Crypto Needs to Be Eradicated | Hacker News Reader

Crypto Needs to Be Eradicated

aljazeera.com

13 pointsdontbenebby19 comments

Haha Michael Hiltzik wtf are you talking about?

Cannot be audited? Lol ok come back when you understand “free and open source software” “transparent blockchain that records transactions for all enternity” “trustlessness”. This guy need to go back to the start of the 2010s.

Yes, but conversely many blockchain technologies were pushed for "privacy".

Maybe I misunderstand that word, since I stopped short of a PhD to fight in the crypto (as in cryptography) wars, but "privacy" doesn't just mean avoiding AML limits[1,2] and Bitcoin etc are MORE tracable[3] than cash, and this has been known since around the time of Bitcoin's inception.

Bitcoin and other crypto have value in that they are "Paypal killers" -- they take away power from abusive orgs like that company, that don't handle fraud complaints well.

To give a case study:

I was so angered when Paypal held hostage funds meant for victims of Hurricane Katrina around the time I was transitioning from boy to man, that I never registered for the service nor Ebay, and conducted all my shopping I could not accomplish on sites like Amazon via Craigslist, a where if I give you money and you try to walk away without giving me what I purchased, I could deal with them physically.

(But that never happened... I sometimes got annoyed people would pull schoolgirl crap like try to pay 10 bucks less for what I listed, but not have threat modeled that I have a car and most students, who did the bulk of craigslist furni transactions in that college town, didn't, so I could go down the list from buyer to buyer until someone paid what was agreed, while they were stuck in their dorm hoping someone from the internet brings them a coffee table with minimal drama at a fair price, then never returns.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act#Currency_tran... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring#United_States [3] Eg: https://fc13.ifca.ai/proc/1-3.pdf [4] https://www.wired.com/2005/09/paypal-freezes-out-katrina-aid...

Some lose money on a receding market, so it needs to shutdown, says Pulitzer-prized journalist.

It wastes productive resources(power, hardware, compute time) on non-productive applications(Ponzi, digital beanie babies, gambling).

Who defines non productive applications? Are movies and video games non productive? Should we stop making entertainment? Should we close down casinos? Why? Why not?

The production of genuine art is productive.

Also it’s very hard to argue that casinos should exist so that’s kind of a non-starter.

I'd argue poker is different than slots, though both are "gambling".

I don't know how I feel about things like blackjack or roulette. They can be good networking, good sources of intel, but I hate that casinos make me combine bad decisions (like inhaling smoke in order to be inefficient with my money).

And no, don't close down casinos, because people will still gamble, and then they'll be having their legs broken by the mafia rather than chased by debt agencies.

It also belches carbon into the atmosphere and inceintivises bad actors to run grifts and Ponzi schemes. It's the negative externality to end all negative externalities.

wastes productive resources … on non-productive applications

I do that a lot myself too. If you divide BTC energy by 8 billion humans, it is 0.05kWh per day, correct me if my calc is wrong. I think I waste around 2.8kWh per evening (at home), most of which is non-productive for sure. k=56:1

Isn't this kind of logic capable of hand-waving anything away? 100 terawatt hours is no joke, if you can make it seem trivial by dividing by 8B that says more about the method than the number.

8 billion people aren't using BTC, so your denominator doesn't have any sensible meaning. You divide BTC energy by 3 transactions per second.

It does, because mining cost doesn’t scale with a number of users. It is a per-humanity process. The only sensible comparison here is to the average of per-person or per-humanity waste.

You divide BTC energy by 3 transactions per second

What meaning does that have? An absolute cost of a transaction compared to what?

All of humanity can't use Bitcoin if only three people can use it per second.

It's an absolute cost per transaction compared to traditional money with banking, which is so cheap to use that it's basically free.

You are counting people that have never used cryptocurrency.

> You are counting people that have never used cryptocurrency.

We are people too

So what are video games? Are we to ban everything not explicitly productive?

Video games are fun, fun is a vital human need- video games are productive.

Crypto is fun for a lot of people too.

Why not art in general friend? Why are we so focused on video games?

I nearly did an MFA in Creative Nonfiction -- I used to sit in a coffee shop that was eventually gentrified away to become the site of one of the largest banks (out of towners, of course) and read stuff like Truman Capote's "In True Blood" or Vonnegut's "Cat Cradle" as I played with various wifi and bluetooth attacks on my cute little Eee PC that fit into my very unfashionable cargo jorts.

I had a privileged position that paid a whole twelve dollars an hour -- enough that unlike my friends, I didn't have to work two or three jobs, and was able to save up to attend my first hacker convention after paying for rent and food.

The CFAA has long since expired. And I did each attack once, to learn how, then avoided using them again absent a very good reason to abuse my access. Looking back a decade and a half later, I am not at all sorry for the things I did those mornings over a quad espresso or whatever.

Moving on:

Being nonproductive is cool and good, but I'm an Epicurean[1], not a hedonist[2] -- you need to balance chasing pleasure with less fun stuff, and the issue seems to be arguments over what I will term "the ratio". (sarcastic finger quotes) or you'll end up addicted to opiate, diabetic, or suffering from some other induced ill that makes you unable to enjoy the simple things in life rather than smoking weed, drinking espresso, and in continual wonder at the joy of knowing how stuff works.

//[1] Epicureanism argued that pleasure was the chief good in life.[8] Hence, Epicurus advocated living in such a way as to derive the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one's lifetime, yet doing so moderately in order to avoid the suffering incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism#Philosophy

//[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism

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