858
Been there (europe.pub)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 194 points 1 week ago* (61 children)

In the same way I feel bad for all the women out that had to put up with conversations about crypto for the last decade, the astrology for dudes

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  • [–] 90 points 1 week ago (52 children)

    Crypto really is the astrology of white guys isn't it.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 week ago (25 children)

    I have no idea why you are bringing racism into this.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 week ago* (23 children)

    It’s ok to be casually racist against white people because it’s “punching up”. Which implies white people are superior. Which is racist against non-whites wait…

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago

    To my understanding white isn't really a race.

    We kind of just like... pick and choose who ever we want to consider white.

    I suspect if I went around saying Russians are white people like Americans like South Africans, and like French people. Many people would give me the: 🤨

    Finally. These are some of my favorite kind of white girls.

    I prefer dark hair but I am a sucker for pale skin.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 week ago (22 children)

    I remember when in my undergrad almost my entire class spent their entire second year learning about blockchain and attending events related to it, and I was proud of myself for playing videogames all day instead. Nobody even talks about blockchain anymore. It's a waste of compute, and most things built on top of it are a grift. There must be some useful cases, but none I can think of. Maybe someone with more experience in Industry can.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago (11 children)

    This might be controversial but hear me out:

    The idea of an international independent currency that can be made use of anonymously and therefore not controlled by anyone is a great idea.

    Most smaller coins are just scams, reimplementing the same protocols that earlier schemes did and eventually adopting a clear pump & dump characteristic.

    However, I personally believe that bigger coins like etherium that don't fold as quickly and stick around are genuinely a good idea.

    Moreover, there's use cases where transactions are tracked for different systems, for example tracking an interconnected energy grid and usage of households.

    And then you also have to consider that block-chains themselves can just be used to keep a fulsome record of something, with the main goal of decentralizing control over that record. I'm sure there will be quite a few use cases for it that make more sense and it's quite a shame the stigma of crypto got attached to it.

    If you wanna learn more about how block chains are actually researched, you have to dive into academic publications, but then you will find out scientists have a very different vision for this technology which is way more useful. And for the sake of actual science, I hope they don't get buried under the stigma of crypto, because oftentimes these are just very smart people with lots of passion for something that they genuinely see value in.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (10 children)

    First of all, it's not guaranteed that it'll say "not controlled by anyone". For example the arms race of something like bitcoin mining leads to mining becoming unprofitable to anyone not building massive mining farms. The efficiency of mining leads to bigger control over the proof of work so there's a natural centralization of control happening with proof of work. And proof of stake isn't saving anyone either because that just opens the door to a different kind of centralization of control. Give it another 50 years and currencies like etherium will also be centralized. With all of the negatives and none of the benefits of centralization.

    And that's the other point, I don't think an internationally independent currency is that great of an idea. At least I don't think it's better than a currency with a central authority. For example central authorities manage the inflation (or in case of crypto currencies the deflation) of the currency to keep is stable and usable. Central authority also keeps oversight of illegal activities, the lack of that oversight is why crypto is popular with the black market. You also get certain consumer-protections which you're unlikely to get with crypto because there's no authority to enforce them, for example if your account gets hacked or stolen you're fucked while banks would freeze your account and reverse transactions. And of course there's taxation, which I can't imagine how that would even happen with crypto.

    I'm not saying blockchain itself is a useless technology, but I have don't believe it's usable as a currency. I also have some serious reservations in its use elsewhere because I have a hard time imagining where it would be better than a traditional database solution.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago* (9 children)

    Yes, a centralized currency can have consumer protections. What about the flip side, protection from the central bank? A central bank can restore your balance under fraud, they can also fraudulently steal your balance. Central banks also get to dictate who/what you get to spend your money on. Which is why blockchain is popular with those who oppose fascists. The government doesn’t like Wikileaks, well, they get to block payments.

    Countries manage currencies for their own ends, not for the benefit on its citizens. Plus, how much violence is the central bank willing to inflict to fulfill its ends? Your whole post ignores the long history of truly awful behavior from governments in order to keep the power of money under their control.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago* (8 children)

    What about the flip side, protection from the central bank? A central bank can restore your balance under fraud, they can also fraudulently steal your balance.

    I'll make a very simple argument here, don't elect corrupt officials who use institutions meant to work for you against you. You may not like that argument and that's fine because I'm not here to argue that argument. Instead we're going to discuss what is you argument when the centralized cabal of your blockchain currency steals your balance? Outside of forking the chain and hoping it gets accepted you've got nothing. You don't get to choose who takes over and you have no way of holding them accountable.

    Before you claim this is impossible go look up Steem. That chain got hard forked into Steem and Hive and of the two Steem, which experienced a hostile takeover, is doing better than Hive, the community fork. People who opposed Steem got cut from the chain. Now, if crypto was a real currency for the sake of stability one of the two forks would have to be chosen (otherwise you end up with fork after fork), who is to say your money won't just get wiped because you ended up on the wrong side of the fork? Who is going to give you that money back? The same way your money gets wiped whatever transaction you want to do can also get wiped if whoever controls the chain decides so.

    And I'll reiterate. My point wasn't that FIAT currencies are the best thing ever, my point was that they're better than the blockchain alternative because you end up with all the bad of the FIAT currency with none of the good.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago*

    Also, crypto and blockchain has an ENORMOUS negative ecological and energetic impact; I think that AIs are worse on that, but I'd still say that if AIs are the number one, cryptos are the number two.

    And then you have the worst part: incel cryptobros, the face of crypto. And with them, lots of scams (even within stablished coins), sects and all kind of grotesque things like that.

    Moreover, crypto is somewhat exclusionary and elitist, because it assumes that you have a somewhat decent hardware that, with the current hardware problems, isn't the case anymore for almost anyone, and even before that, a lot of folks hadn't the opportunity. Yet it's said to be democratic and free (as in Freedom). There's a clear contradiction.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    Yeah, Blockchain is really the prime example of a solution looking for a problem. Everything you can do with Blockchain can be easier done using less ressources with other techniques. It sounds fine on paper, and as you said there might be some esoteric use for it someday in the future.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    The amount of times I've asked a crypto bro to tell me exactly what The Blockchain is and them being able to actually lucidly explain it is exactly 0, in my experience.

    I know there's science somewhere in there, but the loudest enthusiasts I've come across treat it like magic.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago*

    it's not magic, it's just really boring and stupid if you explain it well.

    it's just a decentralized authentication network built on cryptography algorithms. but i guess if you don't know what any of those words mean it seems mysterious. you need a baseline understanding of networking and cryptography, and well, very few people have that.

    and people attribute financial value to each bitcoin (or whatever coin), which is just a piece of code you uniquely possess when it is in your 'wallet'.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago

    It's really not that interesting unless you're specifically into cryptography, and then it's like, kind of interesting for 20 minutes. I remember when "the blockchain" first came out people were talking about lots of potential uses (secure online voting was the only one that comes to mind) besides scamming people and selling illegal stuff, but of course none of those ever materialized.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    The Manosphere/alpha/beta/sigma BS is the real astrology for guys. Crypto is not a pseudo science its just gambling.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Yeah I agree the manosphere is more analogous to astrology, but I’m also guessing there’s a much higher percentage of manosphere believers that never actually go on dates to even discuss their ideas and culty beliefs, compared to any blockchain based technology, which almost all actively dating douchebags participate in and no doubt talked about on actual dates.

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