Sure, lets replace a regulated scam with an unregulated scam, that will solve things /s
The insane thing about Bitcoin’s continued popularity is that out of all the thousands of cryptocurrencies out there, it’s easily the worst in every regard.
I’m not going to name names for fear of being called a shill, but if you want a cryptocurrency for just buying stuff there’s a ton that are more stable, faster, don’t cost a fortune to process, and don’t destroy the planet.
Both sides are bad
Yep. Just because one side is bad, it doesn’t mean the other is any good.
Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling. Credit card companies are still a private owned government branch with no concern for human rights and criminals-enabling.
Yep, but cryptocurrency isn’t dictating what you can spend with it…yet at least. So if no government does anything to help us, then we must adopt a cryptocurrencies like Monero to fight back against censorship as nothing more than a private citizen.
I learned recently FedNow is a payment processor ran by the Federal Reserve, with a fee of $0.043 per transaction. Making it much, much cheaper than every other payment processor out there.
It just launched two years ago; I’m wondering if this might become more of a thing moving forward for digital payments.
You pay fees for transactions?
Every digital payment has transaction fees, yes.
Credit card transaction fees for vendors are generally 1-3%, for example.
Every digital payment has transaction fees, yes.
If you say so.
Which digital payment doesn’t have transaction fees?
Credit cards (vendor side), debit cards (vendor side), and crypto (consumer side) all have transaction fees. Paypal, venmo, etc all make their money from (vendor side) transaction fees as well. Is there a different type of digital payment you are using that doesn’t have transaction fees?
Say that any louder and it’ll be DOGEd overnight.
Nice but floundered. Call me when consumers and small businesses can use it.
It’s also a heck of a lot quicker to process, (effectively instant) and works even on holidays.
And of course, banks like Bank of America, Capital One, and tons of other financial institutions simply refuse to use it, because that would mean spending money on changing their infrastructure, and making it more convenient for people to also use accounts outside of theirs.
Seriously, it’s been ages, and they’ve refused to use it at all, even though it’s purely a financial and technical upside for every user once it’s implemented.
Criminals-enabling is what they call VPNs, E2EE encrypted communication etc.
more and more good people are being called criminals
Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling.
As we all know, Visa and MasterCard have never been used by criminals. As soon as a criminal touches a card, the card turns into ash.
Reading isn’t your strong suit, is it?
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This. Corporate shit weasels or supporting human trafficking.
“We should restrict the free use of oxygen because terrorists can breath it to sustain themselves.”
C’mon. Crypto has issues, but this ain’t one of them. Pandering to people’s fear is how fascist seize power for themselves and perpetuate the horrors we feared in the first place.
is the main problem with crypto who is on control? Bc it seems like ultra rich people. I have yet to see crypto become something people can do for themselves. You have to have the fastest gpu to solvw the puzzle first and get the coin, right? Maybe hierarchicalization is the problem.
Ugh, the “both sides” argument again… /s
Yeah, I’m going to buy my games with bitcoin now.
Oh shit, the fee is higher than the price of the game, can I use Litecoin ?
The current Bitcoin transaction fee is $0.67. Which means for a purchase larger than $34, Bitcoin is cheaper than the average credit card transaction fee.
I don’t have a credit card. If you pay per transaction, is there at least no monthly base fee?
There are are no other fees for holding crypto, you only pay when you move it from one place to another, those fees change depending on time of day/week as well. Though some services (like coincards) may take additional processing fees.
A credit card, in the US, has a transaction fee for the vendor, 1-3% of the purchase price, sometimes with a flat few cents fee on top.
The consumer has no transaction fee, but does pay interest (around 28% annually) if they don’t pay off the full balance every month (if they do pay it in full at the end of the month, there is no interest charge). Usually there will be a 1-2% cash back for the consumer as well.
Some credit cards also have an annual fee for the consumer. These generally have higher cash back rewards and higher vendor transaction fees than those that don’t.
Don’t forget secured cards, which require an upfront deposit, and cards with regular monthly or annual fees, simply for having them, regardless of whether you use them or not.
Thats the kind of credit cards you get offered if you are bad with credit cards (cough most Americans are cough thats kinda the whole business model cough), or, if someone steals your identity and you either don’t have enough time or money or otherwise can’t sufficiently prove to credit reporting agencies / banks that that is what happened.
Go to a credit union. Your local credit union will offer better rates and good limits with low fees compared to big banks. My first card at 18 was a secured card, $500 limit and a 4% interest if you didn’t pay off your card. After six months it went to am unsecured ans $1500 limit. All with no fees.
Yeah, I know it can be hit or miss depending on your location, but I have had similarly good experiences with my local credit union… you just prove to them in a more old fashioned way that you’re responsible, and they’ll often be flexible with you in ways that banks aren’t.
Thanks.
The merchant pays the fee. With cryptocurrencies, the consumer pays the fee. Some sites offer a discount for paying with cryptocurrency as a result. For example, most precious metals dealers who accept Bitcoin offer a 3% discount for using it.
I only buy games at $30 or cheaper. So that won’t work for me 🤷♂️
The current Bitcoin transaction fee is $0.67.
For a ~60 minute confirmation target. It’s $0.77 for a 20 minute confirmation target right now. The daily average is $1.03.
And lets not forget that the only reason the price is so low now is because people aren’t competing much for those transactions. If people actually used bitcoin to buy games the transaction fee would increase significantly.
You only have to wait one hour for the transaction to be confirmed. It also takes a shit load of energy and is extremely inefficient compared to credit card payment processors. Woohoo!
Cumrocket is the way!
Thanks for the tip, I’m putting all my life savings into it then.
This exists too ::: spoiler spoiler https://coinstats.app/coins/8fZL148nnC168RAVCZh4PkjvMZmxMEfMLDhoziWVPnqf_solana/ :::
Bitcoin is pretty old, newer cryptocurrencies are more efficient.
Yeah I’m using this cool new Lightning cryptocurrency, check it out.
Lightning network exists too
Litecoin is cool.
the fee might be higher at some points but you’re just blabbering. check mempool.space and actually look at what fees are at rn + consider that there are many chains and l2s that can be used for payment. B)
A dollar in fees is a dollar more than with fiat for the person paying. That and do you expect enough normal people to learn about L2s and chains to make it worthwhile for Valve or whoever to implement support for anything besides the main chains of 2-3 major cryptos and stablecoins on ethereum main?
A dollar in fees is a dollar more than with fiat for the person paying.
Average credit card transaction fee is ~2%. So a dollar of Bitcoin fees makes Bitcoin cheaper for any purchase over $50.
The transaction fee is not paid by the consumer (directly), and lord knows sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method.
It depends, I have shopped at places where they will discount up to 15% by paying cash.
Yeah, there are a bunch of places around me that offer cash discounts which I make solid use of. Lets them lower prices for you as you aren’t forcing a credit card transaction fee onto them.
sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method
Mullvad actually does this for their VPN service, which I think is great. For a VPN company that doesn’t want to store identifiers about you, taking crypto makes sense because that also doesn’t necessarily have identifiers about you attached that they could read or be required to store, unlike a card that requires your name, address, and card number.
Other than that though, no larger companies are going to do anything of the sort, let alone be likely to even implement it as a payment method to begin with. Tons of additional technical complexity for little to no benefit.
I hope the EU to come up with their own payment process to compete against and be a mainstream alternative to the US based ones.
Sadly, this is probably true. Unless they’re trying to steer customers away from more troublesome payment providers.
People who use credit cards don’t pay the transaction fee. If the product is priced at 10 Stanly nickle they only play 10 Stanley nickle. Lot of credit cards also offer cash back so people might get 1-5% back depending on what the category for the month is.
When it comes to transaction fees you are going to have to sell the vender on it than the consumer since they are the one paying.
Oh you’re definitely paying the credit card fee too, but since it’s the vendor who gets billed it’s just priced into the product. That’s why the product costs 10 Stanly nickle instead of 9 Stanly nickle.
Pay same in cash or credit. Priced in or not what the company asks for is what the consumer pays, so point being these crypto transaction arguments make no difference when it comes to fees. Like you said end retail price is already priced in.
Company wants 10 Stanley nickles consumer is charged 10 Stanley nickles regardless of payment method.
Yeah good point, they’re not discounting the credit increase for the crypto buyers. That might even be against their credit processor contract.
Pay same in cash or credit.
Depends on the vendor. There are a bunch of places around me that offer cash discounts, which I make solid use of. Lets them lower prices for you as you aren’t forcing a credit card transaction fee onto them.
But it’s not variable so the seller prices it in. Switch to Bitcoin and you have to pay it while prices likely stay the same. Also lately most of my games have been under 30 EUR tbh
yes I expect l2s to catch on in different ways and yes I hope that a lot of places like steam or whatever properly implement at least bitpay or something similar in house.
I mean either you care enough about payment processor censorship to go around them or you don’t. If the extra dollar isn’t worth it to you then that is what it is.
Nobody is going to rush to implement a payment system where the fees can change 5x hour to hour because that’s just customer dissatisfaction waiting to happen.
That’s actually one of the matured parts of the crypto ecosystem that has existed for years already, as it was one of the most immediate needs. Last I checked Stripe and Bitpay were the most popular options for vendors.
Lmao, crypto tech bros coming out of the woodwork trying to get popularity for their bag holder’s game…
Also pretending that shit hasn’t been bought up by wall street
What? They have like 5%. You should revisit your stance
Crypto remains a pyramid scheme masquerading as a resistance against tyranny
Ironically you know what ACTUALLY protects from powergrabs by payment processors? A fully centralised, government backed form of digital cash that is fully equivalent to paper money.
Ask a Brazilian about pix. Super low fees (often feeling non existant). And transactions can’t be invalidated on the whims of a corporate board. For something to not be buyable by pix it has to be illegal, thus having to go through every layer of checks and balances a democracy has.
The problem with visa and their ilk is that finance has been privatised. Too much power in the hands of corporations that have deftly dodged regulation that would keep them neutral and honest. Thinking privatising things further and turning everyone into a fully unregulated petty digital landlord is gonna solve anything rather than make it worse is foolhardy.
Adding a few more points to fully kill crypto as a “freedom currency”
- Generating crypto requires capital; people with computers and access to energy will instantly get the ability to outgenerate any other crypto participant
- Energy-centric currency just empowers the same rich lobbies; oil and gaz lobbies are delighted to see that there’s an uptick in energy demand
- People with right material (read, capital) can track you, but low chance to track anyone doing crime at a national level (due to odds of them having a competent IT (baring the Hegseth drunkards out there))
What keeps people from looking at point 1 and not totally stopping there, you think? The game is statistically unwinnable and the more rubes play, the bigger the leech gets.
I looked into crypto seriously several years ago when a friend got interested. I had to inform them it was still a casino where Have’s print the cash and make the rules, specifically so the currency returns to them with interest off someone else’s(our) brow. ie, same scam as wall street stonks. Just reiterating Point 1.
Pretty pointless unless there is an anti-fascist buying collective or something. Remember when reddit saved gamestop for a few years and, uh, very suddenly a lot of common investment apps ‘stopped working’ that week?
As soon as you get a hand in their game, they’ll show you right away you were meant to die slaving for them, not participating in decisionmaking (money AND politics).
Also because the entire thing is backed financially by energy wasted, crypto has actually been slowing down the adoption of cheaper, safer renewable energy.
People spend x dollars on generating crypto, they expect to sell it for x+profit
Ergo if energy became cheaper, crypto would devalue and we can’t have that.
Mining hardware is the bigger cost for bitcoin. Tokens are the largest cost for PoS.
“Difficulty adjustment” minimizes profits. You get a much higher return on the stock market than you do holding dollars.
Your post applies to Bitcoin specifically, not crypto in general.
So according to you, there’s a crypto that 1. doesn’t need any capital (computers), 2. doesn’t need wastable energy (power that wouldn’t otherwise be used) and 3. is actually impossible to track across the board?
From a user perspective yes to all 3.
From a infrastructure perspective,
-
You need capital to keep people honest. Nothing at risk means people can lie
-
Some power is still needed, but Ethereum has gone from the consumption of Chile to a single windfarm.
-
ZK proofs now allow anyone to create an anonymous token. Most blockchains are opt in for anonymity.
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You’ve done it! You’ve fully killed Bitcoin! Now it will certainly become irrelevant! In 5 years, the top answer for “what would you do if you had a time machine and went back 5 years?” definitely won’t still be “Buy more Bitcoin.”
Of course cryptocurrencies will exist in the future. Same as simpler pyramid schemes, corruption, human trafficking, and banging your finger on a corner of a table. It’s not an indication of any positive quality of those things.
It’s Avon for Cis Dudes that make fun of Avon ladies
It’s the Lottery for STEM Majors that make fun of grandpas that play the lottery.
I’d say ‘it’s religion for reddit atheists’, but it’s not. AI is religion for reddit atheists. “
The raptureAGI is right around the corner and when it comes aroundGod will save the righteous and punish the sinnerswe will live in post-scarcity utopia. Just please ignore all thepriests committing horrid crimes on childrenactual AI copmanies being owned by technocrats with fascist leanings who seem very horny for the idea of never having to pay a worker again. Until then we just need topray and proselytize very hardkeep investing on DA FUTER”
Have you heard of the lottery?
Whole-ass time travel to “buy more bitcoin”, what a clown.
Yeah but I don’t already know the winning lotto numbers
With time machine you can create the first lotto and be John Lotto himself
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you know what ACTUALLY protects from powergrabs by payment processors? A fully centralised, government backed form of digital cash that is fully equivalent to paper money.
Only if the government is democratic, many governments seems to be autocratizing these days, which wouldn’t help when they start enacting puritan policies and refuse payment transfers. Not to mention, even some democracies banned porn (South Korea, for example).
You’re not wrong
But keeping a government democratic and under check is a lot easier than trying to do the same to a series of corporations with anonymous investors calling the shots. Every corporation is in and of itself a dictatorship, dangerously close to an old noble clan, and we pretend we don’t see it because it’s been hypernormalised.
I’d much rather take my chances with a government, that can in fact respond to the will of the people from time to time, than with a corporation that only ever responds to money with exactly no exceptions ever.
As far as I know monero didn’t really have that issue, of being a pyarmid scheme, while also being privacy-respecting way more than Bitcoin.
Which is also why it’s starting to get banned in Europe. As far as I know, most brokers don’t even sell it.
But I want to buy and sell illegal goods and services.
that’s what cash is for
Do I look like I’m cool enough for that‽
Sorry, the only illegal shit I do is free illegal shit (piracy)
WELL actually, it’s not illegal here in Brazil. It’s only a crime if you can be proven to be making money off of it. Downloading/copying is free game. :^)
When I heard elon is the primary holder of bit, I knew it was to be trusted. He’s a liar and insecure. Plus his penis looks like a sick dogs vomit.
Benefits of centralization: Someone can counteract harmful interactions.
Drawbacks of centralization: Someone can decide legitimate interactions are harmful.
It does suck when the “harmful interaction management system” goes haywire. But I’m not sure it sucks enough that I’d rather simply not have one.
I used to be one of the people firmly on the “someone can decide legitimate interactions are harmful, thus they should not ever exist” side of the argument, and I think this is certainly a good way of putting it.
For a lot of people heavily into crypto, they see the drawbacks of the existing system, but instead of pushing for reform and legal changes, they try technological abolition of the entire mechanism altogether, without then realizing the tradeoffs that brings (e.g. how a lot of people will go “it’s instant! Sellers don’t have to worry about chargebacks! Nobody can take away your money from you!” yet don’t think about how that also means a scammer taking your money is a permanent loss you can never reverse. (or if they do think about it, will argue that risk can be reduced to a point it is less harmful than the alternative, centralized companies)
I don’t deny crypto can be useful sometimes, or even be more beneficial when the centralized companies do eventually do something bad and people need an alternative payment mechanism, but I think a lot of people into crypto overestimate how beneficial it truly is compared to the tradeoffs.
About the “nobody can take your money” part.
Etherium Classic exists because somebody hacked an extremely valuable wallet and funneled 13% of all eth into their wallet. The people who control the mining pools, (rich assholes) wanted that transaction reversed, so they hard forked. Classic is the main fork that didn’t reverse that transaction. It’s much less popular, despite being run by people who are demonstrably more principled.
Paraphrased from Dan Olson’s video “line goes up” about crypto’s history and affect on the world. Spoiler: it’s a scam, and a tool for the wealthy to get even richer. Computing power can be bought with dollars.
Technically true, but chains nowadays aren’t really vulnerable to that same kind of attack just due to their sheer scale and diversification of controlling stakes compared to what they used to be, so I wouldn’t consider it a particularly relevant issue today.
The relevant part isn’t which mistake happened, but that the fact that no mistake can be reversed.
Fixing one mistake is great and all, but it’s still a method of accounting whose ledger — by design — cannot be revised.
Yeah it’s a personal level of comfort sort of thing. Some people value one side of the equation while some people value the other side. Strong case for vendors accepting both cards and crypto instead of just one.
Yeah. They do such a good job of stopping nazis and csam.
I trust completely in the central bank to fight fascism. It is necessary. The central bank fights for the laborer, not the capitalist. The central bank fights for freedom, not authoritarianism. The central bank ensures democracy, not an oligarchy. Without a central bank, our entire society would be doomed to fall to fascism. A centralized currency is a major facet between a free society and one with a corrupt dictator surrounded by crooked cronies where the wealthy have all the power and the common man is reduced to crumbs.
The central bank is divine and good.
“someone can decide you have zero dollars”
free speech until your bank account goes away
Regulation prevents that. You can’t regulate decentralized currencies, meaning you have zero protection 100% of the time.
Ah, the regulations that judges can just deem not legal? You do understand that checks and balances, right now, are pretty much gone? I’m not for a decentralized currency, I am just against irrationally worshiping centralization with zero concerns. Regulation capitalism is putting a band aid over a gaping wound, the real cure is socialism and socialism isn’t regulations, it’s a complete and total change of the system. If you think regulation is how we achieve socialism, you are wrong. Money shouldn’t even exist, IMO, so I don’t really care for the ‘centralized’ argument of something I fundamentally don’t want to exist. Unless you can tell me how centralized banks are going to bring about socialism, I’m not sure what you’re arguing in favor of if not capitalism. I’m sure there are ways of achieving gift economies and the like without centralized authorities and the possibility of unchecked executive power.
yes, however the regulations will always have some corruption
Same for unregulated systems, only without transparency, limits or recourse
uhhh… so the logic here is that if regulation isn’t even an option then… what exactly? What’s better, wearing a helmet so your head doesn’t get broken in, but leave your arms and legs uncovered, or just not wearing any protection at all?
Communism. Start small, connect networks.
Nah man, you have to want fiat currency! Fiat currency is necessary, man! It’s the only way for a safe and civil society! You want a gift economy? Who the fuck wants to give away shit haha. If I have money, I can keep my community safe by blasting away people who want to take it. In a gift economy or any other kind of anti-capitalist economy people would be incentivized to care for one another, which is unrealistic. We just have to regulate the people who want to kill over their money in a way that they can only kill for their money in socially acceptable ways like through cops and the criminal justice system. People need to know that money is deadly but we don’t need to let them see the blood on the streets. As long as we get to say some people are criminals, people are happy that they got their money in a safe and legal way and followed all the regulations.
Also the trump admin did abolish finality of payments.
you can prevent getting scammed with crypto by using something like escrow
Oh honey…
Doesn’t protect against:
- Social engineering
- Contract code vulnerabilities
- Untrustworthy/Compromised controlling stakes in that escrow, whether they be people or autonomous systems
- False reversal claims made against the escrow
It has the same possible issues for your financial sovereignty as a regular, centralized financial institution, plus technical issues with the way the underlying infrastructure is built.
valid points. i see the problem with that
Isn’t this a right wing meme about centrists, but with the text changed?
The Bitcoin side wouldn’t catch you, because that interferes with the user’s choice to hit the ground.
Perhaps the original is right-wing, though this happens a lot (e.g. the “change my mind” guy). This meme seems anti-collective shout, so I’d place it left wing.
Credit card companies should be nonprofits under democratic control.
Euro has PSD2 which seems to be a step in the right direction
Cash is King.
I’m in Germany and people believe this. I say, if I have my credit card stolen, I can stop the card with my bank app and be refunded for the purchases the thief made.
If they have their 500€ of cash stolen, that’s it. It’s gone. No amount of crying about how cash is king will bring it back.
You are only considering half the issue. If you manage to “aquire” 500 in cash…
So then don’t carry 500 in cash then. You only need enough cash in your wallet to cover the expenses you might encounter in a single day. And having cash on you doesn’t mean you can’t have cards too in case you need more money
So less king and more part of a council?
Yeah, something like that. Maybe cash should be the chair of the council
And Monero is digital cash
Cash is dead deserped from its place by alternative means far before we invented crypto
And those alternatives would be what, exactly?
Checks and credit The US hasn’t been backed by hard currency since the mid-60s. Once we moved off the gold standard, it all became Fiat based on exchange rates
So you don’t actually understand what the phrase “cash is king” really means.
A paper check is not cash. A credit score is not cash. Physical backed up currency in your hand is cash. And I don’t think you can get cash anymore. Only Fiat
And guess what cash doesn’t need to actually work, unlike credit, checks and crypto.
An economy?
paper checks are cash
No
If by mid-60s you mean 1971…?
I seem to have gotten the beginning of the process and the final cutoff date. Confused. That would be the cutoff date, not when they started to restrict the ability to convert
Crypto is to peacocking men what MLMs is to american housemoms.
A lot of crypto relies on greater fools, but not all of it.
You’re right. Those who scam everybody else get to really benefit from crypto. Much like MLMs.
I honestly never understood how Lemmy, a privacy and decentralisation focused community, is so vehemently anti-crypto. It’s worse than genAI. Every time it is mentioned, everyone goes “crypto is a scam”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any good faith discussion around it, just “scam”, “pyramid scheme”, and “only criminals use it”.
Let’s get something out of the way immediately: shitcoins are a literal pyramid scheme and a scam. Anyone can make their own cryptocurrency in an evening, and anyone who throws money at them is either a fool or a gambler.
But I really don’t understand what people mean when they say Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or Monero are a scam. Sure they can be used to scam you, just like Amazon gift cards can. Maybe it’s about the price volatility, but the price of all 3 mentioned before is up on a day, week, month, 6 months, year, and 5 year scale. It’s volatile, but is not a scam. If you bought and sold at two random points in time, it’s more likely you made a profit than “got scammed”. You know what actually is a scam? Credit scores, overdraft fees, having to pay to check your balance, and so many other fucked up practices in the US banking system.
“Criminals use them” is just the worst fucking argument, especially in a space like this. Are PGP, VPNs and TOR for criminals too? Do you think getting rid of crypto would stop crime?
And yes, proof of work fucking sucks. The energy consumption of Bitcoin mining is a problem. I am not a cryptobro who spends all his time making trades and is here to tell you that crypto is the salvation. They are far from being “good” for everyday use. I just wanted to point out how it seems that critical thought gets shut down at the sight of those 6 letters, and I hope someone can explain to me what they find so terrible about crypto (aside from environmental concerns and shitcoins)
The internet loves to hate, it’s that simple.
Lemmy is quite left-leaning, and the impetus behind creating Bitcoin was right-wing Austrian school economics. Now, it’s being pushed by literal fascists.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen fascists pushing Bitcoins, but then again I don’t frequent those spaces. I struggle to see how they are ideologically similar though. Doesn’t seem like a very authoritarian concept
And can we really say we know what brought about the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper?
Trump, Bukele, Milei, Orban, Thiel, Musk, etc. It’s the “Dark Enlightenment” and “Network State” type of fascists that want to replace democratic government with stuff like corporate-controlled city-states, and crazy shit like that. They see it as a means to starve the government so they can run their own corporation-like governments.
The message in the genesis block alludes to the ideology (as that kind of stuff was a major talking point for right-wingers back then), though I guess it’s not definitive proof. The early community was definitely Austrian-school adjacent right-wingers though.
I don’t know any crypto bros who aren’t also MAGA/libertarian/fascist
Many MAGA/libertarian/fascists love ice cream. Does that mean ice cream is bad? We should be able to make up our own minds about things instead of turning everything into a partisan issue. A broken clock is right twice a day.
Crypto is stupid for entirely different reasons that I’ve enumerated in other threads in this post. I’m just observing a correlation I’ve noticed here which directly runs counter to another statement.
I think we can. Have you not heard of this phrase before?
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
Satoshi Nakamoto put it in the zeroth block of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Have you noticed that people who work in tech tend to be less excited about cool new flashy tech developments than the average person?
It’s similar to how people who have worked in fast food aren’t quite as keen on eating out than the average person.
Same as watching your co-worker who hasn’t washed his hands after his last shit collect the pieces of a burger that dropped on the dirty floor to sell them to a customer isn’t exactly appetizing, knowing what goes on behind the scenes with tech developments doesn’t really get you on board for that either.
I think it’s because we get excited super early, and by the time it goes mainstream we’re tired of seeing it shoved into every place it doesn’t belong
And it’s probably still not being used for what we looked forward to about it
I think it’s because, at least in the case of bitcoin, it has no practical real world use other than hoarding like beanie babies, and therefore no real value. As a currency it’s entirely useless.
I have a bit more sympathy for ETH, maybe someday DeFi will produce something truly useful enough to justify the money in crypto, but it hasn’t so far.
This is really getting into the weeds of what you define “value” to be. You could equally argue that a banknote also has no practical real world use other than hoarding (and to trade to others).
A banknote is accepted as a means of exchange, ie a currency in a way that bitcoin and other crypto coins are not and cannot ever be due to the fees and delays in the system, not to mention the absurd volatility or lack of liquidity in the smaller coins.
Crypto is also accepted as a means of exchange. There are plenty of merchants willing to accept it as payment, but they are just not geographically concentrated in one location like banknote-accepters are. With a banknote, you have a very high concentration of merchants who will accept that as a means of payment in one geographic area (i.e. the country or region whose central bank issued that banknote), while it is not accepted anywhere else. With most cryptocurrencies, they will be acceptable worldwide, but the concentration of people willing to take it in any given geographic area is low.
It is important to note that you can’t take properties of the smaller coins (the ones which you are probably thinking of are derisively referred to as “shitcoins” and most are deserving of that epithet) and apply them to every cryptocurrency. Just like you can’t use properties of the Zimbabwean dollar to smear all fiat currencies in general.
Bitcoin transactions on its Lightning Network are typically instantaneous, and fees are lower than most credit cards (usually on the order of 0.1%). An on-chain Bitcoin transaction currently has a fee of about 1 USD, which would make it competitive to credit cards for transactions greater than 40 USD. Bitcoin fees, despite being notorious for being the highest among all cryptos, are actually very competitive with most traditional payment methods. This transaction from the most recent block at the time of writing paid about 117 USD to move over 411 BTC worth 48.5 million USD. That means they paid about 0.00024% in fees and this is the highest-fee transaction in this block (meaning they paid the highest fee rate of any transaction in this block). The going rate for this block was actually much lower; whoever sent this transaction overpaid by about 50 times.
It’s accepted almost no where. And the list of issues go on. Crypto is easily stolen, very difficult to secure. Difficult to use for most people. Proof of work crypto is still in the majority and wastes absurd amounts of energy, etc. But the biggest issue is that it doesn’t solve any problems that were not solved long ago unless you are conducting criminal activity (which I do have to acknowledge as it’s one stand out use case).
The notion that “crypto is easily stolen” is completely false. It’s definitely harder to steal than, say, cash in a wallet. That it is “accepted almost nowhere” is also false. Look hard enough, and you can find someone who will sell you almost anything for crypto.
It depends greatly on how it’s stored. Most people just keep it in an exchange, which are robbed fairly often. Which wouldn’t be a problem with real cash as there are laws in place to protect you. With crypto you have no recourse.
I think the Lemmy userbase is too small and its easy for a few vocal voices to dominate the conversation.
There are often contradicting points that the Lemmy hivemind holds.
Like Lemmy wants to abolish the police but also wants to empower the police to take away people’s guns??? (Talking about the US btw)
Lemmy loves their doublethink
After a few cycles people start to realize blah blah blah explanation is really just when is the price going up. We’ve all heard it all by now. It starts feeling like being sold on a timeshare. We aren’t new clients to try to sell this topic too
We already know all the explaination and blockchain crap. We know the spiel and sat through it all through multiple cycles. It’s at this point like trying to sell a car to a car salesperson using tactics they already know.
So that’s the lack of enthusiasm. We are less likely to be new to this.
But then why still be anti bitcoin?
Because (like genAI) crypto-coin people as a general population will not shut up and it gets annoying to keep hearing the same spiel. And it’s an insulting one, about how everyone not on the Bitcoin train is a stupid loser and we’ll be kissing their ass and wishing we were them when the whole thing really rockets off. Sometimes that part isn’t entirely explicit, but I hear it in almost every pro-Bitcoin rant.
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme because it only keeps its value as long as people are constantly buying it. If no one wants to buy it, the value of any amount of bitcoin is zero. This is why people who have bitcoin are trying to convince anyone else to keep buying.
Your local government-backed currency does not have this problem, because you get paid with it, you pay taxes with it and vendors in your country have to accept it.
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme because it only keeps its value as long as people are constantly buying it. If no one wants to buy it, the value of any amount of bitcoin is zero. This is why people who have bitcoin are trying to convince anyone else to keep buying.
any currency is initially a bank’s promissory notes, and then a promise to exchange the paper for some kind of labor. As a person who has experienced at least one default in his life and whose entire toilet is covered with USSR money, I can say that in this regard, no currency is different from bitcoin.
Well, gold might be a little bit different. It derives its value not because of a government mandate but because monkey brain like shiny
The value of gold, silver and platinum is determined by two factors: there is little of it in nature and you cannot take more at will and it does not oxidize, which ensures good storage.
I really don’t know about you, but in my country you can’t take gold out of the bank. You buy gold from a bank and it stays in the bank longer without the possibility of taking it out. What a joke. Guess what happens to the bank and the gold in it when the economy collapses.
And now look at Bitcoin. there is a little of it, you can’t increase it at will, and it’s convenient to store. Does it remind you of anything? And it’s always with you.
Yes, but the overwhelming majority of the value of gold is because it is shiny. Up until very recently, it had almost no other practical use other than being shiny. Plenty of other objects meet the definition of “rare” and “cannot make more at will” and “doesn’t degrade over time”. Gold is just the prettiest.
Well, what kind of items are these that are rare, they cannot be made as much as you want, they do not deteriorate over time And allow processing?
For most of human history, salt met this definition. Ever wonder why it’s called a salary?
Tungsten is also one of the rarest minerals on Earth despite being relatively cheap.
I was excited for Bitcoin but the more I learned and the more the public used it, the more I hated it.
EDIT: FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IS A BADLY PHRASE EXPLANATION, PLEASE READ MY COMMENT BELOW TO UNDERSTAND MY POINT
Bitcoins timestamp only supports dates up to 2106 because they decided on an UNSIGNED value. You don’t need negative values… You know when the network starts, that is 0. Without network, no Bitcoin.
That is how bad it is engineered.
And we are not even talking proof of work or whatever. Crypto is a scam because the creators made it very obvious that they didn’t really care about the project and the community is just gambling.
I don’t get why using an unsigned value is bad in this context. Like you’ve said yourself, why would you add support for dates that happened before the creation of the network?
Sorry my phrasing was bad and made it confusing. Let me explain it in detail.
They correctly choose a unsigned int for the time but they based it on Unix time, and Unix time is signed. So they choose a system that would require an conversion from Unix time to Bitcoin time (or the other way around) anyway. But you don’t need to be able to have a timestamp for 1970, which their timestamp system supports, because instead of counting from 2008 (the invention of Bitcoin) they count from 1970. Wasting 38 years and as you know Unix time is hitting a limit in 2038, 68 years after its start, Bitcoin time is unsigned and so it gets to 2106. 2106-1970= 136 years. And they are wasting 38 years!!! Why? You need a conversion between both after 2038 anyway. And if they really care for cheap conversion, a signed 64bit value would be much better, because after 2038, that will probably be the standard. So they chose to waste 38 years for compatibility which will break after 2038, instead of choosing compatibility after 2038 for 292 billion years.
And if size was the reason and 64bit timestamps would have been too big, just start counting from 2008 (or better 2009 when the network started) and get all those juicy 136 years instead of 98 years.
It is stupid.
or they can simply inherit the UNIXTIME library, in which 0 has shifted from 1970 to 2038, and add one additional “time epoch” flag. Think about what’s easier - create your own time library or inherit from unixtime?
The choice of a
uint32_tfor time saves 4 bytes per transaction. That doesn’t sound like much, but with 1.2 billion transactions recorded, it adds up to almost 10 GB of space saved.They could, ultimately, just replace it with a
uint64_tsome time in the 22nd century without much fuss. In the late 2000s when Bitcoin was created, storage space was at a significant cost, but now it is quite cheap and in the 2100s it will undoubtedly be even cheaper.10gb, on a 670gb big Blockchain. Those 10gb are super important.
And again, size would an ok argument if they didn’t go for uint32 instead of int32. Because they broke compatible with Unix time for no reason at that moment. Unless they wanted to min/Max every bit and then why did they start with 1970? And not 2008/2009?
It makes no sense.
Also in 2008, 10gb would have cost you around $1. Ofc, each node would have required the 10 additional gb, so each node would be $1 more. Of course, there weren’t that many transaction in the chain and it wouldn’t actually cost that much, but ok.
Last time I checked, BTC transaction fees were prohibitively high to pay for 80$ AAAA games with them, and WAY too high to pay for a 5 USD single-developer itch.io game.
I haven’t looked at other Crypto in a while. I made some money off BTC, but I think it is wildly overvalued for a long time, and I’ve been disappointed in how un-currency-like other alternatives were, even those that have been around long enough that they are unlikely to be rug-pulls.
That said, if you need to get paid and Visa/MC won’t let you use them, I’m not going to attack you (too hard) for accepting Crypto. They are bad systems, but we live in Captialism, so you gotta get paid. They might be the least-worse system that is global and isn’t Visa/MC. I’m unlikely to buy your product that way, tho; I’m more likely to pirate than I am to participate in cryptocurrency again.
Bitcoin bros are acting like little pushed around victims now?
I think this is bit what the post is trying to say.
A few days ago, visa and MasterCard forced steam to stop selling some games they didn’t like, and is not the first time. For many of us (I’m not a bitcoiner nor a crypto bro, my entire crypto wallet is 1usd) the first thought was “this is ridiculous. They have a duopoly so they get to decide the rules of the internet. This can be solved with crypto to remove all the unnecessary middlemen”. I felt the push. It reignited my interest in the tech and am once again seeing what’s out there, fees, and transaction times looking for a good balance
Needlessly antagonistic interpretation presented not for good faith discussion but for your own fragile emotional needs. Reap what you sow.
Trying so hard to sound smart, just like a bitcoin bro
I can dumb it down if you want.
Crypto is still a scam.
And specifically bad for this.
Only way out is communism. Pick yoir flavor.
Bitcoin is not crypto
it’s literally called a “cryptocurrency”.
Yes but they are still very different things.
only if you change the definition of “crypto”.
Many would argue that there needs some distinction between them. The ongoing joke is “Shitcoin” as many have abandoned the benefits of bitcoin.
