Author: Tom Gauld
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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"AI" is the new "blockchain".
You summoned the crypto bros.
It's similarly hyped but deep learning has real applications wherever huge amounts of data are involved. The only application to blockchain tech is online crime.
Not really. You can use crypto to make non-criminal transactions too. You sound exactly like EU politicians, "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". Are you saying that you don't need privacy with your transactions? If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy. And it's the same with crypto.
Theoretically yes. But practically, the whole tech hasn't reached any noteworthy application at the same age as the Android OS.
The tech is garbage because of its inefficiency and blockchain's only selling point, trustlessness, is a lie because you have to trust someone eventually to get your tokens - or your notary substitute not to fuck up the code of your smart contract (lol).
This only works for criminals in countries that don't give a shit if you scam foreigners, like Russia, for example. They know full well who those criminals are though. But that's fine. Blockchain tech never was meant for privacy (how could it with the ledger being public?)
Stuff like Monero can hide that. And even bitcoin is better than banks. You don't have to link your identity to a Bitcoin wallet, meanwhile some banks even want a sample of your voice.
Monero is the only crypto that may actually provide the most barebones version of what Bitcoin was originally supposed to be, but it still has the problem of being massively slow inefficient and unscalable, compared to existing fiat currency electronic banking systems.
Crypto is never going to be widely adopted at PoS, by retailers, basically every attempt at doing that has failed, and I remember when that was the main sales pitch for Bitcoin.
Monero might work for hiding some money, illicit transactions, or doing cross border remittances without massive fees... but in general, crypto is 99% completely baseless speculation and scam grifts.
I agree that a lot of cryptocurrencies are scams, but if you're worried about inefficiency, you can use proof of stake crypto, such as Polkadot. It uses as much energy as 5 households iirc. Even if everyone can see transactions, no one can take that money away from you, which banks can easily do.
Huh, I had not heard of Polkadot.
Proof of Stake only shines compared to Proof of Work. There's no consensus algorithm that isn't blown out of the water by conventional database tech performance-wise and there never will be because of the network character of blockchain tech.
Token-bros (I refuse to give you the term "crypto", it stands for cryptography) ignore this, maybe even rightly so, since the benchmark cannot be conventional tech if you're trying to implement trustlessness (the DB would be controlled by some entity like a bank) but since there is no trustlessness (trust the network, the devs, the exchange for real money, etc), it's a baseless idea.
Why do you use Lemmy, which is far less efficient than a centralized system, because of its network character?
Lemmy's waste of energy is negligible compared to crypto token systems. Also transaction throughput isn't a requirement - if my shitpost comments take an hours to get through, literally nobody cares.
That gotta be the worst false equivalency argument I've ever seen.
I definitely like having some money that doesn’t rely on the stability of the government
Oh yes, stability, the Bitcoin's siamesse twin.... :D
When things are unstable you diversify. Most currency is pegged to the US dollar’s value and, as we’ve seen with recent US recessions, its value impacts the value of state currencies worldwide.
Does your power grid rely on the government?
single governments collapse all the time, and even ones that don’t occasionally invalidate their currency for other reasons. My particular government does not seem the most stable right now.
Thats true but you didn't answer my question.
Of course I’m not off the grid? Weird question. I do know how to wire a car battery though
The point is that crypto is reliant on you having access to a power source, internet infrastructure, things which will more than likely brown out or collapse if your government collapses.
Can't even attempt to buy or sell things with crypto if the infrastructure goes down.
At least with physical currency of some kind, you can try.
Crypto, stops working when your unstable government's infrastructure goes down.
Yes in global collapse it would be useless—more useless than coins or paper which you can melt and burn. I imagine a political collapse limited to the US where I am to be a bit slower to where phone, internet, electricity, water etc. wouldn’t go off immediately, but even if they did I hope I could make it to the border of canada or mexico who will likely have internet. From there I’d be a refugee, but potentially one with a bit of bartering power.
If the US government fails, everyone is going down. That's a singularity event. By which I mean we can't usefully prepare for whatever happens next. At best, we can do some prepper shit, but hiding in a prepper hole isn't something that works in the long run, and sure as hell isn't a desirable life.
Cryptocurrency means nothing in this scenario.
Personally I don’t think a successful coup or similar in the US would destroy other major powers, though it would certainly cause another global financial crisis.
It would. In some ways, the 2008 financial crisis hurt the EU more than it hurt the US, even though all the problems originated in the US. By 2010, the US was looking like the best place to put your money.
Indeed, that’s why I said it would probably cause another global financial crisis. I don’t think their governments would collapse just because the US’s did though. Brettin Woods would be dead and would need to be replaced, plus a lot of IMF loans would need to be reformulated
Oh, yes it would. The global economy flows entirely through the US dollar as a reserve currency. If it goes, everything goes. China can't sell anything to Europe, Europe can't buy oil from the Middle East, and the Middle East becomes a power vacuum. Given time, these could be worked out, but not before their governments collapse.
That's why BRICs have been looking to disentangle themselves from the USD, even to the point of floating the idea of their own currency union. That's a terrible idea for other reasons (it'd let China put a noose around the other three), but there's a reason behind it.
And the few people still into blockchain will be like "what if we combined both blockchains and neural networks?"...
Actually blockchain is going to change the world.
Any minute now…