Just got very lightly flamed by another user for making fun of crypto and was told that Lemmy and crypto have “the exact same advantages and disadvantages”. Now I disagree heavily there, since even if it shares some principles I’d argue that the scale of the problems change when you’re talking about a global finance system versus a social media platform filled with beans. But it did get me curious- how many of you are crypto supporters?
No? There’s definitely some overlap but they’re completely different concepts, just because I like Lemmy doesn’t mean I enjoy unstable coins that use up a ton of energy for no reason and can lose their value by the end of the day
See, that was my response too! Federated servers will waste a bit of energy with duplicate fetch requests, sure, but it’s a far cry from the decades of compute time wasted with adversarial validation and cryptographic mathematics. And that doesn’t even deal with the shitty coins themselves.
Was very confused why they seemed to think the concepts were the same, and thought maybe I was the idiot.
I think the person you were talking to had not really given as much thought into the subject.
Thinking about it too much makes them feel uncomfortable and less optimistic, so they avoid it and try to just focus on the many things they will buy when the value of their crypto coins inexplicably goes really high (which it might if a lot of money needs laundering, though I wonder if previous rounds worked out as well as they were hoping or if they got fucked by exchanges disappearing with their money in the night and decided to just go back to 3 mattress stores on one corner in various cities.
I honestly see* more overlap with the open-source community than with the crypto community
I don’t care about crypto at all. At this point I think of any crypto as pump and dump scams unless proven otherwise
No, fuck crypto. At best it’s a solution looking for a problem while speedrunning a century of banking regulation reform, at worst it’s an environmentally disastrous scam.
Absolutely not. Hell my whole instance is vehemently anti crypto
Only reason I want to get into crypto is being able to donate to heroes like fitgirl
Goddamned heroes 07
God, I hope not. Crypto is an interesting technology that’s been used to promote what’s essentially a scam. Just ask yourself this: Are the people into crypto using it to buy things? Or are they going to sell it for dollars at a high value and then walk away?
Most are the latter. Very few people even bother setting up software wallets. They just keep their crypto on markets and try to sell high.
That means that for most people, it’s not a currency at all, it’s an investment. But a normal investment is backed by something of value, while crypto is just backed by pure speculation - that is, it’s backed by all the other people who are trying to sell high, too. The name for a system where you get people to buy valueless assets and drive up their price so you can sell yours and leave others holding the bag is: “Ponzi scheme.”
The name for a system where you get people to buy valueless assets and drive up their price so you can sell yours and leave others holding the bag is: “Ponzi scheme.”
No, that’s a Greater Fool scheme. A Ponzi is more centralized and the people who get paid out are not supposed to be aware that the money is coming from new investors. Ponzi schemes hide that aspect of it. In a Greater Fool you are betting on someone being dumber than yourself enough to buy your worthless investment at a higher price.
A lot of crypto is Greater Fool, but there have been crypto Ponzi schemes.
As a side note, there is a cultural tendency to call all scams Ponzis when they are not. It is a specific type of scam.
Huh. I was thinking of the whole scheme being centralized around a few core people who push crypto, but I think you’re right. “Greater fool” is a better label for it. Thanks!
It’s a bit of both. The increase in value for those who got in early is propped up by the hype of new bagholders.
I am not. Plus the ones needing to be mined by wasting of ton of energy are basically an environmental disaster.
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Hell no.
They’re almost entirely scams. I don’t support tricking people out of their money.
They also ruined crypto as an abbreviation for cryptography, and spam every cryptography-related discussion forum. Even the NIST post-quantum standardization list has been getting their spam.
Just a legal pump and dump and a great example of why we let the SEC regulate markets.
What about Monero? It seems to be the only one that gives a shit about anonymity and privacy.
It’s destroying the environment with the way it works, so it’s still an extremely shitty thing to promote.
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So the monero web page is lying?
Proof of Work
Monero uses randomx, an ASIC-resistant and CPU-friendly POW algorithm created by Monero community members, designed to make the use of mining-specific hardware unfeasible. Monero previously used CryptoNight and variations of this algorithm. More info in the GitHub repo.
Or are you just lying trying to make a point without having a clue about what you’re talking about?
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Monero’s ring signatures are an actually interesting bit of cryptography. And it does provide a real benefit (private transactions) that other payment systems don’t. Of course that means it breaks all the anti-money-laundering laws to exchange money to/from Monero, but it’s less of a joke than the rest. Still PoW though, so inherently destructive and not something I’ll support.
It’s destroying the environment with the way it works, so it’s still an extremely shitty thing to promote.
Crypto is and always has been a joke. It also doesn’t work that much like the fediverse, which is basically a webring where the sites like to copy each other. TBH I’m looking forward to the
webring hostLemmy instance drama and people beingkicked from the webringdefederated.No
Lol, no I am not. Crypto in it’s current form, is not going to be a legitimate, stable, daily use currency. Digital money/systems with technological roots in crypto may be the future but it will be a 2nd cousin, once removed, at best.
NFTs as implemented, are also pure BS.
The technology has potential but right now it’s mainly being used either to buy illicit goods or separate fools from money.
Lemmy is free to use. If you give money to an instance owner, at least you know it’s a donation and that you’ll never get it back.
Unlikely. The hype for crypto scams had fallen off hard in the last year. It peaked like two years ago.
No
Nope. Crypto is clearly a scam
i’m generally anti-crypto. i’m not against it fully, i think it has a purpose but that purpose is not unstable, highly volatile investments, meme coins, or play-to-earn games.
What is the purpose then? To me it just seems like a solution looking for a problem, and that’s not a good way to make solutions.
i suppose i should have said it could have had a purpose. i think it was initially conceived as a way to make private purchases, perhaps of things one might not want tracked back to them. for a simple example, i always pay cash when i visit a dispensary, even though many of them take cards now, because i don’t care for my bank to know that i am making that purchase. if i could pay with cryptocurrency at the dispensary, keeping that transaction more private, i would. but crypto has ceased to be a private currency, and turned into extremely volatile investments. who would want to make a purchase with crypto when it could skyrocket in value the next day and you’ve suddenly spent more than you thought, or the vendor has made less than they thought when the values plummet?
as it is now, it has no real purpose. it could have though. you are right that as it stands it is a solution looking for a problem.
right now it’s purpose is to tell me who i should avoid
Private? It’s in a public ledger right, I think monero does some scrambling, but most crypto is a lot less private than paying in cash.
your comment is a moot point. i was saying that it could be private and while it is probably mostly associated with people trying to purchase illegal goods crypto tumblers are a thing so that is something that can anonymize your crypto. also, you can’t pay with cash online so there is a utility of something that can facilitate anonymity in transactions online.
