value or utility other than whatever angle those actors have.
    - aortega 4y ago
      >t still completely unacceptable and ridiculous 55 kilowatts is a single car. One car. How many datacenters has your bank? You have a very mistaken idea of computing power and efficiency if you think a Raspberry Pi is more efficient than a server CPU.
      - kkielhofner 4y ago
        What’s next? Comparing square footage of homes? Airline miles? I try to stick to things that are even remotely comparable. My bank has 67 million customers and hundreds of products. The average US adult does 2.3 financial transactions a day. They also have branches, customer service reps, etc because real people in the real world need those things. I’m sure they have much more compute because they’re handling many orders of magnitude more volume at transaction rates no blockchain could comprehend (let’s not start on Solana, please). They also have the novel concept of complying with things like regulation, compliance, the law, and actually doing something about fraud. This also takes significant resources. Yes, given that a Raspberry Pi is capable of running a full Ethereum node on an individual node basis at 10 watts all in it is the most efficient. All 5500 online, distributed, Ethereum nodes utilizing an aggregate of 55 kW is the most efficient power consumption scenario. A server can’t keep the ECC RAM warm with 10 watts.
- 0x64 4y ago
  Ethereum could in theory be powered by a single 6 MW wind turbine
s1gnp0st 4y ago
After the first dot-com bubble it would've been very easy to dismiss all web businesses as scams intended to pump some coin^Wstock. The dust will settle on this round of severe malinvestment in crypto, and there will be things which remain and mature.
panarky 4y ago
Nine out of ten social media posts agree. There are precisely zero people alive who have not heard this many times. Your assessment is solidly conventional wisdom.
anaxag0ras 4y ago
People in developed countries take online payments for granted. Let me give you another perspective from a third world country. Where I live, the international payments are restricted. Most of the neobanks/payment only issue payment cards for EEA or USA and Canada. There are a few options like Dukascopy Bank, but the fees are expensive especially for micro transaction. So cryptocurrency (not all though) does have some utility for people like us. That being said, I do agree that crypto ecosystem is filled with grifters and scammers and only a select few cryptocurrencies are actually useful.

They've also not realised it contributes very little of value to the planet while consuming enormous amounts of resources. But hey, some crypto bro said you can get rich!

aortega 4y ago
Ethereum (which this is based on) do not use PoW anymore, so it consumes very few resources.
- kkielhofner 4y ago
  Except for the (currently) 5,505 Ethereum nodes[0] that are currently online... If you (optimistically) assume that each of these nodes consumes 10w of power (that's an extremely low estimate - not every node is a Raspberry Pi) that's 55,0000 watts - or 55 kilowatts, all for a network that can process a maximum of 30 transactions per second and is used by a tiny portion of the population. That's still absolutely abysmal efficiency. Nowhere near the estimated 150 terawatt hours of power consumed by PoW bitcoin but still completely unacceptable and ridiculous for a network where the ATH for daily active addresses was roughly 1.5m and the daily average hovers more around 500k. 481,000 kWh per year and again, looking at node stats the vast majority are amd64 so the real number is at least 5-10x this. [0] - https://www.ethernodes.org/ https://www.ethernodes.org/
  - yokem55 4y ago
    55 KW is a few racks in a datacenter. Figure 300w per u in a 42u rack, and 4 full racks will use the same amount of power.
    - kkielhofner 4y ago
      Precisely. How many users and traffic can be served by that infrastructure, and with what functionality (outside of blockchain)? A lot more than 500k daily users interacting with smart contracts or updating a ledger at 30 tps... The old version of the Netflix OpenConnect Appliance uses 650 watts of peak power to store 360TB of content and stream at 96 Gbps[0]. Assuming an average bitstream of 4 mbit/s (relatively high) that's 24,000 video streams on 650 watts. Over 2m people STREAMING VIDEO inside of 55 kW. The new version is 190Gbps on 400 watts - at least 5-6m people streaming video inside of 55 kW. [0] - https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/
      - yokem55 4y ago
        Those 30 transactions per second settle multiple billions in value per day. Even in a bear market folks are spending about a billion per year in transaction fees to have those transactions settled. And a good chunk of that power usage is just the value folks get out of being able to read the state of the chain without writing any transactions to it. I get that you don't see the value, but plenty of other people do.
        kkielhofner 4y ago
        I see and hear this a lot (and the data clearly backs up your numbers) but what I can't figure out is - billions of dollars in transactions per day for what realized real-world value, exactly? A billion dollars in fees for what utility? With > 5 billion internet users as a TAM overall adoption for crypto other than trading on exchanges (which is almost completely off chain and essentially has nothing to do with blockchain, really) is miniscule. Every block explorer, DappRadar, MetaMask stats, etc - literally any data shows completely insignificant user adoption (active addresses, number of transactions, etc) when compared to the billions of users that could become blockchain users by installing a piece of software in a few clicks. I know it sounds like I dismiss it completely but I've been active in this space for the better part of a decade and I still can't figure out where the use case is -or- better yet, the killer app that would lead to user adoption resembling anything even close to the web in the 90s. It's been 8-15 years (depending on your starting line). Where is it? Where are the millions (really should be billions by now) of Joe Everyone daily active users? Absent anything approaching a semblance of widespread adoption (from the data I referenced) the cynic in me says most of the "value" you reference is overwhelmingly from wash trading and a lot of other unproductive activity with no value or utility other than whatever angle those actors have.
  - aortega 4y ago
    >t still completely unacceptable and ridiculous 55 kilowatts is a single car. One car. How many datacenters has your bank? You have a very mistaken idea of computing power and efficiency if you think a Raspberry Pi is more efficient than a server CPU.
    - kkielhofner 4y ago
      What’s next? Comparing square footage of homes? Airline miles? I try to stick to things that are even remotely comparable. My bank has 67 million customers and hundreds of products. The average US adult does 2.3 financial transactions a day. They also have branches, customer service reps, etc because real people in the real world need those things. I’m sure they have much more compute because they’re handling many orders of magnitude more volume at transaction rates no blockchain could comprehend (let’s not start on Solana, please). They also have the novel concept of complying with things like regulation, compliance, the law, and actually doing something about fraud. This also takes significant resources. Yes, given that a Raspberry Pi is capable of running a full Ethereum node on an individual node basis at 10 watts all in it is the most efficient. All 5500 online, distributed, Ethereum nodes utilizing an aggregate of 55 kW is the most efficient power consumption scenario. A server can’t keep the ECC RAM warm with 10 watts.
0x64 4y ago
Ethereum could in theory be powered by a single 6 MW wind turbine

s1gnp0st 4y ago

After the first dot-com bubble it would've been very easy to dismiss all web businesses as scams intended to pump some coin^Wstock. The dust will settle on this round of severe malinvestment in crypto, and there will be things which remain and mature.

panarky 4y ago

Nine out of ten social media posts agree. There are precisely zero people alive who have not heard this many times. Your assessment is solidly conventional wisdom.

anaxag0ras 4y ago

People in developed countries take online payments for granted. Let me give you another perspective from a third world country. Where I live, the international payments are restricted. Most of the neobanks/payment only issue payment cards for EEA or USA and Canada. There are a few options like Dukascopy Bank, but the fees are expensive especially for micro transaction. So cryptocurrency (not all though) does have some utility for people like us. That being said, I do agree that crypto ecosystem is filled with grifters and scammers and only a select few cryptocurrencies are actually useful.