this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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LLMs are expensive power hungry beasts of limited use.
Crypto is similarly a power hungry beast. It's also primarily a niche pseudo currency that's arguably more regularly used for crime than legitimate purchases.
"Feed what you wish to grow" applies here ... and TBH I'm okay with what they've done with the LLM. The crypto wallet ... I just wish we'd let crypto die. Bitcoin in particular is too unstable for the average person to use as some kind of normal currency. People also see it as an investment, but it's a super questionable investment that is backed only by the arbitrary value we give it.
Nothing wrong with a crime currency, easier to get safe drugs.
That's true for cash as well, but that's because of a few factors:
Cryptocurrencies can solve these problems. Since it's digital, there's nothing physical to carry around, online purchases are secure, and some vendors charge a lower fee for accepting crypto (e.g. https://based.win has a 10% discount for Monero). Since it's distributed, you're not stuck w/ 3-4 "networks" to process transactions, so transaction fees are generally lower (e.g. Visa/Mastercard/etc generally charge ~3%, whereas Monero charges a few pennies, regardless of transaction amount).
The reason it's more often used for crime is because few vendors accept cryptocurrency as payment, mostly because demand is low. The more people that use cryptocurrencies for legitimate purchases, the more companies will accept it and the ratio between legitimate vs criminal transactions will go down.
I wouldn't be surprised if cash is more often used for crime than legitimate purchases, mostly because cash is annoying to use. That doesn't mean we should eliminate cash, it means we should make using it less annoying (e.g. include sales tax on listed price and not just calculated at checkout). I see cash used a lot more in states w/ no sales tax, and I hear Europeans use cash a lot more as well because VAT is included in the list price.
I know A LOT of people that still use cash and use it frequently for legitimate purchases.
There are also several places around here that are cash only shops, and several more that will charge you extra for using a credit card.
Cash is an official, government sanctioned, form of currency. Part of the appeal of cryptocurrencies is they're a currency that's outside of government management.
The problem with bitcoin in particular is volatility vs any other reference currency is insane. You might have enough to buy an expensive house one day, then a few months later you only have enough for a cheap car, then a few months later you can buy an even nicer house (or maybe not!). That's just not practical for most people ... I don't think it ever will be practical for most people.
If we get a "stable coin" that requires low power draw ... maybe? But is that really better than just using a credit card? Are online purchases really more secure? People get their wallet stolen in real life, getting your digital wallet stolen is something that can totally happen too. There's no FDIC on your bitcoin, a bitcoin wallet isn't a bank.
Crypto fans love to talk up crypto coins but ... I just do not see them as a practical solution to much of anything. We would be far better off improving security of credit cards so you can manage your purchases in a system that's more like PayPal's where there's a way to see "these are the things that are authorized to take money from you automatically" and "these are the things where we generated a one time token and this is how much you paid."
The things I've seen about bitcoin at scale have also suggested it could never even come close to the transaction speed of VISA.
I just ... I am so far from sold. I found Bitcoin when it was ~1 USD per bitcoin. I wish I'd bought just $50 of bitcoin back then and sat on it, but I don't think bitcoin ever has soared because of its merits. It's kind of like this AI hype right now, block chains have very limited practical usability.
I don't know about power draw, but Monero is relatively stable ($120-$170 over the last 2 years; avg $157, and generally stays between $140-160) and is unprofitable to mine, so you only get enthusiasts who really like the coin doing it. I think, on net, it uses significantly less than Bitcoin, just because blocksizes are variable size and there are no mining farms (less competition should mean less waste), but that's incredibly hard to measure or even estimate, and we'd need to take transaction costs into account as well (e.g. I'd be willing to spend more electricity if it meant less money going to bank profits). We could compare Reddit to Lemmy as a similar example, Reddit will be cheaper to operate per user (less duplication), but Lemmy is community driven and has no incentive to screw over users.
Ethereum uses proof-of-stake, so it has much lower power draw than pretty much anything else, but there's still a ton of speculation that causes prices to change dramatically ($1100-3800 over the past 2 years). Eth has a higher transaction fee than Monero by a pretty large factor, so it's not great as a currency either. But maybe it'll encourage more coins to switch to proof-of-stake and drop energy use by the cryptocurrency market substantially.
There's also no FDIC protection on cash. You should, IMO, be treating cryptocurrencies more like a pile of cash than a bank (though it's more secure than cash). You don't need FDIC protection on your spending money, but you should have it on your savings. My investments are at investment brokerages w/ SIPC protection, my emergency fund is at a bank, and my spending money could totally be in crypto, if I had more places to spend it.
There are two main types of crypto fans:
The first are very vocal and should be avoided at all costs, while the second just don't want anyone (banks, governments, etc) to be able to snoop on their transactions. I'm the second, and I honestly don't currently own any cryptocurrencies, but I'm interested in Monero to replace credit cards in online purchases (I have a wallet set up, still haven't gotten to funding it).
Well, the Bitcoin lightning network dramatically improves that and is competitive with VISA and other credit card networks. I don't know the specific numbers, but initial verification of funds (basically what happens when you buy something w/ your credit card) happens almost instantly (seconds), but "settling" takes a bit longer (minutes to days), much like with credit card companies (i.e. "pending" transactions).
Monero is similar. Broadcasting the payment request takes about a second, and settling the transaction takes a few minutes. So for small purchases like a coffee, you probably wouldn't wait for settlement, but you would for larger transactions (e.g. buying a car) because there's technically a risk of double-spending within that block verification time.
Since vendors wouldn't need to pay transaction fees for VISA, Mastercard, etc, I think they'd be willing to occasionally eat the cost of someone scamming them with a double-spend (pretty high effort for the scammer, esp. in person).
So cryptocurrency is ready today to replace credit card networks. You can use Bitcoin Lightning or Monero today and get near-instant verification of funds and reasonable settlement times (usually minutes, maybe hours). The main issue is vendors accepting it as payment.
Agreed. I strongly discourage anyone from buying BTC as an investment. I don't regret not buying BTC when I first noticed it, because if I made a good return, I'd think I know something about it and end up gambling it all away on crypto trades (also why I don't buy individual stocks anymore). I have never and probably will never see cryptocurrency as an investment product, because I don't see any reason for it to increase or decrease in value aside from speculation, whereas I do think things like stocks have understandable and predictable behaviors (on longer time scales, not short-term).
So I don't buy any cryptocurrencies as investments, I'm purely interested in using them for transactions. I'd love to just use cash, but that doesn't work online and is a pain in real life, so I'm hoping cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Monero become mainstream enough that I can do that. Given how many breaches there have been, I just don't trust debit cards, since banks can put checking/savings on hold much longer than credit card companies do (banks make money by holding money, credit cards make money by you spending money).
So I'm sold on the general idea, I'm just limited by places to spend it. That's why I encourage people to use it, so demand goes up and more stores start accepting it.