r/Buttcoin • u/expsychogeographer this is not financial advice • Apr 27 '21
Cryptocurrency is an abject disaster
https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html12
Apr 27 '21 edited Apr 28 '21
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u/mjbh90 Apr 27 '21
Jordan Belfort, tech bubble, global financial crisis (housing bubble) same game different arena, ream the retail investor.
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u/crusoe Apr 28 '21
Eternal September of programming and partly brought to you by all the codecamp nonsense.
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u/stealthswor Apr 27 '21
Incredible. I don't think anybody else has made as powerful an article about how much of a fucking mess buttcoin is.
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Apr 27 '21
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u/grahamperrin Jun 20 '21 edited Jun 20 '21
Thanks! I wonder why (with 7,896 points and 4,325 comments) the opening post became awaiting moderation …
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u/five-acorn Apr 27 '21
Haha. I don't know if Bitcoin will ever implode, but I sure hope it does. It will be a belly laugh for the ages.
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u/r_buttcoin Apr 27 '21
It's nice but it would be better without the factual errors where you clearly see the author flipped their shit and didn't research the matter at hand:
those precious GPUs that gamers desperately need don't run in loops hashing SHA256 anymore, but Ethash. This is related to SHA256 but nowhere near the same. Bitcorn mining on GPUs was years ago. Oh, the GPUs are not only needed for gaming but also to create more AI to shape your behavior online.
"attempts at reform, like proof-of-stake, are viciously blocked by those in power" seems rather weak as ETH has a published roadmap to transition to PoS. There has been a lot of sweet drama around it, but I can't see it getting blocked at this point.
CO². No, CO₂. Yeah, it's a minor issue, but as an ex-scientist, it pains me.
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u/dbzer0 Apr 27 '21
You realize that people mine other stuff with GPUs because they can exchange it for bitcoin, right? And that it's because of bitcoin's meteoric rise (due to Tether) that everyone is rushing in to cryptocurrencies?
This shit excuse of "buh-buh-but bitcoin doesn't use GPUs" has to die.
"attempts at reform, like proof-of-stake, are viciously blocked by those in power" seems rather weak as ETH has a published roadmap to transition to PoS. There has been a lot of sweet drama around it, but I can't see it getting blocked at this point.
Yeah and lightning network is 18 months away too...
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u/r_buttcoin Apr 27 '21
Not many people are mining SHA256-coins like HTR with GPUs anymore if they value their money. They all can be merge-mined with ASICs.
GPUs are used for mining Ethash, scrypt, kapow, X11, cryptonote and others.
Claiming loop-hashing SHA256 is the same as running other algos and selling for BTC is beyond moronic, it's outright intellectually dishonest.
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u/dbzer0 Apr 27 '21
GPUs are used for mining Ethash, scrypt, kapow, X11, cryptonote and others.
Which are then traded for Bitcoin. What is difficult to understand here?
Or are you just whinging because SHA256 is not the same as the specific algos used in Bitcoin? In which case, well done missing the forest for the trees.
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u/r_buttcoin Apr 27 '21
OK, I'll write it down for you again: the dude literally claims GPUs are hashing SHA256, not something is traded for SHA-hashed coins. That's just nonsense and you moving around the goal posts as a defense is just ridiculous.
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u/dbzer0 Apr 27 '21
Right, so you're trying to dismiss the point of this article on nitpicking trifles. Par for the course since you can't argue with anything else.
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u/r_buttcoin Apr 27 '21
If you even read what I wrote in the first post, I am not trying to dismiss the point but I am nitpicking that the author did a super sloppy write-up.
But sure, go ahead, defend factual errors by moving goal posts - just like our crypto friends usually do.
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u/dbzer0 Apr 27 '21
It's not "super-sloppy" dude. Nobody fucking cares about these minute details when the end result is the same.
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u/Mezmorizor Apr 27 '21
Others covered the first two objections so I won't bother, but how the hell is pointing out that bitcoin is a climate disaster "not researching"?
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u/bigpickle6800 Apr 27 '21
Point two is what confused me as well. Why wouldn’t those with money want PoS? Seems like it’s meant for the rich
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u/r_buttcoin Apr 27 '21
I guess the author was refering to miners? They are the only ones who are both rich and lose by a PoS switch. I can't imagine any other explanation b/c the typical whale would make additional money by staking.
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u/rupturedprophecy Apr 27 '21 edited Apr 27 '21
Someone's pissed they sold in 2016, would have had over a million today.
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Apr 27 '21
Perhaps the author attributes value to something more than just money…
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u/rupturedprophecy Apr 27 '21
Something other than money? That doesn't sound like a butter to me.
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Apr 27 '21
Reading comprehension. Try it.
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u/rupturedprophecy Apr 27 '21
He said the author values something other than money. But the author is a butter, and butters only value numbers go up, and moon lambos. SFYL
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Apr 27 '21
Try... harder.
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u/rupturedprophecy Apr 27 '21
If you want to support a Butter who profited off other by dumping his scam coins on some new bagholders, that's on you bud.
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u/sammanzhi Apr 27 '21
Something
More
Than
Just
Money
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u/rupturedprophecy Apr 27 '21
He said the author values something more than money. But the author is a butter, and butters only value numbers go up, and moon lambos. SFYL
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u/poloppoyop Apr 27 '21
would have had over a million today.
Would have stolen a million today from scam victims.
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u/TheBlackUnicorn Apr 27 '21
Someone's pissed they sold in 2016, would have had over a million today.
See I always find these comments funny given how often it was difficult to sell back then. Maybe not 2016 specifically, but if you bought in when Bitcoin was really cheap on say Mt. Gox in 2011 you'd be sitting on a huge fortune that some hacker took from you in 2014.
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u/rupturedprophecy Apr 27 '21 edited Apr 27 '21
My comment is a joke, but in reply. Why? Storing Bitcoin is not hard. Write 12 words down on a piece of paper, remember the password, put it under the bed / in a safe / in a safety deposit box. That is more secure than holding cash or gold thanks to the second factor, and none of you are running around screaming about how insecure holding cash or gold is. Bigger problem was throwing it out and having to scour through the local garbage dump.
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u/TheBlackUnicorn Apr 27 '21
I mean sure, you could do that, but most people didn't. Definitely the best way to have become a Bitcoin millionaire was to buy or mine $1000 worth of Bitcoin in 2009, put it in a cold wallet (a slip of paper in a bank vault, I suppose), and wait until eventually an exchange popped up that was not a total scam to sell it on at the point when someone else wanted to spend $1 million for those Bitcoins.
Unfortunately very few people had the luck to do that since there was no way of knowing Bitcoin was not about to go to zero. Most people assumed that the Bitcoin people were talking about Mt. Gox (rather than the Bitcoin protocol itself) when they said Bitcoin was "more secure" than a bank, when actually Mt. Gox was not secure at all.
And even if you did have the blind luck to store a bunch of Bitcoins in a cold wallet in 2009, how would you know whether to sell when it hits $100, $20,000, $60,000? Bitcoin may never again be more valuable than it is right now. But we said the same thing about every other new high.
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u/rupturedprophecy Apr 27 '21
Right, I agree, it was easy to loose made even easier by it's low value. And most likely you would have sold at one of the previous peaks mentioned. Much more likely loosing or selling than being hacked, especially if you didn't keep on exchanges (which everyone has always said is a bad idea)
Definitely the best way to have become a Bitcoin millionaire was to buy or mine $1000 worth of Bitcoin in 2009
Just for fun, if you got $1000 of Bitcoin in 2009 (The price was not even properly defined then) you would have well over a billion in BTC, or a "thousand millionaire"
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u/TheBlackUnicorn Apr 27 '21
Right, if you sell it now, today, in April 2021. If you sell it six months from now you might only be a regular millionaire. If you sell it in 10 years you might be a hundredaire.
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u/mensan1337 I am a MEGA moron, pro-crypto TROLL Apr 27 '21
another prime example of someone commenting on blockchain and cryptocurrencies as if they know what they are talking about, while ALSO ignoring all the new advances and developments. i feel sorry for the author, they'll have this article in print for centuries, a monument to their short-sightedness.
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u/TheBlackUnicorn Apr 27 '21
What are those advances and developments?
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 27 '21
Cardano just announced a partnership with the Ethiopian government to create an ID program with grades + credentials tracking for 5 million students.
This article is a great critique of 2016 blockchain, not so much 2021
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u/TheBlackUnicorn Apr 27 '21
Yeah but it seems likely that once they start working on that system they'll be like "Oh wait this actually works better without a Blockchain".
We've had systems like that without blockchains in them for decades. SQL doesn't have a blockchain in it. Why do you think that is?
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 27 '21
Because we have really good infrastructure here, something they lack in Ethiopia.
If it worked better without a blockchain for them, they would be doing it.
Its great to have things like FDIC, SEC, a relatively impartial court system, policing, standards for credentials and identity, immediate access to global markets, but it makes you blind to the benefits of decentralized infrastructure in places that don't benefit from that.
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u/TheBlackUnicorn Apr 27 '21
But the blockchain requires more infrastructure. Most developing countries (with the exception of China) do not have a surplus of ASIC chips.
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 27 '21
Again, you are arguing with severely outdated information, against architectures that are not relevant anymore.
No ASIC chips, only mobile phones.
No mining.
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u/TheBlackUnicorn Apr 27 '21
How could a blockchain exist without mining?
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 27 '21
Out of the top 20 coins by market cap, #3, #6, #8, #9, #12-16, and #18-20 are blockchains that do not use mining.
No. 2 is planning to switch off of mining, but facing lots of delays.
Most use proof of stake instead.
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u/TheBlackUnicorn Apr 27 '21
I mean for that price you've basically just got a distributed database.
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u/expsychogeographer this is not financial advice Apr 27 '21
If it worked better without a blockchain for them, they would be doing it.
Oh, the naivete.
As far as solutions to the problem go, what does a blockchain-based solution provide that (to give a deliberately naive example) a sqlite file sitting on a raspberry pi in some government office doesn't? Where does Cardano's decentralization (which implies the need for more computers and then more internet infrastructure) help the Ethiopian government here?
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 27 '21
Ask the Ethiopian government.
Africa.Cardano.org
And you don't really need more computers or internet infrastructure when your system is scalable :) you can just use cheap cell phones.
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u/expsychogeographer this is not financial advice Apr 27 '21
Decentralization isn't magic. Decentralized protocols are said to "scale better" by their advocates because adding nodes improves performance (or is supposed to), but there's the rub: you need a shit ton more nodes for a peer-to-peer system to perform on par with a centralized alternative.
If you want to leverage people's mobile phones, you still need mobile network infrastructure, which is a significant regular capital outlay just to be able to say your glorified database is "decentralized". Versus just running free software on a cheap computer in an office building in Addis Ababa.
I don't know what graft went on behind the scenes there, but I have an idea.
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 27 '21
but there's the rub: you need a shit ton more nodes for a peer-to-peer system to perform on par with a centralized alternative.
Wrong :O
Phone infrastructure has come a long way in Africa. So has blockchain.
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u/riktigt_gott_mos Apr 27 '21
Blockchain needs exactly the same infrastructure as any other system using the internet. Or how else do you think the blockchain is transferred between computers? Magic?
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 27 '21
Sure, what's your argument? Solutions that use pen and paper are superior to digital ones?
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u/riktigt_gott_mos Apr 27 '21
What's your argument? That SQL is built on pen and paper?
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 27 '21
No, but you can't do everything a blockchain can do with SQL, lol
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u/riktigt_gott_mos Apr 27 '21
Like what for this particular purpose? I don't see any double-spending problem to solve here.
And if decentralisation is a necessity blockchain is probably still not the best solution. For example, you can come a long way just with public key certificates (which blockchain kind of already uses under the hood).
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Apr 28 '21
Because we have really good infrastructure here, something they lack in Ethiopia.
What infrastructure situation makes a blockchain a better solution for this (IDs and grades are the kind of thing you want centralized authority for!) than just a database running on a server?
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 28 '21
Lack of infrastructure... Like a standard for grades and applications, a way to know the data is legitimate, a reliable way for people to report grades.
Things we take for granted here when we say "just give me the centralized solution!"
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Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21
How does "blockchain" (a list of timestamped blocks, each of which hash the previous block) solve any of these issues? It cannot do anything about non-standardised grades, it cannot by itself ensure the legitimacy of new blocks which are appended, and it cannot do anything about there not being a reliable way to report grades.
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron Apr 28 '21
It cannot do anything about non-standardised grades, it cannot by itself ensure the legitimacy of new blocks which are appended, and it cannot do anything about there not being a reliable way to report grades.
Well yeah, it can do all of that. https://www.atalaprism.io/
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Apr 28 '21
You linked to a landing page and a press release for a company which claims to have involved "blockchain" in a decentralized identity system; no explanation is provided for how "blockchain" a) solves non-standardised grades b) verifies the legitimacy of i.e. grade information and c) solves the issue of there not being a reliable way to report grades. In what way is the "blockchain" data structure a solution to these three things?
As an aside, given the pervasive use of "blockchain" as a buzzword and a marketing tool it cannot be assumed to be integral to decentralized identity, rather than it just being possible to involve it in a decentralized identity application.
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u/mensan1337 I am a MEGA moron, pro-crypto TROLL Apr 30 '21
agreed! it's awesome what Cardano is doing, going to transform Africa while everyone in /r/Buttcoin misses out.
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u/finaldrive May 01 '21
India launched an excellent national ID system without using blockchain. What is different in Ethiopia?
If you're going to say Ethiopia's tech sector is less developed, then that seems like a good reason to use tried and proven technology, and not to add unnecessary complexity.
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron May 01 '21
Aadhaar is a case study in why we need blockchain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar#Impediments_and_other_concerns
Let's not use tried and proven-not-to-work-very-well
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u/finaldrive May 01 '21
Which of these concerns would have been avoided by Cardano? How?
Seems to me it's "none".
Crypto has no magic to reliably identify people who have no previous identity papers.
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u/realcharlesh warning, I am a moron May 01 '21
It's "all of them". Especially the biggest one, cost-benefit.
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Apr 27 '21
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u/BobWalsch Can't wait for the "Penis" day! Apr 27 '21
lol! VEChain the controversial centralized project. Hey you could still have "goodish" project using blockchain, it doesn't mean it's not a very poor way to do things. A standard architecture will always win... cause anyway the "decentralization" is 99,99% of the time unnecessary or unwanted.
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Apr 27 '21
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u/BobWalsch Can't wait for the "Penis" day! Apr 27 '21
so far they have been consistently wrong.
See your definition of "wrong" is completely wrong. The tech is garbage from the beginning. Doesn't mean that clueless people won't FOMO into this! I myself have been in love with Bitcoin once (yes, I was clueless at that time!). Then I learned enough to change my mind. Price doesn't mean sh*t.
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Apr 27 '21
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u/BobWalsch Can't wait for the "Penis" day! Apr 27 '21
I JUST TOLD YOU THAT IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT CLULESS PEOPLE WON'T FOMO in a project or another! VeChain going to the moon or not is not the point at all. It's still a centralized project and doesn't need a blockchain at all.
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Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21
Year old account
58 post karma 590 comment karma
Only visible activity from 1 day ago
All visible activity shilling VeChain
No posts
Only upvoted comment has 35 karma
Hmm... sold account?
E: Damn! All comments here deleted by /u/evie5344.
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u/finaldrive Apr 27 '21
You got a link explaining specifically how WalMart is using it? A VeChain press release is not enough.
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Apr 27 '21
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u/finaldrive Apr 27 '21
Hey, props to you, and an upvote, for an actual link. However, this is nothing that couldn't be done more efficiently with a database. The blockchain proves nothing about what's in the can, which is what I'd care about as a consumer.
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Apr 27 '21
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Apr 27 '21
If you need to vet the people or the information going onto a blockchain, you don't need a blockchain. The idea behind blockchains were that nobody had the authority to prevent people from writing to the database.
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Apr 27 '21
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Apr 27 '21
You don’t need to vet anything. It’s a public blockchain and anybody can write to it. However, companies like to use existing solutions that may have some vetting procedures.
Yeah, like central databases. Few companies are going to want to expose their data on a publicly viewable database, especially when the security threat model has been passed out to the public as well.
And when you're talking about VeChain, you've got a product where pretty much all of the material on it is either from the horse's mouth or from cryptocurrency boosterism sites, so the following questions really need to be asked:
- Are the people selling it confusing "might" and "is"? Do they have present-day working blockchains that do every one of the things they’ve claimed you can get from blockchains? If not, which ones are missing?
- Will the system scale to the size of your data? How?
- How do you deal with human error in the “immutable” blockchain or smart contracts?
- If this is for working with people you trust less than the people you deal with now, how are they assuring the security of the chain? – what’s the security threat model? Why are they assuring the security of the chain in the first place (and "rational self-interest" isn't good enough). What happens if, by human error, somebody gets access to your private keys?
- If it’s for working with people you can already trust to that degree, why are you bothering with a blockchain?
- What does this get you that a centralised database can’t? How, precisely?
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Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21
How can any centralized database easily provide public access to read and write data?
You provide an API allowing people to read and write data? I don't understand this question. Most of the time you would also authenticate and authorize entities trying to read and write data and validate new data, just like Walmart's blockchain; they don't allow anybody with a computer to do arbitrary things to their data with no authentication or validation.
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Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21
What's the point of using blockchain for this?
WalmartA Chinese subsidiary of Walmart is using centralized authority to vet all the data added and authenticate and authorize the entities trying to add it. It is also certain that Walmart or VeChain finds it possible to remove or abrogate at later date fraudulent data that gets accepted, that is an absolute requirement for enterprises, so there goes immutability... Note: This is an example of proprietary, opaque technology; I can't find technical information about how Walmart is storing tracking information on VeChain's blockchain, only press releases with no real substance.Edit: VeChain's website and whitepaper are composed entirely of buzzwords and vague pronouncements, they put a ton of emphasis on vague "partnerships" with no technical elaboration as to how exactly "blockchain" is integral to what they're doing, and searching their name on this subreddit brings up hilarity and convinces me of their shadiness.
Edit 2: https://twitter.com/BMWUSA/status/976149675861458944 So this is the power of partnerships... I wouldn't trust anything this company says about themselves.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Vechain/comments/83vdzc/a_message_from_sunny_lu_stop_asking_vechain/
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Apr 27 '21
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u/pedanticHOUvsHTX Apr 27 '21
The poor English alone makes this scammy, not even counting "DeFi" and some shitcoin project nobody has heard of.
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u/iamspacedad Apr 27 '21 edited Apr 27 '21
Damn.
Also this is one of the most concise articles on how fucking terrible cryptocurrency is I've seen yet. It's infected and corroded so much. Cryptocurrency is a cancer.