Cryptocurrencies and the economy

[psionl0]

Seems that almost all the interest in crypto is purely speculative and not very beneficial, societally speaking. Hell, the intense speculative nature of crypto makes it less useful as a currency, and has a lot of negative externalities like power and material usage.

That's a very bitcoin-centric POV.

The real question is whether a crypto could be developed that overcomes the technical shortcomings of bitcoin and therefore becomes more useful as a currency instead of just an instrument of speculation.

 

[Belz...]

ftfy.

You're not fixing anything. The two are not mutually exclusive. Killing people can be profitable too.

 

[psionl0]

You're not fixing anything. The two are not mutually exclusive. Killing people can be profitable too.

"Crazy" is not a part of the business vocabulary. Businesses don't make value judgements. Profits are all.

Anything that is legal and profitable goes. Even if it is illegal but profitable then some businesses will engage in it. (Although, taking out contracts on human lives is an unusual business practice. Bad publicity is bad for profits).

 

[Puppycow]

If you are going to make this all about bitcoin then there is no point in having a separate thread.

Obviously I'm not. This is a thread about cryptocurrencies in general and the externalities they create.

The energy consumption figures show a need to find some workable consensus validation model and to ditch the POW, POS and other competitive validation schemes. There is definitely a demand for cryptocurrencies.

OK, I would happily agree with you about that. The only question I have is who does that? Who has the power to make a decision like that? Does anyone?

I found an article from 2019 about how Ethereum was supposedly going to cut its energy consumption by 99%, but I don't see that that has actually happened 2 years later. The article was published in January of 2019 and suggested that this would happen before the end of that year. Has it?

Buterin plans to finally start undoing his brainchild’s energy waste in 2019. This year Buterin, the Ethereum Foundation he cofounded, and the broader open-source movement advancing the cryptocurrency all plan to field-test a long-promised overhaul of Ethereum’s code. If these developers are right, by the end of 2019 Ethereum’s new code could complete transactions using just 1 percent of the energy consumed today.

Because from what I'm seeing, it hasn't happened yet. And probably some stakeholders who invested a lot of money in GPUs don't want it to happen because it would reduce the value of their investment.

 

[Belz...]

"Crazy" is not a part of the business vocabulary.

Maybe you missed it but I'm not a business, and I made the post. Now, do you have any actual comment to make about what I said, or was that just your reflexive defensive attitude towards cryptos?

Businesses don't make value judgements.

Sure they do. Look at Georgia right now.

Profits are all.

No they're not. You're describing predatory businesses and publicly-traded corportations, but not all business.

Business is the idea of selling products and services for payment. The two sides of the equation are intimately linked. And since we are talking about humans, a host of other things can come into play.

 

[psionl0]

The only question I have is who does that? Who has the power to make a decision like that? Does anyone?

Ripple and Stellar both use a consensus validation system. Instead of the "winner" getting to add the next block to the chain, all the nodes participate in generating the next block (or "last closed ledger" in their case).

Neither is geared up for crypto-mining ATM and there doesn't seem to be an equitable block reward scheme but there is no reason to believe that nobody will adapt that technology in the future.

 

[psionl0]

No they're not. You're describing predatory businesses and publicly-traded corportations, but not all business.

Maybe that's the way it works on Planet X but in the real world (other than some privately owned businesses) nobody looks much above the bottom line.

If you have bought in to a superannuation or managed investment fund then it is a safe bet that the only 3 letters that matter to you are R O I. You don't know (or care) what investments they have made. For all you know, they might even have some shares in a bitcoin mining company (or one that has a subsidiary that mines bitcoins).

 

[Belz...]

Maybe that's the way it works on Planet X but in the real world (other than some privately owned businesses) nobody looks much above the bottom line.

See, this is one of the reasons I don't take you seriously. You just repeated what I said and made it look like you disagreed.

Yes, I know publicly-traded companies only care about profit and that's a problem. Caring about the other side of the equation is important, and unless you think reality is planet X, it's actually been an essential part of business.

Your brand of care-for-nothing greed is a dangerous fiction. But hey, you sidestepped my point about Georgia so I guess it doesn't exist.

 

[Samson]

If you are going to make this all about bitcoin then there is no point in having a separate thread.

The energy consumption figures show a need to find some workable consensus validation model and to ditch the POW, POS and other competitive validation schemes. There is definitely a demand for cryptocurrencies.

No, that was new information on ethereum.

 

[psionl0]

You just repeated what I said and made it look like you disagreed.

Or vice versa.

 

[Puppycow]

Ripple and Stellar both use a consensus validation system. Instead of the "winner" getting to add the next block to the chain, all the nodes participate in generating the next block (or "last closed ledger" in their case).

Neither is geared up for crypto-mining ATM and there doesn't seem to be an equitable block reward scheme but there is no reason to believe that nobody will adapt that technology in the future.

That's great, but what I meant is who has the authority to make bitcoin and ethereum change to a similar model that doesn't require huge amounts of electricity to run?

 

[Puppycow]

"Crazy" is not a part of the business vocabulary. Businesses don't make value judgements. Profits are all.

Anything that is legal and profitable goes.

I don't actually think most for-profit businesses have that mindset. The company I work for doesn't. They care about their reputation too.

 

[psionl0]

That's great, but what I meant is who has the authority to make bitcoin and ethereum change to a similar model that doesn't require huge amounts of electricity to run?

There is no central authority with bitcoin. Changes to the protocol may be agreed to by the mining community. However you may get a situation where only some of the community agrees to a specific change and others don't. The result is a fork where two versions of the currency run instead of one. In a "hard" fork, the crypto in each fork may not be interchangeable. This was the case with bitcoin and bit cash.

Regardless, changing from a competitive to a consensus based validation model is not even a hard fork. It would be a completely new crypto currency that would have to compete with the existing cryptos. Whether a new entrant could compete successfully would depend on a number of factors. I would suggest that scalability (the ability to increase the transaction rate) and low energy consumption would be two of them.

 

[lomiller]

That's a very bitcoin-centric POV.

The real question is whether a crypto could be developed that overcomes the technical shortcomings of bitcoin and therefore becomes more useful as a currency instead of just an instrument of speculation.

Resolving a few technical shortcomings will not fix a flawed concept.

 

[Olmstead]

Carbon tax it to death (along with some other stuff, but this seems particularly egregious).

 

[Belz...]

Or vice versa.

That doesn't make any sense. You were responding to what I said.

You're really just reflexively disagreeing with anyone who posts about cryptos, at this point.

 

[psionl0]

Resolving a few technical shortcomings will not fix a flawed concept.

Labeling something "flawed" without the slightest hint of a justification is worthless. If cryptos were a "flawed" concept then they would have died out decades ago.

Ripple is already being used by major banks as a faster and cheaper alternative to using SWIFT for international money transfers. So cryptos definitely have a place if technical shortcomings are overcome.

 

[psionl0]

You're really just reflexively disagreeing with anyone who posts about cryptos, at this point.

You are just reflexively disagreeing with anything I post - on principle.

 

[Belz...]

You are just reflexively disagreeing with anything I post - on principle.

Again, not making any sense. You were responding to what I said.

I can't preemptively disagree with you. That's what I mean by reflexively. You don't even put any thought into it anymore.

 

[psionl0]

Again, not making any sense. You were responding to what I said.

I can't preemptively disagree with you. That's what I mean by reflexively. You don't even put any thought into it anymore.

Of course you would argue about that - just like you ague about everything I post.

There was nothing wrong with pointing out that bitcoin mining is profitable in spite of the electricity consumption but you are so angry that I was the one to point it out that you haven't stopped attacking me since.