Post 2778880 by kragen@nerdculture.de
(DIR) More posts by kragen@nerdculture.de
(DIR) Post #2750064 by lesbianhacker@mastodon.social
2019-01-07T22:42:58Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
#BitCoin is an ecological disaster and a huge waste of resources.
(DIR) Post #2750065 by uranther@cybre.space
2019-01-07T22:47:14Z
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@lesbianhacker I just hope we all can move past that FUD.
(DIR) Post #2753568 by revolverocelot@elekk.xyz
2019-01-08T01:03:54Z
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@uranther @lesbianhacker "I disagree therefore it is FUD"
(DIR) Post #2773602 by stevenroose@fosstodon.org
2019-01-08T13:14:00Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@revolverocelot @uranther @lesbianhacker It actually is all mostly FUD. Most calculations I've seen are incorrect. None also take into account that a lot Bitcoin mining is done with leftover energy (because that energy is super cheap and Bitcoin mining can be done anywhere there is leftover energy available).There also is no "waste": it's used to have Bitcoin. You can disagree that Bitcoin is useful, of course. But if I don't find fashion useful, I'm also not calling all clothing waste.
(DIR) Post #2773603 by lesbianhacker@mastodon.social
2019-01-08T16:12:08Z
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@stevenroose @revolverocelot @urantherWhat is gained by using BitCoin? Why is it better? I barely have enough money to pay my bills, why should I trust my life to BitCoin?
(DIR) Post #2773604 by uranther@cybre.space
2019-01-08T16:42:34Z
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@lesbianhacker @stevenroose @revolverocelot Why should you trust your life to a shadowy cartel who makes themselves obscenely rich at the world's expense simply because they control a monopoly on money creation?I am talking about the central banking cartel here. Wake up!
(DIR) Post #2774641 by lesbianhacker@mastodon.social
2019-01-08T17:15:57Z
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@uranther @stevenroose @revolverocelotYou realize that using BitCoin doesn't change the fact that capitalists run the world, right?If you're going to condescend to me and act like I'm sleeping on the evils of capitalism and banks then I'm going to do myself a favor.
(DIR) Post #2775972 by stevenroose@fosstodon.org
2019-01-08T17:59:56Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@lesbianhacker @revolverocelot @uranther If you have the time, I recommend reading The Bitcoin Standard from Saifedean Ammous. The inflation-based economy that started 100 years ago has made saving useless because inflation makes your savings lose their value. In the meantime governments and big companies profit from it. An economy based on a sound money like gold or Bitcoin makes saving feasible again and takes monetary power out of the hands of powerful individuals.
(DIR) Post #2776000 by stevenroose@fosstodon.org
2019-01-08T18:06:59Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@lesbianhacker @revolverocelot @uranther No one is saying you should trust your life to #Bitcoin. All we're asking is to not criticize a system you don't know. We're also just trying to make a positive change to the world. Or better reverting a negative change that happened 100 years ago when most rich countries abandoned the gold standard to pay for the First World War.Just giving us a chance and not bashing us with bogus arguments would be appreciated.
(DIR) Post #2776129 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2019-01-08T18:17:20Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@lesbianhacker @stevenroose @revolverocelot @uranther Here in Argentina, I can't open a bank account. The last time someone sent me money via Western Union, they took 15% of it, and then I had it in Argentine pesos, which lost half of their value in a month a few months ago, and have lost 93% of their value since I moved here. I can't get a credit card, and Argentine server hosting is shit, so Bitcoin is a godsend for buying hosting, too. Bitcoin protects people like me from predators.
(DIR) Post #2776179 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2019-01-08T18:19:41Z
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@stevenroose @lesbianhacker @revolverocelot @uranther On the contrary, in the US, saving has been quite doable — you just had to save in stocks and perhaps real estate rather than money. Outside the US and a few other countries, however, investing in stocks was just a way to get robbed. And that may be the case today in the US, too.
(DIR) Post #2776269 by stevenroose@fosstodon.org
2019-01-08T18:23:20Z
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@kragen @lesbianhacker @revolverocelot @uranther Saving in stocks and real estate is not something that working class people can do. Those people have to save *before* they can get their first home, so "investing" in real estate is not easy in that case.And stocks are more of a speculative investment than a saving. It's true that there are low-risk funds and the likes, but it's still a higher barrier to entry.Money in rich countries uses half their value within 30 years.
(DIR) Post #2776307 by uranther@cybre.space
2019-01-08T18:24:55Z
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@kragen Sorry to hear that. Western Union is such a scam! :blobangery:We need more stories like yours to show others that money doesn't *just work* like it does in the US.Even here, banksters are constantly finding new ways of getting screwing us with e.g. prepaid Visa cards that can only be spent in certain places on certain items. Or frustratingly, having legit transactions blocked by Visa/MC/PayPal's AI for suspicion of fraud. Then there is straight-up censorship by those same stooges.
(DIR) Post #2776354 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2019-01-08T18:27:20Z
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@stevenroose @lesbianhacker @revolverocelot @uranther On the contrary, in the US in the 20th century, most working-class people did so.
(DIR) Post #2776376 by uranther@cybre.space
2019-01-08T18:27:40Z
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@kragen Unless you have $10-100k, most bank savings accounts nowadays only offer 0.0 or 0.01% interest.401k is a scam when it can get wiped out practically overnight like it did for many people in 2008-2009.
(DIR) Post #2776554 by uranther@cybre.space
2019-01-08T18:36:23Z
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@kragen Personally, I *hate* that I am forced to pay fees just to extract my digital money into cash. Even on 'participating network' ATMs, there is still a daily limit to cash withdrawal.With most merchants refusing cashier's checks, personal checks, or money orders, it makes paying without a debit/credit card unnecessarily difficult.
(DIR) Post #2778779 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2019-01-08T20:07:40Z
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@uranther Yeah, savings accounts are denominated in fiat money, and so are not a good choice for saving. Anything can get wiped out overnight — including Bitcoin — but if you want to save, you should probably invest in something with a secular upward trend, like stocks in the 20th century or, perhaps, Bitcoin today.
(DIR) Post #2778837 by uranther@cybre.space
2019-01-08T20:10:23Z
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@kragen I need to get myself some precious metals.
(DIR) Post #2778880 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2019-01-08T20:12:20Z
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@uranther My dad lost his savings on precious metals in the 1980s. Take a look at gold's price over the last ten years. It has very little long-term inflation or deflation but it has a lot of very-short-term volatility. Perhaps Bitcoin will turn out to be the same way.
(DIR) Post #2778917 by uranther@cybre.space
2019-01-08T20:14:26Z
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@kragen Probably because that market is manipulated. I of course wouldn't care to own by proxy, but rather something I can bite on.On the other hand, maybe I should just amass quantities of salt.
(DIR) Post #2780366 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2019-01-08T21:09:58Z
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@uranther Well, there certainly is insider trading in commodity markets; in a way, it's the whole point of having commodity markets
(DIR) Post #2782920 by revolverocelot@elekk.xyz
2019-01-08T22:59:17Z
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@kragen @lesbianhacker @stevenroose @uranther that's the real benefit I've seen of crypto, is that there are places where 'real' money is hard to get or resources are so if enough people pool their resources to mine crypto they can get resources like food for their community.I have problems with crypto and the comfy white dudes who champion it and contribute to capitalism but I won't deny that there are some really nice things it can do
(DIR) Post #2831370 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2019-01-10T11:18:46Z
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@stevenroose @lesbianhacker @revolverocelot You’re destroying our habitat to make a handful of people (mostly men) richer. There is nothing ethical about proof of work. And I do know the system. Merkle Trees and append-only logs are hugely useful in building decentralised systems. Proof of work, however, is the digital equivalent of slash and burn agriculture. It’s a libertarian wet dream in no way related to creating a fairer, more just, more sustainable world.
(DIR) Post #2831371 by stevenroose@fosstodon.org
2019-01-10T12:25:04Z
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@aral @lesbianhacker @revolverocelot It's the only way yet known to create some form of authority-less authorization. Literally. Lots of research has found vulnerabilities in Proof-of-Stake proposals.If we want a global honest money, free from power corruption, we need something that is incorruptible. And I believe personally that this benefits the world and the lesser gifted in our society more than it benefits the rich.
(DIR) Post #2831386 by bigl0af@social.foxfam.club
2019-01-10T12:26:08.939355Z
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@stevenrooseI think we have one 😀@revolverocelot @lesbianhacker @aral
(DIR) Post #2831733 by p@freespeechextremist.com
2019-01-10T12:41:19.079193Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@stevenroose @uranther @revolverocelot @lesbianhacker @kragen You can start mutual funds with a hundred dollars or so, and except for major dips, they outperform inflation, even after taxes. Most people don't know this sort of thing, they're in the dark about that as much as about BTC or any of it.All that relies on a reasonable currency policy and a beefy economy, but it's not quite as hard in the US as people seem to think.
(DIR) Post #2831777 by stevenroose@fosstodon.org
2019-01-10T12:32:31Z
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@bigl0af @revolverocelot @aral @lesbianhacker True, gold comes closest to what we need. It has several issues. It's very hard to move, so it tends to be easier to politically suppress. That is exactly what happened when the US Treasury decided to not return the gold it stored for foreign central banks to their rightful owners. And they still have not done so until today.Gold is easily confiscated and hard to transfer.Bitcoin tries to solve exactly these issues.
(DIR) Post #2831864 by bigl0af@social.foxfam.club
2019-01-10T12:46:40.305755Z
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@stevenrooseRight but BTC solves those issues by ditching the traditional notion of "sound money". You can't "51% attack" a physical commodity. Interesting times folks! 😀@lesbianhacker @aral @revolverocelot
(DIR) Post #2832448 by stevenroose@fosstodon.org
2019-01-10T12:59:21Z
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@bigl0af Yeah the 51% attack is the main downside of proof-of-work. And that's also why using all this energy is so important.It's the convenience of a digital vs physical gold against the risk of a 51% attack.
(DIR) Post #2847871 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2019-01-10T23:22:11Z
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@p @lesbianhacker @stevenroose @revolverocelot It relies on sufficient regulation to protect shareholders from management and minority shareholders from majority shareholders. I don't think it relies on a reasonable currency policy, just policy that doesn't facilitate accounting fraud. I'm not sure the US is currently okay on these metrics but it was from 1935–1995 at least. That's why elder poverty vanished in the US during that time.
(DIR) Post #2848101 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2019-01-10T23:30:00Z
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@p @lesbianhacker @stevenroose @revolverocelot Also you can open stock trading accounts with US$5000 or less. And probably if you have less than that to invest, you'll be better off investing in things like "having enough food to go to the grocery store once a week instead of once a day" or "ramen & eggs so you aren't tempted into eating at McDonald's" or "a washing machine" or if you have a house "insulating your house to lower your energy bills" or just "enough cash to never use payday loans"
(DIR) Post #2848202 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2019-01-10T23:32:36Z
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@p @lesbianhacker @stevenroose @revolverocelot People without a bank account are going to have a hard time opening a stock trading account, but in developed countries the barrier to entry for bank accounts is pretty low