An insight on Bitcoin

[Howel]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/co...hats_ethereum/

Is...this as utterly braindead as it seems? How does this compare to an actual service, like Uber or Ebay, who take a cut of sales through their platform?

Like yeah, no shit Uber or Ebay, who facilitate transactions, will take a cut of the transaction, because it's not a 1:1 transaction as you're using a third party as a middleman.

Am I missing something here or is this like, genuinely what's going on? Or just what cryptobros think is going on because it doesn't seem to reflect like, actual reality?

I'm just making sure I'm not missing something obvious here.

It is apparently to eliminate the middleman, who sells your data. Which... I am not sure how true that is. I don't think these services can willy nilly sell your account and purchasing data, I feel like there are some very strict laws in that regard.

[Edge-]

It is apparently to eliminate the middleman, who sells your data. Which... I am not sure how true that is. I don't think these services can willy nilly sell your account and purchasing data, I feel like there are some very strict laws in that regard.

But he didn't compare it to say, a Google or a Facebook where that's how the monetize their users most often. That would maybe be a bit more fair of a comparison. I'm mystified at how crypto somehow would eliminate say, Uber or Ebay's cut if you like, used those platforms to purchase something or get a ride. Unless "smart contracts" are going to be so smart they can somehow predict everything you want and pre-emptively find another person directly who will provide that good/service without the need of any third party providers.

Which sounds a lot like magic, to me.

[Howel]

But he didn't compare it to say, a Google or a Facebook where that's how the monetize their users most often. That would maybe be a bit more fair of a comparison. I'm mystified at how crypto somehow would eliminate say, Uber or Ebay's cut if you like, used those platforms to purchase something or get a ride. Unless "smart contracts" are going to be so smart they can somehow predict everything you want and pre-emptively find another person directly who will provide that good/service without the need of any third party providers.

Which sounds a lot like magic, to me.

Yeah, I think the "kill the middleman" narrative is not entirely thought through as to what that would actually have off consequence.

[Edge-]

Yeah, I think the "kill the middleman" narrative is not entirely thought through as to what that would actually have off consequence.

Yeah. Looks like most of the top comments are pointing out that his examples are garbage (and that eth isn't a cryptocurrency which is news to me, but I don't follow it closely), I'm just surprised it got that many upvotes.

And I guess there are fees for eth transfers anyways so...

Seriously, the most and more I learn/come across about crypto, the fewer and weaker the arguments in favor of it get. Really the only practical uses I can still think of are like, buying drugs on the internet and shit. Cool and all, but seems kinda pointless and why can't folks find a local dealer and shit?

[igualitarist]

I'll just leave this here: (about the fake news regarding "bitcoin" destroying the environment")

[Edge-]

I'll just leave this here: (about the fake news regarding "bitcoin" destroying the environment")

Ah yes, I too go and ask oil companies if their businesses have any impact on the climate/environment. And the coal industry about if there are any adverse affects like black lung, to working in a coal mine. And I sometimes even ask the tobacco industry if smoking is harmful to my health, or addictive.

[Shadowferal]

Ah yes, I too go and ask oil companies if their businesses have any impact on the climate/environment. And the coal industry about if there are any adverse affects like black lung, to working in a coal mine. And I sometimes even ask the tobacco industry if smoking is harmful to my health, or addictive.

And I bet they all insist "perfectly safe. Environment...health, no issues here."

[igualitarist]

Ah yes, I too go and ask oil companies if their businesses have any impact on the climate/environment. And the coal industry about if there are any adverse affects like black lung, to working in a coal mine. And I sometimes even ask the tobacco industry if smoking is harmful to my health, or addictive.

Oh you replied to me 3 minutes after i posted the video, which means you didn't even watch. But i see, you prefer to ask those old fucks in wall street instead about a new way to do finances.

What you are doing here is listening to oil companies (a dying industry) about green energy (a new industry). Those fucks in wall street (and all the mainstream media loyal to them) are a dying industry, cryptocoins are a new industry.

But at least have the dignity to watch the video and check its sources before going into baseless bashing.

[Edge-]

Oh you replied to me 3 minutes after i posted the video, which means you didn't even watch. But i see, you prefer to ask those old fucks in wall street instead about a new way to do finances.

What you are doing here is listening to oil companies (a dying industry) about green energy (a new industry). Those fucks in wall street (and all the mainstream media loyal to them) are a dying industry, cryptocoins are a new industry.

But at least have the dignity to watch the video and check its sources before going into baseless bashing.

You're right, I didn't. Why? For the same reason I don't go to the Camel YouTube channel for information on how cigarettes aren't addictive or harmful. Or the BP channel about how there are no environmental risks of drilling for oil in the ocean or burning fossil fuels.

Find a source that doesn't have a vested financial interest in showing that there's no environmental impact from crypto mining and shit and I'll be happy to give it a read/watch.

And actually I'm not listening to oil companies about shit. I don't give a fuck what any of them have to say. Or really, Wall Street either. Fuck Wall Street, and my view remains that the stock market is largely a load of horse shit.

[uuuhname]

I don't know, crypto sure seems to collapse on itself worse than wall street does and it doesn't have a stellar record on stability either.

[Howel]

You're right, I didn't. Why? For the same reason I don't go to the Camel YouTube channel for information on how cigarettes aren't addictive or harmful. Or the BP channel about how there are no environmental risks of drilling for oil in the ocean or burning fossil fuels.

Find a source that doesn't have a vested financial interest in showing that there's no environmental impact from crypto mining and shit and I'll be happy to give it a read/watch.

And actually I'm not listening to oil companies about shit. I don't give a fuck what any of them have to say. Or really, Wall Street either. Fuck Wall Street, and my view remains that the stock market is largely a load of horse shit.

A quick skim through it, and it debunks something that no one here has mentioned, like at all. Basically a single study was published long ago, that took the aggravate growth rate and then let that continue, which fair enough that is indeed "fake" news. But as no one here has argued that point, it is the emission estimates these last coupled of years, be they high or low, that have come up in this thread, and those aren't great, no matter how you look at them (if you add the mining requirements for the rare minerals used in computer components, it is even worse).

So yeah, skipping that video was probably a wise move, would recommend.

[Fluttershy]

DLTs have and will be used even more by actual businesses and banks. Problem is you're looking at ancient, badly coded crap from 10 years ago that costs 80$ in gas fees per transaction like ethereum.

There's maybe, 2-3 of them that have any real world use. Notice the lack of shitcoin casinos/animal token staking here?

[PACOX]

So can I pay my landlord, taxes, buy food with xyzcoin yet?

[Fluttershy]

So can I pay my landlord, taxes, buy food with xyzcoin yet?

No, because cryptocurrencies are doomed to fail, it's simply an extension of this technology. No government will ever allow it to be used as currency(outside their own).

[Krastyn]

Oh you replied to me 3 minutes after i posted the video, which means you didn't even watch. But i see, you prefer to ask those old fucks in wall street instead about a new way to do finances.

What you are doing here is listening to oil companies (a dying industry) about green energy (a new industry). Those fucks in wall street (and all the mainstream media loyal to them) are a dying industry, cryptocoins are a new industry.

But at least have the dignity to watch the video and check its sources before going into baseless bashing.

My first question would be, did you watch this video before posting it?

One of the arguments "debunking" the amount of power bitcoin uses was because a study calculated that if Bitcoin were to become the go-to currency, that it would need to be doing almost a billion transactions per day. The host was all "Ha! bitcoin can't do more than 300,000 per day! Their math is wrong!" Which does not in any way, debunk the energy calculation if Bitcoin were to see widespread use.

They also talk about how Bitcoin miners often set up next to renewable sources, and cites Canada as one of those locations. Yes, much like this site in Canada, which is run 100% off fossil fuels. So green.

They talk about how Bitcoin uses less energy that the entire banking system of the US......while not actually providing a single piece of data to back it up. The entire section of the video on "Bitcoin Mining Energy Use" is just a clusterfuck.
- They start off saying they don't really know how much energy is used.
- They then reference a study that estimated between 40 to 445 TWh of energy, with a central estimate of 130.
- They then state the claim that global Bitcoin energy uses more than a small country is false, because the comparison used a value of 111.7 TWh, instead of the minimum of 40. Which is hilarious.
- They then go on to say how even if you use higher estimation, that's still less than the idle power used by devices in the US, and have a graphic in the background showing the study (check 9:42 or so in the video. The thing is, the graphic shows 50, 500MW power plants, which is 219 TWh of power. That's actually less than half the "higher" estimate.
- They also compare it to the global gold mining industry, which consumes 131.9 TWh. Which again, is pretty much bang on the central estimate. For just Bitcoin, in its current state, not as a globally used currently that would need to scale up by several orders of magnitude.

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole video, is how he claims that Bitcoin mining is really a driver of green technology, because you can build a new hydro plant, plop down a mining farm next to it, and then use the revenue from the mining farm to invest and build more green energy projects. Which is like saying you could build a new hydro plant, build a masssive grow-op next to it, and then use the revenue to build more projects. Weed is clearly a green energy driver. Or literally any other thing that uses electricity, from which the product can be monetized.

As Edge predicted, this was like watching a video hosted by Joe Camel, about how tobacco is totally misunderstood. He's a massive shill, literally telling outright lies.

[Magical Mudcrab]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/co...hats_ethereum/

Is...this as utterly braindead as it seems? How does this compare to an actual service, like Uber or Ebay, who take a cut of sales through their platform?

Like yeah, no shit Uber or Ebay, who facilitate transactions, will take a cut of the transaction, because it's not a 1:1 transaction as you're using a third party as a middleman.

Am I missing something here or is this like, genuinely what's going on? Or just what cryptobros think is going on because it doesn't seem to reflect like, actual reality?

I'm just making sure I'm not missing something obvious here.

The guy on reddit is a fucking liar or doesn't know how ETH processes transactions. Transactions done on BTC and ETH both require some sum to be paid for the transaction to process. Transactions are processed as a part of the Proof-of-Work process (PoW), which nowadays typically prioritizes individuals who provide the most of either currency for processing their transaction.

If A wants to send B some ETH, A must request a transaction to send X amount of ETH to B. These transactions then require A to pay C, who runs some mining rig(s), to verify their transaction as part of the PoW process, with prices for said transaction fluctuating depending on the ETH networks.

[Acidbaron]

I'll just leave this here: (about the fake news regarding "bitcoin" destroying the environment")

If you have to spin things that hard to defend something, yeah.....

Not buying it one bit also a lot of what ifs, and or and buts in their defence.

And i get why they do it, because if you simply look at how much energy that "industry" consumes, what should be the benchmark for it, if something has a big carbon footprint or not it simply shows crypto is anything but low on energy consumption. So they have to come up with all these sort of constructs to justify what they are doing. I am sure there is some sort of psychological term for this type of behaviour, what's it called again when you have to try real hard to justify your actions to yourself and others?



On crypto in general.

The only people interested in using crypto as an currency are people who have a lot of it and want to see its value and usability increase.
Crypto currency is too volatile to be used as a currency, if your employer suddenly tells you he would be paying you in a coin that can drop in value randomly you wouldn't be happy if suddenly your rent costs 20% more because your coin got devalued.
It's value often comes from people investing heavily into it and thus treating it as a long term or short term investment.
It's anonymity is nice but it's a two sided blade, this also means that a lot of criminal money can go into system.
There are simply too many coins at this point, for something that has the intention of being limited in supply, also the older the coin gets the more fractions of coins get sold. Nowadays you don't buy 1 bit coin, you buy a small cut of a bit coin. This to me shows its interest is really not becoming a stable coin to be used as a form of payment, but these are all methods to further increase the value of their "limited" coins by allowing people to pump more money into it.

Is it a bubble or isn't it? No idea, right now only people who own something in it want it to succeed or to grow in value. Maybe more companies will jump on board but that isn't always a sign that the future is bright, the housing bubble market also had a lot of big names jumping on those toxic products and we all know that out come.

I simply don't see it being used as a currency by governments from the G8 or other lesser wealthy nations due to it's volatile nature, a currency has to be stable to function.

My gut tells me a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money in the future, some will gain but those jumping on the boat now this late into all these new trendy and flashy coins, bad vibes from that.

- - - Updated - - -

The guy on reddit is a fucking liar or doesn't know how ETH processes transactions. Transactions done on BTC and ETH both require some sum to be paid for the transaction to process. Transactions are processed as a part of the Proof-of-Work process (PoW), which nowadays typically prioritizes individuals who provide the most of either currency for processing their transaction.

If A wants to send B some ETH, A must request a transaction to send X amount of ETH to B. These transactions then require A to pay C, who runs some mining rig(s), to verify their transaction as part of the PoW process, with prices for said transaction fluctuating depending on the ETH networks.

This reads as banks and stock brokers, or owners of stock selling/buying apps pushing people with preferably as little to no knowledge how things work into all this because they don't care how things turn out, they can take a large enough commission per transaction so all they care for quantity, as that's how they win and make money.

Or even worse this can be seen as all those "forex traders" selling regular joe's and janes on how rich they can get with the forex market, while it being almost a ponzi scheme where you pay out of your ass in transaction fees.

[jonnysensible]

Bitcoin runs on coal and when tether finally pulls the rug out it will be incredibly funny. The Chai coin is the new horror iteration that should be nuked.

[Acidbaron]

Bitcoin runs on coal and when tether finally pulls the rug out it will be incredibly funny. The Chai coin is the new horror iteration that should be nuked.

For me it highlights the big hypocrisy in these silicon valley and new tech people who invest in it. They are all about talking and promoting renewable energy and sustainable plans for the planet.

And then you have people like Elon Musks promoting and investing in crypto currency.


I simply don't see how such people can justify it.

[Zan15]

is it me or does some crypto remind you of the Bennie Baby craze a while back?




Only a matter of time till the IRS figures out the right angle to go at this legally and the flood gates will open on the tax front.


https://www.zdnet.com/article/irs-se...rency-traders/

RS secures order to serve Kraken with customer data request on cryptocurrency traders
Updated: Users who have conducted $20,000 in transactions are now on the tax office’s radar.