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It's entirely possible for nvidia to be sour and also correct. Crypto currencies have done nothing for society but to introduce scam and money laundering vector

It's entirely possible for nvidia to be sour and also correct. Crypto currencies have done nothing for society but to introduce scam and money laundering vectors.

psychphysic 4y ago
Online dark net markets would not be possible without cryptos. They are a pretty big win for those who believe in personal liberty.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  Fortunately I don’t think anyone is concerned with what libertarians consider a “big win”.
  - mmiliauskas 4y ago
    Except for libertarians? Personally, as a libertarian this is all I need -- a win for myself.
    - bregma 4y ago
      Not all libertarians. Any libertarian is of course free to decide for themself if it's a win or not. Some may, and some may not.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  Bullshit, they existed both before the crypto and before the Internet itself. It's just a bit more convenient, but otherwise it's just the same as it was: give money to one man, take money/goods from other man and how exactly they settle their accounts is none of your business.
- Melingo 4y ago
  In sense of buying drugs? Yeah sure still not society relevant. And look what happens in Germany, it's much better to push for legalization. People need to stand up for rights
- edflsafoiewq 4y ago
  Yes, crypto's main use is crime. Its supporters have various arguments for why crime is actually good.
  - rvz 4y ago
    > Yes, crypto's main use is crime. It is quite a very poor use with such "crime" happening all on a public and transparent blockchain, making it very easy to trace all of that (even if they use a tumbler / mixer) with the funds certainly seized and frozen as soon as it hits the exchange. In fact criminals and scammers still use banks and Zelle to facilitate their criminal enterprise - [0] [1] in the trillions of dollars. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/fincen-files-financial-scandal-criminal-networks https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/fincen-fil... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-zelle-banks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-z...
    - tzs 4y ago
      So why do so many ransomware gangs want payment in Bitcoin?
      - rvz 4y ago
        Perhaps they want to get themselves traced on a public ledger and to join the long list of gangs caught and arrested by the authorities each week? Once again, Bitcoin is worse for scammers, criminals and ransomware than using Zelle and the banks for fraud. You should be asking why the banks continue to move trillions of dollars of illicit funds for criminals for years without them doing anything. Same with Zelle.
    - saurik 4y ago
      And Square. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jack-dorsey-block-loses-20-164948270.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jack-dorsey-block-loses-20-16...
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    I suppose you'd have told Ms Parks to shut up and get off the bus if avoiding crime is all that's good for society?
- tzs 4y ago
  "A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it" --Jean de La Fontaine. With sufficient tracking of non-cryptocurrencies and physical goods governments could largely kill dark net markets by making it too hard to buy anything physical with your cryptocurrency. Imagine KYC but applied to every transaction instead of just large ones. Making dark markets too easy isn't a win for personal liberty. Its a step on the road to a dystopia with little personal liberty or privacy because every time something seriously bad happens a few due to dark markets that would not have been possible in the legal markets the general public will demand something be done about it, which will result in government being granted more power.
  - M95D 4y ago
    No need for dark markets. We will get there anyway. Government doesn't need people to demand it.
1066 4y ago
Right, but _they_ are also are also firmly planted within the fiat monetary system. Ultimately their will be a socially defined singular cryptographic definition of economic value at some point in the future.
tric 4y ago
His claim... "it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society" ...is incorrect. The total crypto market cap collapsed because of interest rate hikes. Nvidia's stock dropped 68%. Is that because it didn't bring anything useful for society? No. It was trading at a premium because of low rates.
- TrainedMonkey 4y ago
  > The total crypto market cap collapsed because of interest rate hikes. Let's take a deeper cut, why does something collapse when interest rates rise?
  - nightski 4y ago
    Because capital is necessary for growth and the more expensive capital becomes the less growth is anticipated.
    - kiviuq 4y ago
      We've seen a lot of growth over the past decades, so it should be easy to retire at 30, but we're being told to work longer, be more productive, and die sooner. So where is that all growth? something doesn't add up.
      - everfree 4y ago
        > So where is that all growth? Is that a rhetorical question? It flows to the 1%. Current levels of wealth inequality are unprecedented in American history. We work hard to support the lavish lifestyles of the rich. If we could combine today's technology with 1970s levels of wealth equality, we could probably retire in 1970s level comfort by the time we reach age 40.
  - enjoy-your-stay 4y ago
    Money flows out of equities and into bonds which yield a higher more dependable return when interest rates are high enough. The equities market was already running at artificially inflated values for some sectors (like technology), which means there isn't much growth potential (if everything is deemed to be already overpriced), and so the outflows were quite significant from those sectors, accentuating the inverse relationship between equities and interest rates.
everfree 4y ago
We could go back and forth for days on whether cryptocurrencies have done anything for society, but it's already been discussed ad infinitum both here on HN and elsewhere. I only wanted to point out that this article is inane.
emsy 4y ago
There are people that still have their accounts frozen because they donated to the truckers in Canada. That’s insane. Other countries had or will have similar cases in the future. We absolutely should have a way to exchange money without the governments involvement. The government already has the monopoly on physical force. That ought to be enough. So yes, there is a use case. But you’re correct in that it hasn’t really been used that way so far.
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Oh yeah, and those same people later cry foul when they get robbed of their money because it was not protected in any way. Suddenly everybody wants crypto but with protections. Fools. There is a reason why money and banking is regulated -- to protect little guys from getting scammed right and left. Those protections are not perfect, true, but still orders of magnitude better than crypto free for all. And as to monopoly on physical force, there is a reason for it, too. Take a look at African countries for what happens when people are allowed to take things into their own hands. Take a look at The Last of Us if you want to know what happens when there is no government that can project physical force. Our civilisation is far from perfect but it is a civilisation. It lets you live, travel and do business in relative safety. So think about it the next time you start imagining how good it would be without all this pesky civilisation around you. Because it is much better and productive to try to iteratively fix what we already have than decide to erase everything and start a complete rewrite.
  - mike741 4y ago
    > Oh yeah, and those same people later cry foul when they get robbed of their money because it was not protected in any way. Can you give an example? Do you actually know any of these people? > Suddenly everybody wants crypto but with protections Not me, So not everybody. > There is a reason why money and banking is regulated -- to protect little guys from getting scammed right and left. The reason is that their protocols are inherently unsafe. Similarly, there is a reason Bitcoin was made to be unregulated -- to protect the little guys from having their share devalued by trillion dollar bail-outs for the super rich. > orders of magnitude better than crypto free for all Better for who? Maybe better for you, but certainly not everyone. > Take a look at The Last of Us if you want to know what happens The video game?? > It lets you live, travel and do business in relative safety. Speak for yourself. Not everyone is safe. That's an increasingly rare privilege as the wealth divide grows, and many people attribute this divide to our monetary system.
patrick451 4y ago
Money laundering is a social good, necessitated by corrupt governments who steal innocent people's cash [1], [2]. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-seized-40-000-couple-151500433.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-seized-40-000-couple-1515... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_forfeiture https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_forfeiture
bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
Do we have different definitions of nothing?
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
I will have to disagree. They enable people to buy medicine that is otherwise too expensive to get from official channels.
nonethewiser 4y ago
They would still be incorrect about the cause, in your example.
b33j0r 4y ago
One of the things I hadn’t considered in the beginning is that it is also a large conversion of resources and power into computation and heat. Fundamentally, that’s a kind of transfer of wealth in and of itself. My favorite examples were people with subsidized electric bills who kinda scored on that arbitrage until everyone wised up.
grapesurgeon 4y ago
[dead]
xk_id 4y ago
As part of the society being referenced, I find it very upsetting that you think yourselves in a position to judge this on my behalf.

It's entirely possible for nvidia to be sour and also correct. Crypto currencies have done nothing for society but to introduce scam and money laundering vectors.

psychphysic 4y ago

Online dark net markets would not be possible without cryptos. They are a pretty big win for those who believe in personal liberty.

KyeRussell 4y ago
Fortunately I don’t think anyone is concerned with what libertarians consider a “big win”.
- mmiliauskas 4y ago
  Except for libertarians? Personally, as a libertarian this is all I need -- a win for myself.
  - bregma 4y ago
    Not all libertarians. Any libertarian is of course free to decide for themself if it's a win or not. Some may, and some may not.
justsomehnguy 4y ago
Bullshit, they existed both before the crypto and before the Internet itself. It's just a bit more convenient, but otherwise it's just the same as it was: give money to one man, take money/goods from other man and how exactly they settle their accounts is none of your business.
Melingo 4y ago
In sense of buying drugs? Yeah sure still not society relevant. And look what happens in Germany, it's much better to push for legalization. People need to stand up for rights
edflsafoiewq 4y ago
Yes, crypto's main use is crime. Its supporters have various arguments for why crime is actually good.
- rvz 4y ago
  > Yes, crypto's main use is crime. It is quite a very poor use with such "crime" happening all on a public and transparent blockchain, making it very easy to trace all of that (even if they use a tumbler / mixer) with the funds certainly seized and frozen as soon as it hits the exchange. In fact criminals and scammers still use banks and Zelle to facilitate their criminal enterprise - [0] [1] in the trillions of dollars. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/fincen-files-financial-scandal-criminal-networks https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/fincen-fil... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-zelle-banks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-z...
  - tzs 4y ago
    So why do so many ransomware gangs want payment in Bitcoin?
    - rvz 4y ago
      Perhaps they want to get themselves traced on a public ledger and to join the long list of gangs caught and arrested by the authorities each week? Once again, Bitcoin is worse for scammers, criminals and ransomware than using Zelle and the banks for fraud. You should be asking why the banks continue to move trillions of dollars of illicit funds for criminals for years without them doing anything. Same with Zelle.
  - saurik 4y ago
    And Square. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jack-dorsey-block-loses-20-164948270.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jack-dorsey-block-loses-20-16...
- psychphysic 4y ago
  I suppose you'd have told Ms Parks to shut up and get off the bus if avoiding crime is all that's good for society?
tzs 4y ago
"A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it" --Jean de La Fontaine. With sufficient tracking of non-cryptocurrencies and physical goods governments could largely kill dark net markets by making it too hard to buy anything physical with your cryptocurrency. Imagine KYC but applied to every transaction instead of just large ones. Making dark markets too easy isn't a win for personal liberty. Its a step on the road to a dystopia with little personal liberty or privacy because every time something seriously bad happens a few due to dark markets that would not have been possible in the legal markets the general public will demand something be done about it, which will result in government being granted more power.
- M95D 4y ago
  No need for dark markets. We will get there anyway. Government doesn't need people to demand it.

1066 4y ago

Right, but _they_ are also are also firmly planted within the fiat monetary system. Ultimately their will be a socially defined singular cryptographic definition of economic value at some point in the future.

tric 4y ago

His claim... "it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society" ...is incorrect. The total crypto market cap collapsed because of interest rate hikes. Nvidia's stock dropped 68%. Is that because it didn't bring anything useful for society? No. It was trading at a premium because of low rates.

TrainedMonkey 4y ago
> The total crypto market cap collapsed because of interest rate hikes. Let's take a deeper cut, why does something collapse when interest rates rise?
- nightski 4y ago
  Because capital is necessary for growth and the more expensive capital becomes the less growth is anticipated.
  - kiviuq 4y ago
    We've seen a lot of growth over the past decades, so it should be easy to retire at 30, but we're being told to work longer, be more productive, and die sooner. So where is that all growth? something doesn't add up.
    - everfree 4y ago
      > So where is that all growth? Is that a rhetorical question? It flows to the 1%. Current levels of wealth inequality are unprecedented in American history. We work hard to support the lavish lifestyles of the rich. If we could combine today's technology with 1970s levels of wealth equality, we could probably retire in 1970s level comfort by the time we reach age 40.
- enjoy-your-stay 4y ago
  Money flows out of equities and into bonds which yield a higher more dependable return when interest rates are high enough. The equities market was already running at artificially inflated values for some sectors (like technology), which means there isn't much growth potential (if everything is deemed to be already overpriced), and so the outflows were quite significant from those sectors, accentuating the inverse relationship between equities and interest rates.

everfree 4y ago

We could go back and forth for days on whether cryptocurrencies have done anything for society, but it's already been discussed ad infinitum both here on HN and elsewhere. I only wanted to point out that this article is inane.

emsy 4y ago

There are people that still have their accounts frozen because they donated to the truckers in Canada. That’s insane. Other countries had or will have similar cases in the future. We absolutely should have a way to exchange money without the governments involvement. The government already has the monopoly on physical force. That ought to be enough. So yes, there is a use case. But you’re correct in that it hasn’t really been used that way so far.

twawaaay 4y ago
Oh yeah, and those same people later cry foul when they get robbed of their money because it was not protected in any way. Suddenly everybody wants crypto but with protections. Fools. There is a reason why money and banking is regulated -- to protect little guys from getting scammed right and left. Those protections are not perfect, true, but still orders of magnitude better than crypto free for all. And as to monopoly on physical force, there is a reason for it, too. Take a look at African countries for what happens when people are allowed to take things into their own hands. Take a look at The Last of Us if you want to know what happens when there is no government that can project physical force. Our civilisation is far from perfect but it is a civilisation. It lets you live, travel and do business in relative safety. So think about it the next time you start imagining how good it would be without all this pesky civilisation around you. Because it is much better and productive to try to iteratively fix what we already have than decide to erase everything and start a complete rewrite.
- mike741 4y ago
  > Oh yeah, and those same people later cry foul when they get robbed of their money because it was not protected in any way. Can you give an example? Do you actually know any of these people? > Suddenly everybody wants crypto but with protections Not me, So not everybody. > There is a reason why money and banking is regulated -- to protect little guys from getting scammed right and left. The reason is that their protocols are inherently unsafe. Similarly, there is a reason Bitcoin was made to be unregulated -- to protect the little guys from having their share devalued by trillion dollar bail-outs for the super rich. > orders of magnitude better than crypto free for all Better for who? Maybe better for you, but certainly not everyone. > Take a look at The Last of Us if you want to know what happens The video game?? > It lets you live, travel and do business in relative safety. Speak for yourself. Not everyone is safe. That's an increasingly rare privilege as the wealth divide grows, and many people attribute this divide to our monetary system.

patrick451 4y ago

Money laundering is a social good, necessitated by corrupt governments who steal innocent people's cash [1], [2]. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-seized-40-000-couple-151500433.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-seized-40-000-couple-1515... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_forfeiture https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_forfeiture

bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago

Do we have different definitions of nothing?

PartiallyTyped 4y ago

I will have to disagree. They enable people to buy medicine that is otherwise too expensive to get from official channels.

nonethewiser 4y ago

They would still be incorrect about the cause, in your example.

b33j0r 4y ago

One of the things I hadn’t considered in the beginning is that it is also a large conversion of resources and power into computation and heat. Fundamentally, that’s a kind of transfer of wealth in and of itself. My favorite examples were people with subsidized electric bills who kinda scored on that arbitrage until everyone wised up.

grapesurgeon 4y ago

[dead]

xk_id 4y ago

As part of the society being referenced, I find it very upsetting that you think yourselves in a position to judge this on my behalf.