Cryptocurrency as the next significant stage for computing technology, not just an investment

[Psychotronic]

Squid?! 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2021 by Psychotronic

[Silent Member]

[usagi]

the value of that token just went from $2800 to under $1 in like 10 minutes. extremely stable future evolution of mankind technology.

[ignatius]

so, the corporations and on line gambling are getting into crypto pretty big. fucking commercials during sporting events pushing the various on line gambling platforms heavily with celebrity endorsements and linking them to crypto. 

for better or worse, you can bet like anything else that corporations will co-opt a big part of it to market it to mainstreamers and simplify it for consumption and syphon off a buck via fees etc. 

 

[zero]

yeah what the hell...saw a commercial over the weekend with America's favorite boy actor Matt Damon talking in vagaries, showcasing images that represent some ideal of "heroism," followed by a quick crypto.com symbol. I found it very confusing, but so is the whole crypto world I guess.

https://news.bitcoin.com/matt-damon-stars-global-crypto-ad-fortune-favours-the-brave-air-in-20-countries/

[ignatius]

3 minutes ago, zero said:

yeah what the hell...saw a commercial over the weekend with America's favorite boy actor Matt Damon talking in vagaries, showcasing images that represent some ideal of "heroism," followed by a quick crypto.com symbol. I found it very confusing, but so is the whole crypto world I guess.

https://news.bitcoin.com/matt-damon-stars-global-crypto-ad-fortune-favours-the-brave-air-in-20-countries/

saw that one too and had a wtf is this shit reaction. obviously this is all targeted at opportunists and tech savy people. 

older people generally have no clue about any of this. there are handfuls of tech savy people in every age group.. even boomers. but many have no clue and barely understand the office computers they've used for 30 years or whatever. 

so, this all will really start to smell like a grift. it'll be like how in the 90s the major labels made billions selling CDs of albums that people already owned.  the banks will preserve their power and take over or co-opt any new system and skim their profits in the form of fees etc to a new generation. "Crypto-Credit Cards" are probably only so far off. 

 

[zlemflolia]

>All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind -Marx

Of course crypto will be co-opted by big businesses, that doesn't take it away as an object of direct use value the same way the commodification of anything doesn't take away the original

[zero]

from the article I linked in my post above:

Quote

“We are a community building the future of the internet, Web3. Powered by cryptocurrency, Web3 will be more fair and equitable, owned by the builders, creators and users. You.”

this is the part I don't see going according to plan. it reeks of pie in the sky bullshit. someone, somewhere, will make a ton of money, and a bunch of other people will get screwed. it's the human way.

I agree with the underlying message here for web 3.0, but suppose I am just too cynical to believe some "more fair and equitable" mechanism is going to come out of it. but I am an end-user, not some developer who thinks overly ambitiously about stuff. grandiose plans to reform the world, and all that. 

[ignatius]

35 minutes ago, zero said:

from the article I linked in my post above:

this is the part I don't see going according to plan. it reeks of pie in the sky bullshit. someone, somewhere, will make a ton of money, and a bunch of other people will get screwed. it's the human way.

I agree with the underlying message here for web 3.0, but suppose I am just too cynical to believe some "more fair and equitable" mechanism is going to come out of it. but I am an end-user, not some developer who thinks overly ambitiously about stuff. grandiose plans to reform the world, and all that. 

sort of like the idealism that many who were on the ground floor of the internet imagined.. then it went poo poo obviously. 

[cruising for burgers]

corruption > crypto

The rich will only get richer and the poor will only get poorer.

my 13 years old sister

Edited November 2, 2021 by _vow_of_silence_

[auxien]

i mean, they're not wrong but

[zlemflolia]

On 11/1/2021 at 12:26 PM, zero said:

from the article I linked in my post above:

this is the part I don't see going according to plan. it reeks of pie in the sky bullshit. someone, somewhere, will make a ton of money, and a bunch of other people will get screwed. it's the human way.

I agree with the underlying message here for web 3.0, but suppose I am just too cynical to believe some "more fair and equitable" mechanism is going to come out of it. but I am an end-user, not some developer who thinks overly ambitiously about stuff. grandiose plans to reform the world, and all that. 

the future of the internet can only come through overcoming capitalism or else profit schemes will be baked in.  there is real potential for a web 4.0 based on mesh nets, decentralized torrent swarms over tor, things like this, that truly puts the internet into the hands of the people, even if it has a bit less "performance" in comparison to the centralized capitalist internet, but that's ok. you don't need on demand streaming of 4k content.  you can watch it next week once it's done downloading.  content created by independent producers without 150m budgets.  that 150m goes to feeding homeless people.

[logakght]

3 hours ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

the future of the internet can only come through overcoming capitalism or else profit schemes will be baked in.  there is real potential for a web 4.0 based on mesh nets, decentralized torrent swarms over tor, things like this, that truly puts the internet into the hands of the people, even if it has a bit less "performance" in comparison to the centralized capitalist internet, but that's ok. you don't need on demand streaming of 4k content.  you can watch it next week once it's done downloading.  content created by independent producers without 150m budgets.  that 150m goes to feeding homeless people.

I like how you think. What have you read to come to this?

[zlemflolia]

Just now, logakght said:

I like how you think. What have you read to come to this?

to come to that post would mostly be a combination of Marx to value overcoming capitalism and its distorting affects on the behavior of labor to achieve communism and communistic technologies like what I described, in addition to general software, networking, and computer hardware knowledge from working as a software engineer and computer science degree curriculum, and cryptocurrency protocol knowledge.  these domains inevitably converge upon the types of conclusions made in that post though the area is dominated pretty heavily by techno-libertarians generally rather than communists

[logakght]

2 minutes ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

to come to that post would mostly be a combination of Marx to value overcoming capitalism and its distorting affects on the behavior of labor to achieve communism and communistic technologies like what I described, in addition to general software, networking, and computer hardware knowledge from working as a software engineer and computer science degree curriculum, and cryptocurrency protocol knowledge.  these domains inevitably converge upon the types of conclusions made in that post though the area is dominated pretty heavily by techno-libertarians generally rather than communists

Ok, thanks, I'm going on the same path.

[zkom]

10 hours ago, auxien said:

i mean, they're not wrong but

I don' think anyone is assuming that the value of their dollars is going to go up over time. More like the opposite because of inflation. Basically you are guaranteed to lose if you get dollars and let them just sit on your account without any interest. And good luck finding any bank account that pays any significant interest for just having your money. So I don't know how it's a Ponzi scheme?

[usagi]

51 minutes ago, zkom said:

I don' think anyone is assuming that the value of their dollars is going to go up over time. More like the opposite because of inflation. Basically you are guaranteed to lose if you get dollars and let them just sit on your account without any interest. And good luck finding any bank account that pays any significant interest for just having your money. So I don't know how it's a Ponzi scheme?

I believe the assertion that it's a ponzi scheme has less to do directly with the value of crypto coins compared to real money and more to do with how the system is oriented, who the gatekeepers are, who is influencing market sentiment and directing the 'ape' plebs whose idiotic frenzy causes some coins to rise and crash suddenly, and who profits the most from those wild fluctuations. (this fuckery happens in real money markets too, of course. whole other argument about how current capitalism itself has the same fatal flaws.) there are people piling into this thing and boasting of making high value trades without actually being able to cash any of it out into anything used in the real world. scamming and defrauding is rife. people get sucked in by the excitement without doing any due diligence. all of this makes for a system that creates a bullshit illusion of wealth and opportunity whilst actually offering nothing to ordinary people with average luck except a toilet in which to immediately flush all their savings. and while probably making someone far more cunning than them richer than they already are.

hence "ponzi scheme". it's less about the literal definition of one - borrowing from some investors to pay others - and more about the illusion and defrauding behind it. same theme.

Edited December 13, 2021 by usagi

[zlemflolia]

17 minutes ago, usagi said:

I believe the assertion that it's a ponzi scheme has less to do directly with the value of crypto coins compared to real money and more to do with how the system is oriented, who the gatekeepers are, who is influencing market sentiment and directing the 'ape' plebs whose idiotic frenzy causes some coins to rise and crash suddenly, and who profits the most from those wild fluctuations. (this fuckery happens in real money markets too, of course. whole other argument about how current capitalism itself has the same fatal flaws.) there are people piling into this thing and boasting of making high value trades without actually being able to cash any of it out into anything used in the real world. scamming and defrauding is rife. people get sucked in by the excitement without doing any due diligence. all of this makes for a system that creates a bullshit illusion of wealth and opportunity whilst actually offering nothing to ordinary people with average luck except a toilet in which to immediately flush all their savings. and while probably making someone far more cunning than them richer than they already are.

hence "ponzi scheme". it's less about the literal definition of one - borrowing from some investors to pay others - and more about the illusion and defrauding behind it. same theme.

>there are people piling into this thing and boasting of making high value trades without actually being able to cash any of it out into anything used in the real world

I hear this used a lot and it's often the key point of this overall argument, but it's fundamentally not true.  You can "cash out" in a variety of ways from buying commodities in cryptocurrency to selling it on a market for another cryptocurrency or fiat currency.  It's not like everyone who owns crypto is just stupid enough to buy something they can't sell.  Of course you can cash out.  Or else the price would never go down.  You can go sell $1m worth of crypto in a way appropriate for the level of liquidity within that crypto market on a particular exchange and get it as fiat currency in a traditional bank account relatively fast.  This isn't a concern

[zkom]

32 minutes ago, usagi said:

I believe the assertion that it's a ponzi scheme has less to do directly with the value of crypto coins compared to real money and more to do with how the system is oriented, who the gatekeepers are, who is influencing market sentiment and directing the 'ape' plebs whose idiotic frenzy causes some coins to rise and crash suddenly, and who profits the most from those wild fluctuations. (this fuckery happens in real money markets too, of course. whole other argument about how current capitalism itself has the same fatal flaws.) there are people piling into this thing and boasting of making high value trades without actually being able to cash any of it out into anything used in the real world. scamming and defrauding is rife. people get sucked in by the excitement without doing any due diligence. all of this makes for a system that creates a bullshit illusion of wealth and opportunity whilst actually offering nothing to ordinary people with average luck except a toilet in which to immediately flush all their savings. and while probably making someone far more cunning than them richer than they already are.

hence "ponzi scheme". it's less about the literal definition of one - borrowing from some investors to pay others - and more about the illusion and defrauding behind it. same theme.

What I meant that I don't see how dollars can be considered a Ponzi scheme because people aren't expecting the value of dollar to go up so it makes zero sense to me to say that "So are the dollars in your pocket".

[zkom]

One thing that strikes me funny is that so far all the "yOu CaN PaY WiTh CrYpToS NoW!" stuff has been that yes you can buy with cryptos but the price in cryptos is based on the fiat currency price. So the price isn't fixed as units of the crypto but as units of a fiat currency and then conversion is applied on top of that. It's the fiat currency price that stays relatively constant while the crypto value varies hour by hour.

So basically you are paying a fiat currency price that is just converted to crypto for the transaction. So in this case the cryptos are more just acting as a payment method and not the actual currency that the goods are valued in. It's the fiat currency that is used to determine the price and value.

I try to imagine someone trying to go full crypto and they get their paycheck in crypto, they are paying their rent and bills in crypto and buying groceries in crypto. Because none of the goods have stable prices, in fact they can have completely different prices during a single day, also their salary would have to fluctuate wildly to accommodate the price changes. If the salary stayed constant in crypto units then one month they would be living like royalty and the next wouldn't able to pay the rent and a can of beer would be worth a full day's salary and then the next month it would swing completely the opposite way. So basically their salary needs swing wildly also or the salary's buying power would swing wildly. Either you don't know what you can buy with your salary or how much crypto you'll be getting each month. What a dream life!

[usagi]

36 minutes ago, zkom said:

What I meant that I don't see how dollars can be considered a Ponzi scheme because people aren't expecting the value of dollar to go up so it makes zero sense to me to say that "So are the dollars in your pocket".

oh, I completely ass-backwards misinterpreted your post.

speaking to the other side of it then: the assertion crypto people have about normal money being just another make-believe ponzi scheme is, in my opinion, not without some merit either. it's a poor argument in defence of crypto to say "well all the rest of this is just as shitty so I'm just going to enjoy this particular flavour of shitty". but fiat currency is just as made up, by definition, and traditional markets are the original grounds for the problems of greed and wealth concentration that we all observe. a lot more people believe in this (non-'puter monies) made up thing however, it's been observed and analysed much longer, and consequently there is a lot more understanding and oversight to try to stop it moving in the directon of all-out fraud and exploitation. which makes all the difference, even if it hasn't been very successful to date.

59 minutes ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

I hear this used a lot and it's often the key point of this overall argument, but it's fundamentally not true.  You can "cash out" in a variety of ways from buying commodities in cryptocurrency to selling it on a market for another cryptocurrency or fiat currency.  It's not like everyone who owns crypto is just stupid enough to buy something they can't sell.  Of course you can cash out.  Or else the price would never go down.  You can go sell $1m worth of crypto in a way appropriate for the level of liquidity within that crypto market on a particular exchange and get it as fiat currency in a traditional bank account relatively fast.  This isn't a concern

converting to another crypto coin or even buying something directly with crypto is not cashing out. and I think it's a stretch to say that the average person will have no trouble selling off their holdings whenever they feel like it without exchange problems, hacking, fraud, or some other form of irretrievable loss. or the currency wildly devaluing suddenly as zkom mentions which makes the whole endeavour pointless anyway. but let's say that it's all moving in a stabler direction where those specific issues will cease to be. what about the other parts of the problem? what about the antics in the current state of the crypto markets that lead people to point at this thing and say "I don't trust it"? do you think crypto is immune from the same basic greed that leads to top-heavy wealth concentration in normal markets? nb. you can't use the "well that's people, not the technology" argument to answer this when you posit the technology will magically solve everything including the people part of the problem.

[auxien]

6 hours ago, zkom said:

I don' think anyone is assuming that the value of their dollars is going to go up over time. More like the opposite because of inflation. Basically you are guaranteed to lose if you get dollars and let them just sit on your account without any interest. And good luck finding any bank account that pays any significant interest for just having your money. So I don't know how it's a Ponzi scheme?

may have to respond properly after work but it seems like others are sorta getting there (not read fully) but your premise/understanding isn’t really correct, or at least not taking real world aspects into account perhaps. 

basically, ANY monetary system that isn’t tied directly to real world goods is a Ponzi scheme. if i can’t be guaranteed by the issuer of the dollar that at any point i and any other holders of a dollar can exchange it for a set amount of corn or wheat or whatever, then it is set up to be manipulated by nefarious actors (banks, the wealthy and powerful, evil villains twirling their mustaches, etc.)

Edited December 13, 2021 by auxien

[zkom]

1 hour ago, auxien said:

may have to respond properly after work but it seems like others are sorta getting there (not read fully) but your premise/understanding isn’t really correct, or at least not taking real world aspects into account perhaps. 

basically, ANY monetary system that isn’t tied directly to real world goods is a Ponzi scheme. if i can’t be guaranteed by the issuer of the dollar that at any point i and any other holders of a dollar can exchange it for a set amount of corn or wheat or whatever, then it is set up to be manipulated by nefarious actors (banks, the wealthy and powerful, evil villains twirling their mustaches, etc.)

My point is that people aren't investing in dollars because someone says the value is going to go up. The value is pretty much guaranteed to go down. So there is no promise of any kind of positive yield, which is central to a Ponzi scheme.

The definition of a Ponzi scheme from US Securities and Exchange Comission:

Quote

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often promise to invest your money and generate high returns with little or no risk. But in many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters do not invest the money. Instead, they use it to pay those who invested earlier and may keep some for themselves.

No one even at the US government is promising anyone high returns for buying dollars. The government acknowledges that the value is going down due to inflation. (Actually the increase of value, or deflation, would be generally a negative thing.)

Simply not having a real world assigned value to some commodity doesn't make something a Ponzi scheme.

Are cryptos then strictly a Ponzi scheme based on this definition? Mneeh. Idk. But fiat currencies for the most part certainly not.

[auxien]

almost no one* is holding a dollar bill going “yesss! this will be worth $1.01 tomorrow, then more and more!!!” …they’re investing dollars into things they think will give them returns, stock markets, new companies, savings with interest, etc. not sure why you’re acting like that’s the issue here.

 

*some markets do trade the values of some currency against other currencies, but in my understanding this isn’t a huge thing (could be wrong). but i don’t think it’s particularly relevant here, as they’re not necessarily expecting the inherent value of the currency to rise, but they are looking to benefit on the rise and fall of its use in relation to other currencies.

1 hour ago, zkom said:

Are cryptos then strictly a Ponzi scheme based on this definition? Mneeh. Idk. But fiat currencies for the most part certainly not.

‘the dollar itself’ isn’t the Ponzi scheme. it’s the entire US marketplace being built upon essentially no true backing.

[zkom]

18 minutes ago, auxien said:

almost no one* is holding a dollar bill going “yesss! this will be worth $1.01 tomorrow, then more and more!!!” …they’re investing dollars into things they think will give them returns, stock markets, new companies, savings with interest, etc. not sure why you’re acting like that’s the issue here.

 

*some markets do trade the values of some currency against other currencies, but in my understanding this isn’t a huge thing (could be wrong). but i don’t think it’s particularly relevant here, as they’re not necessarily expecting the inherent value of the currency to rise, but they are looking to benefit on the rise and fall of its use in relation to other currencies.

‘the dollar itself’ isn’t the Ponzi scheme. it’s the entire US marketplace being built upon essentially no true backing.

The original quote was talking about literal cash money: "Yes, it’s a Ponzi scheme. But who cares? So are the dollars in your pocket." Dollars in anyone's pocket aren't a Ponzi scheme.