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Generative AI hype is ending – and now the technology might actually become useful
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Unfortunately crypto is still somehow a thing. There is a couple year old bitcoin mining facility in my small town that brags about consuming 400MW of power to operate and they are solely owned by a Chinese company.
I recently noticed a number of bitcoin ATMs that have cropped up where I live - mostly at gas stations and the like. I am a little concerned by it.
Do you really think that paper money covered in colonizers and other slavermasters is going to last forever?
Found the diamond hands.
Crypto currencies are still backed by and dependent on those same currencies. And their value is incredibly unstable, making them largely useless except as a speculative investment for stock market daytraders. BitCoin may as well be Doge Coin or Bored Ape NFTs as far as the common person is concerned.
I hope your coins haven't seen a 90%+ drop in value in the past 4 years like the vast majority have.
Cryptos obviously have serious issues, but so do fiat currencies. In fact all implementations of money have one problem or another. It's almost like it's a difficult thing to get right and that maybe it was a bad idea in the first place.
What do you mean by “backed” here? I think I’m misunderstanding but I thought (and a short google seems to confirm) that currency A being backed by currency B means the value of A is fixed at a certain amount of currency B, and there is some organisation “backing” this with reserves.
Not trying to shill/defend crypto, just confused on terminology :)
I mean that crypto currencies are essentially the same as stocks. They have no worth on their own, and their value is tied to converting them to other currencies.
And this conversion rate fluctuates constantly. What one bitcoin is worth today is not what it will be worth tomorrow. In order to buy something with a crypto currency, companies have to first check how much it's worth in fiat currency.
That's why you stick with Bitcoin instead of running after whatever flashy new super duper coin that assholes trick fools into buying.
lol
Forever? No, of course not.
But paper currency is backed by a nation state, so I'm betting it'll be around a bit longer then a purely digital asset without the backing of a nation, and driven entirely by speculation.
I'm not even anti-crypto. It was novel idea when it was actually used entirely as a currency, but that hasn't been true for quite some time.
Bullets and toilet paper will be more usable currency than crypto if paper falls out of favor.
I hope this is sarcasm.
It takes living with a broken system to understand the fix for it. There are millions of people who have been saved by Bitcoin and the freedom that it brings, they are just mainly in the 2nd and 3rd worlds, so to many people they basically don't exist.
That's great and all but doesn't sound like a valid excuse for the excessive amount of energy it consumes. It's also hard for me to imagine 3rd world places that somehow flourish because of a currency that needs the Internet to exist.
I just looked it up, it looks like it is the a difference of 35% to 80% in the developed world.
Imagine this, you are forced to hold your wealth in corrupt government run banks. They often print tons of it for themselves, criminals are printing it, the government can seize it from anyone they want. You can try to store it at home, yourself, or you can give it to the banks. Now there is a third option, store it as Bitcoin. No need for risking it under your bed or with the corrupt banker politicians, and on top of those be victims to their inflation. Sure, your bank probably doesn't often seize your money, and your currency probably isn't rapidly devaluing even compared to the dollar, but if it was then you would probably think the energy is worth it.
But crypto also suffers from crashes and being devalued and if you're buying Bitcoin with your hard earned dollar that is worth less and less then you are ultimately buying less and less Bitcoin. The fact that Bitcoin still needs all of the other currency to function as a middle man makes it vulnerable to the same risks. Maybe it helps people in niche situations but I'm sure we'll all be thinking it's worth it when those same struggling places are the hardest hit by climate change. At least they'll have a bunch of digital currency propped up by fiat currency.
Climate change is a separate issue.
It would be fantastic if people being abused by corrupt politicians and currencies was niche! It's not though, there are hundreds of millions of people struggling with it. Billions depending on how you count it. It is a disease of the 1st world to be unable to accept that not everyone has the same privileges they enjoy. Human beings are literally starving to death and dying decades early due to poverty, Bitcoin is literally keeping them alive. Spoiled brats want them to die because they saw a headline that tells them to parrot that Bitcoin is bad. Where is your outrage over Christmas lights? How about video games? These things don't save lives and transform existences like safe money does.
Nearly everyone who has bought Bitcoin and held are up, it has outperformed every stock, every currency, every investment on large enough time scales. Give me a volatile currency that goes up in value over volatile currencies that utterly collapse. Where is the outrage over the lira? Or any other currency that is down to 5% of itself that people are "supposed" to hold according to you?
There is a very good reason that you don't have answers to these. It is because all you know on the issue is that you are not supposed to look to deeply and you're supposed to mindlessly repeat that Bitcoin is bad without having any idea why. You are allowed to research, you are allowed to make your own decisions, you are allowed to talk to people in the 2nd and 3ed worlds. You are allowed to travel to these places and talk to people. Nobody forces you to repeat their BS, you just have to decide that you want to learn and then put in some effort.
Ive worked in 3rd world and I'm shocked that you think these people give a shit about Bitcoin or that it can do anything for them. You can sing its praises all you want and go on and on about how it's just me repeating what I've been told. It's a joke.
İ live in the 2nd world and am often in the third. You must have either been in a pretty unique place, or you are projecting your experience from long ago onto the current state of things. You just need to revisit and update your world view to modern times.