astoor

14 ms·

91.
by astoor 5y ago
There have been a number of startups selling crypto-mining electric heaters, but they've all faced the same problems: - They're much more expensive than normal heaters, and the returns on mining don't make it cost effective.
92.
by astoor 5y ago
How can cryptocurrencies not be zero sum? Especially meme coins like SHIB. These are purely speculative devices, have no intrinsic value, and don't lead to the creation of legitimately beneficial products or services, etc. - all they d
93.
by astoor 5y ago
A couple of thoughts: - This would only be the "greatest trade ever" if they actually cash out, i.e. realise the paper profits. The other two examples of "greatest trades ever" did realise their profits. There are of cou
94.
by astoor 5y ago
Which version of the OED includes the phrase "without favouritism or discrimination" in the definition of "fairness"? The one I have access to, oed.com (OED Third Edition, December 2013; most recently modified version pu
95.
by astoor 5y ago
> It's "fair" if you're referring to equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. Fairness and equality are different. Imagine 2 people of different heights who can't see over a wall - equality is giving them both a
96.
by astoor 5y ago
I know there's the whole "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence", but is incompetence a more likely path to becoming a billionaire?
97.
by astoor 5y ago
Furthermore, according to https://worldcoin.org/how-it-works , it seems the billionaires are planning on enriching themselves by exploiting individuals in some of the poorer nations first (Chile, Kenya, Indonesia, Sudan). (A
98.
by astoor 5y ago
This is just so wrong in so many different ways, it actually fills me with despair to think that there are people somewhere who actually think this is in some ways a good idea. To the point of wondering if there is some way of organising mo
99.
by astoor 5y ago
Reading this has destroyed my faith in technology and hope for the future as well. How can we, as sane and rational beings, try to stop this sort of dystopia from devouring the human race?
100.
by astoor 5y ago
> "now you've created some amorphous group of oligarchs whose power cannot be really removed by traditional means. It's just a regression." "With the privatisation of money creation and the proliferation of dec
101.
by astoor 5y ago
In my day, Web 3.0 meant the Semantic Web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web#Web_3.0 .
102.
by astoor 5y ago
The problem is that HN actually does understand crypto and blockchain. The layperson might believe the myth that NFTs, for example, are "amazing tools with huge potential for monetization of all sorts of digital goods", but most
103.
by astoor 5y ago
> irreversibility is not a feature but a bug Completely true. Irreversibility and lack of consumer protections might just about fly for small transactions with pocket change which people on both sides of the transaction don't mind l
104.
by astoor 5y ago
HNers are often skeptical of all new unproven technology, but have a begrudging acceptance of established and proven technology. The thing with cryptocurrency is that it has now been around for over a decade, and not delivered on any of its
105.
by astoor 5y ago
I would also prefer "useful", as in "capable of being put to use", to apply to uses with net positive outcomes for society - I was just trying to make the point that, unfortunately, many others don't.
106.
by astoor 5y ago
> Can you give example of a cryptocurrency startup which innovated anything useful? This is a trap I've seen many technical folks on HN fall into - they define "useful" along the lines of "beneficial", or &quot
107.
by astoor 5y ago
The problem is, if you build a new financial system which facilitates criminal activity such as scams, fraud, extortion, money laundering, tax evasion, terrorist financing, etc., it very quickly gets dominated by the types of people who wan
108.
by astoor 5y ago
As well as completely transforming many people's view of Musk (he ceased to be "the least bad billionaire" for many), the case also reflected extremely badly on the US legal system, showing that if you are rich enough you can
109.
by astoor 5y ago
There were a lot of adverts on the London underground recently saying "If you're seeing bitcoin on the Underground, it's time to buy", which I thought was was quite strange because it was pretty much the exact opposite o
110.
by astoor 5y ago
And how does that reputation token change value? Human input, i.e. information which starts outside the blockchain but which has to be recorded onto the blockchain. In which case, what is the point of the blockchain? Maybe making it impossi
111.
by astoor 5y ago
But what can you actually do with blockchains, outside of cryptocurrencies? The "oracle problem" means they can only interact with themselves, so all these ideas about Airbnb or Uber or whatever on the blockchain will never be abl
112.
by astoor 5y ago
Part of the problem is that they're slow and expensive to use. Although Cryptokitties had (in web terms) a miniscule number of users performing tiny transactions, that was enough to essentially break Ethereum in 2017[0]. There are othe
113.
by astoor 5y ago
"here is a revolutionary trustless system of currency, but you must trust a group of anonymous developers in the non-extradition offshore not to screw you with premine" and trust them to make immutable smart contracts 100% bug fre
114.
by astoor 5y ago
> "The article makes it sound like as if this is a recent phenomenon. I don't believe that's true. I believe that stock prices, or prices of anything, be it tulips or paintings, have always been driven by narratives. &quo
115.
by astoor 5y ago
> "no one has verified their assets" It's worse than that - they were audited by Friedman LLP in 2017, but chose to suppress the full outcome: https://www.coindesk.com/tether-confirms-relationship-audito.
116.
by astoor 5y ago
> "Looking at the pricing page, this seems to be almost as expensive as AWS/GCP, while having unknown performance characteristics of random people's devices and network connections" What happened when utility tokens
117.
by astoor 5y ago
> "Things that go up for no apparent reason can come down for no apparent reason." Many of the previous sharp increases do have explanations, e.g. the $150 to $1,500 rise was largely due to manipulation by the Willy and Marku
118.
by astoor 5y ago
> I think NFTs are great because they move money from the hands of the stupid&rich to the hands of artists. There are 15 million items offered for sale on OpenSea, for example, and each one of those will have cost the artist $50-10
119.
by astoor 5y ago
A successful pyramid scheme has a couple of valuable attributes: "plausible deniability", i.e. the ability to disguise the pyramid scheme to convince as many people as possible that it isn't actually a pyramid scheme, and &qu
120.
by astoor 5y ago
> "prices aren't determined by supply alone, they are determined by supply and demand" What we saw with the ICOs in 2017 and early 2018 is that there was a surge in demand for Ethereum to participate in the ICOs, which i

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