Ben Barbersmith: Cryptocurrency is bad. For the planet, for consumers(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Ben Barbersmith: Cryptocurrency is bad. For the planet, for consumers
https://twitter.com/benbarbersmith/status/1387371326005030912
17 comments
I disagree. Some moral outrage is required in this situation. Well-informed, quiet opinions are not always a mechanism for change, especially with such wealth involved.
Uninformed opinions about technical shit are never mechanisms for change.
Again, I disagree. The adoption of technical shit is a whim of the ignorant mass; macOS users largely don’t care that smart engineers built Unix, BSD, NextStep, they don’t care for the technical opinions inherent to the development. In righteous ignorance, the tech consumer demands that it simply just works.
And that it doesn’t offend their ethics in its effect on society - for instance, New York recently rejected the use of Boston Dynamic’s robots by police for reasons of technically, but not ethically, ignorant moral outrage.
And that it doesn’t offend their ethics in its effect on society - for instance, New York recently rejected the use of Boston Dynamic’s robots by police for reasons of technically, but not ethically, ignorant moral outrage.
They'll just run planes above the city to watch people instead, until they find what shape of surveillance robot people are okay with.
This[0] is why the technical knowledge is more important — this went on for how long, and will continue in the dozen(s?) of other US cities because people don't read.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/5/22267303/baltimore-marylan...
This[0] is why the technical knowledge is more important — this went on for how long, and will continue in the dozen(s?) of other US cities because people don't read.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/5/22267303/baltimore-marylan...
Cryptocurrency does not equal Proof of Work. Stop conflating them, it makes no sense to do so.
> Cryptocurrency does not equal Proof of Work. Stop conflating them, it makes no sense to do so.
Couterpoint:
All the major cryptocurrency are prof of work.
Ethereum is pinky promising that they will switch of POW "soon" for years. Spoiler alert: they are still POW.
The statement that all Cryptocurrency's that have any kind of following are POW at the moment is absolutely true.
When there is a cryptocurrency that is not POW and you can buy, and pay stuff online with, then we can talk, bur for now its vaporware.
Couterpoint:
All the major cryptocurrency are prof of work.
Ethereum is pinky promising that they will switch of POW "soon" for years. Spoiler alert: they are still POW.
The statement that all Cryptocurrency's that have any kind of following are POW at the moment is absolutely true.
When there is a cryptocurrency that is not POW and you can buy, and pay stuff online with, then we can talk, bur for now its vaporware.
> The statement that all Cryptocurrency's that have any kind of following are POW at the moment is absolutely true.
Utter nonsense. There are plenty of functional Proof of Stake-based blockchains and cryptocurrencies.
Examples: Neo, Avalanche, Elrond, Fantom, Polkadot, Cosmos. These are all under one category of blockchain, contract platforms, which you can build applications or currencies ("tokens") on top of, and not one of them uses Proof of Waste. If you want an example of a pure currency like Bitcoin, see Nano.
Utter nonsense. There are plenty of functional Proof of Stake-based blockchains and cryptocurrencies.
Examples: Neo, Avalanche, Elrond, Fantom, Polkadot, Cosmos. These are all under one category of blockchain, contract platforms, which you can build applications or currencies ("tokens") on top of, and not one of them uses Proof of Waste. If you want an example of a pure currency like Bitcoin, see Nano.
I have never heard of most examples of what you wrote.
Now you could say that, that just shows my ignorance, and I suppose that is somewhat true. After a while I just wrote off cryptocurrency's, as a waste of my time.
But on the other hand I have never seen any of those cryptos as an option to buy anything I ever wanted to buy, and I buy most of my stuff over internet.
I have also Implemented checkouts for various online stores and have been asked several times to implement bitcoin support. Never been asked for any of the above coins.
After brief googling for Nano as you gave it as example, I mostly found how you could buy the coin or exchange the coin for some other coin on various exchanges.
I am sure if I would spend more time, I could find something somewhere to buy that is not crypto related, but I have already spent too much time on this.
As far as I am concerned my point still stands. Except for bitcoin and Ethereum, there is little you can buy with any other cryptos.
And if you can't buy stuff with it, it's not really useful as a currency in my not so humble opinion.
Now you could say that, that just shows my ignorance, and I suppose that is somewhat true. After a while I just wrote off cryptocurrency's, as a waste of my time.
But on the other hand I have never seen any of those cryptos as an option to buy anything I ever wanted to buy, and I buy most of my stuff over internet.
I have also Implemented checkouts for various online stores and have been asked several times to implement bitcoin support. Never been asked for any of the above coins.
After brief googling for Nano as you gave it as example, I mostly found how you could buy the coin or exchange the coin for some other coin on various exchanges.
I am sure if I would spend more time, I could find something somewhere to buy that is not crypto related, but I have already spent too much time on this.
As far as I am concerned my point still stands. Except for bitcoin and Ethereum, there is little you can buy with any other cryptos.
And if you can't buy stuff with it, it's not really useful as a currency in my not so humble opinion.
The two largest blockchain are PoW. XRP, Cardano, Polkadot, the next in line by marketcap, are PoS.
It is also somewhat misleading to portrait Ethereum PoS has an eternal promise without acknowledging that real, significant steps have been taken in the last year towards - the Beacon chain launched and thousands of ETH are locked up semi-permanently, withdraw-able only on the PoS chain.
Finally, importantly, users of a PoS chain do not have to defend a PoW if they prefer not to, much in the same as you can eat Vegan food despite the CO2-cost of the environmental impact of meat production.
It is also somewhat misleading to portrait Ethereum PoS has an eternal promise without acknowledging that real, significant steps have been taken in the last year towards - the Beacon chain launched and thousands of ETH are locked up semi-permanently, withdraw-able only on the PoS chain.
Finally, importantly, users of a PoS chain do not have to defend a PoW if they prefer not to, much in the same as you can eat Vegan food despite the CO2-cost of the environmental impact of meat production.
And there are thousands of unimplemented patents changes mean nothing if not mass adopted and XRP is not moving money (or wastage) as much as BTC to matter in the discussion
Proof of Work (or some other external resource) is needed for fair coin distribution.
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Link to the actual article the twitter post is about: https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas...
And to the post on HN about the article yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26943408
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> From my limited understanding, Proof of Stake doesn’t require the same exponential growth of hardware & power. If that’s correct, then I’m not against it.
> I love the philosophy & promise of cryptocurrency! But I can’t excuse the negative impact of the current implementation.
> When proof of stake becomes the norm, I’m happy to reverse my opinion. If it doesn’t cost exponentially increasing power and hardware, I’m down.
Wish he would have informed himself a bit more before making blanket statements