Mozilla's call for cryptocurrency donations angers founder
theregister.com
theregister.com
It’s kind of the worst of both worlds. But hey, at least they have a process for USD-denominated refunds on those donations. /s
Mozilla should just have thrown up a self-custodied wallet address or two on their website and be done with it instead of awkward emoji-shill-tweeting about Dogecoin through Bitpay.
Unless of course cryptocurrency really is about anonymity, tax evasion and laundering money.
1. Give up your data
2. Be a criminal
Places outside of your local jurisdiction are not beholden to your laws.
Also, even you have a third option, which is to just not open a bank account. So again, it's a false dichotomy. Not to mention you could move somewhere that allows non-KYC banking. There are definitely more options than you let on.
But charities are there to do a job, if someone wants to give them money, it seems silly to refuse.
Accepting a bitcoin and immediately turning it into USD does not mean you politically support cryptocurrency.
It is interesting that "saving energy" has been established as a dogma that does not even get questioned. I guess the propaganda by big energy monopolists about "carbon footprint" was very successful.
Currently nearly the whole world is running a economic system that is based on economic growth and leads to maximizing resource consumption. Sure using resources efficiently does increase the value society can gain from them but not total consumption. If you stop Bitcoin, people will find other means to use the excess energy.
The reasonable way to solve this is to make energy PRODUCTION stop using fossil fuels anymore. Simple as that. That is why we need to keep talking about our carbon footprints so we don't take any action that might go against the interest of certain corporations.
[1] > The data and analyses presented here show that historically, over long time periods, improvements in efficiency have not succeeded in outpacing increases in the quantity of goods and services provided.
https://web.mit.edu/2.813/www/readings/DahmusGutowskiEfficie...
Like when they say "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle; in that order" for recycling.
If someone wants to give me money and happens to have it in BTC, either they’re going to convert it or I am. I might as well make it easy for them. (I’m generally anti-BTC, but if I were taking donations, I’ll find a way to take what you want to give me.)
Every time someone says "if you don't like it here, go somewhere else / home" with an anti-immigration stance (even if they're talking to people born / naturalized in that country) they're asking them to be an immigrant elsewhere.
Of course it is, since a block holds a max number of transactions. Say a block can hold between 1 and 1000 transactions. Then, mining a block takes 1 kWh. This means that a transaction takes between 1 kWh and 1Wh, depending on transaction size (number of wallets involved, other metadata etc).
What's being "validated" by PoW mining is that someone has done a bunch of expensive, energy-intensive work on a block of transactions to satisfy an arbitrary condition (that a hash of the block be less than a target value). Explaining how this actually "secures the transactions" involves a great deal more hand-waving.
Money has been secure for literally thousands of years before PoW was invented. Sure, PoW works, but it's the most wasteful solution to the problem of securing transactions that has ever been invented in the history of the world.
And Bitcoin will not protect anyone from non-financial inflation, such as rising energy prices causing a rise in prices for most other goods. If anything, Bitcoin would make kt harder to actually transact in this type of market potentially leading to problems of simply there not being enough money for the economy to function.
Finally, while Bitcoin may give some protection from a hostile government, it also leaves you with no protection for much more common cases of fraud, forgotten/destroyed passwords etc. Not to mention, most people transact Bitcoin through an exchange, the equivalent of a bank, which could probably be forced to cede control of "your" wallet to a government just as much as any other financial institution.
It's basically like heating your home by adding CPUs in your walls and having them compute the digits of Pi instead of running current through a resistor, because you don't want to have to trust Big Resistor.
The bitcoin network is far more centralized than traditional payment systems, many orders of magnitude slower, and it uses as much electrical energy as entire countries to achieve this.
How is this any different?
(Point being, there are many, many activities people engage in that are a complete waste of energy. Should PoW cryptocurrency mining be singled out for particular excoriation? Personally I'm against it for the exact reasons mentioned along with the reality that Bitcoin has failed in its mission. But let's not pretend it's the only thing we should stop doing.)
Not to repeat it in full, but the short of it is that bitcoin's usage of energy is not for the amount of energy, but because it must expend a certain economic value of energy in order to keep the network secure. If energy becomes cheaper or more efficient, bitcoin must burn more. Bitcoin's energy usage has an adversarial relationship with efficiency. Practically every other use of energy does not have an adversarial relationship, and will accept the same total amount of cheaper energy to do the exact same work with no complaints.
A helicopter will not require twice as much gas to fly the same distance if we happen to make gas twice as cheap.
As a result, yes I think we should single out PoW.
The person turning it down gets to brag on Twitter about turning it down.
At best you can feed a million people for a day (you certainly won't be curing cancer) but you will launder their reputation in the process. These kinds of charitable causes allow for people like the Sacklers to get the attention they crave from their fellow high society despite the awful things they have done, just because they flash their wallets around at a few galas. As long as nothing requires them to change their behavior, they won't.
A bigger problem is that it swiftly undermines an important trait of a charity which is: that it ought to represent ethical action in at least some (palatable) framework that appeals to people who would consider donating toward that work. For example, I donated to Wikileaks years before Assange's choices made that work highly questionable, and like many other observers would now never consider donating to wikileaks again. The damage to Wikileaks' credibility has hit the organisation in both financial and cultural spheres. Their ability to advocate depends significantly on their reputation.
Not every charities end up with a conundrum quite this dramatic, but it's not uncommon they face some. One example is LGBTQ charities, who are offered money by large organisations which those organisation in return use to portray themselves as more progressive. Those same orgs may still have discriminatory hiring practices or a troubled history with LGBTQ community, and where that occurs, the act of taking that money significantly undermines the charities' reputation among the LGBTQ community itself. This isn't hypothetical, I've seen this happen, both with large companies and with police, which for many decades persecuted LGBTQ people—and in some places still do.
Notably, I didn't actually argue above that "taking someones money means you must morally agree with that person", but instead provided concrete examples of how taking money from morally dubious sources compromises peoples ability to act ethically, and further, compromises that charities appeal to people who would otherwise consider donating.
You're also free to ignore what they want if you are dependent, and either seek other funding, reduce your efforts, or dissolve the charity.
> Having your charity financially dependent on puppy killers or (say) weapons manufacturers undermines your ability to act ethically in various situations, which you may or may not see as important. Here you might picture Assange taking Russian money (indirectly) and the ethical swamp he finds himself in when he criticising behaviour that is an assault on journalism in the west while deciding whether or not to cover the astounding number of journalists in Russia that tend to fall out of windows.
You are arguing from a point if view that where it's a given that a charity compromises it's ability to act ethically if it accepts money from an unethical source. That is the entire question. Assange for example could accept the money and simply not let it affect the content he releases.
> A bigger problem is that it swiftly undermines an important trait of a charity which is: that it ought to represent ethical action in at least some (palatable) framework that appeals to people who would consider donating toward that work. For example, I donated to Wikileaks years before Assange's choices made that work highly questionable, and like many other observers would now never consider donating to wikileaks again. The damage to Wikileaks' credibility has hit the organisation in both financial and cultural spheres. Their ability to advocate depends significantly on their reputation.
A charity by definition represents an ethical action. You are internalizing the ethics of donors into the ethics of the charity. If you do this no large charity is safe since most likely hundreds of thousands of people have donated to them. Most likely many of them having ethics you do not agree with. I'm not sure what your point with Assange is. It's an entirely different discussion separate from whether charities should accept money from unethical donors.
> Not every charities end up with a conundrum quite this dramatic, but it's not uncommon they face some. One example is LGBTQ charities, who are offered money by large organisations which those organisation in return use to portray themselves as more progressive. Those same orgs may still have discriminatory hiring practices or a troubled history with LGBTQ community, and where that occurs, the act of taking that money significantly undermines the charities' reputation among the LGBTQ community itself. This isn't hypothetical, I've seen this happen, both with large companies and with police, which for many decades persecuted LGBTQ people—and in some places still do.
Then the LGBTQ is undermining their own cause. They refuse an improvement in their situation for a theoritical best outcome. Perfect is the enemy of good. I think it's great that a company donates to a good cause. I don't particularly care what their hidden motivations are. In fact I would not ascribe any positive feelings to the company because of them donating. The only reason a company donates is because it thinks it will somehow make them money. If in the process a charity receives money because of this then I think this a great construct.
What I think is bad is that if a donor influences the charity or the charity let's the donor influence them. But a charity accepting money from an unethical donor doesn't imply that. It only makes it a possibility.
Now if we remember that Mozilla, the company, is financially dependent on Google money for the deal of making it the default search engine, we see the much bigger ethical issue here.
Also, by the usage and transaction volume Bitcoin is already behind Ethereum and others, so it is no longer even top 1 and has been falling against others for the last 4 years.
https://twitter.com/evan_van_ness/status/1471643651608649728...
95% of 10 k. Coins. 66% still buys mainly Bitcoin
In terms of "Total Market Capitalization", Bitcoin currently sits around ~39%[1], which feels unlikely if "66% still buys mainly Bitcoin". But again, you could be right.
I can ensure you the number looks very different in reality.
https://twitter.com/evan_van_ness/status/1471643651608649728...
Way more than 95% of the 8900 cryptocurrencies are jokes, like CumRocket.
boom boom
Why not take this argument all the way?
At current valuations (Shiller PEs ~40), stocks are disconnected from their income. Therefore, if the Fed tapers harder or even reduces the money supply, it will crash. This leads to a "Ponzi" musical chairs aspect where investors getting in last will have bailed out the ones before them.
> Real estate obviously
Valuations are still heavily influenced by monetary policy, but also by intrinsic scarcity. As space runs out around desirable areas, the ways to acquire are increasingly limited to buying from an existing owner.
But for the average retail investor owning stocks is the same Ponzi, no?
If I buy Apple stock, I have a piece of a company that rakes in billions in actual profit by turning raw materials into useful machinery.
If I buy a US bond, I get interest, and it is guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the United States.
If I buy gold, I own a physically rare and hard to counterfeit asset that humans have valued for thousands of years.
If I have a savings account, I get interest, and the money is guaranteed by the FDIC.
Even dollar bills under the mattress don't decrease in value by 10% in a single day.
Humans, and by extension governments cannot be trusted with the money supply. It is just human nature. I don’t think control of issuance of currency is even a matter of democracy — for it is not the people that elect the chair of the central banks, the imf, the bis. People have no say in the monetary policy, it is thrust upon them by the unelected. If the individual could have a choice, would any democratic candidate be bound to follow their wishes? So, instead, we bypass this. Step outside the system where it cannot be corrupted.
You trust humans and governments too much. I trust math. Math won’t let you down like humans will.
I have developed educational materials for folks and played with this technology a long time. I will admit I don’t grok every line of the science experiment geth (ethereum client), but I do understand the math, it is the same as Bitcoin. I haven’t been keeping up with Eth client nearly as much as BTC. Running an eth full node needs some real hardware. BTC runs on a potato.
Yes, empires have historically debased their currencies during a decline. Blaming the decline on debasing the currency rather than the other way around is an argument one could mount, but the evidence either way is scant.
As far as elected governments hiring civil servants being anti-democratic goes, must every candidate for every role be voted on? At what point can the people vote for someone and delegate authority to them?
The IMF was created by elected officials and exists with their support.
You have the same say in that as all other voters; you just don’t like being outvoted and have elected to claim the rules are unfair instead.
Freedom and democracy is taken, not given. If you ever stop fighting, the government will become complacent and leech away a large part of an economy.
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-201...
This is an appropriate reaction to the promotion of a scam industry. The antiwork subreddit had to add a warning about crypto because a crypto shill managed to get his post on the front page. The more crypto is normalized, the more regular people will be tricked into worthless "digital property", with their money siphoned into the pockets of people like Gary Vaynerchuk.
I am not sure where you've lived the last 13 years, but in this reality lots of projects that were aspiring use cases of that technology were founded, somebody got wind of it with their disciples...and the coin got dumped afterwards.
So yeah, I would say crypto coins overall are a ponzi scheme. Doesn't matter how good your tech is, people will exploit it to get rich. And they successfully did, otherwise everybody (meaning the whole society) invested in BTC would be a millionaire by now and the current oligarchic structure with almost neverending wealth through manipulation of other people would not exist.
Count the coins, count the IPOs that successfully were dumped. They have a different view on it. Also ask them about whether or not two years after the IPO they've build any actual code or any actual program. Most of them, even the successful ones, abandoned their ideas because they got money out of it and that was the thing they cared about the most.
People in the crypto bubble always forget to ask these questions, because they themselves think that they are already invested into crypto and have no alternative way of using their resources anymore. But that's not true either.
Coming back to BTC: a stable coin does not have more than 20k$ difference in worth per day. Sorry, BTC failed. And now it's the competition of high frequency traders that you as a citizen have no chance against anymore. That is why I'd say BTC also has failed.
Just because you want it to fail, doesn’t really matter. It is not failing, in fact, we had a country adopt it as legal tender last year, with another few to follow in 2022. I like that kind of failure!
My thesis is that BTC failed at exactly that. It's the opposite of stable.
BTC only works advantegous for the HODLers because they actually buy things in another currency, and not in BTC. If they would have to buy electricity, food and shelter and actual physical assets via BTC, they would have to pay millions for it; because BTC is in the state of maximum inflation eversince the HFTs went on it.
I would recommend you read up on the financial crisises that happened all over the world after the second world war, and what the obligations of a central bank (e.g. European central bank) are and why they exist, and what they prevent.
Otherwise this "but it's awesome cause I think I'm rich" discussion is gonna be pretty pointless, because we have really opposing views on what "stability" means in regards to e.g. inflation vs. amount of goods that back up the economy's currency.
The issue that I see behind BTC and other crypto currencies is that they kind of want to introduce a new good that balances the value of the currency: computation power (and maybe bandwidth/storage).
But these goods are heavily dependent on the physical world, the progress of other economies (e.g. chip shortage is gonna hit BTC real hard soon, I "would predict") and the advancements of tech (e.g. ASICs or FPGA-based hash generation methods that are more efficient than what's available to everyone). Those dependencies is what I think are messed up, because they favor the ones that already have money in the physical space.
As long as the goods required by the crypto currency are in the physical space, this inflation and behaviours of created sub-economies iteratively failing at some point won't change. I don't have an idea how to solve it, it's just what I've come to realize after years investing in the crypto currency space; and observing the shitshow that's NFTs right now.
The current state is certainly not what BTC or any crypto currency was intended for as an idea, and getting a database entry somewhere because you were the first is not a reasonable approach to how an economy should work, algorithmically speaking. We need a better approach for throttling and redistribution of wealth, because the gas price in ETH obviously isn't enough.
If an economy favors the ones that were in it first, it's also not an economy that can scale. Because it will result in an oligarchic bank-like structure, where money is hoarded that cannot flow and push the rest of the economy where it would be needed to get out of unfavorable situations like poverty (that is in regards to goods aka only having an old computer).
Some folks are getting paid to stake, which may be more of a scam, and we can agree on that, they sacrifice nothing to produce more wealth.
You haven’t said why it is a scam, except that people were entrepreneurs or investors in risky assets who were rewarded for their risk?
Lottin you have been passionate against this for a long time, are you sure you are rationally evaluating this?
Before that, 2011, GPUs. It was not a risk free operation. All had ongoing energy cost to produce. You said “$1” to make most coins. It is much much higher than this.
If you are talking 2010, sure, the sub 100 or so folks that were actually mining and are actually on this board might think they did extremely well for themselves. Some have died with their coins since. Some have had tragic lottery winning misadventure. Of the ones I know, they absolutely deserve it and make the world better because of it.
Either way, it’s not like most of the early coins have not changed hands many many times. There are early coins, but the vast majority are not in circulation. It’s not nearly as bad as it seems. Significantly better. And most early holders sold years and years and years ago. Most of the circulating coin today is young. The exchanges have about 1.3M trading today.
Bitcoin has redistributed wealth. Especially the early coins, where it was the real hardcore math and crypto nerds that were rewarded. Don’t imagine that the early folks are those NFT and shitcoins shilling charlatans. This is a true cypherpunk revolution.
Amongst whom? Do you have some studies showing the distribution relative to normal fiat?
> You are just bitter
Username checks out.
Your options are buying houses, which are fixed and hard to sell; stocks, which can be inflated and are not internationally portable (only between brokerages) or Bitcoin which is globally portable, takes no space, cannot be inflated or controlled by any State and self custodial.
Where is the scam, except working for inflating fiat?
Jwz already made his money, and owns a nightclub in SF. Your average worker in Turkey or Nigeria just wants the fruit of his labor not to be eroded away by politicians.
Often, to the proposal for a fundamental monetary reform of our currencies, the objection is raised that a maintenance tax or a user fee of, say, five per cent for money, is in effect nothing but inflation in small doses to the same extent; both of them would put money into motion. The latter is right, of course. But there are still essential differences in both these circulation ensuring measures, not only in their impacts but also in the following points.
Maintenance costs of money are applicable only to demand money, cash.
Inflation affects the many times larger monetary assets.
Maintenance costs of money drive surplus money into banks and increase the credit potential.
Inflation drives surplus money into consumption or false investments and heats up economic growth.
Maintenance costs of money stabilize the purchasing power of money and thus price levels.
Inflation causes, in contrast, constant price-alterations and irritations in the structure of all money related matters, especially of all calculations and settlements.
Maintenance costs of money not only enable stability of the purchasing power, but they also push the interest rates little by little towards zero.
Inflation, on the other hand, drives the interest rates upwards, with all their negative consequences.
Maintenance costs of money flow from the cash boxes of the money holder into that of the state and thus to the general public.
The many times higher inflation and interest charges have to be borne by the general public and benefit a minority.
Maintenance costs of money can be scheduled at a fixed rate and levied.
In contrast, inflation can neither be calculated nor set at a fixed rate.https://www.themoneysyndrome.org/contents/chapter-34/
How about we get rid of inflation in fiat currencies then?
Cryptocurrency is... nothing. It could disappear tomorrow and only those affected by the ponzi scheme would even notice.
If a house disappears tomorrow, well, we have more interesting things to discuss.
You can get pretty close to that today by just having an online bank account that can issue checks(to yourself).
I think the problem isn't necessarily the idea, but the implementation (all 25k of them).
If I as a US citizen have to run away from my house, the banks have stolen all the money, what good is Bitcoin going to do? At that point it's all out anarchy, and good luck finding a computer much less electricity. And assuming you find both, what in the world are you even hoping to buy?
And if you're thinking of those in other countries with less protections and stability, fair enough, but those aren't the ones speculating and getting rich off this scheme.
I get it. Your money is safe in FDIC insured banks. There are billions of people that don’t have this luxury. This is for them. And you, if you don’t trust those banks.
So like Tether, TrueUSD, or Diem? Backed by fiat currency and commercial paper.
Or do you mean like Digix where each coin is backed by 1 gram of gold?
It seems like every day I read about hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto being stolen. A simple phishing attack could wipe out your savings. Since there’s no authority to do anything about it, that money is gone. To me, this affects more people than the “flee your land, take nothing with you” crowd.
Exchanges
Smart Contracts
People that give away their keys.
I’d you don’t risk giving your Bitcoin to an exchange, don’t wrap it and give it to smart contracts, and don’t give away your keys, you should be ok. If your keys are stored safely you wont be phished. I feel bad for people that are, but it is their mistake, not the technology.
But yeah, it’s generally the same case as giving away your keys. Don’t use your keys in the main memory of a compromised system.
For stock, what effect do stocks changing hands in the stock market have to the company really? (repeated from here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29823307)
Until then, people like this will continue to get outraged while the pro-crypto crowd carries on unaffected.
The only technological solution to the downsides of PoW is to not use PoW.
Nice logical fallacy by the way, "opponents just have to solve the problems we've created..." no thanks.
Cryptocurrency being in use means people perceive the cost of using them being less than the benefit from using them.
If the problem is the carbon emitted for power generation, then tax the carbon emissions (which already happens in lots of jurisdictions).
About Bitcoin being a Ponzi scheme, if this is true, then so are the current stock and bond market at absurd valuations (1.75% interest while inflation is 6.8%), where investors play musical chairs until the Fed and commercial banks stop printing money.
Most of the cost isn't born by those who benefit from it, it's an externality to them.
> If the problem is the carbon emitted for power generation, then tax the carbon emissions (which already happens in lots of jurisdictions).
There's still the opportunity cost of available low-carbon energy being frittered away on cryptocurrencies instead of something more useful.
And to not want to contribute?
Why is not ok to prefer money regulated by the rule of law?
Moreover, I have no idea how I could help with the problem of recovering stolen cryptocurrency/NFTs or lost private keys.
https://twitter.com/DigiEconomist/status/1477420461122375683
> Some statistics to start the year:
> During 2021 Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total, which is comparable to the electrical energy consumed by a country like Argentina.
> Related CO2 emissions were ~64 Mt; enough to negate the entire global net savings from deploying EVs.
is it?
> Does giving cryptocurrency result in more of my charitable donation going to transaction fees?
> No. Bitpay’s service fees, at a flat 1%, are actually lower than credit card or Paypal transaction fees.
How does that answer the question? The question was about cryptocurrency fees, which is not answered. Or is BitPay eating the transaction costs, if so, how is their business model viable? (Bypassing the issue that using BitPay is nowhere near decentralization and defeats the entire purpose of cryptocurrencies)
> What personal information does Mozilla require cryptocurrency donors to provide?
> In most cases, Mozilla requires only an email address [...]
That seems false, the form is asking me for Name, Address, Phone number and more AFK details if I try to donate. Again, antithetical to the original purpose of cryptocurrencies.
No, I haven't missed that. So if I send 10 USD via Ethereum to Mozilla, BitPay will take 1% of the amount that reaches Mozilla, but I'll also pay a huge transaction fee on top of that, making it almost guaranteed that I'll pay more in transaction fees than what Mozilla actually gets. That means that the answer to the question "Does giving cryptocurrency result in more of my charitable donation going to transaction fees?" is a sound "Yes" in some cases.
Mozilla can't figure out what your transaction cost is, because it is variable. You have much better information on that part of the transaction than they do.
Yes, I agree with this, but for someone who is using cryptocurrencies the first time, it might not be, and the answer they currently have to that question doesn't say what you said, it says something different.
You don't know that. The sender can pass the transaction fee on to Mozilla simply by deducting it from the donated amount.
But the real question is: if I have the equivalent of 10 USD in some form, how can I make sure Mozilla gets as much of those 10 USD as possible? The answer will almost certainly be traditional payments infra, especially for small sums. Even if I currently have 10USD worth of BTC, it may be more efficient for me to convert it to actual USD and pay whatever is left through PayPal/a credit card then it is to make an on-chain transaction.
Eth is an expensive gas coin and will cost multiple dollars or more to trade or sell. Agreed about that.
[0] https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...
I think there are some very bad wallets out there. You can do minimum fee txs nearly all the time. Blocks generally are not full for long periods, so a 1sat tx will confirm eventually.
Only the name and e-mail fields are marked as required, dunno if the name would accept anonymous for small donations.
>Again, antithetical to the original purpose of cryptocurrencies.
Sure, but donations have certain laws an organization needs to follow.
https://blog.mozilla.org/foundation-archive/fundraising/bitc...
(Also, it was still using an awful lot and the trendline was clear.)
Same goes for donations in croins, I presume.
However, unfortunately I would now say that it's been co-opted by US-centric grifters/charlatans/hustlers.
The grifters need to go, but the crypto community doesn't really seem to want this to happen, as if the movement has been co-opted by these exact types of people.
Sidenote: I would hazard a guess that the people memeing about "oh my energy use" haven't looked into it with all that much detail. Fiat is MUCH worse in this position.
> Sidenote: I would hazard a guess that the people memeing about "oh my energy use" haven't looked into it with all that much detail. Fiat is MUCH worse in this position.
No, fiat is processing literally millions of times the amount of transactions of BTC & ETH combined for a fraction of the energy use. Sure, the whole financial sector is larger in energy use than BTC and ETH, but most of that is all the parts that BTC and ETH don't cover at all - insurance, loans, risk eval, customer support, investments, KYC and AML, and many other functions that are crucial to the economy.
Visa is exactly the right equivalent to the BTC network.