Utopia Talk / Politics / Another Reason Not Invest Crypto

nhill Member	Wed May 12 23:30:27 Note: Ultimately it depends on your risk appetite and ability to weather short term volatility. But here's another reason to NOT use it for investment purposes. (I do recommend checking out some of the banking services if you have a deep wallet) Elon Musk tweeted about dropping BTC at Tesla and the price tanked around 20%. Was he short BTC? No way to know. If you short BTC over-the-counter your public address is never associated with your identity. But it doesn't even matter. SEC wouldn't care even if he was found out to be manipulating the market. Because Cryptocurrency IS NOT A SECURITY. It's considered property in the eyes of the law. Not saying the SEC does much good overall, but they do prosecute for market manipulation. Another example is Dogecoin. He pumped it 17,682.87%. He not only admitted he owned Dogecoin (allegedly for his son), but we'll never know how much because the same issue I pointed out above. And it wouldn't matter anyways, as there's no legal recourse. I own 0 bitcoin, but Elon Musk is a tool.
nhill Member	Wed May 12 23:34:55 Q: "But I thought you believed in Cryptocurrency?" A: I do, because it's the future of finance. I don't believe in it as an investment vehicle unless you have a high risk appetite or high belief in a particular project. It's a volatile investment and trades like a commodity. So it is a commodity, not a currency. Look at the price characteristics of commodities vs currencies. I keep 10% of my investment portfolio in commodities.
nhill Member	Wed May 12 23:36:13 (not investment advice)
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu May 13 04:36:49 I don’t buy that Elon didn’t know about energy or that he is dumb enough to misunderstand where the energy comes from. This is all bullshit. Though as an investment, for ordrinary people salaried people, it is fine. People with salaries save some fixed amount of their income every month. This way you buy in the highs and lows. And with this long term savings strategy, the volatility is of no concern.
Seb Member	Thu May 13 05:15:41 Quelle suprise. How long before regulators step in to start treating this as market manipulation? How long before people who have bought into this market start demanding they do so? One of the more depressing things about crypto is watching centuries worth of painfully leaned lessons on economic, banking and monetary policy get re-learned again in decades by people who just didn't want to understand the problem in anything more than the most basic technical terms.
jergul large member	Thu May 13 06:06:59 Seb The demand side will be anyone and everyone who profits from any transaction. They are the only ones really set to make money.
nhill Member	Thu May 13 09:15:02 Nim I think it's fine if you truly believe in it (as I do). But for others, they will probably sell at a loss when there's a massive dip. Seb It's not the only unregulated market in history, laws will catch up, eventually. But even then, it will be hard to determine someone profited from their manipulation. jergul That's what DeFi is partly about. You can profit from transactions directly, if you'd like. For example, if you provided money to convert between dog themed coins that past week, you would have gotten the equivalent of around 300% APR. Otherwise, sure, exchanges like Coinbase benefit a lot from the volatility. As do miners.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu May 13 10:15:59 Seb It is just difficult to take your criticism seriously since you are also defend de-fund the police policy. You can't whine about injustice this and injustice that, and then not understand that the financial order of this world - one largely set by your country and the "West", tangled with your colonialism - is the root of it all. If it helps you, since I know you like this sort of thing, view this as "de-colonizing finance and banking". It will be a bumpy ride, those with power invested in the old system are going to fight tooth and nail, like people always do, to keep their way of life. Crypto is most used in Nigeria, of all place, the Rising Star of Africa. Step aside white man.
Seb Member	Thu May 13 10:44:47 Nim: It's difficult to take anything you say seriously given your adamant belief in Evolutionary Psychology. Allocating resources for coordinating fire response and social work away from police to a dedicated non-coercive public service providers - which is the extent to which I support that agenda - is not only common sense but the defacto standard in your country and mine. Can I assume from your evident opposition to this, you want Sweden to shut down social services and fire, and re-allocate the funding to SWAT teams? "financial order of this world" Believing financial order of the world creates problems does not make anything that comes along purporting to be a solution automatically viable. I don't actually think fractional reserve banking is the source of all injustice.
chuck Member	Thu May 13 11:28:47 Meh, it's overblown. I appreciate that you don't want to be the cause of anybody losing their life savings though. In 5 days of "investing" in cryptocurrency, I've weathered one bad trade of my own where I missed the hypetrain, the Muskocolypse, and I'm still up 2.5% even with those headwinds. It's paltry compared to what it could have been, but 2.5% a week is still an annualized return of of 260%.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu May 13 11:33:15 I am adamant in my belief in science to figure stuff out, including the evolutionary origins of human psychology. I can only mourn your selective acceptance of science. You can assume anything you want, but with few exception you have defended every crazy disruptive social policy that was imagined in the name of equality and social justice. "comes along purporting to be a solution automatically viable." Us "believers" have already covered our backs fairly early, by saying, this may go horribly wrong. But that isn't it, you actually believe in this current version. Which is fine, but cut the crap about the technical impossibilities etc.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu May 13 11:35:03 Nhill Fair enough, though that kind of psychology is common, because of how volatile crypto is, the damage will be far greater to people.
Seb Member	Thu May 13 14:14:13 Nim: Much of evolutionary psychology doesn't meet the basic requirements of falsifiability and therefore isn't science, that's my basic criticism of it. "but with few exception you have defended every crazy disruptive social policy that was imagined in the name of equality and social justice" Correction: you have assumed any policy that you consider to be in the name of equality and social justicie is crazy and disruptive without considering it on its own merits. "Us "believers" have already covered our backs fairly early, by saying, this may go horribly wrong." This isn't about belief - it is about analysis and reason. If you want to make it about beliefs, this doesn't sit well with the claim to rationalism you made only a paragraph ago. "But that isn't it, you actually believe in this current version" Again, not about belief. "but cut the crap about the technical impossibilities etc." Proof of work based systems offer no obvious path to scaling to handle the volume and frequency of current transactions. That implies it cannot support the current economy. You end up having to adopt alternative methods like proof of stake etc. which start to create additional vulnerabilities (e.g. bribe attack) that favor institutional traders in the currency who can orchestrate it. A big poster saying "I want to believe and technical critiques to the contrary are heretics" is wishful thinking.
nhill Member	Thu May 13 14:39:04 In the end, it'll be quite simple to settle this. Both Nim and I have investigated the fundamentals of the decentralized ecosystem and the ideas powering it and came to the conclusion that it's a probable replacement / strong alternative to our current system. It has nothing to do with belief in the system, and I suspect Nim was using that term colloquially. You claim to have done a similar investigation (but terrible due diligence since you haven't even used it), and came to a different conclusion. Cool. I believe in my capability to evaluate the system, because I have understood it at a deeper level. (partly a side effect of having actually used it, instead of trying/failing to be an armchair quarterback, but mostly because I've investigated all the way from the macroeconomics down to the bits/code). We'll let the market decide who is right.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu May 13 15:11:31 Seb A very _basic_ crtiticism based on a very narrow defi ition of science as ”falsifiable”, which you keep bringing up, but actually has no correlation with what is going on in evolutionary psychology and the fact that hypothesis are tested and falsifiable. One of the oldest debunked myths about the field, you keep bringing up, revealing a great degree of ignorance. And drop by drop thread by thread, your ignorance became an ocean, so now I am primed to be preemptively skeptical whenever you say anything about anything. Other than that +1 to what Nhill said. Clearly what I am saying can be parsed and summarized in a manner I will write under. He even understood ”believers”, I even put it quotes for you seb... tsk tsk tsk.
TheChildren Member	Thu May 13 15:13:24 charlatan musks promised hypaloopz in 2016. hows that workin out 4 ya muricans. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgUIzyn0hZY
TheChildren Member	Thu May 13 15:15:19 made out of vibraniumz, u stupid motherfuckers. i betcha produced in wakanda?? motherfucker, they literally named it vibriniumz. yea u have 2 be grovellin those feets hard 2 still believe anuthing comin out of there mouths.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu May 13 15:23:04 >Proof of work based systems offer no obvious path to scaling to handle the volume and frequency of current transactions.< You keep bringing this when you have been given several explanatioms why this is a bad argument. 1. energy isn’t an issue if it solves problems 2. there are several ways to scale BTC and keep PoW 3. BTC doesn’t need to replace Visa, it has a use more like Fedwire and then from there second layers that will scale it just fine 4. Clearly PoW isn’t the only consensus mechanism It is just such a low tier argument, a myth, just like your myth about EP and falsifiability. Does it matter that I told you I don’t care avout BTc specifically, like 5 times? I care about the ideas and concept that are emerging, like defi, smart contracts and non government owned non-fiat currencies. You will be here 5 years from now talking about the scalability issues of PoW. *yawn*
Seb Member	Thu May 13 15:23:05 Nhill: I'm not sure simply using it adds much - after all pretty much everyone uses Fiat currency and far fewer have much understanding of how it works as a monetary system. But yeah, I agree with your statement - the proof will be in the pudding as to whether an appreciable volume of real economic activity actually gets conducted in cryptocurrency. Nim has been pretty clear by what he means by belief (in the thread prior to your return). This strange idea that I don't think crypto currencies can work systematically means I must therefore be morally invested in the status quo and all its outcomes is absurd, however. Both of you have leapt at points to this conclusion. Might be worth reflecting on why that is. Perhaps your preference for decentralisation is more a normative imperative than an objectively valuable property in the market place. This point is as important for broader adoption outside of a novel speculative asset class - however as you say, eventually we will see. But the measures will not be market cap, but either total proportion of economic transactions or the total value generated by novel business models.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu May 13 15:36:08 Or seb, a third option, it is a normative imperative because of the value it creates in a de-centralized manner. You lack basic imagination.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu May 13 15:40:09 I just got off the phone with my uncle, he is even deeper into crypto. He just explained he has a Binance visa card, that he can use to get take out 250 euros a day from ATMs, or 8000 dollars from forex. But seb will be here 5 years from now talking about how PoW can’t scale. lulz :)
nhill Member	Thu May 13 15:47:57 > I'm not sure simply using it adds much - after all pretty much everyone uses Fiat currency and far fewer have much understanding of how it works as a monetary system. Currency is such a narrow way of looking at this, which is why I can tell you haven't actually used it. Academics like to pontificate from their Ivory Tower all day, but once they get into the real world their tune changes quite fast. Look up the "Armchair Quarterback" idiom. ;)
nhill Member	Thu May 13 15:56:41 > This strange idea that I don't think crypto currencies can work systematically means I must therefore be morally invested in the status quo and all its outcomes is absurd, however. Both of you have leapt at points to this conclusion. Might be worth reflecting on why that is. Perhaps your preference for decentralisation is more a normative imperative than an objectively valuable property in the market place. The idea came from when you ignored about 40 posts worth of arguments and then continued to harp on the same points that had already been addressed and put to rest. It had nothing to do with your thoughts on the system, and everything to do with your head in the sand attitude which you've since remedied, hence I have not brought this up since the start of 2 threads ago. Let it go, man. And yes, we're happy to see an intelligent system designed that will reduce the need to use a corrupt centralized banking system of which we have no control, no stake, and no transparency. This doesn't mean I was looking for a system and then tried to fit a square peg in a round hole, as you suggest. You have the causality reversed. I saw the beauty of the system and then came the natural, & quite pleasant, conclusion that it'll render traditional finance obsolete over time. There's no more need for opaque middlemen.
nhill Member	Thu May 13 16:01:12 Opacity being relative, of course. But, even lacking the ability to discern yourself, you can always find someone to read code/whitepapers and summarize crypto accurately & precisely, whereas there's simply no recourse if you want to figure out exactly what happens at banks behind the scenes.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu May 13 16:14:18 ”This strange idea that I don't think crypto currencies can work systematically means I must therefore be morally invested in the status quo and all its outcomes is absurd, however.” The reverse. You believe in this current interation of money and finance, ergo crypto is bunk. This is your bias. You have said so many low tier wrong things, it is impossible that you have made any analysis of anything significant or valuable regarding crypto. Ignorant or biased, either way, and I disagree with nhill on this, you have said nothing of value.
Seb Member	Thu May 13 16:18:36 Nim: What's the quantifiable value in decentralisation, other than the idea that there's a premium that people will pay simply in order to be decentralised. Pretty much every argument we've had on this boils down to "but decentralisation is preferable in itself". That's just a normative choice and there's not a huge amount of evidence most people will pay for/adopt it, even if it were not far slower, volatile and less widely accepted than conventional options. Re Binance, I'm not sure pointing out how crypto exchanges need to use the conventional payments systems to provide an acceptable low friction speedy consumer experience is a great argument. It simply demonstrates how deficient the crypto system is for the kind of user experience people expect. It essentially works because Binance is the counterparty for your sale of cryptocoins and holds your wallet. I.e. it's performing the same role as a bank under gold standard with the same kinds of risks; but probably not offering the same kinds of statutory protections a regulated bank does. It's also effectively the issuer of BNB. Which is a proof of stake /authority system, not proof of work system, with a limited number of validators decided by aggregated stake values from delegated wallets. It's actually a pretty centralised system actually. I suspect you are potentially exposed to 51% attack and bribe attack. So basically quite a compromise on the pure decentralized vision and desire to get rid of privileged institutional players and put everyone on an equal footing. It's functioning pretty close to company scrip really. It does raise the question as to whether, as a user of this stuff for money, you are really better off than in a bank once you remove the expectation that the value of the coin will go up. Which really, in the long run, out to be linked to whether it's superior as a form of money.
nhill Member	Thu May 13 16:40:59 > It's actually a pretty centralised system actually. I suspect you are potentially exposed to 51% attack and bribe attack. Didn't I tell you 2 threads ago that crypto supports both centralization and decentralization? It's agnostic to either. It's used more for the latter because there aren't any good traditional alternatives for decentralization. > Binance is the counterparty for your sale of cryptocoins and holds your wallet. Binance is an exchange, btw. It doesn't hold your wallet. It doesn't even hold your crypto. It has a float and will issue enough to cover outflows, but, similar to a bank, it doesn't cover 100% of customer holdings. Seb, I'll be honest, it's stuff like this that frustrates me. You still lack some very basic fundamentals yet feel confident enough to make sweeping judgments. I just don't get you.
TheChildren Member	Thu May 13 16:45:58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgLWjh1QFk4 vibranium...4 years ago!
TheChildren Member	Thu May 13 16:46:06 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgLWjh1QFk4
nhill Member	Thu May 13 17:00:59 TheChildren I think you got lost, this is a thread about cryptocurrency investing and Elon was mentioned simply because he was a recent event catalyst. If you want to bash Elon and America, do it in one of your other 50 threads that do the same thing. Thanks for understanding.
nhill Member	Thu May 13 23:51:15 The Elon Musk and Vitalik rug-pulling this week will partly solve the problem itself, recursively enough. The more this happens, the more speculators will go broke or give it up. A natural selection, if you will.
nhill Member	Thu May 13 23:55:30 Gas fees are back down to near normal levels. It's really interesting to see how hype overloads the network and the network compensates by commanding a higher fee to play, therefore requiring fairly deep pockets to get out (or in, even) of a highly speculative play. It naturally disadvantages small speculators if they are trading off exchange. On-exchange it's not an issue. Many exchanges offer free conversions between cryptos.
jergul large member	Fri May 14 01:38:07 The house always wins.
Seb Member	Fri May 14 01:50:12 Nhill: "Didn't I tell you 2 threads ago that crypto supports both centralization and decentralization" Yes. Which wasn't news at the time. You probably aren't following the conversation well. Nim's principle point about crypto is that it is valuable because decentralisation is a virtue. Which is fine, but this is a poor example of that. "Binance is an exchange, btw." Yes. I say as much in literally the first sentence. Pay attention! "Re Binance, I'm not sure pointing out how *crypto exchanges* need to use the conventional payments systems" "It doesn't hold your wallet." It does if you are using the Binance visa card, which is what we are talking about. Its an exchange that's using swipe to link wallets it provides to visa, thus allowing you to make fiat payments on cards with it handling the conversion of cryptocoins to fiat. Essentially, it's similar to the way banks operated in the gold standard era - issuing their own notes backed by gold. Structurally they operate in a privileged position so there's options here for front running and all the good old bank gifts.
jergul large member	Fri May 14 02:53:48 I will elaborate. In many ways, satisifaction denial is a guiding principle in my life. I play first person shooters carefully to deny the twitch bunnies easy kills. I make informed choices when buying appliances or ordering a plumber - specifically to deny anyone the joy of ripping me off. I used to play online poker conservatively - I never tilted and fokused on limiting the rake the house could take from me (so mainly tourney). Index funds but of course. The premium paid for managed funds eats a lot of the profit over time. And the kicker for this thread. The service fees are ass-rape that pretty much turns crypto investments into ponzi schemes.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 10:28:46 > It does if you are using the Binance visa card, which is what we are talking about. Its an exchange that's using swipe to link wallets it provides to visa, thus allowing you to make fiat payments on cards with it handling the conversion of cryptocoins to fiat. This isn't true, though. Fundamental misunderstanding here. You never have a wallet. Binance never has a wallet. Binance will cover the charge on the card with USD and then take an equivalent amount of artificial cryptocurrency out of your balances.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 10:35:44 > The service fees are ass-rape that pretty much turns crypto investments into ponzi schemes. How so? The service fees for DeFi are way less than TradFi. I think you have some fundamental misunderstanding, so let me attempt to clarify. Are you talking about mining? Because that's not a service fee. That's paying for a commodity (computing power). And it is often less than a credit card fee, provided you are moving a large enough sum (it's a flat fee). Mining is also not a Ponzi Scheme. It's providing a real commodity to people that want to buy it. What people see as a Ponzi Scheme is yield farming. Where people lock up pairs of crypto (for example, I could lock up an Ethereum/Polygon tokens together), and when someone converts between the two I get a portion of the fees. But, guess what? That's the same thing banks do, except they charge more. People look at 137% APR or whatever and automatically think it's a Ponzi Scheme...how do you think banks make money? It's supply and demand. I provide enough liquidity for people to convert between two cryptocurrencies and if people convert frequently those fees add up. But each individual fee is very small. Get it? High mining fees are a solved problem, already, anyways. It just hasn't full propagated yet. I'm using the Polygon network and the miner fees are measured in cents. I did enough DeFi last night on the Polygon network that would have been over $1000 in mining fees on L1 Ethereum. Costs me about 90 cents on Polygon.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 10:37:42 > The house always wins. The difference in DeFi is you can be either the house, or the player. :) So you can always win, if you'd like, by providing services to the speculators. That's the beauty of DeFi. You can use the bank or Be The Bank.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 10:40:11 And even if you use the bank, you still save money! It's mind-boggling when people like Seb don't realize the value and think this is something that will through macro out of balance. It's literally the same financial system, dude. Just another way of delivering the same services. Currency is a separate matter. That would disrupt things. But, once again, currency is a tree in the crypto forest.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 10:43:17 The tokens in the DeFi world have real value, but aren't meant as a currency. They are commodities. The reason people want tokens is very varied. Some people want them to participate and use their token to vote on changes to the project. Some people want them to stake a network so they can provide computing power for mining. Some people want them to attach an NFT and sell it. Some people want them simply to speculate. Some people want them to remunerate the developers. Some people want them simply to speculate. None of these uses have anything remotely to do with a currency. Crypto should never have had the currency part appended, but it happened to be the first use case to coalesce.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 10:55:23 For the most part, I'm not frustrated with anyone here. It's a whole new paradigm so it's natural to miss out on some fundamental concepts. I've been studying/using it for a long time, and you have to keep an open mind because there's always something new and often some fundamental you missed. The only frustrating thing is Seb thinking he understands the system yet repeatedly demonstrating he's barely scratched the surface, and, not only does he understand very little, but he's attached to things that are flat out incorrect. Hubris.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 10:56:43 That said, I'm not the type to argue about shit I don't understand yet. Might be his thing, whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Seb Member	Fri May 14 11:38:02 Nhill: Binance's website literally says you need to transfer your crypto into a card wallet they hold linked to a card. http://www.binance.com/en/cards "Hold crypto in your Binance Card wallet and exchange only when you're making payments". So, as I said, the whole thing works because they hold your wallet and act as a counterparty for selling your currency in exchange for fiat.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 11:48:26 That’s not a crypto wallet. That’s their term to make things easier to understand, but ultimately it’s just a fake number. You don’t call your bank account a wallet. Same principle.
Seb Member	Fri May 14 12:10:16 Nhill: A technical but meaningless distinction that lacks relevance to the point I was making. Nim raised them in rebuttal to my point in the original thread (data before your return) where I said that a proof of work based system could not scale out to achieve his stated desire of a fully decentralised monetary and financial system replacing existing ones so as to limit the power of state and large financial institutions. Key points here: 1. Binance's cards don't represent a scale up of a crypto system to handle transactions at the scale and rate that conventional payment systems do. This is, in fact, a conventional payments system, not blockchain powered. 2. Binance's own coin isn't PoW based or decentralized. 4.Binance's card payment is indistinguishable from a bank in terms of business model. They hold your coins on your behalf, and control them, they act as the counterparty (so set the exchange rate). In every way this is a terrible example to use as a rebuttal. If you want to educate sometime, you might want to start there. By the way, this is a classic example of what hI mean by wfocusing too much on the technological backend. Whether it's formally a wallet they control, or just a centralised conventional database where they count how many cryptocoins you transferred to them isn't as relevant as the fact they control it, and they act as the counterparty to the sale of coins, and the fact that the financial transaction on USD is off the block chain. They have all of the privileges of a bank via a vis customers, but far fewer responsibilities, and far less regulatiory protection is provided to customers; and the technological protections supposedly provided by cryptocoins aren't present either. The price in this scheme of getting the convenience of a credit or debit card is to forgo all the individual and systemic benefits of cryptocoins as a medium. The only benefit is to partake in very high growth, while people are speculatively buying in, but with the the risk that Binance turns out not to be honest/competent.
Seb Member	Fri May 14 12:19:22 Actually, if it's not a wallet they run on your behalf, that's worse. There's no guarantee that the coins you put into your "card wallet" are still there. You must be transferring them to Binance into some central pot, which means there's additional risks here around Binances solvency in the coin you choose to put into the wallet. So like I said: very much like a retail bank operating under gold standard!
nhill Member	Fri May 14 12:19:50 Or you could just not hold your crypto on Binance, lol. Completely moot point. Yes, crypto is risky and unregulated. Yes, there's sketchy exchanges as a result (see Mt. Gox fiasco). No news there. It'll mature, eventually. > The only benefit is to partake in very high growth, while people are speculatively buying in, but with the the risk that Binance turns out not to be honest/competent. Speculation is probably the least significant portion of the ecosystem. There are more people that understand the value of the tokens than there are speculators, and that ratio will continue to increase as people find out speculation is indeed speculation. Equivalent of a lottery ticket, but people think that's actually 'investing'. They learn the hard way. The crux of your arguments is pretty much the same as how luddites view any paradigm shift. Much akin to people how people initially complained about how cars are less reliable than horse and buggy, as if that wouldn't be a solved problem eventually.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 12:21:50 > Actually, if it's not a wallet they run on your behalf, that's worse. > There's no guarantee that the coins you put into your "card wallet" are still there. You must be transferring them to Binance into some central pot, which means there's additional risks here around Binances solvency in the coin you choose to put into the wallet. > So like I said: very much like a retail bank operating under gold standard! Yeah, exactly. That's why you only use an exchange as an ingress point, not the end goal in itself. Exchanges are a temporary measure due to Govt regulations against exchanges. Everything an exchange can do is already replicated in DeFi, anyways.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 12:27:57 Also, you may have interpreted Nim's statement wrong again. Or perhaps I did, he'll have to clarify. But his story about the Uncle came off to me as an indication of further adoption & acceptance of our new financial ecosystem (doesn't matter that his Uncle may not fully understand the implications). PoW is already a solved problem, anyways. Exchanges are the best solution to avoid it in Ethereum now if you are trading, but we already have Eth 2.0 that solves the problem and a growing number of L2 chains that also solve the problem.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 12:30:35 You've also, incidentally (or perhaps serendipitously), highlights another strength of the crypto world. It's already an improvement on stock exchanges (e.g. Robinhood) where you have no recourse for your assets. Not only are they just a number in their system, but there's also no way to simply 'transfer it to your wallet'. Some exchanges allow you to convert your stock into an actual certificate like the old days, but many don't. Crypto you never have to worry about it if it's transferred to your wallet. You hold the keys and nobody can take it away without you messing up some way.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 12:33:48 See the whole Gamestop fiasco. Many people had Gamestop stock thinking it was real. But then exchanges locked it and crashed the stock, and only hedge funds could benefit because they can trade directly on an exchange (instead of a broker) or OTC. How many people held the bag on $GME? Simply not possible for them to do it in DeFi. You can convert any token to USD tokens are any time. Within seconds on some chains. Example number 55 on why this enables individuals to take back their own purchasing power.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri May 14 13:31:44 ”But his story about the Uncle came off to me as an indication of further adoption & acceptance of our new financial ecosystem (doesn't matter that his Uncle may not fully understand the implications).” Yeah. Pretty obvious given the context, if your name isn’t seb. The point is, a year ago there was no Binance visa card, now there is. In another 6 months things will develop and seb will still be here talking about PoW doesn’t scale (because seb doesn’t understand that networks can scale in layers), and the kicker is that PoW isn’t even the only consensus method. Oh seb...
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri May 14 13:37:00 I have already been influenced by Nhill’s ”sermons” on mount Utopia and begun to understand the innovation potential of ETH and the broader crypto world. Smart contracts and defi are all fairly new to me. I still think BTC has value as digital gold, but that is really the tip of the ice berg.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 13:45:52 Let there be light! I think BTC is a good store of value, much akin to digital gold, also. But I also think people believe it has more utility than just a store of value, so it's got some faulty information priced into the market. Haven't owned Bitcoin for months.
Seb Member	Fri May 14 13:50:26 Nhill: "Or you could just not hold your crypto on Binance" So, basically, you agree with my point. Nim: "In another 6 months things will develop and seb will still be here talking about PoW doesn’t scale" So, your stunning argument for the success of crypto ecosystem is how a firm creates an interface that requires you to give over your crypto coins to them, and have a conventional debit card linked to an amount of fiat currency based on a notional unregulated debt they owe to you denominated in cryptocoins. Do you realise how bad that is as an argument, particularly in context of your original motivation for a decentralised financial system? It's like taking your gold, handing the gold to a third party not to hold it on your behalf, but explicitly exchanging it for a bit of paper issued by them - without any real regulatory guarantees they will honour that. It's like fiat money, but issued by a private bank, that's not regulated. "the kicker is that PoW isn’t even the only consensus method." If I thought that was the only consensus mechanism, I wouldn't have caveated that specifically PoW systems don't scale. However, proof of stake and proof of authority and other consensus mechanisms introduce other vulnerabilities that undermine some of the decentralisation - which is for you the key benefit.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 13:51:09 > So, basically, you agree with my point. What was your point? Not to hold crypto on exchanges?
nhill Member	Fri May 14 13:53:58 > However, proof of stake and proof of authority and other consensus mechanisms introduce other vulnerabilities that undermine some of the decentralisation - which is for you the key benefit. Pretty much every problem you have has been solved, try to keep up, please! Proof-of-space does not have those vulnerabilities. Another concept that went over your head. Proof-of-space has all the benefits of decentralization and almost zero of the energy or computation costs. I traded some Chia yesterday (made thousands mining it) and guess how much it cost to send it out? 0.0000001 $XCH. Ended up being a fraction of a cent in USD terms.
Seb Member	Fri May 14 14:01:44 Nhill: "Crypto you never have to worry about it if it's transferred to your wallet. You hold the keys and nobody can take it away without you messing up some way." The same is true of certain types of bond in most countries, at least part of your deposits (up to 85k in UK) at each institution is 100% guaranteed. But appreciate if we are thinking in terms of an asset or security. But there are certainly trading platforms where you do own the asset and they cant take that away from you. Provided you are using the cryptocoin "natively", yes it's secure. But that's the whole point about this Binance Card, to get the speed and convenience of the visa payments system, you are doing the equivalent of signing over your digital gold, buying a bond denominated in gold (but not necessarily an obligation for Binance that it has the gold to cover your balance) and Binance will deduct from that balance an appropriate amount for each dollar transaction based on its own exchange rate at time of transaction. Except as it's all unregulated, it's probably a lot weaker than paper gold etc.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 14:08:53 So your argument is it's going to fail due to lack of regulations as a security? I'll ignore the fact that the 'investing' part is a small slice of a giant pie, for now. But I can defeat that argument pretty easily by saying eventually it will be regulated and there will be the equivalent of an FDIC-type system eventually. Wouldn't be surprised if there already is in some countries.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri May 14 14:11:08 Seb It is an argument for how stunningly obtuse you are and the general low tier argument and outright falshoods you make. Again, your expectations for an instant ready to deploy replacement of the current financial system, isn’t an argument against the viability of the systems and concept long term. It will take years to mature, as it does you will constantly bring up none issues or the issues of yester year. Always steps behind. That was the stunning argument. Of course, it can all go to shit, I don’t have chrystal ball.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 14:12:49 One example would be the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and the Bitcoin/ETH ETFs in Canada. You can invest in those and have the same guarantees as any other security on the exchanges in which they trade. But really, that's all investing/trading/speculating and I don't care about it. It's a fun little side effect of making a compelling alternative to traditional finance and, frankly, I'm grateful because it gave me generational wealth, but that was a side effect, not my primary goal.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 14:14:48 > Of course, it can all go to shit, I don’t have crystal ball. Agreed. I generally speak in probabilities, so when I say that DeFi is the future of finance, there's always a small chance the TradFi wins out or some other system manifests itself. But I'm not betting on a horse and buggy when gas cars are an option. ;)
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri May 14 14:30:11 Without a doubt Defi and smart contracts are a portal to another existence. It would have probably gone under my radar for quite longer if you hadn’t come here. I have seen the word float around in different circles and podcasts, even my uncle mentioned it, but I defered reading more into it for later. Then the Lex Fridman podcast with the founder of Chainlink and the return of the prodigal son (Nhill) coincided, thus fulfilling the prophecy. I have seen the light! May the ledger confirm Nhill.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 14:36:02 Haha, happy to help! It's an interesting world, for sure.
Seb Member	Fri May 14 15:21:00 Nhill: That binance cards defeat pretty much all the things that Nim claims to value about blockchain based systems because what you have, once you put the coins in your "card wallet" isn't actually cryptocoins anymore, it's an IOU denominated in cryptocoins, and the payment system isn't actually on chain. Proof of capacity I'm not well versed on, but it is not widely used. I know it involves caching solutions on your HD (which presumably still require compute power, but I never dug into whether that was factored into the supposed efficiency). I don't see how it isn't subject to the same centralisation if any given implementation gets to the valuations bitcoin has - granted storage is utility and most implementations have something that penaluzes latency to stop you just spinning up a huge cloud storage volume; but I imagine a few dedicated data centres could easily dominate over smaller scale individuals. Let's say it does allow scaling to visa levels of transactions speeds and volumes - and I appreciate that you don't think cryptocoins *are* an substitution for monetary systems but that was Nim's to original belief so let's not play bait and switch here - you still have the wider problems. And it would still leave a basic question over what actual economic value it uniquely commands - what can be done with this that cannot be done with conventional legal and financial instruments which a premium can be generated, and what is that premium. Why will most people want to adopt this system? That sets the ultimate value of these assets, and sets any rational expectation of the price of any coin in the long term. It's not tulip bulbs. It's Dutch East India Company shares. These got grossly overvalued for a period because the Dutch East India company was a reliable way of obtaining tulip bulbs, which has a high market value. It also had other value too. The question is how valuable do decentralised finance systems bring over conventional ones, and are the current prices an under or over estimate that. And as you say, time will tell. But what you and I agree on, and Nim did not - is the potential for cryptocoins to remove much of the need for financial institutions and ultimately governments. But and back to the beginning, Nim citing something that is in fact exactly like a conventional financial institution as an example of how cryptocurrencies are evolving to avoid the need for financial institutions, in order to rebut the point that financial institutions will need to exist to make cryptocoins the kind of usability that people currently expect of money is obviously idiotic line of argument. It proves point, not his. More so if in fact the only link between the card and the coin is notional.
Seb Member	Fri May 14 15:23:09 Nhill: Dig out the original thread. You are coming late to the game and being slow to pick up the differences between Nims position and my position, and taking my arguments against his an argument against your position - and it's getting boring.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 15:52:26 Oh, okay. Well, stop prefixing your statements with "Nhill" and I'll stop responding to your circular logic.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri May 14 15:53:15 I hope it is clear for seb's last big post, this is something personal for him against me, it has nothing to do with crypto, decentralization or any of his mutated summaries of what *I* think and want, like removal of governance. lol you are such a dolt :) I won't bother correcting him anymore, but as a disclaimer, take none of seb's summaries of what I think and believe at face value. Often times the complete opposite of what he claims, is actually closer to what I actually said.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri May 14 15:59:42 http://www...hread=87979&time=1619169050078 "None of that means, I am against say, regulation, single payer health care system, social safety nets, collectively funded education etc. I am not against collective efforts, but I worry when the collective becomes too big or too powerful, as it has a tendency to suffocate everything at the margins. That is where I stand." -Nimatzo raving against the government. Seb and I have a long history of failing to communicate. But don't let me ruin this :) I want seb to ruin this all by himself. Just pretend I don't exist.
nhill Member	Fri May 14 16:05:46 > Let's say it does allow scaling to visa levels of transactions speeds and volumes - and I appreciate that you don't think cryptocoins *are* an substitution for monetary systems but that was Nim's to original belief so let's not play bait and switch here - you still have the wider problems. That's mostly right. Cryptocoins can replace monetary systems, but I'm not interested in the relative to DeFi, hence I have no real arguments one way or the other. I know it would work fine, technically. Both Polygon and Chia transact faster than VISA & scale well. My guess is that cryptocoins will serve as a clearing house of sorts and reduce the dependence on USD for the global financial system, until said financial system is replace with DeFi (the same banks can pivot to providing DeFi services, but it'd be more of a wrapper around services anyone can also use). Every country would benefit from that other than the USA, but it'll be like pulling teeth getting there. As for everyday currency, adoption is difficult to accomplish for non-technical reasons. It'll probably take a generation of crypto-natives before that happens. > And it would still leave a basic question over what actual economic value it uniquely commands - what can be done with this that cannot be done with conventional legal and financial instruments which a premium can be generated, and what is that premium. Why will most people want to adopt this system? > The question is how valuable do decentralised finance systems bring over conventional ones, and are the current prices an under or over estimate that. And as you say, time will tell. Do you like to make more money, pay smaller fees, get guaranteed 100% transparency, and cut middle men out of your life? If the answer is yes, than that's why people will adopt it once it's more user-friendly. If it's no, then that explains our communication breakdown. > The question is how valuable do decentralised finance systems bring over conventional ones, and are the current prices an under or over estimate that. You don't seem to understand how the prices for tokens are determined. It's not only based on how valuable the service is. That's one component, but ultimately the price is determined by how much utility you can get out of the token (such as voting rights). A good example is the $LQTY token. It doesn't confer voting rights because it's protocol is immutable. There's nothing to vote on. And the market priced it much lower than equivalent tokens, because it has less utility. So, it's not like a company where people are invested in its Forward P/E. It's a token that gives you exclusive access and influence in building the Future of Finance. > But what you and I agree on, and Nim did not - is the potential for cryptocoins to remove much of the need for financial institutions and ultimately governments. Financial institutions will become more optional over time, but certainly they will evolve to provide DeFi services. As will governments. Most (not all) crypto is natively censorship-resistant, and I think that's what Nim meant w/ government. > But and back to the beginning, Nim citing something that is in fact exactly like a conventional financial institution as an example of how cryptocurrencies are evolving to avoid the need for financial institutions, in order to rebut the point that financial institutions will need to exist to make cryptocoins the kind of usability that people currently expect of money is obviously idiotic line of argument. It proves point, not his. More so if in fact the only link between the card and the coin is notional. I don't think that was the point of the discussion, but I'll let you two settle that one.
Seb Member	Sat May 15 01:59:59 Nhill: I wouldn't have to address posts to you if you didn't keep responding to my posts to Nim to "correct" them! If you go back to the original thread you will see we agree on the fundamentals: 1. Cryptocoins are not a currency, they are an asset whose current price is largely driven by speculation, and a means of transfer outside existing payment systems. 2. Proof of work based systems can't replace fiat currency for a number of reasons and must always sit alongside fiat monetary systems. Nim: It's funny you say this is personal for me, when you were the first one to address me in this thread and you did so spouting nonsense about defund police that's irrelevant to this conversation and not even an accurate reflection of my position on that. And even in the original thread you were unable to separate the idea of whether cryptocoins *do* work for the purpose you intend from whether that purpose is something that should be preferred or not. The question - the only relevant question here - is what can you usefully use cryptocoins for that people will pay for.
nhill Member	Sat May 15 02:21:09 > 1. Cryptocoins are not a currency, they are an asset whose current price is largely driven by speculation, and a means of transfer outside existing payment systems. I didn't say that. XRP, for example, works very well as a currency and is way more efficient than VISA. I simply don't care about that part of the ecosystem, and know little about it. The coins representing DeFi projects are to what I was referring. I agree they are being speculated upon right now, but don't let that fool you into thinking they are only a speculative opportunity. Like I said, if you want to be an active participant in the new financial system, coins represent your ability to do so. See my post above starting with: "The tokens in the DeFi world have real value, but aren't meant as a currency. They are commodities. The reason people want tokens is very varied." > 2. Proof of work based systems can't replace fiat currency for a number of reasons and must always sit alongside fiat monetary systems. Who cares. PoW is old news.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat May 15 04:18:07 Seb It is highly relevant since most of your resistance is rooted in how this will render useless ”decades of painful lessons”. That is what I was thinking during the BLM defund the police riots, but I was open go the experiments going on at city level. Said as much back then. Some people need to retake some courses and maybe...maybe I am wrong. I didn’t think I was wrong, but my approach to all of this the real novelty, that you still have not grasped. I am all for experimenting with governance.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat May 15 04:22:22 Seb If you want responses from me on what I said a few threads ago, quote and reference. There is a 93.7% chance you have sebbed it.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat May 15 04:23:56 I shouldn’t say most, a large part of the thrust was rooted in that statement.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat May 15 04:30:28 I repeat what I said in the first thread. There are things to get about crypto ona fundamental level that I so get. O have been pretty clear that I don’t inderstand all the details. But they are irrelevant at this point. It is like when automobiles came around, there were no roads, no rules they were dirty and even dangerous. Nimatzo back then he would have seen the pontetial power waiting to be realized, and seb the physics PhD would be ranting and raving about inefficient use of energy and the PHYSICAL impossibilities.. Ok boomer... which by the way, is a mindset not a literal physical description.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat May 15 04:46:26 ”Who cares. PoW is old news.” And this wouldn’t be so sad, if I in the first thread had not said, ”I don’t care about BTC, but I need something LIKE BTC...” the technical details are not for me to figure out. Jesus... this is literally a description of some large parts of my career, I have never been the technical expert of ANY field I work with. I am the project manager and regulatory ”expert”. I am expected to ”get stuff” at a good enough technical level and work with the scientists and and test engineers, and do useful stuff. Sure a BSc isn’t that impressive, but my first BSc was actually finding application for new technology (pulsed electrical fields). This is how I sit in on AI meetings currently, not because I can build AI, but because I find application for things and stuff, that, if I do say myself, most other people are afraid or too institutionalized to look at. That is the novel trait I bring to the table where I work. I’ m not afraid to look like an idiot in my quest to find awesome stuff. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat May 15 05:11:06 ”is what can you usefully use cryptocoins for that people will pay for. ” What was the usefulness of automobiles 10 years after their emegence, that people would pay for? It was almost nothing, but it set off a chain of innovations and events that forever changed transportation. It also created a bunch of new problems, a BUNCH. We had to relearn how the fucking wheel worked!
chuck Member	Sat May 15 06:49:51 > I am all for experimenting with governance. +∞
Seb Member	Sun May 16 14:42:52 Nim: "Nimatzo back then he would have seen the pontetial power waiting to be realized, and seb the physics PhD would be ranting and raving about inefficient use of energy and the PHYSICAL impossibilities.." Except the whole point about an ICE is that is very clearly did have benefits. I think it is probably more like - oh, segways of something like that. Billed as transformative and going to change the design of cities, turned out to be a bit niche in practice. This is the problem Nim, you boil everything down to personality. It is possible to honestly disagree about outlook for a technology without getting so ridiculously emotive and assigning it to personal defects or virtue. Plenty of technologies and even more applications of technology fail. I'm more interested in secure multi-party computation. "What was the usefulness of automobiles 10 years after their emegence, that people would pay for?" For a start, being able to get somewhere far faster than a horse could carry you. Cars never had an issue with an obvious use case that delivered tangible benefits over the prior invention. DeFi, on the other hand, I'm not seeing the benefit as that valuable. The strongest feature is the ability to guarantee the integrity of the payments. But your current fraud doesn't occur because VISA stole your money in transit; it normally comes from goods and services not being delivered as promised. It's at the interfaces. And the non-repudiation of a blockchain exacerbates risk of fraud: transactions are irreversible, unlike in conventional banking. --- Nhill: Any thoughts about the claims regarding Tether? I've read a few things in the last few days that very convincingly make the case that Tether isn't remotely backed in cash or anything highly liquid, and c.50% in corporate paper (with no clarity on the risk profile and maturity dates). The claims also suggest that tether is used for a lot of transactions into and out of other coins and so may be effectively setting the USD price of other coins - such that a major devaluation in Tether would hit the whole market. The former claim looks solid, the latter I have less credible way to easily verify.
nhill Member	Sun May 16 15:45:02 Seb Now that's the type of question I love. It actually investigates the veracity of the ecosystem. It's true that Tether has been one of the sketchiest linchpins of the crypto world for years now. A good breakdown is here: http://cry...-doomsday-machine-f8dcf78a64d3 My view on the matter is that Bitfinex and Tether are both going to fail, and the market supports this. Tether grew 5.8x in the past year, while another USD coin (USDC) grew 20x, and yet another one (DAI) grew 50x. To me, the writing is on the wall. It's a major concern that the bulk majority of crypto activity flows through Tether, but if we look at why that is, it's less concerning to me than at the outset. The reason why Tether is responsible for the majority of inflows is its networks effects due to being a first mover. Some argue that it's also because you can theoretically redeem your Tether for USD since it's backed by actual currency. I don't buy that, and the market has not supported that thesis. The first mover advantage gives Tether two advantages: 1. It has the most liquidity, so exchanges adore it. 2. It has many financial applications (such as collateralized loans on exchanges) that are built already which locks people into the ecosystem. But, I don't think this is a long time-horizon issue. Short/medium term it may be responsible for a huge crash. Crypto crashes are intense (we're in the middle of a healthy pullback right now and even that is intense), so you could see downside of about 50-80% before it consolidates and goes to new highs again. This is another reason why I don't recommend crypto as a traditional investment vehicle right now. But in terms of DeFi's viability, it's not really a problem. Most, if not all, DeFi services run on $USDC and $DAI along with $USDT (Tether), so losing 1 would simply result in people moving to the other. I borrow stablecoins using crypto as collateral and the put the stablecoins in savings accounts to generate interest. If the stablecoin I use (primarily USDC) starts to lose liquidity it takes all of 30 seconds to convert to a different one. TLDR: Seb has brought up a legitimate concern which I think merits a lot of discussion. That, being Tether & Bitfinex's influence on the ecosystem. I don't see it as an issue for DeFi but it's a massive risk for investors/speculators.
Seb Member	Sun May 16 17:22:07 Nhill: Yup that's one on the articles I've read. It's a short term issue, but it does relate to the structural issues of pricing. Cryptocurrency as an asset that really only has intrinsic value as a payment mechanism, whilst remaining intangible. Pricing is actually set by supply / demand but there's no reason you need any particular amount of coin to conduct a transaction, and they are infinitely divisible. Hence my obsession in trying to get to the core of what the unique value proposition is for cryptocurrencies. But let's not get back into that.
nhill Member	Sun May 16 18:10:52 Yeah, I think we already agreed to disagree there. Valid concerns, though.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon May 17 06:11:58 Seb "Except the whole point about an ICE is that is very clearly did have benefits." Hindsight makes everyone a genius. People made all sorts of outlandish criticisms back then about cars, that now with the progression of history sound retarded. You forget that there were electrical cars being invented and developed and that at some point it wasn't obvious which mechanical horse was going to win the race. Or that boats and trains were not "enough". That combustion engines where not going to fulfill some niche role, like the electrical automobiles did until recently. "technology without getting so ridiculously emotive and assigning it to personal defects or virtue." You should try it. You are the one who attributed derogatory ideological motives, both to me and Nhill. You are the one who have voiced poorly thought out ethical concerns about illicit activity such as pedophilia, not me. I have not used the word "virtue" or said anything that can categorically be construed as decentralization being a "virtue". Like said said in the first thread I view these things, as most things, as adaptive or maladaptive. In that light the survival of the specie is the moral imperative. You constant attempts to paint this discussion in moral and ideological colors, only reveal you own motivation and only validates my assertion that, *you* are the one, morally or otherwise invested in the status quo. It is great that you are reading more now and actually bringing up good stuff, but this tether thing, while valid, is you hitting the target with ONE slug after spraying the place with a shotgun. Or as the old saying goes, a broken clock is correct... *** Reading the details around tether, it sounds shady as fuck. Thought I have to say I dismissed tether fairly early just based on the fact, why the fuck would I want a crypto that is TETHERED (imprisoned) to a fiat currency? It not only didn't grab me it repelled me because it kinda goes against the entire philosophy. I have also permanently lost some faith (not all) in Elon Musk's ability to understand things. And I am not talking about him not believing in BTC anymore, but the clear low tier reason, that a "genius" like him could not have missed or misunderstood. I fully respect people for not getting on board or even believing in the crypto project, what I don't get it is top tier intelligent people like Musk or NN Taleb, getting on board and then turning 180. Then what good was that 400 IQ? Sounds like bullshit. The kicker here is that Elon is apparently now working closely with Doge. What do we make of this?
Habebe Member	Mon May 17 06:24:34 This is a prank/gag for Elon while popularizing crypto. That's my personal take atleast. Also his IQ is believed to be 155.But it takes more than IQ to be successful.The man has insane time/project management skills.
Seb Member	Mon May 17 06:41:04 Nim: "Hindsight makes everyone a genius" Then maybe perhaps stop using hindsight "You'd have opposed cars Hur hur hur" to try and discredit any critique of a technology in its infancy in the here and now? "You are the one who attributed derogatory ideological motives, both to me and Nhill" Nope. "categorically be construed as decentralization being a "virtue"." "The future I want"? "moral and ideological colors" I mean now you are just trolling! "but this tether thing" Is a short term price mover but not that relevant to the main critiques I've made, other than the fact that price and value are quite decoupled as cryptocoins aren't really backed and redeemable in the way fiat currencies are; and there are very few examples right now of unique added value delivered by cryptocurrency. You get the point here is not restricted to Tether, it's suggesting that the USD price for many other currencies are in effect being manipulated by Tether. "what I don't get it is top tier intelligent people like Musk or NN Taleb, getting on board and then turning 180." Lol. It's all unregulated stock and he can do pump and dump out in the open with no legal consequences - what's not to get here?
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon May 17 06:49:51 "you boil everything down to personality." You are nothing, but your personality. Even the things you engage with that have empirical answers as a scientists, the hypothesis you choose (the ones you don't think about) they are all rooted in your personality and the flavor of your character. But I have already given you my check mark of approval, I think you are a good "personality". On a personal emotional level I think you are a decent, moral and kind person who is genuinely concerned about human well being. Which is why you must have a career where you feel you are making the world better. You have the same flavor as me is what I am saying. That is the hidden flattery in me saying "I know you better than you know yourself". I just think you are wrong about a bunch of stuff and in those battles, we get a little carried away and perhaps things get too memefied sometimes. These are things that have happened with my IRL close friends as well. Has anyone on UP ever said these words to you? I am pretty sure you can write under that summary of your personality as it is. I mean every word. But I am quite irritated by not getting my points across when talking with you. I don't know what it is, it may be idiosyncrasies that emerge when our personalities collide on UP.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon May 17 07:03:16 "Nope." "The closest thing I have as a mental model for it (because you haven't articulated it) that I can map to is the "adolescent tech bro utopianism" which is just anarcho libertarianism reheated with magic tech dust. The tech bro utopianism is a fantasy that" "As for your anarcho libertarian future or whatever it is, I don't think" http://uto...hread=88064&time=1620077290624 I even summarize it here as you do the same libertarian utopia speil with Nhill: http://utopiaforums.com/boardthread?id=politics&thread=88078&time=1620241729329 And I have explained several times, Chuck understand what future I am talking about. You can too. I even used a app store and app analogy to explain we are not talking on the same level of problems. "Lol. It's all unregulated stock and he can do pump and dump out in the open with no legal consequences - what's not to get here?" Because neither Taleb nor Musk are the kinds of people who have marketed themselves as scumbags. Scumbaggery would tarnish their reputation as the folksy heroes that have built themselves to be, punching up, not down. So, it isn't as lulzy and clear cut what they are doing or if indeed they realized they were wrong. It is just very low tier level of wrong.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon May 17 07:09:58 The problem is seb, you are about as wrong about libertarianism and utopia as it gets. My world view is a consequences of all the utopia dreams of my adolescence completely collapsing in front of my eyes. There is no utopia the dream is dead, which is why I am so radical about more autonomy to smaller entities, decentralization and subsidiarity. We are going to kill ourselves because we think there is utopia and because we are getting worse and worse about settling smaller and smaller differences. My world view is largely colored by the works of Francis Fukuyama and Peter Turchin. Both their predictions have come true in front of our eyes.
Seb Member	Mon May 17 10:04:23 Nim: "You are nothing, but your personality." For someone that railed not so long ago against postmodernism, to argue that argument cannot be separated from the personality of the person who is espousing it is a very strange thing to do. Certainly, there can and is bias - but that's not a sufficient means to dismiss a reasoned argument out of hand. The motivation is irrelevant. Every scientist wants their hypothesis to be true, but that's insufficient evidence for dismissing it! Yes, adolescent tech bro-utopianism as I said - probably isn't what you are getting at but is the closest thing I can map to what you mean by "your "Because neither Taleb nor Musk are the kinds of people who have marketed themselves as scumbags." Nobody markets themselves a scumbag though. Elon has just discovered that BitCoin is environmentally damaging. Many will believe him. You only need to look at how many of his fans will jump to defend all the scumbaggery he is already well known for: like how he went out of his way to try to hound and destroy former employees who have raised issues around the security and safety of Tesla products; the union busting; the getting people to work without adequate safety during covid etc. He got so incensed with a guy that mocked his mad submarine idea; he tried to brand him a pedophile. It's a bit like Trump: a lot of stuff that would sink other people bounces off him because of his rock star status and hard core fans that guarantee positive coverage; because a great deal of our news now operates on an entertainment style business model (i.e. ratings driven on a micro scale - and telling an engaged niche market what they want to hear sells much more than telling an honest story to a disengaged mass market that will probably not click through). "There is no utopia the dream is dead, which is why I am so radical about more autonomy to smaller entities, decentralization and subsidiarity." Sounds like your alternative was like the Liberal utopia I had in mind in my undergraduate days. Subsidiarity works to a degree, but most of the hard problems we face as a civilisations are due to market failures and tragedies of the commons that are a consequence of the trend to greater individualism and autonomy of the latter half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Much of the sense of lacking control is actually due to emergent phenomena as a result of agents acting independently and our inability to steer and influence society; and governments increasing inability to do so due to the growing rights based structures of law and a consensus against intervention with the market. Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross arguments that we are already governed by slow, soft rogue AI (corporations that are running to optimize shareholder value and growth) of the paperclip builder types is a fair point. I suspect that the kinds of trustless systems will accelerate that: it disaggregates power but does not really reduce the power of existing centers of power. Systems to enable broad cooperation are more important - not less important. Now maybe cryptocoins can do this, but I remain skeptical. The solution is more likely to be found in greater political engagement - not retreat into smaller and smaller autonomous groupings - because our autonomous actions still impact each other creating conflicts and fueling the sense of lacking control that must be necessity be resolved.
TheChildren Member	Mon May 17 13:28:43 lol reason discovered. how much u lost these last 2 days...lmao. this is why we dunt buy crypto.
nhill Member	Mon May 17 13:29:18 This isn't about investing, punk. Go back to your cave.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue May 18 06:32:15 “For someone that railed not so long ago against postmodernism” My railings against post modernism, has nothing to do with the fact that we have different personalities and biases, it is in a nutshell, that there is no truth, objective facts, logic or reason, everything is a narrative. “Yes, adolescent tech bro-utopianism as I said - probably isn't what you are getting” Ok, but then the answer wasn’t “Nope”, I didn’t make this emotive and personal, you did. You dismissed my ideas based on your ideas about my personal ideological and moral motivation. You were the one typing “sigh” and “weeping uncontrollably” i.e giving expression for emotions. All together I think you can imagine how it was received. “Taleb and Musk” I just do not expect them to pump and dump, it isn’t in tune with their character as I understand them. Yes I could be wrong, but there is so much ambiguity in whatever version of explanation I pick. That is what I mean with “I don’t get it”. “our inability to steer and influence society; and governments increasing inability to do so due to the growing rights based structures of law and a consensus against intervention with the market.” Is the product of successive generations of liberal democratic values and individual rights and economic prosperity. Effectively reducing for central authority to ability to steer and influence society. Besides, the governments in these free and open societies are competing with the free agents on youtube, twitter et. Al. for influence. Things are developing technologically at a pace far greater than the, by design, slow governance of liberal democratic countries. I don’t think it is something to fight, but to design new systems around these emergent facts. Adapt and change (or dismantle) our systems to harness the new reality and make things scale better. Just think about the fact that we evolved, largely decentralized, for hundreds of thousands of years we had no central authority and those are the conditions our brains evolved under. With the empires came virtually all systemic risk, such as social, financial and viral contagions. There is an evolutionary piece of wisdom to salvage from our past, but it is only possible with technology and different systems - We don’t want to lose all the good stuff the vast networks of cooperation and pooling of resources and markets (goods/information) that centralization brought with it. I also don’t think this ability isn’t coming back, unless some terrible things happen in Western societies where a strong centralized authority can step in and save the day, before we can turn the page and enter a system that can wwithstand those terrible things. Did you see the individualism that the west has fostered over many generation, emerge as an existential risk during a pandemic? The data is there, authoritarian countries have lower death rates. “Now maybe cryptocoins can do this, but I remain skeptical.” And it is perfectly fine that you are skeptical, I already concede that crypto can fail or at the very least I know for a fact that not all problems I think would benefit from decentralization, are best served by crypto. I do think some are. However, the thing I want to press home here, is that this is exactly the reason I like crypto, because decentralization is inherently more cooperative, whereas centralized systems compete with other centralized systems*. This is one of my primary _personal_ drivers, I think cooperation should be systematically incentivized everywhere, it should be the fabric of the system. Cooperation however requires trust. Decentralized systems achieve this cooperation without the need to trust other human agents, and that is beautiful :,-) In addition, decentralized systems are inherently less susceptible to systemic failure, censorship and manipulation. They reduce asymmetry of power within systems, making them more resilient to malicious or incompetent actors, another systemic threat. And ultimately the value of decentralization and crypto are all the above-mentioned things, it becomes a system upgrade, a new paradigm that can create and spread value/responsibility/risk more equitable, increase cooperation without the need for trust, and at the same time be safer and more resilient to systemic failure. When described like that, it sounds magical, but it isn’t, there will still be old problems and we will have new problems. *That isn’t to say there isn’t an unhealthy number of crypto projecting going on atm, but that is human gold rush psychology, not inherent crypto as a tech or decentralization as a concept. “not retreat into smaller and smaller autonomous groupings” I do not believe it needs to be a deterministic retreat away from cooperation, we need a new system and cultural mode of thinking that does not readily devolve into zero sum competitions. One example is the short term thinking and opportunism that emerges in politics, another in conflicts with other countries that ultimately carry an existential risk for the specie. I do not think decentralization, will solve everything, but I think it is one step, or if we are lucky, a leap in the right direction.
Habebe Member	Tue May 18 06:45:56 Nhill, TC has a particular bone to pick with crypto gamblers since he he lost "all his monies" on buying into gamestonk WAY too late.
nhill Member	Tue May 18 09:29:00 Haha.
Seb Member	Tue May 18 12:02:30 Nim: "Ok, but then the answer wasn’t “Nope”," Excuse me, but I didn't dismiss your ideas, because you wouldn't articulate exactly what they meant, but had made them the lynch pin of the argument ("Ah, you don't agree with crypto because you don't *want* the future I want!") I had to try and understand what exactly your future looked like in detail to explain why I think - from a technological, monetary and governance perspective - they don't work. *You* made it about beliefs when you started trying to find an ulterior motive for my position based on principles, and you decided to then make adherence to an ill-defined ideological position "the future I want" the center-piece of discussion! "You were the one typing “sigh” and “weeping uncontrollably”" Yes! Because you stopped trying to engage with the facts and analysis and instead shifted onto a purely ideological basis - and whether or not you think decentralisation is desirable or not (I favour "tight/loose" mixed ecosystem, for what it is worth) - my fundamental point is I don't believe cryptocurrencies can deliver- basically it is another attempt at a technological fix for a socio-economic problem. But look, lets draw a line under that as it's not productive.
Seb Member	Tue May 18 12:35:12 Nim: "Is the product of successive generations of liberal democratic values and individual rights and economic prosperity. Effectively reducing for central authority to ability to steer and influence society." Yup, and that's the paradox. We crave greater individual autonomy - yet that autonomy does not give us independence in a complex society. I think Tony Blair (in his rather good Open vs Closed world analysis of the new ideological splits that later became brexit) called it the "stop the world I want to get off" mentality. And Brexit Sovereigntist headbangers are a good example in some ways of the essential mechanism of the paradox. Yes, they want greater control of decision making because they feel the outcomes in their day to day lives are shaped by decisions made elsewhere. But having taken that control back, and no longer needing to compromise on what positions they want to stake out, find that the inter-dependencies of the world are such that their local outcomes are still determined by decisions made elsewhere which they can no longer influence. Decentralization of governance isn't likely to resolve this unfortunately. It is more likely to undermine confidence in democracy (what is the point in voting for a govt that in the end has little ability to actually influence anything). I think if anything it needs more powerful centralized decision making but greater transparency and accountability systems. At the moment, we run the risk of decentralising citizens power, while centralising corporate power and other forms of power, and leaving the state open to capture by vested interests. This is a bad mix. "With the empires came virtually all systemic risk, such as social, financial and viral contagions." I don't necessarily agree with that view - these risks always existed - we have survivor bias here. But the central issue is how to satisfy the desire for a sense of control and autonomy with a complex society where interdependency creates so many invisible constraints. Yes, some of the western individualism has perhaps gone too far into a toxic form (e.g. the "I am not willing to wear a mask ergo I will not wear a mask, and telling me to wear a mask = fascism"). That is in part because of the 80s onward (particularly in the anglo-saxon world) reductionist materilaist. Too much Us vs Them and what is in it for me, and not enough "we". Thatcher is famous for saying "there is no such thing as society" - though it is often left off "there are families and there are people". Cameron's retort "There is such a thing as society, it's just not the same as the state" is a snappy rejoinder but indicates the fundamental logical disconnect the reductionist line of thinking goes down to: if the state isn't the same as society, or at least the agent of society, what the hell is it doing in a democratic society? In fact what does that say about the government? It may be that actually it is our perception that is wrong here: have our societies socialised us into an unhealthy level of individualism. To the point where we fear the state (that should be one of the main agents against more powerful entities such as corporations or incredibly rich individuals). "Decentralized systems achieve this cooperation without the need to trust other human agents," Or alternatively, because they are trustless, they provide less opportunity to build and earn trust, and thus limit cooperation to areas where trust is not required. One of the more interesting policy briefs I had was looking about transparency policy - and one of the biggest paradoxes is improvement in transparency seems to always undermine trust and increase concerns about principal-agent problems. Sociologically, I suspect that a lot of the focus on crypto (what about censorship, what about the state taking my money) is a good example of this: focusing on the wrong problem - and the more policy areas and machinery of society we can shift to trustless basis will simply undermine trust in public institutions further still ("What would the bastards be getting up to if it wasn't impossible? What must they be getting up to where it is?"). " because decentralization is inherently more cooperative, whereas centralized systems compete with other centralized systems*." Autonomous systems compete all the time though - and they find it hard to cooperate absent sets of common rules etc - and the setting of these rules tends to require layers of governance distant from the individual members, fueling the sense of impotence. Explainability I think, is something that is underrated. We focus a lot on transparency, but explainability is something we leave to intermediaries. And one of the big problems I have with technology, particularly technological solutions to sociological problems, is explainability is often lost. Like science, it becomes a matter of trusting the experts for many people.
Seb Member	Tue May 18 12:39:46 A brief addendum on transparency vs trust: transparency is an easy thing for govts, particularly new govts to do: you air your predecessors dirty laundry. Then it starts to be your dirty laundry that is being aired, so you are transparent in as atomistic way as possible - factual on what, but not how, why or how things relate to each other (i.e. lacking explainability) which limits accountability. Transparency then, ultimately, becomes a bait-and-switch. The question, from a governance position, should move away from focusing on transparency to "What do we need to do in order to win trust". Transparency might be part of that, but it is at best necessary, not sufficient.
Seb Member	Tue May 18 12:40:54 And as I say, purely algorithmic approaches that render trust un-needed are likely quite constraining as to what can be done - and are essentially an admission of defeat "you can't trust us, in fact you shouldn't".
Seb Member	Tue May 18 13:43:58 You might find this interesting by a former colleague. http://med...se-are-e719aa636b98#.z66ylavqn
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