Pup Biru

i tend to agree for mass-adopted currency, but mass currency is only 1 use case for blockchain

things like bank to bank transfers (think a replacement to swift: with semi trusted entities like a big group of banks, the proof functions can be both extremely efficient and fast whilst remaining scalable and distributed so nobody has control… of course this would be a private network, but every bank involved can audit and sign off on transactions)

blockchain at its core is an immutable log between untrusted parties… it can be used to prove a particular thing happened at a particular point, in situations where people don’t even trust governments etc to maintain accurate records

it’s too big and cumbersome to be used by everyone in the world for payment, but it’s a good facilitator of some niche things that most people won’t have any idea about

the technology is solid; it’s just very limited, and the most “profitable” and marketable uses are also the most ill-suited

consensus is basically what all modern databases rely on… it’s not unstable; it has properties that need to be well known and accounted for

whaaaat? where is doing this? i haven’t seen it, and would ABSOLUTELY boycott the shit out of it

i do think they hold some value for things like bank to bank, where each party is kiiiiind of untrusted and unrelated (not on a public chain - it’s just a private consensus between collaborating parties)

it also undeniably provides payment outside of standard card networks and the finance sector (people have been using crypto to buy drugs for decades now), so can be used to circumvent things like this mastercard/visa morality police garbage… i think in that, it’d be useful to have a strongish cryptocurrency somewhere at least to be able to provide uncensorable competition (the alternative to that being some global EU network that everyone accepted in the same manner)

but i think the value in blockchain in general is minimally about currency: that was just the first implementation… it’s a distributed, trustworthy log between untrusted individual entities. the benefits of that are honestly pretty niche, but i think it does solve some valuable problems… just most people should never even know that blockchain was involved

i’ll add an extra to this on the cashback etc

credit card companies charge stores processing fees, and then give consumers cash backs to encourage them to spend using their cards

stores add credit card processing into their cost of doing business… you’re charged that in the cost of things you purchase

if you pay with a credit card, you get some of that back. if you don’t pay with a credit card, you’re still charged the fees - you just don’t get any of the benefits

totally agree re bitcoin, and also am very sceptical of crypto as a mass-adopted currency in general

however there are plenty of networks that don’t use proof of work to validate their chains, and they aren’t bad for the environment to nearly the same degree

assume the allegations are true when interacting with the woman, and assume they’re false while interacting with the accused

id also add to assume they’re at least somewhat plausible when interacting with people around them who may be effected in the future

putting people on guard, as long as it doesn’t negatively effect anyone involved is useful: it’s not a good outcome to have information, keep it to yourself to protect people, and then for someone new to get hurt

it’s incredibly tricky, and imo false reports are just as bad as true reports: false reports hurt real, and future victims significantly