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Am I hopelessly naive, thinking all of crypto is a complete BS scam that destroys the environment to boot?

by AgentOrange1234 2y ago

throwaway314155 2y ago
Not at all.
dumpsterdiver 2y ago
It’s eerie, right? Feeling like the only sane person in the room in crypto discussions.
- avmich 2y ago
  Reminds me that picture of a priest, who'd preach to his people, "machines can't think! machines should drive!" . I suspect he was also feeling like the only sane person in the room...
boogerlad 2y ago
Not monero. It is the only useful cryptocurrency in my opinion, and it is easy to understand that it is private digital cash.
- polotics 2y ago
  You have to define what you mean by "useful"? Monero's fungibility is excellent, but the transactions-per-second ain't that great right? Also Proof of stake is inherently more sustainable in a resource-constrained world: you don't want to replace banks by something more wasteful thank banks... For my money's worth, and clearly talking my own book here, the decidedly zero-hype Algorand is the useful crypto at 20k TPS, this is the Visa/Mastercard territory where things get interesting. As for fungibility, it will have to be some democratically controlled thing I think...
  - boogerlad 2y ago
    You're right about how "useful" needs to be defined. Monero at 30tps and blockchain growth rate is useless for global adoption. Lack of fungibility also makes every other cryptocurrency useless for global adoption. You're also right that PoS is more sustainable than PoW, but I think this will change your mind: https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/lv5285/alt_take_on_proof_of_stake_problem/gpacbw5/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/lv5285/alt_take_on_... It did for me. Thankfully since the energy consumption does not scale with the transaction rate, it's not a long term problem I think. Currently, the high energy per transaction stats are only because the adoption is low.
avmich 2y ago
A person was trying to save his money, which mostly sat in banks in a country which got in a financial turmoil. No external wires were possible. He bought cryptocurrency which sold in another country and put the other currency in a bank in the save haven. He got substantial losses, around 10%, but there was a serious risk was to lose all. Just as an illustration of a use which - for good or bad - reached the goals of the person.
juujian 2y ago
That's not the whole story, some of it also has a functionality in facilitating trade of drugs and weapons.
- mingus88 2y ago
  Which also seems to be pretty much dead at this point. TOR appears to have enough nodes operated by the authorities, with enough notable de-anonymizing exploits that anybody running a market or selling enough gets got And the ledger isn’t anonymous, and never was. Even using a mixer isn’t really good enough anymore to keep the authorities from tracking bitcoin flows to the point of cash out.
  - toraway 2y ago
    Drug markets are very much not dead. One of the largest and most popular markets (Archetype) has been running smoothly for almost 4 years at this point. Which operates exclusively on Monero due to its far superior anonymity over Bitcoin. Most markets have either required Monero or heavily discouraged Bitcoin for quite a while now.
  - hiq 2y ago
    Not sure where you get that from given the number of headlines mentioning cryptocurrencies including BTC and USDT being used in money laundering and crime in general. It looks like the US government has way less control over USD-based stablecoins than it has on the actual USD.
astrange 2y ago
They mostly don't have environmental impact as long as they're not PoW. Still got all the other problems.
airstrike 2y ago
I think I've seen ONE decent use of crypto so far: https://www.drips.network/ https://www.drips.network/
- hiq 2y ago
  It doesn't need crypto to work though, does it? Same for polymarket and a few others.
  - airstrike 2y ago
    It doesn't strictly need to, but I think it arguably makes the flow of funds simpler particularly as the funds keep dripping into smaller fractions. I'm generally quite bearish on crypto, but I saw this and was like hmmm
  - pants2 2y ago
    You could create pump.fun on non-crypto rails too, but your bank and payment processor would kick you off in a heartbeat.
ipython 2y ago
Nothing screams intrinsic value like burning enormous amounts of energy just to find a set of bits that happen to hash to a value less than a target value. But hey at least we proved that we won the race to find said hash before someone else!
parkaboy 2y ago
"Crypto" like Bitcoin and Monero have legitimate (non scam/non-greed-driven roots) academic roots and solve entirely real non-scam product problems. ETH is academically interesting as a platform, but as far as I've seen has not "solved" any real product problems people care about in a real way at scale that has persisted (I.e. not fads) or that don't actually NEED the concept of a Blockchain. Being able to transact and store value without a central entity solves a myriad of problems, including, but definitely not limited to: * Sending funds internationally is much much easier, an order of magnitude less expensive, and several orders of magnitude faster than going through the traditional banking system. It's entirely next level and there are plenty of legitimate reasons why people need to send international wires. * Transacting in legal, but morally divisive areas, where traditional banking/finance might shut down your business just because it doesn't like what you're doing or is scared of the risk. E.g. selling cannabis products, sex industry stuff (porn, sex work), gambling, etc. people may not like some of these businesses and want to impose their own morals to get rid of them, but crypto makes this impossible in ways the traditional banking system can't. Point is: there is absolutely a toooon of BS scammery in crypto. And many naughty things it can enable. It's the financial Wild West. But to call all crypto a "BS scam" is simply untrue. It would be like calling the entire Internet a BS scam just because of what it enables (plenty of scams, online gambling, porn sites, darknet markets) and the immense energy it consumes. But like the Internet, the technology is fundamentally useful. You've got your blinders on a bit too strongly if you believe otherwise.
rldjbpin 2y ago
for memecoins, right about the first half but almost all them do not take much to run. it can be wagered that all the social media airtime spent on them would probably waste more electricity in the process.

Am I hopelessly naive, thinking all of crypto is a complete BS scam that destroys the environment to boot?

throwaway314155 2y ago

Not at all.

dumpsterdiver 2y ago

It’s eerie, right? Feeling like the only sane person in the room in crypto discussions.

avmich 2y ago
Reminds me that picture of a priest, who'd preach to his people, "machines can't think! machines should drive!" . I suspect he was also feeling like the only sane person in the room...

boogerlad 2y ago

Not monero. It is the only useful cryptocurrency in my opinion, and it is easy to understand that it is private digital cash.

polotics 2y ago
You have to define what you mean by "useful"? Monero's fungibility is excellent, but the transactions-per-second ain't that great right? Also Proof of stake is inherently more sustainable in a resource-constrained world: you don't want to replace banks by something more wasteful thank banks... For my money's worth, and clearly talking my own book here, the decidedly zero-hype Algorand is the useful crypto at 20k TPS, this is the Visa/Mastercard territory where things get interesting. As for fungibility, it will have to be some democratically controlled thing I think...
- boogerlad 2y ago
  You're right about how "useful" needs to be defined. Monero at 30tps and blockchain growth rate is useless for global adoption. Lack of fungibility also makes every other cryptocurrency useless for global adoption. You're also right that PoS is more sustainable than PoW, but I think this will change your mind: https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/lv5285/alt_take_on_proof_of_stake_problem/gpacbw5/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/lv5285/alt_take_on_... It did for me. Thankfully since the energy consumption does not scale with the transaction rate, it's not a long term problem I think. Currently, the high energy per transaction stats are only because the adoption is low.

avmich 2y ago

A person was trying to save his money, which mostly sat in banks in a country which got in a financial turmoil. No external wires were possible. He bought cryptocurrency which sold in another country and put the other currency in a bank in the save haven. He got substantial losses, around 10%, but there was a serious risk was to lose all. Just as an illustration of a use which - for good or bad - reached the goals of the person.

juujian 2y ago

That's not the whole story, some of it also has a functionality in facilitating trade of drugs and weapons.

mingus88 2y ago
Which also seems to be pretty much dead at this point. TOR appears to have enough nodes operated by the authorities, with enough notable de-anonymizing exploits that anybody running a market or selling enough gets got And the ledger isn’t anonymous, and never was. Even using a mixer isn’t really good enough anymore to keep the authorities from tracking bitcoin flows to the point of cash out.
- toraway 2y ago
  Drug markets are very much not dead. One of the largest and most popular markets (Archetype) has been running smoothly for almost 4 years at this point. Which operates exclusively on Monero due to its far superior anonymity over Bitcoin. Most markets have either required Monero or heavily discouraged Bitcoin for quite a while now.
- hiq 2y ago
  Not sure where you get that from given the number of headlines mentioning cryptocurrencies including BTC and USDT being used in money laundering and crime in general. It looks like the US government has way less control over USD-based stablecoins than it has on the actual USD.

astrange 2y ago

They mostly don't have environmental impact as long as they're not PoW. Still got all the other problems.

airstrike 2y ago

I think I've seen ONE decent use of crypto so far: https://www.drips.network/ https://www.drips.network/

hiq 2y ago
It doesn't need crypto to work though, does it? Same for polymarket and a few others.
- airstrike 2y ago
  It doesn't strictly need to, but I think it arguably makes the flow of funds simpler particularly as the funds keep dripping into smaller fractions. I'm generally quite bearish on crypto, but I saw this and was like hmmm
- pants2 2y ago
  You could create pump.fun on non-crypto rails too, but your bank and payment processor would kick you off in a heartbeat.

ipython 2y ago

Nothing screams intrinsic value like burning enormous amounts of energy just to find a set of bits that happen to hash to a value less than a target value. But hey at least we proved that we won the race to find said hash before someone else!

parkaboy 2y ago

"Crypto" like Bitcoin and Monero have legitimate (non scam/non-greed-driven roots) academic roots and solve entirely real non-scam product problems. ETH is academically interesting as a platform, but as far as I've seen has not "solved" any real product problems people care about in a real way at scale that has persisted (I.e. not fads) or that don't actually NEED the concept of a Blockchain. Being able to transact and store value without a central entity solves a myriad of problems, including, but definitely not limited to: * Sending funds internationally is much much easier, an order of magnitude less expensive, and several orders of magnitude faster than going through the traditional banking system. It's entirely next level and there are plenty of legitimate reasons why people need to send international wires. * Transacting in legal, but morally divisive areas, where traditional banking/finance might shut down your business just because it doesn't like what you're doing or is scared of the risk. E.g. selling cannabis products, sex industry stuff (porn, sex work), gambling, etc. people may not like some of these businesses and want to impose their own morals to get rid of them, but crypto makes this impossible in ways the traditional banking system can't. Point is: there is absolutely a toooon of BS scammery in crypto. And many naughty things it can enable. It's the financial Wild West. But to call all crypto a "BS scam" is simply untrue. It would be like calling the entire Internet a BS scam just because of what it enables (plenty of scams, online gambling, porn sites, darknet markets) and the immense energy it consumes. But like the Internet, the technology is fundamentally useful. You've got your blinders on a bit too strongly if you believe otherwise.

rldjbpin 2y ago

for memecoins, right about the first half but almost all them do not take much to run. it can be wagered that all the social media airtime spent on them would probably waste more electricity in the process.