I honestly never understood how Lemmy, a privacy and decentralisation focused community, is so vehemently anti-crypto. It’s worse than genAI. Every time it is mentioned, everyone goes “crypto is a scam”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any good faith discussion around it, just “scam”, “pyramid scheme”, and “only criminals use it”.
Let’s get something out of the way immediately: shitcoins are a literal pyramid scheme and a scam. Anyone can make their own cryptocurrency in an evening, and anyone who throws money at them is either a fool or a gambler.
But I really don’t understand what people mean when they say Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or Monero are a scam. Sure they can be used to scam you, just like Amazon gift cards can. Maybe it’s about the price volatility, but the price of all 3 mentioned before is up on a day, week, month, 6 months, year, and 5 year scale. It’s volatile, but is not a scam. If you bought and sold at two random points in time, it’s more likely you made a profit than “got scammed”.
You know what actually is a scam? Credit scores, overdraft fees, having to pay to check your balance, and so many other fucked up practices in the US banking system.
“Criminals use them” is just the worst fucking argument, especially in a space like this. Are PGP, VPNs and TOR for criminals too? Do you think getting rid of crypto would stop crime?
And yes, proof of work fucking sucks. The energy consumption of Bitcoin mining is a problem. I am not a cryptobro who spends all his time making trades and is here to tell you that crypto is the salvation. They are far from being “good” for everyday use. I just wanted to point out how it seems that critical thought gets shut down at the sight of those 6 letters, and I hope someone can explain to me what they find so terrible about crypto (aside from environmental concerns and shitcoins)
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme because it only keeps its value as long as people are constantly buying it. If no one wants to buy it, the value of any amount of bitcoin is zero. This is why people who have bitcoin are trying to convince anyone else to keep buying.
Your local government-backed currency does not have this problem, because you get paid with it, you pay taxes with it and vendors in your country have to accept it.
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme because it only keeps its value as long as people are constantly buying it. If no one wants to buy it, the value of any amount of bitcoin is zero. This is why people who have bitcoin are trying to convince anyone else to keep buying.
any currency is initially a bank’s promissory notes, and then a promise to exchange the paper for some kind of labor. As a person who has experienced at least one default in his life and whose entire toilet is covered with USSR money, I can say that in this regard, no currency is different from bitcoin.
After a few cycles people start to realize blah blah blah explanation is really just when is the price going up. We’ve all heard it all by now. It starts feeling like being sold on a timeshare. We aren’t new clients to try to sell this topic too
We already know all the explaination and blockchain crap. We know the spiel and sat through it all through multiple cycles. It’s at this point like trying to sell a car to a car salesperson using tactics they already know.
So that’s the lack of enthusiasm. We are less likely to be new to this.
I think it’s because, at least in the case of bitcoin, it has no practical real world use other than hoarding like beanie babies, and therefore no real value. As a currency it’s entirely useless.
I have a bit more sympathy for ETH, maybe someday DeFi will produce something truly useful enough to justify the money in crypto, but it hasn’t so far.
This is really getting into the weeds of what you define “value” to be. You could equally argue that a banknote also has no practical real world use other than hoarding (and to trade to others).
Lemmy is quite left-leaning, and the impetus behind creating Bitcoin was right-wing Austrian school economics. Now, it’s being pushed by literal fascists.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen fascists pushing Bitcoins, but then again I don’t frequent those spaces. I struggle to see how they are ideologically similar though. Doesn’t seem like a very authoritarian concept
And can we really say we know what brought about the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper?
Many MAGA/libertarian/fascists love ice cream. Does that mean ice cream is bad?
We should be able to make up our own minds about things instead of turning everything into a partisan issue. A broken clock is right twice a day.
Trump, Bukele, Milei, Orban, Thiel, Musk, etc. It’s the “Dark Enlightenment” and “Network State” type of fascists that want to replace democratic government with stuff like corporate-controlled city-states, and crazy shit like that. They see it as a means to starve the government so they can run their own corporation-like governments.
The message in the genesis block alludes to the ideology (as that kind of stuff was a major talking point for right-wingers back then), though I guess it’s not definitive proof. The early community was definitely Austrian-school adjacent right-wingers though.
Have you noticed that people who work in tech tend to be less excited about cool new flashy tech developments than the average person?
It’s similar to how people who have worked in fast food aren’t quite as keen on eating out than the average person.
Same as watching your co-worker who hasn’t washed his hands after his last shit collect the pieces of a burger that dropped on the dirty floor to sell them to a customer isn’t exactly appetizing, knowing what goes on behind the scenes with tech developments doesn’t really get you on board for that either.
I was excited for Bitcoin but the more I learned and the more the public used it, the more I hated it.
EDIT: FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IS A BADLY PHRASE EXPLANATION, PLEASE READ MY COMMENT BELOW TO UNDERSTAND MY POINT
Bitcoins timestamp only supports dates up to 2106 because they decided on an UNSIGNED value. You don’t need negative values… You know when the network starts, that is 0. Without network, no Bitcoin.
That is how bad it is engineered.
And we are not even talking proof of work or whatever. Crypto is a scam because the creators made it very obvious that they didn’t really care about the project and the community is just gambling.
I don’t get why using an unsigned value is bad in this context. Like you’ve said yourself, why would you add support for dates that happened before the creation of the network?
Sorry my phrasing was bad and made it confusing. Let me explain it in detail.
They correctly choose a unsigned int for the time but they based it on Unix time, and Unix time is signed. So they choose a system that would require an conversion from Unix time to Bitcoin time (or the other way around) anyway. But you don’t need to be able to have a timestamp for 1970, which their timestamp system supports, because instead of counting from 2008 (the invention of Bitcoin) they count from 1970. Wasting 38 years and as you know Unix time is hitting a limit in 2038, 68 years after its start, Bitcoin time is unsigned and so it gets to 2106. 2106-1970= 136 years. And they are wasting 38 years!!! Why? You need a conversion between both after 2038 anyway. And if they really care for cheap conversion, a signed 64bit value would be much better, because after 2038, that will probably be the standard. So they chose to waste 38 years for compatibility which will break after 2038, instead of choosing compatibility after 2038 for 292 billion years.
And if size was the reason and 64bit timestamps would have been too big, just start counting from 2008 (or better 2009 when the network started) and get all those juicy 136 years instead of 98 years.
or they can simply inherit the UNIXTIME library, in which 0 has shifted from 1970 to 2038, and add one additional “time epoch” flag. Think about what’s easier - create your own time library or inherit from unixtime?
I honestly never understood how Lemmy, a privacy and decentralisation focused community, is so vehemently anti-crypto. It’s worse than genAI. Every time it is mentioned, everyone goes “crypto is a scam”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any good faith discussion around it, just “scam”, “pyramid scheme”, and “only criminals use it”.
Let’s get something out of the way immediately: shitcoins are a literal pyramid scheme and a scam. Anyone can make their own cryptocurrency in an evening, and anyone who throws money at them is either a fool or a gambler.
But I really don’t understand what people mean when they say Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or Monero are a scam. Sure they can be used to scam you, just like Amazon gift cards can. Maybe it’s about the price volatility, but the price of all 3 mentioned before is up on a day, week, month, 6 months, year, and 5 year scale. It’s volatile, but is not a scam. If you bought and sold at two random points in time, it’s more likely you made a profit than “got scammed”. You know what actually is a scam? Credit scores, overdraft fees, having to pay to check your balance, and so many other fucked up practices in the US banking system.
“Criminals use them” is just the worst fucking argument, especially in a space like this. Are PGP, VPNs and TOR for criminals too? Do you think getting rid of crypto would stop crime?
And yes, proof of work fucking sucks. The energy consumption of Bitcoin mining is a problem. I am not a cryptobro who spends all his time making trades and is here to tell you that crypto is the salvation. They are far from being “good” for everyday use. I just wanted to point out how it seems that critical thought gets shut down at the sight of those 6 letters, and I hope someone can explain to me what they find so terrible about crypto (aside from environmental concerns and shitcoins)
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme because it only keeps its value as long as people are constantly buying it. If no one wants to buy it, the value of any amount of bitcoin is zero. This is why people who have bitcoin are trying to convince anyone else to keep buying.
Your local government-backed currency does not have this problem, because you get paid with it, you pay taxes with it and vendors in your country have to accept it.
any currency is initially a bank’s promissory notes, and then a promise to exchange the paper for some kind of labor. As a person who has experienced at least one default in his life and whose entire toilet is covered with USSR money, I can say that in this regard, no currency is different from bitcoin.
You forgot shoes! Criminals use shoes, too! So everyone wearing shoes must be a criminal. Either that, or they were scammed into wearing shoes.
After a few cycles people start to realize blah blah blah explanation is really just when is the price going up. We’ve all heard it all by now. It starts feeling like being sold on a timeshare. We aren’t new clients to try to sell this topic too
We already know all the explaination and blockchain crap. We know the spiel and sat through it all through multiple cycles. It’s at this point like trying to sell a car to a car salesperson using tactics they already know.
So that’s the lack of enthusiasm. We are less likely to be new to this.
But then why still be anti bitcoin?
I think it’s because, at least in the case of bitcoin, it has no practical real world use other than hoarding like beanie babies, and therefore no real value. As a currency it’s entirely useless.
I have a bit more sympathy for ETH, maybe someday DeFi will produce something truly useful enough to justify the money in crypto, but it hasn’t so far.
This is really getting into the weeds of what you define “value” to be. You could equally argue that a banknote also has no practical real world use other than hoarding (and to trade to others).
Lemmy is quite left-leaning, and the impetus behind creating Bitcoin was right-wing Austrian school economics. Now, it’s being pushed by literal fascists.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen fascists pushing Bitcoins, but then again I don’t frequent those spaces. I struggle to see how they are ideologically similar though. Doesn’t seem like a very authoritarian concept
And can we really say we know what brought about the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper?
I think we can. Have you not heard of this phrase before?
Satoshi Nakamoto put it in the zeroth block of the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Republicans in US congress just forced through a bunch of pro-crypto crap, if you’re looking for undeniable proof.
I don’t know any crypto bros who aren’t also MAGA/libertarian/fascist
Many MAGA/libertarian/fascists love ice cream. Does that mean ice cream is bad? We should be able to make up our own minds about things instead of turning everything into a partisan issue. A broken clock is right twice a day.
They aren’t pushing pro-ice cream laws, this is a disingenuous take.
Trump, Bukele, Milei, Orban, Thiel, Musk, etc. It’s the “Dark Enlightenment” and “Network State” type of fascists that want to replace democratic government with stuff like corporate-controlled city-states, and crazy shit like that. They see it as a means to starve the government so they can run their own corporation-like governments.
The message in the genesis block alludes to the ideology (as that kind of stuff was a major talking point for right-wingers back then), though I guess it’s not definitive proof. The early community was definitely Austrian-school adjacent right-wingers though.
Have you noticed that people who work in tech tend to be less excited about cool new flashy tech developments than the average person?
It’s similar to how people who have worked in fast food aren’t quite as keen on eating out than the average person.
Same as watching your co-worker who hasn’t washed his hands after his last shit collect the pieces of a burger that dropped on the dirty floor to sell them to a customer isn’t exactly appetizing, knowing what goes on behind the scenes with tech developments doesn’t really get you on board for that either.
I think it’s because we get excited super early, and by the time it goes mainstream we’re tired of seeing it shoved into every place it doesn’t belong
And it’s probably still not being used for what we looked forward to about it
I was excited for Bitcoin but the more I learned and the more the public used it, the more I hated it.
EDIT: FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IS A BADLY PHRASE EXPLANATION, PLEASE READ MY COMMENT BELOW TO UNDERSTAND MY POINT
Bitcoins timestamp only supports dates up to 2106 because they decided on an UNSIGNED value. You don’t need negative values… You know when the network starts, that is 0. Without network, no Bitcoin.
That is how bad it is engineered.
And we are not even talking proof of work or whatever. Crypto is a scam because the creators made it very obvious that they didn’t really care about the project and the community is just gambling.
I don’t get why using an unsigned value is bad in this context. Like you’ve said yourself, why would you add support for dates that happened before the creation of the network?
Sorry my phrasing was bad and made it confusing. Let me explain it in detail.
They correctly choose a unsigned int for the time but they based it on Unix time, and Unix time is signed. So they choose a system that would require an conversion from Unix time to Bitcoin time (or the other way around) anyway. But you don’t need to be able to have a timestamp for 1970, which their timestamp system supports, because instead of counting from 2008 (the invention of Bitcoin) they count from 1970. Wasting 38 years and as you know Unix time is hitting a limit in 2038, 68 years after its start, Bitcoin time is unsigned and so it gets to 2106. 2106-1970= 136 years. And they are wasting 38 years!!! Why? You need a conversion between both after 2038 anyway. And if they really care for cheap conversion, a signed 64bit value would be much better, because after 2038, that will probably be the standard. So they chose to waste 38 years for compatibility which will break after 2038, instead of choosing compatibility after 2038 for 292 billion years.
And if size was the reason and 64bit timestamps would have been too big, just start counting from 2008 (or better 2009 when the network started) and get all those juicy 136 years instead of 98 years.
It is stupid.
or they can simply inherit the UNIXTIME library, in which 0 has shifted from 1970 to 2038, and add one additional “time epoch” flag. Think about what’s easier - create your own time library or inherit from unixtime?