Molly White“WAGMI” — we're all gonna make it — was crypto's 2021 rallying cry. But those with wealth and power knew it was a lie, and that “all” just meant them. My latest traces the last five years from hype to technoligarchy — and why they're not all gonna make it either.
Kevin Ashworth@molly0xfff Bitcoin is for everybody. Anybody can participate. It holds promises for a better future (promises that admittedly could also come with another form of hard money). I certainly want, as one example, a future without permanent inflation. That said, a lot of douchebros have jumped in. These weasels may be the defining participants, which makes the whole promise of Bitcoin less, much less. We shall see what happens. But other coins are worse, as they are mostly Bitcoin affinity scams.
Luna Lactea@kevinashworth @molly0xfff Bitcoin is for rich techbros to gamble with. It's a really bad currency.
Jivan Pal@jackemled It works perfectly fine as currency. What issues do you experience with it as currency?
@jivan Sudden & extreme fluctuation of buying power due to lack of a legitimizing force (such as people & businesses accepting it as payment), hyperdeflation, hyperinflation, it is still centralized due to rich people buying all of the GPUs & making ASICs for mining, expensive power usage, high transaction latency (Bitcoin Lightning is a hack, not a solution), high barrier to entry for nontechnical people. It lacks everything that makes a currency practical to use & even defeats the entire point of a currency with its instability of buying power. I could go on for at least an hour. You can't even use it for anything except buying a Crunchwrap Supreme at Taco Bell (unless they stopped their cryptocurrency thing & I didn't know) or buying a hyperlink to a picture of a monkey JPEG on someone else's computer.
@jivan Also, the append only data structure of blockchains also makes them very cumbersome to use, & the public readability of most cryptocurrency blockchains means no privacy, a feature it's missing compared to fiat currencies where the only ones able to see a transaction's details are its participants & maybe their banks & payment processors if they aren't using physical bills.
@jackemled Are we talking about Bitcoin specifically here, or cryptocurrencies in general? You mention a lot of things that are true about Bitcoin but not other cryptocurrencies, and vice-versa. I just want to make sure we're on the same page about what we're discussing before I go to the effort of responding to your points.
@jivan Mostly Bitcoin, but most other cryptocurrencies I'm aware of also suffer from some combination of these issues & it makes them unappealing or entirely impractical to use as a currency.
Out of what I've seen, Monero looks the best in my opinion, but still suffers from hyperdeflation, energy & computationally intensive mining, & high transaction latency. It also still depends on a blockchain, & even if it's not publicly readable it's still a cumbersome & resource intensive data structure. Some others like Chia are much better about transaction latency & average buying power, but are still very unstable, have a high barrier to entry, suffer from centralization due to resource availability, a publicly readable blockchain, & very very few people or businesses accept them as payment.
A currency that doesn't rely on a central organization to manage production, destruction, & legitimization of it is very appealing to me. I like the idea behind cryptocurrency, but I dislike its execution.
@jackemled You seem to have some pretty sensible takes on this overall, which is a pleasant surprise since most people that say things like "Bitcoin just doesn't work as a currency" aren't aware of some of its technical underpinnings or the alternatives (e.g. Monero and Chia, which I'm also fond of).
Where I largely disagree with your original response to me is on the following ideas:
1. that blockchain is not necessary. (Blockchain in particular actually might not be, but we still need
[1/]
1. (cont.) some definite solution to the double-spend problem, and I'm yet to see one other than blockchain.)
2. that Lightning is a "hack" rather than a solution to scaling. (It works.)
3. that onboarding is still troublesome. (It's not.)
4. that bitcoin is not accepted as a means of payment. (It is.)
[2/3]
5. that high volatility due to lack of widespread adoption as a unit of account is a reflection of some fundamental property of bitcoin, rather than just being a reflection of society's current attitude towards bitcoin.
I'm happy to go into more detail on any of these points when I have more time, if you're interested.
[3/3]
@jivan Onboarding is troublesome for alot of them. You have to do lots of research to find a wallet app that works for you. Many cryptocurrencies that are otherwise appealing do not have clients except a crappy reference client that only technically does the job. It's not like a real wallet where you can put bills into any container & it will function as a wallet. You also have to have an electronic device, so you can't buy a Crunchwrap Supreme if your phone battery dies.
Also I really don't see cryptocurrency as a useful means of payment unless I can buy groceries & get an oil change for my car with it. Some fast food restaurants accept one or two cryptocurrencies, but most other businesses I know of don't. I know of a VPS provider that accepts Monero & a VPN proxy provider that also accepts it, but nothing else.
I haven't seen anything that can replace a blockchain either, but that doesn't mean it isn't a bad & inconvenient solution. I wish there was something better.
@jivan I agree completely about 5, & I didn't intend it to seem like I meant that was a fundamental property of any cryptocurrency. That's just how money of any kind works; if nothing exists to legitimize it, it will be unstable.
It's like how you could buy Wii Points for the Wii Shop Channel, & you would always be able to buy the same amount of stuff for the same amount of points. Nintendo legitimized the currency by providing a method to exchange it for goods & limiting it to the purchase of goods on their service only. Wii Points always had the same or almost the same buying power. Wii Points were technically credit, not money, but I think you can see what I mean.
@jivan Cryptocurrencies don't have a stable buying power because nothing exists to enforce value & assign a specific buying power to a unit. The values of them fluctuate wildly because not enough people & organizations want to exchange them with eachother, so no one has a reference of how many tokens is worth how many pounds of sugar. It's made worse by some people speculating on it & gambling with it, siphoning buying power from the system & transferring it to other currencies.
This can happen with any potential currency, we replicate this effect right now if we create a new currency & start printing bills without also creating a business or government to legitimize it. No one is going to want it at first, but if we convince some investors to exchange their USD & Euro for some, the value skyrockets & then begins fluctuating as more people start trading it for investment purposes & little else.
@jivan I think me not knowing of something theoretically more practical than a blockchain is just me not being an expert cryptographer & data scientist. I'm sure there's a way to track current state & maintain consensus without requiring a complete ledger of all interactions ever, especially since Monero actually manages to do this somewhat by having its thing where a new node only needs to synchronize a third of the blockchain.
Maybe someone smarter than me has already found something better, but it hasn't caught on because "blockchain" is a buzzword.