yaa_minu

Yes, in pow systems, miners can only ddos the network and they can do nothing more.

Satoshi mined every single one of it and anyone would have been able to do same also he never sold his coins and left the project early on to avoid having too much control. Quite the opposite with Vitalik who on the other hand premined his eth, has been selling them Ever since, and continues to have significant control over ehereum.

No, he donated an illiquid pump and dump shitcoin that was sent to him by the scammers who created it. There's little to praise about this.

We need to understand is that, while many cryptocurrencies are completely worthless, some cryptocurrencies have solid reasons to exist.

Your characterization of all cryptocurrencies as a ponzi scheme purely based on the fact that people buy it because they believe others will buy it later at a higher price is weak because that is how all monetary assets like gold operates. We take it because we believe others will also take in the future.

I personally buy bitcoin not to sell for a higher price but rather, I believe strongly that a monetary system that's provably scarce, programmable, completely decentralized, permission-less, trustless, higly divisible, borderless and very easy to transfer has the potential to revolutionize how we store value.

This does not mean that everyone buys bitcoin because of this, some (perhaps majority) buy it because they believe it's going to go up but I see that as an initial incentive to get people into the industry.

At the end of the day, only time will tell if cryptocurrencies can actually live up to their promises of revolutionizing the financial system.

Yes, 70% premine. Absolutely unethical

It's interesting because if anything, it's the current financial system that's created out of thin air.

bitcoin is burning down down the planet? Why do you equate energy use to environmental destruction?

Bitcoin has been superseded by better projects like? care to give some examples?

Elon claims they sold the 10% only to prove the liquidity of bitcoin and he himself hasn't sold any of his personal holdings[1]

1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1386821144037236737

Not everyone is an investor. People who are not ready to invest now should beable to save their earnings withouthhaving to worry about their savings losing value.

Location: Accra, Ghana

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Not immediately but maybe in the future

Technologies: Python, Django, Rest Framework, FastApi, Tornado, Node.js, Typscript, Javascript, Postgres, Redis, Mongodb, Celery, Elastic Search

Email: afolanyaaminu {at] {g-mail} [dot] [com]

resume: https://tinyurl.com/lci9JBJB

github: https://github.com/yaaminu/

I'm an all-round generalist backend engineer with over 4 years of experience and have spent the majority of my career working in fast-paced startup environments. At my current company, I've played a critical role in the design of among many things, the architecture of our inventory, payment processing and billing system. Before joining them, I helped build data aggregation tools and a monitoring dashboard for a UK based Non-Profit that focuses on early childhood development. More in my resume.

>... and the huge load it puts on the GPU market

Point of correction: Bitcoin is mined with ASICS not GPUs

I suspect US citizenship required, right?

Location: Accra, Ghana

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Not immediately but maybe in the future

Technologies: Python, Django, Rest Framework, FastApi, Tornado, Node.js, Typscript, Javascript, Postgres, Redis, Mongodb, Celery, Elastic Search

Email: afolanyaaminu {at] {g-mail} [dot] [com]

resume: https://tinyurl.com/lci9JBJB

github: https://github.com/yaaminu/

I'm an all-round generalist backend engineer with over 4 years of experience and have spent the majority of my career working in fast-paced startup environments. At my current company, I've played a critical role in the design of among many things, the architecture of our inventory, payment processing and billing system. Before joining them, I helped build data aggregation tools and a monitoring dashboard for a UK based Non-Profit that focuses on early childhood development. More in my resume.

Majority of bitcoin mining is done with renewables[1]. In fact, it won't be long, only mining with renewables may be profitable.

1. https://www.vox.com/2019/6/18/18642645/bitcoin-energy-price-...

No, the model predicted a completely different load even with intervention(in the chart). That's the point of the tweet.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Basic Economics[1] by Thomas Sowell.

It's a fairly detailed book but it's worth the time. If you're too busy to read a whole book, you might want to take a look at "Economics in One Lesson" [2] by Herny Hazlitt.

The foundation for economic education[3] has some great articles too about economics and public choice.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowel/dp/04650... [2] https://fee.org/media/14946/economicsinonelesson.pdf [3] https://fee.org

The talk was given in 1977 when at the time Russia was socialist. This is no more the case. A better comparison can be made today with say Venezuela.

The concentration of power, in this case, refers to political power not market(economic) power. If you think about it carefully, economic power often is very weak and vulnerable as they often derive them from consumers which means they can only maintain it by giving consumers what they want. People like Bezos, Bill Gates are far less powerful than say, Putin, Erdogan, Xi, etc.

As an example, how far did Bloomberg's billions take him in the democratic nomination?

>This is empirically false, there are many ways a large business can lock down a market/resource, or very nearly so, and prevent competition from smaller upstarts. Look no further than two-billion-dollar-a-day-revenue Walmart, whose signature practice is running competitors out of town by undercutting them and sustaining the losses until they close.

A better way to word this is this: consumers chose Walmart over its competitors because they believe they get better deals there than the alternatives.

So the solution is to abolish capitalism right? Assuming you're right with your "lobbying" claim, how can you solve this by increasing government involvement in the economy? won't it be the same corrupt politicians who would be more empowered to pass laws to benefit their cronies?

Criminal justice reform or simply decriminalizing drug use will eliminate this problem entirely.

How does this relate to the incarceration rate which is what this thread is all about?

Meaning(value) is subjective, under capitalism, what's demanded by people is what's produced. Sure speculation can mislead people into valuing the wrong thing but that's hardly a problem inherent with capitalism itself.

Whenever I analyze arguments against the free market, it almost always seems that the person speaking thinks the market should give people what the person speaking thinks they ought to want.

45% of incarcerations in the US are due to the drug war [1].

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

Maybe you should watch the video before passing a comment? You're completely wrong with your assumption because he made no such statement in the talk.

Where's the free market here? As far as I know, student loans are guaranteed by the government so the universities are not incentivized to keep the cost down because no matter how much they charge, students can "afford" to pay.

No, let's look at it from a more philosophically objective point of view.

Why do you think that the millions of Londoners who voluntarily chose Uber over traditional taxi services should be denied the freedom to choose what taxi services to use?

> I disagree. The UK could be viewed as more "socialist" than Ghana...

Yes, Ghana has been through a lot of dictatorship rule until recently when we saw the light of reducing government involvement in people's lives. But why does that matter here?

>Also, with the tactics Uber has historically used - in a "proper" free market, would they not become a monopoly?

How so? it's very easy to start a ride-hailing service. In fact, I've lost count of how many of them we have here in Accra. Uber itself has been forced to reduce its charges by other competitors like Yango[1], Bolt(Taxify) and even ironically the traditional taxi providers.

These days, I don't even bother to order uber or Yango or Taxify because the taxis are responding to the competition.

[1] https://yango.yandex.com/en_gh/

The fact that you're being downvoted shows how much of a socialist hell-hole HN has become.

No one is forcing people to drive for uber and no one is forcing the rider to use uber. In my city, Accra, Taxis were so expensive until uber came to the market and forced down the price.

The only system that puts the consumer (read: common man) first is the free market (if and only if politicians would allow it to work).

The motto of the UK labour party is "For the many, not the few". I hope you get the joke now.