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el_hoovy on scored.co
14 days ago11 points(+0/-0/+11Score on mirror)1 child
crypto is a second stock market, complete with rugpulls, pump and dump schemes, bubbles, etc. since it's unregulated and not ever tied to real production like a real company can be, the proportion of blatant scams to honest coins is extreme.
on the other hand, the BTC bubble has been inflating so consistently and for so long that people are starting to treat it as a sound investment. however, it is held up purely by trust and by the sunk cost fallacy given the thousands of expensive data centers burning GPUs to run it. the reason it costs 10 dollars to send 5 dollars is because you must pay those GPU owners to all collectively agree "yes, you sent 5 dollars". this is referred to as mining, since for any one entity to agree that anything happened it must first solve arbitrary, wasteful cryptographic challenges. this is the "work" that supposedly validates BTC as a currency, like how an hour of shovelling would validate an hourly salary.
it takes 1.5 watt-hours for a regular card transaction to be processed. it takes 700,000 watt-hours for one instance of bitcoin being sent.
in my opinion the thing is a shameful scam and anyone on our side who praises this jewish turbo-fiat is a fool. if you got/get rich off it good for you, but winning a couple hands of blackjack does not vindicate mafia-owned casinos. crypto is half the reason a new GPU today starts at $600, the other half being AI, it has facilitated countless confidence scams, and i shudder to think what we could have achieved instead with all the literal energy wasted on processing it.
A couple of somewhat pedantic points:
1) GPUs haven't been used in crypto for a very long time now. Everything is custom chips. Mining on GPUs will earn you pennies, if anything. GPUs are expensive due to AI mostly.
2) Fiat means by-decree, i.e. legal tender. None of these are fiat (yet), at least in a first-world country.
on the other hand, the BTC bubble has been inflating so consistently and for so long that people are starting to treat it as a sound investment. however, it is held up purely by trust and by the sunk cost fallacy given the thousands of expensive data centers burning GPUs to run it. the reason it costs 10 dollars to send 5 dollars is because you must pay those GPU owners to all collectively agree "yes, you sent 5 dollars". this is referred to as mining, since for any one entity to agree that anything happened it must first solve arbitrary, wasteful cryptographic challenges. this is the "work" that supposedly validates BTC as a currency, like how an hour of shovelling would validate an hourly salary.
it takes 1.5 watt-hours for a regular card transaction to be processed. it takes 700,000 watt-hours for one instance of bitcoin being sent.
in my opinion the thing is a shameful scam and anyone on our side who praises this jewish turbo-fiat is a fool. if you got/get rich off it good for you, but winning a couple hands of blackjack does not vindicate mafia-owned casinos. crypto is half the reason a new GPU today starts at $600, the other half being AI, it has facilitated countless confidence scams, and i shudder to think what we could have achieved instead with all the literal energy wasted on processing it.
1) GPUs haven't been used in crypto for a very long time now. Everything is custom chips. Mining on GPUs will earn you pennies, if anything. GPUs are expensive due to AI mostly.
2) Fiat means by-decree, i.e. legal tender. None of these are fiat (yet), at least in a first-world country.