Thousands have been tricked this way
September 20, 2023 1:02 AM Subscribe
It was hard to see how this slave complex could exist without cryptocurrency. Crypto bros like to claim they were somehow helping the poor. But it seemed none of them had bothered to look into the darker consequences of a technology that allowed for anonymous, untraceable payments. From ‘Don’t You Remember Me?’ The Crypto Hell on the Other Side of a Spam Text [Bloomberg; ungated]
Local newspaper has had recent headlines like: "Crytpo Cases Double" and "Crytpo Outbreak Effecting Everyone" - which you might think is reporting that the cops are finally chasing down some of these schemes ..... but no, it's something almost as bad, a cryptosporidium outbreak at a local resort
posted by mbo at 2:46 AM on September 20, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by mbo at 2:46 AM on September 20, 2023 [14 favorites]
To be fair, a lot of businesses aren't good about checking what kind of labor goes into their products. This is hardly unique to bitcoin.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:22 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:22 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
Crypto bros like to claim they were somehow helping the poor. But it seemed none of them had bothered to look into the darker consequences of a technology that allowed for anonymous, untraceable payments.
Wait, anonymous and untraceable money being used for villainy? But, how?
Look... I don't read Bloomberg. Are they always like this? These two sentences, who are they for?
posted by adept256 at 3:47 AM on September 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
Wait, anonymous and untraceable money being used for villainy? But, how?
Look... I don't read Bloomberg. Are they always like this? These two sentences, who are they for?
posted by adept256 at 3:47 AM on September 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
I am sometimes astonished at our capacity to be cruel to other people. And sometimes I am not so much astonished as just sadly resigned.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:47 AM on September 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 4:47 AM on September 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
Ensuring good crypto control requires careful monitoring of coagulation parameters before disinfection steps as otherwise cysts can be protected by particle matter, wait is this about something else?
posted by atrazine at 4:50 AM on September 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by atrazine at 4:50 AM on September 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
I’ve been reading a very little bit about crypto use by organized crime groups. It is very useful in moving funds across national lines, but at the cost of potentially devastating security failures if the wrong wallet is used, allowing precise tracking of financial networks. In this particular case, being able to commit fraud in another country is a boon, especially if your country is not inclined to investigate or prosecute. Also, since crypto is so volatile, a defrauded person might not realize they’d been cheated for at least a while.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:51 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:51 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Having done a bit of journalism about the Tether founder (that might be footnoted in this book) I can say the badness, unfortunately, goes way beyond just not sourcing labor ethically.
posted by earthstarvoyager at 4:56 AM on September 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by earthstarvoyager at 4:56 AM on September 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
To be fair, a lot of businesses aren't good about checking what kind of labor goes into their products.
When your business abducts, and enslaves their labor force... what is there to check?
posted by superelastic at 5:18 AM on September 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
When your business abducts, and enslaves their labor force... what is there to check?
posted by superelastic at 5:18 AM on September 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
Avoiding crypto like the plague that it is is should be one of your life goals.
posted by tommasz at 5:56 AM on September 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 5:56 AM on September 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
I was wondering why suddenly text message alerts were just completely unusable. 90% of the time its a scam text of some variety.
posted by Slackermagee at 5:59 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Slackermagee at 5:59 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I felt kind of stupid for not getting in on bitcoin when it was really new, but now... now I don't.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:00 AM on September 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:00 AM on September 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
This seems not as much a story about crypto than about complicity and the ability of organized crime to pivot more quickly than authorities can/are willing to react. The captive workers probably didn't even have to vary their script transitioning from online poker scams to crypto scams.
I would like to know why Tether seems to be the coin of choice for this, though.
posted by credulous at 7:00 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I would like to know why Tether seems to be the coin of choice for this, though.
posted by credulous at 7:00 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Well, it’s not really the whole story, it’s more of an intro to how Faux gets drawn into the bigger story of crypto.
posted by earthstarvoyager at 7:06 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by earthstarvoyager at 7:06 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Having done a bit of journalism about the Tether founder (that might be footnoted in this book) I can say the badness, unfortunately, goes way beyond just not sourcing labor ethically.
Absolutely not trying to pick on you, earthstarvoyager, and I'm 99% sure we're on exactly the same side, but I wanted to point out that anodyne terms like "sourcing labor ethically" are part of the problem. "Sourcing labor" makes it sound like choosing between two kinds of apple at the market. That's no mistake. Capital has worked very hard to popularize this terminology. But we have to keep calling it by its real name: paying for a product you know was built/harvested/whatever by enslaved humans.
posted by Mayor West at 7:15 AM on September 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
Absolutely not trying to pick on you, earthstarvoyager, and I'm 99% sure we're on exactly the same side, but I wanted to point out that anodyne terms like "sourcing labor ethically" are part of the problem. "Sourcing labor" makes it sound like choosing between two kinds of apple at the market. That's no mistake. Capital has worked very hard to popularize this terminology. But we have to keep calling it by its real name: paying for a product you know was built/harvested/whatever by enslaved humans.
posted by Mayor West at 7:15 AM on September 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
I find it so weird that commenters here are in a rush to dismiss the cryptocurrency part of this story. Sure, there's other scams in the world and there are other enterprises that enslave workers. But cryptocurrency is uniquely suited to this criminal enterprise thanks to its intentional design as a black market currency. If you're running other financial scams you have to somehow be able to process credit cards, or accept Western Union money transfers, etc. All of which bring you in contact with a banking system that has a fair amount of fraud prevention built in. Alternately if you're kidnapping people to force them to process shrimp or sell clothes, you still have to sell those shrimp or clothes. It's not easy.
Cryptocurrency has no fraud prevention, by design. It's remarkably easy to take tokens worth millions of dollars. You do still have the problem of turning the magic beans into real money but thanks to the industry oftumblers money laundering systems and semi-legitimate exchanges like Binance it's not so hard.
And cryptocurrency was intentionally designed to support this kind of fraud. That's it's primary function, either made explicitly clear or under a smokescreen of "privacy" and "no middleman".
I'm not familiar with Zeke Faux' reporting but given the title of their book, I'm going to assume a lot of the rest of the book is about that. The enslavement and scamming described here is just one end of a long chain of criminal enterprise that ends in American banks and investors.
From the book site
Cryptocurrency has no fraud prevention, by design. It's remarkably easy to take tokens worth millions of dollars. You do still have the problem of turning the magic beans into real money but thanks to the industry of
And cryptocurrency was intentionally designed to support this kind of fraud. That's it's primary function, either made explicitly clear or under a smokescreen of "privacy" and "no middleman".
I'm not familiar with Zeke Faux' reporting but given the title of their book, I'm going to assume a lot of the rest of the book is about that. The enslavement and scamming described here is just one end of a long chain of criminal enterprise that ends in American banks and investors.
From the book site
Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to “ApeFest,” an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Pokémon knockoff mobile game touted by boosters as a cure for poverty. And in an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring.posted by Nelson at 7:16 AM on September 20, 2023 [16 favorites]
The cool thing about the lines that divide tech, crime, finance and intelligence is that they don't exist. They're just parts of the same elephant we're told from birth to worship because there is no alternative.
The question isn't "how can crypto exist?" it's "how could it not?".
posted by Reyturner at 7:24 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
The question isn't "how can crypto exist?" it's "how could it not?".
posted by Reyturner at 7:24 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
And in an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring
I think part of what’s being read as dismissive may just be a response to the idea that there was anything “astonishing” about this development.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 7:33 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think part of what’s being read as dismissive may just be a response to the idea that there was anything “astonishing” about this development.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 7:33 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Crypto, like all financial structures, exists primarily to benefit the unethical.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:34 AM on September 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:34 AM on September 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
...I’d zeroed in on Tether as a target for my crypto investigation. The coin and the company behind it, also called Tether, were practically quilted out of red flags.
A lovely turn of phrase in an otherwise bleak-as-hell piece.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 7:49 AM on September 20, 2023 [13 favorites]
A lovely turn of phrase in an otherwise bleak-as-hell piece.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 7:49 AM on September 20, 2023 [13 favorites]
I'm pretty sure the criteria for getting work with Bloomberg is the capacity to be shocked, SHOCKED!!, that there's gambling in Casablanca.
posted by Reyturner at 7:51 AM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Reyturner at 7:51 AM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
I find it so weird that commenters here are in a rush to dismiss the cryptocurrency part of this story. Sure, there's other scams in the world and there are other enterprises that enslave workers. But cryptocurrency is uniquely suited to this criminal enterprise thanks to its intentional design as a black market currency.
And yet people have been doing full force since *before there was an internet*. Lord knows the internet helped it along and cryptocurrency made it "safer". But frankly it was almost entirely safe before that. It was done from countries that couldn't care less about American law enforcement requests. The only question was whether the local government wanted a cut and that has not changed in the least. They don't care how the money arrives.
There is a story here, a very old one, about criminal enterprises and how they take the capitalist ideal of exploiting workers for maximum profit too far for our tastes. Cryptocurrency was either cynically tacked on or the author is unaware of just how long this sort of things has been going on.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:55 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
And yet people have been doing full force since *before there was an internet*. Lord knows the internet helped it along and cryptocurrency made it "safer". But frankly it was almost entirely safe before that. It was done from countries that couldn't care less about American law enforcement requests. The only question was whether the local government wanted a cut and that has not changed in the least. They don't care how the money arrives.
There is a story here, a very old one, about criminal enterprises and how they take the capitalist ideal of exploiting workers for maximum profit too far for our tastes. Cryptocurrency was either cynically tacked on or the author is unaware of just how long this sort of things has been going on.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:55 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't know if it's still there, but there used to be a Youtube channel -- and before that, a forum thread and probably a website -- about pranking scammers and making them do ridiculous things. I hate scams and scammers, but I never liked any of that. Whatever else they are, the people at the front lines of the scams are living in a cyberpunk nightmare, and they have it worse than most Americans.
Seeing SBF's weak-chinned profile on the book's cover at the end of the article was especially infuriating after all that.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:03 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Seeing SBF's weak-chinned profile on the book's cover at the end of the article was especially infuriating after all that.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:03 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
To be fair, a lot of businesses aren't good about checking what kind of labor goes into their products.
To be fairer, a lot of those other business make a product that improves human welfare in some way instead of just turning electricity into fraud and crime.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:19 AM on September 20, 2023 [18 favorites]
To be fairer, a lot of those other business make a product that improves human welfare in some way instead of just turning electricity into fraud and crime.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:19 AM on September 20, 2023 [18 favorites]
Glad we’ve solved the problem of “how do we burn the planet down and enrich criminals”.
posted by Artw at 8:21 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Artw at 8:21 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
Countess Elena: I don't know if it's still there, but there used to be a Youtube channel -- and before that, a forum thread and probably a website -- about pranking scammers and making them do ridiculous things.
You might be thinking of 419eater, who would respond spam emails with all kinds of crazy demands, one standing out in my mind is a Commodore 64 carved out of wood in the service of obtaining an “art scholarship” that was dangled before the scammer.
I can’t say I feelbad if they’re lone operators in Internet cafes trying to scam pensioners but the catfishing-meets-slavery model is something else entirely.
posted by dr_dank at 9:15 AM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
You might be thinking of 419eater, who would respond spam emails with all kinds of crazy demands, one standing out in my mind is a Commodore 64 carved out of wood in the service of obtaining an “art scholarship” that was dangled before the scammer.
I can’t say I feelbad if they’re lone operators in Internet cafes trying to scam pensioners but the catfishing-meets-slavery model is something else entirely.
posted by dr_dank at 9:15 AM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Don't worry, in a few years the scammers will be able to use AI, so they won't have to abuse or enslave their workers. And there's no way AI could cause any other problems.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 9:17 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 9:17 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
replacing slave labor might be the single sole ethical use case for AI
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:21 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:21 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
I'm not sure that crypto is as untraceable as people here are making it out to be. There was a series of articles from not terribly long ago about some blockchain tracing tools that had been developed and a team that was using them to trace payments both directions to find both the buyers of and purveyors of child pornography. It was sold early on as being untraceable, but the fact of the matter is that every transaction is recorded on the blockchain and with enough patience you can trace every piece of every token that has been moved around.
posted by hippybear at 9:28 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 9:28 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
It is becoming abundantly clear that there is no legitimate use case for crypto, and its existence is a moral and ethical pit.
strangely enough, I just had a meeting about a job of creative work which, only at the end of things, did I realize was going to be part of a package that would be released as a limited run of NFTs (except they won't be calling it that because everybody knows now that only a fool would buy an NFT). And the thing is, there's nothing crooked seeming about it. The pay is good. It's not part of some complex pyramid scheme. There's no slave labour involved. It's a well established and successful company (some of their artists are very much household names) which pays taxes, has over fifty full time employees, pays them benefits etc ...
The product in question is effectively a deluxe album of music which will include a bunch of video and related extras. As was explained to me, their interest in pursuing the NFT model is that it's pretty much the only way to release audio visual product anymore in a digital form that can't be easily copied and shared. Yes, there will also be a real world vinyl version released, albeit with less in the way of extras, but their (the company's) market research tells them that, despite all the hype, the market for vinyl just isn't that big (prohibitive cost to consumers being a major factor).
Worth noting: this "album" is very much being pursued as an experiment. The company has not done anything like it before but they're working a hunch that the world just might be ready for such stuff. I haven't said yes or no to anything as they're still not sure of certain details at the tech and compensation end. But I imagine they will be going forward with something, and reasonably soon (within the next six months).
Interesting times.
posted by philip-random at 9:30 AM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
strangely enough, I just had a meeting about a job of creative work which, only at the end of things, did I realize was going to be part of a package that would be released as a limited run of NFTs (except they won't be calling it that because everybody knows now that only a fool would buy an NFT). And the thing is, there's nothing crooked seeming about it. The pay is good. It's not part of some complex pyramid scheme. There's no slave labour involved. It's a well established and successful company (some of their artists are very much household names) which pays taxes, has over fifty full time employees, pays them benefits etc ...
The product in question is effectively a deluxe album of music which will include a bunch of video and related extras. As was explained to me, their interest in pursuing the NFT model is that it's pretty much the only way to release audio visual product anymore in a digital form that can't be easily copied and shared. Yes, there will also be a real world vinyl version released, albeit with less in the way of extras, but their (the company's) market research tells them that, despite all the hype, the market for vinyl just isn't that big (prohibitive cost to consumers being a major factor).
Worth noting: this "album" is very much being pursued as an experiment. The company has not done anything like it before but they're working a hunch that the world just might be ready for such stuff. I haven't said yes or no to anything as they're still not sure of certain details at the tech and compensation end. But I imagine they will be going forward with something, and reasonably soon (within the next six months).
Interesting times.
posted by philip-random at 9:30 AM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
And yet people have been doing full force since *before there was an internet*. Lord knows the internet helped it along and cryptocurrency made it "safer". But frankly it was almost entirely safe before that. It was done from countries that couldn't care less about American law enforcement requests. The only question was whether the local government wanted a cut and that has not changed in the least. They don't care how the money arrives.
This is like saying machine guns are no big deal since people have been shooting each other for centuries. Scale matters: things like ransomware and these “pig butchering” scams existed before but they were far smaller because it was hard for the criminals to get away with the money, and they had to spend a lot in the process – banks would refuse or halt money transfers, people needed to be bribed, police intercepted shipments of cash, etc. Cryptocurrency not only made that easier, it got American venture capitalists to fund most of the infrastructure!
North Korea is a good example: they certainly tried to get hard currency before but they were limited in where they could get it, how much total any given source could yield, and where they could spend it - they could have hacked a mid-western hospital before but didn’t because the victim couldn’t send them money through the existing financial network and it’d be too hard to get a suitcase full of cash over the border. Cryptocurrencies raised those limits and meant that they could turn ransomware into a hundred billion dollar revenue source with Bitcoin and Ethereum users helping to conceal their activities.
posted by adamsc at 9:31 AM on September 20, 2023 [14 favorites]
> Crypto bros like to claim they were somehow helping the poor.
One rule I've adhered to in life is to never trust anyone who claims to have "a system" or similar shortcut/lifehack which will lead to riches, because c'mon man...if whatever their shit is actually worked, why would they share it with other people?
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:33 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
One rule I've adhered to in life is to never trust anyone who claims to have "a system" or similar shortcut/lifehack which will lead to riches, because c'mon man...if whatever their shit is actually worked, why would they share it with other people?
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:33 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
see something, say something
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:35 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:35 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
As was explained to me, their interest in pursuing the NFT model is that it's pretty much the only way to release audio visual product anymore in a digital form that can't be easily copied and sharedThis was a common sales pitch but it’s not really true: the NFTs provide a signed receipt but they can’t prevent copying. A DRM system does (to some extent), but if you have that you don’t need the NFT system duplicating it.
posted by adamsc at 9:35 AM on September 20, 2023 [22 favorites]
a. I did say "cant be easily copied and shared"
b. the first time I even heard about blockchain etc (a decade ago now?) was in the context of using it as a means toward solving the rip-copy-share dilemma facing any attempt to monetize digital files. My response at the time was that it felt like the wrong fix to the problem, the problem being western capitalism and its dependency on scarcity, so much so that now there seemed to be a technology (blockchain etc) whose main selling point was its ability to manufacture scarcity. I mean seriously, what's wrong with poor people being able to get the same music etc as rich people?
c. so what am I doing even considering getting involved in such a project? They called me up. They like my stuff. I'm an almost retirement age artist type stuck living in what is fast becoming one of the most expensive cities in the world. I may well need the cash.
posted by philip-random at 9:49 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
b. the first time I even heard about blockchain etc (a decade ago now?) was in the context of using it as a means toward solving the rip-copy-share dilemma facing any attempt to monetize digital files. My response at the time was that it felt like the wrong fix to the problem, the problem being western capitalism and its dependency on scarcity, so much so that now there seemed to be a technology (blockchain etc) whose main selling point was its ability to manufacture scarcity. I mean seriously, what's wrong with poor people being able to get the same music etc as rich people?
c. so what am I doing even considering getting involved in such a project? They called me up. They like my stuff. I'm an almost retirement age artist type stuck living in what is fast becoming one of the most expensive cities in the world. I may well need the cash.
posted by philip-random at 9:49 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
As was explained to me, their interest in pursuing the NFT model is that it's pretty much the only way to release audio visual product anymore in a digital form that can't be easily copied and shared.
As long as humans listen with analog ears and watch with analog eyes, audio-visual products will always be easily copied and shared. Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about or is trying to sell you something.
posted by axiom at 9:50 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
As long as humans listen with analog ears and watch with analog eyes, audio-visual products will always be easily copied and shared. Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about or is trying to sell you something.
posted by axiom at 9:50 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
To be fair, a lot of businesses aren't good about checking what kind of labor goes into their products. This is hardly unique to bitcoin.
No, but pig butchering is, as is the entire ransomware industry. Sure, you could have installed cryptolocker viruses on people's computers before, but how would you collect? Have them mail you a check? Cryptocurrency is the only way this becomes a feasible scam to perform at internet-scale. Same with pig butchering. Same with everything adamsc said.
Technology is neither neutral nor inevitable. Anyone who claims otherwise is someone who either benefits or has the privilege to be unaffected by said technology.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:51 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
No, but pig butchering is, as is the entire ransomware industry. Sure, you could have installed cryptolocker viruses on people's computers before, but how would you collect? Have them mail you a check? Cryptocurrency is the only way this becomes a feasible scam to perform at internet-scale. Same with pig butchering. Same with everything adamsc said.
Technology is neither neutral nor inevitable. Anyone who claims otherwise is someone who either benefits or has the privilege to be unaffected by said technology.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:51 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
so what am I doing even considering getting involved in such a project? They called me up. They like my stuff. I'm an almost retirement age artist type stuck living in what is fast becoming one of the most expensive cities in the world. I may well need the cash.Understood - not faulting you, but I would recommend thinking about what you’ll do when that part turns out to be snake oil.
posted by adamsc at 9:53 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I mean seriously, what's wrong with poor people being able to get the same music etc as rich people?
Not to pile on, but you might be happy to learn that's not what NFTs do. Unfortunately NFTs are a tornado of bullshit. They do not "release audio visual product[s] in a digital form that can't be easily copied and shared". Easily or otherwise. That's not what they do.
The enable the trading and tracking of digital signatures. More or less entirely for speculation and gambling.
posted by Wood at 9:53 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
Not to pile on, but you might be happy to learn that's not what NFTs do. Unfortunately NFTs are a tornado of bullshit. They do not "release audio visual product[s] in a digital form that can't be easily copied and shared". Easily or otherwise. That's not what they do.
The enable the trading and tracking of digital signatures. More or less entirely for speculation and gambling.
posted by Wood at 9:53 AM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
To expand the trading and tracking I'm talking about is semi-fictional. It exists by the consent of everyone involved. So people choose to participate in a shared fiction because they want to gamble and speculate.
posted by Wood at 9:56 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Wood at 9:56 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think philip-random is working as a paid artist and is being paid with actual money and isn't working for future promises or anything like that. I could be wrong, but that's what I read in what they've written.
posted by hippybear at 9:57 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 9:57 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
a. I did say "cant be easily copied and shared"
NFTs have zero effect on this. None. DRM has some (it can complicate the 'easily' bit) but NFTs have zero bearing on the actual media files they are sometimes distributed alongside.
posted by Dysk at 10:00 AM on September 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
NFTs have zero effect on this. None. DRM has some (it can complicate the 'easily' bit) but NFTs have zero bearing on the actual media files they are sometimes distributed alongside.
posted by Dysk at 10:00 AM on September 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
replacing slave labor might be the single sole ethical use case for AI
About that...
posted by Reyturner at 10:05 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
About that...
posted by Reyturner at 10:05 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
DRM has some (it can complicate the 'easily' bit) but NFTs have zero bearing on the actual media files they are sometimes distributed alongside.
thanks. I'm not a tech guy. Last science course I passed was Chemistry 11.
I think philip-random is working as a paid artist and is being paid with actual money and isn't working for future promises or anything like that.
yeah, hippybear's right.
And please, I don't think I need a 101 on Blockchain itself. I researched the hell out of the stuff a few years back because somebody wanted to get me involved in helping them market some. I declined rather loudly because I couldn't see there being any value in what they were purporting to do ... beyond getting in on the biggest grift perhaps ever.
I raised my current situation because the first (heavily favourited) comment in this thread said:
It is becoming abundantly clear that there is no legitimate use case for crypto, and its existence is a moral and ethical pit.
In my experience, no technology has morals or ethics. Every technology has implications. It's how we use them, isn't it? Obviously blockchain got off to a real bad start and I'm not surprised to see the skepticism here. I have it myself. Big time.
But is this stuff just going to go away?
posted by philip-random at 10:11 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
thanks. I'm not a tech guy. Last science course I passed was Chemistry 11.
I think philip-random is working as a paid artist and is being paid with actual money and isn't working for future promises or anything like that.
yeah, hippybear's right.
And please, I don't think I need a 101 on Blockchain itself. I researched the hell out of the stuff a few years back because somebody wanted to get me involved in helping them market some. I declined rather loudly because I couldn't see there being any value in what they were purporting to do ... beyond getting in on the biggest grift perhaps ever.
I raised my current situation because the first (heavily favourited) comment in this thread said:
It is becoming abundantly clear that there is no legitimate use case for crypto, and its existence is a moral and ethical pit.
In my experience, no technology has morals or ethics. Every technology has implications. It's how we use them, isn't it? Obviously blockchain got off to a real bad start and I'm not surprised to see the skepticism here. I have it myself. Big time.
But is this stuff just going to go away?
posted by philip-random at 10:11 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Ensuring good crypto control requires careful monitoring of coagulation parameters before disinfection steps as otherwise cysts can be protected by particle matter, wait is this about something else?
William Blake has you covered, atrazine:
But crypto is in fact like a fungal infection: as it’s sterilized out of existence in one place, it’s spores germinate, grow a mycelial network and fruit somewhere else. A vulnerable part of its life cycle seems to be the electricity required to grow it. We could at least keep any part of the grid from participating in that, I’d think.
The mining metaphor is also extremely apt. JK Galbraith points out in his book on money that the sudden Iberian access to large amounts of gold from the New World caused bread prices in Poland to double in short order, because if you had gold back then, it almost auto magically generated any currency you wanted.
I’d be interested to know how much crypto is responsible for our current high inflation in general, and what countries have been worst hit.
posted by jamjam at 10:27 AM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
William Blake has you covered, atrazine:
'The prince's robes and beggar's ragsAnd yes, Blake is deploying a metaphor most famously recently used by Stormy Daniels.
Are toadstools on the miser's bags'
But crypto is in fact like a fungal infection: as it’s sterilized out of existence in one place, it’s spores germinate, grow a mycelial network and fruit somewhere else. A vulnerable part of its life cycle seems to be the electricity required to grow it. We could at least keep any part of the grid from participating in that, I’d think.
The mining metaphor is also extremely apt. JK Galbraith points out in his book on money that the sudden Iberian access to large amounts of gold from the New World caused bread prices in Poland to double in short order, because if you had gold back then, it almost auto magically generated any currency you wanted.
I’d be interested to know how much crypto is responsible for our current high inflation in general, and what countries have been worst hit.
posted by jamjam at 10:27 AM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
crypto will never go away because we are wired to make an easy buck and never mind the consequences
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:35 AM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:35 AM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
For what it's worth, " On Sep. 10, 2023, the value of all bitcoins was 0.11% of all money
Bitcoin is the largest and best-known cryptocurrency in the global economy. However, it is far from the only one. If we combine Bitcoin with Litecoin, Monero, Ethereum, and all other significant cryptocurrencies, the total value comes to roughly $1.04 trillion (as of Sep. 10, 2023).
5
That was about 0.23% of the value of all money.."
investopedia
Crypto transactions are slow and expensive. It hasn't really caught on.
There are reasons for hating it, but causing inflation isn't one of them.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:59 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Bitcoin is the largest and best-known cryptocurrency in the global economy. However, it is far from the only one. If we combine Bitcoin with Litecoin, Monero, Ethereum, and all other significant cryptocurrencies, the total value comes to roughly $1.04 trillion (as of Sep. 10, 2023).
5
That was about 0.23% of the value of all money.."
investopedia
Crypto transactions are slow and expensive. It hasn't really caught on.
There are reasons for hating it, but causing inflation isn't one of them.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:59 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
tulips were also a valued at significant fraction of money at their peak
posted by lalochezia at 11:05 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 11:05 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've been reading the book, and one interesting thing that I gleaned from it is that Bitcoin was almost worthless until someone figured out that they could use it to buy drugs on Silk Road. Silk Road itself and its founder didn't last long, but it was pretty clear who could really use this stuff.
Also, an up-to-date list of mysterious deaths connected to crypto, including Yevgeny Prigozhin, who apparently had the fifth-largest Bitcoin wallet.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:39 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Also, an up-to-date list of mysterious deaths connected to crypto, including Yevgeny Prigozhin, who apparently had the fifth-largest Bitcoin wallet.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:39 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I loved the iphone recharge hack without tools, amazing.
Faint of Butt> Crypto, like all financial structures, exists primarily to benefit the unethical.
Yes exactly. We'll have more of this with or without crypto-currency, because financial regulations were designed to facilitate unethical benefits. And crypto-currency is too insignificant to crash the larger edifice.
We'll instead reach the end of economic growth soon, due to peak oil, planetary boundaries like climate, and other limits to growth. Initially, our financial world pursues other gains, which enables Theranos, Kiva, and pyramid schemes like Bitcoin, but also legitimize crimes by regular companies which exist slightly out-of-sign. Apple maybe avoids the next worse Foxconn, by overcharging locked in consumers, but I'd expect many commenting here wind up owning phones made by slave labor in the future. The difference in crypto-currency is that so much of the fraud, like bitcoin's proof-of-work or Vicky Ho's scam, is just so staggeringly incompetent. I donno this matters, but it makes reporting easier than if you need a leak from an insider at Samsung or Apple.
Anyways, the real solution is a faster collapse of global trade, which then slows exploitation of the global south, reduce excess consumption, etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:40 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Faint of Butt> Crypto, like all financial structures, exists primarily to benefit the unethical.
Yes exactly. We'll have more of this with or without crypto-currency, because financial regulations were designed to facilitate unethical benefits. And crypto-currency is too insignificant to crash the larger edifice.
We'll instead reach the end of economic growth soon, due to peak oil, planetary boundaries like climate, and other limits to growth. Initially, our financial world pursues other gains, which enables Theranos, Kiva, and pyramid schemes like Bitcoin, but also legitimize crimes by regular companies which exist slightly out-of-sign. Apple maybe avoids the next worse Foxconn, by overcharging locked in consumers, but I'd expect many commenting here wind up owning phones made by slave labor in the future. The difference in crypto-currency is that so much of the fraud, like bitcoin's proof-of-work or Vicky Ho's scam, is just so staggeringly incompetent. I donno this matters, but it makes reporting easier than if you need a leak from an insider at Samsung or Apple.
Anyways, the real solution is a faster collapse of global trade, which then slows exploitation of the global south, reduce excess consumption, etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:40 AM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I find it so weird that commenters here are in a rush to dismiss the cryptocurrency part of this story.
This thread is full of people talking about crypto and as far as I can tell 0 discussion of how the Cambodian government allowed office buildings full of trafficked slaves or the US government's defacto legalization of financial crimes against its citizens as long as those crimes are initiated outside its borders.
Crypto makes it easier for this particular crime to be conducted, but before crypto it was conducted using wire transfers and if crypto was banned it would continue to be conducted using that or some new scheme like gift cards.
posted by hermanubis at 11:48 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
This thread is full of people talking about crypto and as far as I can tell 0 discussion of how the Cambodian government allowed office buildings full of trafficked slaves or the US government's defacto legalization of financial crimes against its citizens as long as those crimes are initiated outside its borders.
Crypto makes it easier for this particular crime to be conducted, but before crypto it was conducted using wire transfers and if crypto was banned it would continue to be conducted using that or some new scheme like gift cards.
posted by hermanubis at 11:48 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
In my experience, no technology has morals or ethics.
Every technology has morals and ethics, because technology is made by people, and created with intent, and averting your eyes from it doesn't make it go away - this is the whole point of the famous line from Jurassic Park stated by Ian Malcolm:
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:53 AM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
Every technology has morals and ethics, because technology is made by people, and created with intent, and averting your eyes from it doesn't make it go away - this is the whole point of the famous line from Jurassic Park stated by Ian Malcolm:
You were so busy trying to figure out if you could, that you didn't think about if you should!Beyond that, crypto was openly and deliberately built on a very specific ethos of creating a currency system unbound by trusts and governments. It's not surprising that such a system attracts people looking to commit crimes against people.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:53 AM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
As AI is the new bullshit hotness, we might've investor scams like: Fork & tweak existing AI models. Assign slave army to improve customer queries in real time.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:06 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by jeffburdges at 12:06 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also, crypto transactions have never been remotely untraceable. Being indelibly visible on the blockchain is a feature of the system. “Tumblers” are a way of obscuring transactions, but the real attraction for crime is that, while everyone can see that Wallet A paid Wallet B X amount, there isn’t a direct way to say who owns either wallet. As long as you can keep that true, you’re safe. However, once a criminal enterprise is associated with a wallet, it becomes increasingly easy to trace connections and expose entire criminal enterprises. It’s not a failsafe way to transfer illegal money and gets less so every time a wallet gets used.
I said the indelibly visible transactions are a feature, but they aren’t all that useful a feature unless you are trying to build a trustless system, which, OK, but since humans have literally thousands of years doing OK using systems that involve some trust, the drawbacks are worse than the solutions.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:11 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I said the indelibly visible transactions are a feature, but they aren’t all that useful a feature unless you are trying to build a trustless system, which, OK, but since humans have literally thousands of years doing OK using systems that involve some trust, the drawbacks are worse than the solutions.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:11 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
This thread is full of people talking about crypto and as far as I can tell 0 discussion of how the Cambodian government allowed office buildings full of trafficked slaves or the US government's defacto legalization of financial crimes against its citizens as long as those crimes are initiated outside its borders.
For the first part, the article implies the answer pretty strongly — Cambodia is a poor country with an authoritarian government. Corruption is rampant and local governments collude with organized crime both foreign and domestic.
For the second part, the fiscal agencies of the US Government have started taking brisk action to police crypto as unregistered securities over the last 18 months. It is substantially more difficult to move money via crypto, convert crypto into dollars, being new suckers into the market, etc. Crypto exchanges are closing, and it is getting especially hard to buy crypto on overseas markets. It also looks like operating a tool like a tumbler may soon be defined as money laundering, even if they can’t prove that a specific someone laundered money with it. We’ll see.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:28 PM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
For the first part, the article implies the answer pretty strongly — Cambodia is a poor country with an authoritarian government. Corruption is rampant and local governments collude with organized crime both foreign and domestic.
For the second part, the fiscal agencies of the US Government have started taking brisk action to police crypto as unregistered securities over the last 18 months. It is substantially more difficult to move money via crypto, convert crypto into dollars, being new suckers into the market, etc. Crypto exchanges are closing, and it is getting especially hard to buy crypto on overseas markets. It also looks like operating a tool like a tumbler may soon be defined as money laundering, even if they can’t prove that a specific someone laundered money with it. We’ll see.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:28 PM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
Why do we treat crypto as fungible? Every unit is fully traced.
Simply mark individual crypto as being involved in a crime, and make its possession a crime. Publish the crypto with this criminal connection; allow for a short window to hand over said crypto after it is declared criminal. (You can dispute the criminal state of crypto as part of handing it over).
And yes this makes all existing crypto impelentations useless as a medium of exchange.
We can add in exceptions, where a anti-laundering measures are used to track crypto ownership. But that is a bank.
posted by NotAYakk at 1:40 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Simply mark individual crypto as being involved in a crime, and make its possession a crime. Publish the crypto with this criminal connection; allow for a short window to hand over said crypto after it is declared criminal. (You can dispute the criminal state of crypto as part of handing it over).
And yes this makes all existing crypto impelentations useless as a medium of exchange.
We can add in exceptions, where a anti-laundering measures are used to track crypto ownership. But that is a bank.
posted by NotAYakk at 1:40 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have a cryptobro in one of my classes this semester. Poor sod keeps trying to get me to debate him on it. I refuse.
The best thing I can tell myself is that he's 18 or 19 -- he'll likely grow out of it. I just hope he does before he hurts somebody.
posted by humbug at 2:29 PM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
The best thing I can tell myself is that he's 18 or 19 -- he'll likely grow out of it. I just hope he does before he hurts somebody.
posted by humbug at 2:29 PM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
I mean, isn’t crypto just fiat currency except without any stable government or military force to back it? Money that only has value because of, say, the US Government’s promise is still … clearly better and more reliable than crypto in all ethical cases.
Tech guys always they have created some incredible new value for humanity but this is only true in maybe 1% of cases. Crypto makes no sense to me.
posted by caviar2d2 at 3:08 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Tech guys always they have created some incredible new value for humanity but this is only true in maybe 1% of cases. Crypto makes no sense to me.
posted by caviar2d2 at 3:08 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Every technology has morals and ethics, because technology is made by people, and created with intent
NAK.
Technology is notoriously and continuously co-opted for things it was never intended for. I'm sure writing was invented with the best of intentions, but blackmail notes get written nonetheless.
To claim that technology has inherent control over how it is used is to give a lot more power to it (or the people who invented it) than they could ever possibly wield.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:33 PM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
NAK.
Technology is notoriously and continuously co-opted for things it was never intended for. I'm sure writing was invented with the best of intentions, but blackmail notes get written nonetheless.
To claim that technology has inherent control over how it is used is to give a lot more power to it (or the people who invented it) than they could ever possibly wield.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:33 PM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Afaik two "value models" exist caviar2d2: All the purely transactional ones were designed as roughly ponzi schemes, including Bitcoin originally. Aside from these, all the Ethereum killers, and Ethereum itself, promote the idea that some marketable value exists in somewhat general computations being somewhat more publicly verifiable.
In fact, yes there is value in verifiability, unlike in bitcoins, but.. How much market? What competitors? etc.
Rule 1. Avoid consensus if possible: We never needed consensus in bittorrent, only reachability. Certificate transparency (CT) has many blockchain-like aspects, but avoids requiring consensus. Intel SGX is a crappy threat model, but it's clearly a major competitor to Ethereum killers. Zero-knowledge proofs or multi-party computations permit some verifiability without consensus.
Rule 2. Avoid capitalism being your threat model: Tor runs its own bespoke consensus, formed by community trust in the 12 individuals who run DirAuths. And drand similarly establishes trust publically.
Academics do have myriad more protocols that demand roughly blockchains, with ARLEAS being one example. Yet, how many need deployment? How many uses really need consensus once hand optimized? How many uses become crap once they suck capitalism into their threat model?
All the Ethereum killers should be much cheaper, but proof-of-stake Ethereum itself must pay one million nodes. That's infinitely cheaper than Bitcoin, or proof-of-work Ethereum, but it remains so incredibly expensive that really nobody should ever use it for anything.
Anyways..
Do we know applications that break rule 1 and rule 2 above, but avoid picking a fight with the financial system? Yes, massive multi-player games might "benefit" from blockchains, in the sense that players could run massive on-chain government-like processes for developing the game. Indeed, Vitalik created Etehreum after "crying himself to sleep" over Blizzard nerfing his World Of Warcraft character. I'm dubious that politicking over game balance really beats an authority saying "We think this'll be more fun", but it's clearly a market of some type.
This brings us back to my point above about incompetence. There are talented people doing stuff like consensus protocols, zero-knowledge proofs, etc in the crypto-currency space, but so far the teams who actually ship end users products have remained too incompetent to ship a game that's actually fun. This to me is mind blowing. How can this space with so much money be so devoid of end user developer competence that nobody shipped any fun massive multi-player games yet?
posted by jeffburdges at 4:09 PM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
In fact, yes there is value in verifiability, unlike in bitcoins, but.. How much market? What competitors? etc.
Rule 1. Avoid consensus if possible: We never needed consensus in bittorrent, only reachability. Certificate transparency (CT) has many blockchain-like aspects, but avoids requiring consensus. Intel SGX is a crappy threat model, but it's clearly a major competitor to Ethereum killers. Zero-knowledge proofs or multi-party computations permit some verifiability without consensus.
Rule 2. Avoid capitalism being your threat model: Tor runs its own bespoke consensus, formed by community trust in the 12 individuals who run DirAuths. And drand similarly establishes trust publically.
Academics do have myriad more protocols that demand roughly blockchains, with ARLEAS being one example. Yet, how many need deployment? How many uses really need consensus once hand optimized? How many uses become crap once they suck capitalism into their threat model?
All the Ethereum killers should be much cheaper, but proof-of-stake Ethereum itself must pay one million nodes. That's infinitely cheaper than Bitcoin, or proof-of-work Ethereum, but it remains so incredibly expensive that really nobody should ever use it for anything.
Anyways..
Do we know applications that break rule 1 and rule 2 above, but avoid picking a fight with the financial system? Yes, massive multi-player games might "benefit" from blockchains, in the sense that players could run massive on-chain government-like processes for developing the game. Indeed, Vitalik created Etehreum after "crying himself to sleep" over Blizzard nerfing his World Of Warcraft character. I'm dubious that politicking over game balance really beats an authority saying "We think this'll be more fun", but it's clearly a market of some type.
This brings us back to my point above about incompetence. There are talented people doing stuff like consensus protocols, zero-knowledge proofs, etc in the crypto-currency space, but so far the teams who actually ship end users products have remained too incompetent to ship a game that's actually fun. This to me is mind blowing. How can this space with so much money be so devoid of end user developer competence that nobody shipped any fun massive multi-player games yet?
posted by jeffburdges at 4:09 PM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Technology is notoriously and continuously co-opted for things it was never intended for. I'm sure writing was invented with the best of intentions, but blackmail notes get written nonetheless.
To claim that technology has inherent control over how it is used is to give a lot more power to it (or the people who invented it) than they could ever possibly wield.
Technology absolutely has control over how it is used, as its design informs its use. The fact that it can be subverted doesn't change that it is created with purpose that in turn drives its form and shape. And cryptocurrency demonstrates this rather adeptly, as its design with its focus on not needing trust and setting up a system designed to be uncontrollable by a single entity made it perfect for operating in ways suited for criminal operations. The damage crypto is doing is very much "by design".
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:32 PM on September 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
To claim that technology has inherent control over how it is used is to give a lot more power to it (or the people who invented it) than they could ever possibly wield.
Technology absolutely has control over how it is used, as its design informs its use. The fact that it can be subverted doesn't change that it is created with purpose that in turn drives its form and shape. And cryptocurrency demonstrates this rather adeptly, as its design with its focus on not needing trust and setting up a system designed to be uncontrollable by a single entity made it perfect for operating in ways suited for criminal operations. The damage crypto is doing is very much "by design".
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:32 PM on September 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
its design with its focus on not needing trust and setting up a system designed to be uncontrollable by a single entity made it perfect for operating in ways suited for criminal operations.
I suppose what I don't like about this is the implication that there is some single entity I might trust to control things. There isn't.
posted by philip-random at 7:12 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I suppose what I don't like about this is the implication that there is some single entity I might trust to control things. There isn't.
posted by philip-random at 7:12 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
In 2022 over 350 million people experienced the crippling effects of hyperinflation.
In many countries the local currency is exploitative garbage.
I'm glad people now have the option to use a decentralised, secure digital money with a supply fixed at 21 million.
It's not like petrodollars hold any moral high ground here.
posted by neonamber at 10:47 PM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
In many countries the local currency is exploitative garbage.
I'm glad people now have the option to use a decentralised, secure digital money with a supply fixed at 21 million.
It's not like petrodollars hold any moral high ground here.
posted by neonamber at 10:47 PM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm glad people now have the option to use a decentralised, secure digital money with a supply fixed at 21 million.
The sheer amount of ignorance in this statement of not just crypto and its failings in security and working as actual money, but of how finance actually works and why static money supplies are why economic depressions were endemic until we moved away from such standards is, well...it's a large part of why crypto advocates aren't taken seriously.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:20 PM on September 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
The sheer amount of ignorance in this statement of not just crypto and its failings in security and working as actual money, but of how finance actually works and why static money supplies are why economic depressions were endemic until we moved away from such standards is, well...it's a large part of why crypto advocates aren't taken seriously.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:20 PM on September 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
The sheer amount of ignorance
I'm just offering a counter point to the people are saying it* has no valid use case. Legitimate use cases do exist and it* is being utilised by people.
..and its failings in security and working as actual money
If you follow best practices it's exceptionally secure and has worked fine every time I used it.
The sheer amount of ignorance in how finance actually works
How finance worked
I don't think the current growth addicted monetary system is good for the planet or its people. It's a mad scramble that maximises exploitation and it's quite apparent the control levers are becoming unwieldy. The current system is amplifying wealth inequality.
it's a large part of why crypto advocates aren't taken seriously.
* Just to be clear, I'm not a big umbrella 'crypto advocate'. I only like original recipe.
posted by neonamber at 12:54 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm just offering a counter point to the people are saying it* has no valid use case. Legitimate use cases do exist and it* is being utilised by people.
..and its failings in security and working as actual money
If you follow best practices it's exceptionally secure and has worked fine every time I used it.
The sheer amount of ignorance in how finance actually works
How finance worked
I don't think the current growth addicted monetary system is good for the planet or its people. It's a mad scramble that maximises exploitation and it's quite apparent the control levers are becoming unwieldy. The current system is amplifying wealth inequality.
it's a large part of why crypto advocates aren't taken seriously.
* Just to be clear, I'm not a big umbrella 'crypto advocate'. I only like original recipe.
posted by neonamber at 12:54 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure how introducing an inherently deflationary alternative money is meant to lessen wealth inequality...
posted by Dysk at 2:53 AM on September 21, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 2:53 AM on September 21, 2023 [12 favorites]
I'm not sure how introducing an inherently deflationary alternative money is meant to lessen wealth inequality...
No yield farming / no returns / no staking rewards / no pre-mine / no rug-pull. It's no inequality panacea but at least it's not designed to systematically enrich the already wealthy via staking.
posted by neonamber at 6:21 AM on September 21, 2023
No yield farming / no returns / no staking rewards / no pre-mine / no rug-pull. It's no inequality panacea but at least it's not designed to systematically enrich the already wealthy via staking.
posted by neonamber at 6:21 AM on September 21, 2023
I'm just offering a counter point to the people are saying it* has no valid use case. Legitimate use cases do exist and it* is being utilised by people.
Cryptocurrencies are slow and unwieldy, processing transactions at a rate that is laughable, with transaction fees that are usurious. Legitimate use cases "exist" in that they can be articulated, but in reality, crypto gets its lunch eaten by every other system that doesn't have to deal with the ridiculous overhead that crypto needs to fundamentally exist.
I don't think the current growth addicted monetary system is good for the planet or its people.
No. Just...no.
You don't get to talk about what's "good for the planet" when you are literally advocating for a financial system that is a documented ecological nightmare, built on a system of busywork that serves no purpose other than it is the only way to "build consensus" in a vacuum of trust, and which by its very design will require ever-growing power consumption to meet that goal.
This is why your position is ignorant - you try to advocate for it by pointing out the problems of the existing financial system, while ignoring that the system you propose is worse in so many ways.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:31 AM on September 21, 2023 [11 favorites]
Cryptocurrencies are slow and unwieldy, processing transactions at a rate that is laughable, with transaction fees that are usurious. Legitimate use cases "exist" in that they can be articulated, but in reality, crypto gets its lunch eaten by every other system that doesn't have to deal with the ridiculous overhead that crypto needs to fundamentally exist.
I don't think the current growth addicted monetary system is good for the planet or its people.
No. Just...no.
You don't get to talk about what's "good for the planet" when you are literally advocating for a financial system that is a documented ecological nightmare, built on a system of busywork that serves no purpose other than it is the only way to "build consensus" in a vacuum of trust, and which by its very design will require ever-growing power consumption to meet that goal.
This is why your position is ignorant - you try to advocate for it by pointing out the problems of the existing financial system, while ignoring that the system you propose is worse in so many ways.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:31 AM on September 21, 2023 [11 favorites]
No yield farming / no returns / no staking rewards / no pre-mine / no rug-pull.
No, just returns for those with capital to throw at custom hardware and homebrew datacentres, increasing returns to those who can afford to just hold money built in. Rewarding those who already have means is built in to the system, the absence of a bunch of even worse shit that is also only found in crypto nonsense doesn't add up to an advantage, just a lack of some batshit disadvantages. It's like claiming a budget brand of food is good because it doesn't contain arsenic and razorblades.
posted by Dysk at 9:05 AM on September 21, 2023
No, just returns for those with capital to throw at custom hardware and homebrew datacentres, increasing returns to those who can afford to just hold money built in. Rewarding those who already have means is built in to the system, the absence of a bunch of even worse shit that is also only found in crypto nonsense doesn't add up to an advantage, just a lack of some batshit disadvantages. It's like claiming a budget brand of food is good because it doesn't contain arsenic and razorblades.
posted by Dysk at 9:05 AM on September 21, 2023
>In my experience, no technology has morals or ethics. Every technology has implications. It's how we use them, isn't it?
see, here's the deal, and this deal might be what you're saying with the second sentence but it's directly opposed to your first sentence:
technologies expand the field of possible actions in specific directions (with or without the intent or foresight of the creators) and expanding the field of the possible is in and of itself a moral, ethical, and political decision.
some guy on a blue website, i forget which one, came up with a really interesting analogy a while back. say you're really into acorns, you love them a ton, you can't get enough of acorns, and you decide to invent a device to get acorns out of trees more efficiently. so what you do is you make a metal tube and you put in a powder that explodes when exposed to flame, and then you put a heavy little ball into the tube, you attach a little sparky widget that can catch the powder on fire when you push a button, and then you point the metal tube with the ball and powder in it toward a branch you want to get acorns from and blammo! you've got a bunch of acorns down on the ground. efficiency!
of course, you haven't invented an acorn fetcher, no matter how much you insist on it, because what you've really invented is a gun.
being all blithe about whether or not the thing you're building is a gun is a political choice, and it's a political choice with serious moral implications. note that the moment of moral decision i am referring to in this case isn't directly the choice whether or not to invent a gun, but is instead the choice to be indifferent about whether or not the thing you're building is a gun, the decision to just build something without seriously investigating whether or not you're by so doing becoming a gun manufacturer.
the definition of techologies as not having morals or ethics is a definition that enables/encourages you to treat the implications of your devices as not your department. it is in and of itself an immoral conceptual frame.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:23 AM on September 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
see, here's the deal, and this deal might be what you're saying with the second sentence but it's directly opposed to your first sentence:
technologies expand the field of possible actions in specific directions (with or without the intent or foresight of the creators) and expanding the field of the possible is in and of itself a moral, ethical, and political decision.
some guy on a blue website, i forget which one, came up with a really interesting analogy a while back. say you're really into acorns, you love them a ton, you can't get enough of acorns, and you decide to invent a device to get acorns out of trees more efficiently. so what you do is you make a metal tube and you put in a powder that explodes when exposed to flame, and then you put a heavy little ball into the tube, you attach a little sparky widget that can catch the powder on fire when you push a button, and then you point the metal tube with the ball and powder in it toward a branch you want to get acorns from and blammo! you've got a bunch of acorns down on the ground. efficiency!
of course, you haven't invented an acorn fetcher, no matter how much you insist on it, because what you've really invented is a gun.
being all blithe about whether or not the thing you're building is a gun is a political choice, and it's a political choice with serious moral implications. note that the moment of moral decision i am referring to in this case isn't directly the choice whether or not to invent a gun, but is instead the choice to be indifferent about whether or not the thing you're building is a gun, the decision to just build something without seriously investigating whether or not you're by so doing becoming a gun manufacturer.
the definition of techologies as not having morals or ethics is a definition that enables/encourages you to treat the implications of your devices as not your department. it is in and of itself an immoral conceptual frame.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:23 AM on September 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
Technology absolutely has control over how it is used, as its design informs its use. The fact that it can be subverted doesn't change that it is created with purpose that in turn drives its form and shape
Okay, if you insist that intent defines the morality of technology then you will find cryptocurrencies to be completely without blame for any criminal activities.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:36 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
Okay, if you insist that intent defines the morality of technology then you will find cryptocurrencies to be completely without blame for any criminal activities.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:36 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
> The current system is amplifying wealth inequality.
if you want to reduce wealth inequality without getting rid of currencies altogether, what you need is a deliberately inflationary currency. this is because reducing wealth inequality requires making the past less valuable in the present, i.e. privileging doing active current work in the present (labor) over having claimed ownership over something in the past (capital).
deflationary quasi-currencies — no cryptocurrency is a currency, they're even less currency-like than git commits, and git commits are non-currency on the face of them — anyway, deflationary currencies/quasi-currencies increase the value of the past over the present, i.e. in deflationary environments value flows toward those who staked an ownership claim in the past and away from those working in the present, because the stuff you did in the past is automatically more valuable than the stuff you're doing in the present.
amusingly, this is the exact same mechanism as the one that comes into play with mlms and related scams, which are all about the people who joined early draining all the money from the new people they recruit. deflationary cryptocurrencies aren't mlms-for-bros in a metaphorical sense, they're mlms-for-bros in a totally literal sense. they work the same way, it's just in the case of cryptocurrency the bro-huns use/misuse merkle trees to produce a patina — but just a patina — of algorithmic quasi-sophistication.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:42 AM on September 21, 2023 [5 favorites]
if you want to reduce wealth inequality without getting rid of currencies altogether, what you need is a deliberately inflationary currency. this is because reducing wealth inequality requires making the past less valuable in the present, i.e. privileging doing active current work in the present (labor) over having claimed ownership over something in the past (capital).
deflationary quasi-currencies — no cryptocurrency is a currency, they're even less currency-like than git commits, and git commits are non-currency on the face of them — anyway, deflationary currencies/quasi-currencies increase the value of the past over the present, i.e. in deflationary environments value flows toward those who staked an ownership claim in the past and away from those working in the present, because the stuff you did in the past is automatically more valuable than the stuff you're doing in the present.
amusingly, this is the exact same mechanism as the one that comes into play with mlms and related scams, which are all about the people who joined early draining all the money from the new people they recruit. deflationary cryptocurrencies aren't mlms-for-bros in a metaphorical sense, they're mlms-for-bros in a totally literal sense. they work the same way, it's just in the case of cryptocurrency the bro-huns use/misuse merkle trees to produce a patina — but just a patina — of algorithmic quasi-sophistication.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:42 AM on September 21, 2023 [5 favorites]
Okay, if you insist that intent defines the morality of technology then you will find cryptocurrencies to be completely without blame for any criminal activities.
Actually, the argument goes the other way - the fact that crypto was designed to work outside the banking system - and that system's protections against criminal activity, as incomplete as they may be - is exactly why crypto took off in the more illicit corners of the world (remember, crypto's initial "killer app" was buying drugs on Silk Road.) Which comes back to the point that was made - technology inherently has a moral and ethical dimension because its very creation is a moral and ethical act, and that is not something that we can dismiss.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:46 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
Actually, the argument goes the other way - the fact that crypto was designed to work outside the banking system - and that system's protections against criminal activity, as incomplete as they may be - is exactly why crypto took off in the more illicit corners of the world (remember, crypto's initial "killer app" was buying drugs on Silk Road.) Which comes back to the point that was made - technology inherently has a moral and ethical dimension because its very creation is a moral and ethical act, and that is not something that we can dismiss.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:46 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not so sure about your dire assessment NoxAeternum.
This is what I see happening:
* Mining is effectively securing a public utility used by real people.
* Mining hardware is getting more efficient.
* Mining operations are being integrated into the grid in order to stabilise supply using load shedding.
* Mining is increasingly powered by renewable energy.
* Mining is helping reduce methane emissions.
If it's so laughably impractical then I would expect it to fade in popularity but I genuinely do not think we're seeing that occur. It's nearing 15 years old and more people than ever are using it as a store of value. For comparison, peak Dutch tulip mania came and went in the space of 1 year.
I also think there is a reasonable chance Bitcoin mining becomes so green it's considered an ESG asset. The value proposition for an economically productive, portable and instantly flexible load in a renewable mix energy market is just too great to ignore.
posted by neonamber at 10:02 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is what I see happening:
* Mining is effectively securing a public utility used by real people.
* Mining hardware is getting more efficient.
* Mining operations are being integrated into the grid in order to stabilise supply using load shedding.
* Mining is increasingly powered by renewable energy.
* Mining is helping reduce methane emissions.
If it's so laughably impractical then I would expect it to fade in popularity but I genuinely do not think we're seeing that occur. It's nearing 15 years old and more people than ever are using it as a store of value. For comparison, peak Dutch tulip mania came and went in the space of 1 year.
I also think there is a reasonable chance Bitcoin mining becomes so green it's considered an ESG asset. The value proposition for an economically productive, portable and instantly flexible load in a renewable mix energy market is just too great to ignore.
posted by neonamber at 10:02 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
- it's not a store of value, it's a medium for speculation. being a store of value requires stability.
- but wait you say, there's cryptocurrencies tied to the usd! that makes them stable!
- lol no the tether dudes are all doing financial crimes and some of them are doing times for those crimes.
- efficiency improvements/"improvements" in the process of pointless fiddling with hash trees are not real efficiency gains, because there is no reason to be fiddling with hash trees and then pretending your git commits are currency.
- the way to make it efficient is to knock it off altogether
> I also think there is a reasonable chance Bitcoin mining becomes so green it's considered an ESG asset. The value proposition for an economically productive, portable and instantly flexible load in a renewable mix energy market is just too great to ignore.
okay this line is kind of funny, so points for that.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:09 AM on September 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
being all blithe about whether or not the thing you're building is a gun is a political choice, and it's a political choice with serious moral implications.
problem is, I'm not a moralist. Not that I don't have morals. I've just learned they only really work for me, toward driving and influencing my own actions/decicions. To demand or impose them in any remotely overt way on others is kind of a fools game, often makes things worse. That's been my experience.
As for "political choice", this is where I shrug and say, whatever. Some of the worst people I've ever had dealings with had exemplary progressive political bona fides. So yeah, I'm acutely skeptical of political anything as a driving force. Sorry.
On the "no technology has morals or ethics" point, which I started. I do think it's incomplete without the next sentence: "Every technology has implications". And though some of these implications may be obvious, many are not and only really come clear in hindsight. So yes, as the tech's implications play out (often completely at odds with how they may have been intended) they do indeed force us into moral/ethical discussions/concerns/quandaries.
You say cause, I say effect.
posted by philip-random at 10:09 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
problem is, I'm not a moralist. Not that I don't have morals. I've just learned they only really work for me, toward driving and influencing my own actions/decicions. To demand or impose them in any remotely overt way on others is kind of a fools game, often makes things worse. That's been my experience.
As for "political choice", this is where I shrug and say, whatever. Some of the worst people I've ever had dealings with had exemplary progressive political bona fides. So yeah, I'm acutely skeptical of political anything as a driving force. Sorry.
On the "no technology has morals or ethics" point, which I started. I do think it's incomplete without the next sentence: "Every technology has implications". And though some of these implications may be obvious, many are not and only really come clear in hindsight. So yes, as the tech's implications play out (often completely at odds with how they may have been intended) they do indeed force us into moral/ethical discussions/concerns/quandaries.
You say cause, I say effect.
posted by philip-random at 10:09 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
tl;dr: i've got some git commits i want to sell you they're the new hotness buy 'em while you can cause their value can only go up, right, they can only go up!
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:09 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:09 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not so sure about your dire assessment NoxAeternum.
This is for reasons Upton Sinclair elaborated on a century ago.
The simple reality is that proof of work mining is literally burning resources meaninglessly - not surprising as proof of work as a concept is about adding friction into a system in order to discourage bad actors (the original case was adding proof of work to sending email to combat spam.) Saying "but proof of work mining is getting greener" misses the point, as a) we've already seen mothballed coal power plants brought back online to power proof of work mining and b) it doesn't change the fact that proof of work is literally built on wasting resources. And if you move to a less destructive system like proof of stake, well - then you're just moving to centralization, making crypto even more meaningless.
Ultimately, you are arguing for waste, and there is no lipstick you can put on that porcine that will make it anything but a pig.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:30 AM on September 21, 2023 [6 favorites]
This is for reasons Upton Sinclair elaborated on a century ago.
The simple reality is that proof of work mining is literally burning resources meaninglessly - not surprising as proof of work as a concept is about adding friction into a system in order to discourage bad actors (the original case was adding proof of work to sending email to combat spam.) Saying "but proof of work mining is getting greener" misses the point, as a) we've already seen mothballed coal power plants brought back online to power proof of work mining and b) it doesn't change the fact that proof of work is literally built on wasting resources. And if you move to a less destructive system like proof of stake, well - then you're just moving to centralization, making crypto even more meaningless.
Ultimately, you are arguing for waste, and there is no lipstick you can put on that porcine that will make it anything but a pig.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:30 AM on September 21, 2023 [6 favorites]
On the "no technology has morals or ethics" point, which I started. I do think it's incomplete without the next sentence: "Every technology has implications".
Those implications exist because of morals and ethics. The statement is trying to have its cake and eat it too - it's trying to call the moral and ethical aspects of technology something else as to avoid the hard questions that come up when creating new technologies.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:34 AM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
Those implications exist because of morals and ethics. The statement is trying to have its cake and eat it too - it's trying to call the moral and ethical aspects of technology something else as to avoid the hard questions that come up when creating new technologies.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:34 AM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
> On the "no technology has morals or ethics" point, which I started. I do think it's incomplete without the next sentence: "Every technology has implications".
i encourage you to read the first sentence of the comment you're responding to, and then to also read the sentence after that, which is helpfully set aside in its own paragraph.
the last sentence — likewise set aside in its own paragraph for emphasis — may also be worth reading.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:46 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
i encourage you to read the first sentence of the comment you're responding to, and then to also read the sentence after that, which is helpfully set aside in its own paragraph.
the last sentence — likewise set aside in its own paragraph for emphasis — may also be worth reading.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:46 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
"The purpose of a system is what it does." So far what crypto (and blockchain in general, honestly) does is drive waste, shady purchases, scams, and mindless speculation.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 10:54 AM on September 21, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 10:54 AM on September 21, 2023 [5 favorites]
Obviously blockchain got off to a real bad start and I'm not surprised to see the skepticism here.
I mean, coming from a mathematician' perspective, and someone who found aspects of the original design clever, blockchin always looked to me like a solution in search of a problem. There's very little use case for distributed persistent world-writable immutable-past ledger systems, and if you drop any individual part of that specification, there's usually a much more straightforward way to do it than the quite massive overhead of blockchain.
I've gone on about this before.
posted by jackbishop at 12:36 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
I mean, coming from a mathematician' perspective, and someone who found aspects of the original design clever, blockchin always looked to me like a solution in search of a problem. There's very little use case for distributed persistent world-writable immutable-past ledger systems, and if you drop any individual part of that specification, there's usually a much more straightforward way to do it than the quite massive overhead of blockchain.
I've gone on about this before.
posted by jackbishop at 12:36 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
* Mining hardware is getting more efficient.
Which means more mining takes place, and the difficult of mining gets adjusted up.
* Mining is increasingly powered by renewable energy.
While a lot of other consumption is not. A lot of that capacity could be used for actual meaningful services. Using purely illustrative numbers: if there is 100MW of normal demand, and you're using 20MW for crypto, it is not green if 20MW of the 120MW being used is coal, regardless of who is using it. The renewables that crypto uses displaces their availability for other uses.
* Mining is helping reduce methane emissions.
wut???
There is no reality in which consuming power unnecessarily, on an order of magnitude where it eclipses entire developed countries' demand, is green. Especially not in a reality where some of our power generation is fossil fuels. Sure, you might have an exclusive deal with the hydro plant next door or whatever, but the result is that the town down the road is now burning something instead of using the hydro.
posted by Dysk at 4:32 PM on September 21, 2023 [9 favorites]
Which means more mining takes place, and the difficult of mining gets adjusted up.
* Mining is increasingly powered by renewable energy.
While a lot of other consumption is not. A lot of that capacity could be used for actual meaningful services. Using purely illustrative numbers: if there is 100MW of normal demand, and you're using 20MW for crypto, it is not green if 20MW of the 120MW being used is coal, regardless of who is using it. The renewables that crypto uses displaces their availability for other uses.
* Mining is helping reduce methane emissions.
wut???
There is no reality in which consuming power unnecessarily, on an order of magnitude where it eclipses entire developed countries' demand, is green. Especially not in a reality where some of our power generation is fossil fuels. Sure, you might have an exclusive deal with the hydro plant next door or whatever, but the result is that the town down the road is now burning something instead of using the hydro.
posted by Dysk at 4:32 PM on September 21, 2023 [9 favorites]
wut???
Methane is essentially a waste product at some remote petroleum wells. It's not commercially viable to store or transport so instead it gets burned via flaring. This flaring burns most of the methane but incomplete combustion results in some methane ending up in the atmosphere where it's a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
This creates a situation where methane emissions can be reduced by burning the waste methane more completely and cleanly in the engine of a generator, producing electricity that's used to mine Bitcoin.
I'm personally in favour of aggressively banning all but the most essential petroleum mining along with coal power stations but society is neither willing nor ready to take this step. As long as society is letting this mining/flaring occur it makes sense to do something more useful with the energy.
A similar situation can occur with renewables. Remote sites facing an energy glut can be made more economically productive by trucking in a shipping container of miners and using the excess locally.
A lot of people point to the energy footprint and say it's wasteful but in many cases that energy was never destined for more conventional use anyway.
The reality is that as humanity transitions from a more centralised grid with constant gigawatts of fossil fuel production to a more distributed patchwork of smaller and more numerous but highly variable renewable generation it will unavoidably create local excess.
Bitcoin mining thrives in these situations. The notion Bitcoin mining is slurping up energy that would otherwise be used to power hospitals is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of grid dynamics.
posted by neonamber at 9:09 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
Methane is essentially a waste product at some remote petroleum wells. It's not commercially viable to store or transport so instead it gets burned via flaring. This flaring burns most of the methane but incomplete combustion results in some methane ending up in the atmosphere where it's a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
This creates a situation where methane emissions can be reduced by burning the waste methane more completely and cleanly in the engine of a generator, producing electricity that's used to mine Bitcoin.
I'm personally in favour of aggressively banning all but the most essential petroleum mining along with coal power stations but society is neither willing nor ready to take this step. As long as society is letting this mining/flaring occur it makes sense to do something more useful with the energy.
A similar situation can occur with renewables. Remote sites facing an energy glut can be made more economically productive by trucking in a shipping container of miners and using the excess locally.
A lot of people point to the energy footprint and say it's wasteful but in many cases that energy was never destined for more conventional use anyway.
The reality is that as humanity transitions from a more centralised grid with constant gigawatts of fossil fuel production to a more distributed patchwork of smaller and more numerous but highly variable renewable generation it will unavoidably create local excess.
Bitcoin mining thrives in these situations. The notion Bitcoin mining is slurping up energy that would otherwise be used to power hospitals is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of grid dynamics.
posted by neonamber at 9:09 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
That is a wild ride of desperate reaching.
The notion Bitcoin mining is slurping up energy that would otherwise be used to power hospitals is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of grid dynamics.
This is especially bollocks. We're not talking about moment to moment here when we say mining displaces renewables supply, we're taking about capacity. Nobody is running any mining at scale in the utopian way you suggest. Instead, in the actual reality we live in, mining is having a huge effect on demand, not being used as fucking load balancing.
And if you were to use compute to do load balancing, we'd all still be better off if that was some actual useful compute that would have to happen otherwise, or gives us some useful results, like fucking protein folding or something. If load balancing the grid via compute is possible at any meaningful scale, that's still not an argument for a while bunch of excess unnecessary demand chasing speculation and get rich quick schemes. There is no shortage of useful compute. Bitcoin is not that.
But really, you cannot increase demand and consumption and claim that it's green actually, it's reducing methane emissions actually. That's nakedly nonsense.
posted by Dysk at 12:40 AM on September 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
The notion Bitcoin mining is slurping up energy that would otherwise be used to power hospitals is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of grid dynamics.
This is especially bollocks. We're not talking about moment to moment here when we say mining displaces renewables supply, we're taking about capacity. Nobody is running any mining at scale in the utopian way you suggest. Instead, in the actual reality we live in, mining is having a huge effect on demand, not being used as fucking load balancing.
And if you were to use compute to do load balancing, we'd all still be better off if that was some actual useful compute that would have to happen otherwise, or gives us some useful results, like fucking protein folding or something. If load balancing the grid via compute is possible at any meaningful scale, that's still not an argument for a while bunch of excess unnecessary demand chasing speculation and get rich quick schemes. There is no shortage of useful compute. Bitcoin is not that.
But really, you cannot increase demand and consumption and claim that it's green actually, it's reducing methane emissions actually. That's nakedly nonsense.
posted by Dysk at 12:40 AM on September 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
Remote sites facing an energy glut can be made more economically productive by trucking in a shipping container of miners and using the excess locally.
Also this is based on a misunderstanding of equating economic efficiency with making more money. It isn't. The economy as a whole is not producing any more value, as bitcoin is not a valuable output. It is not more efficient for the economy as a whole, we are not getting more for less, by mining bitcoin. You're using dramatically more, to achieve nothing useful.
posted by Dysk at 12:54 AM on September 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
Also this is based on a misunderstanding of equating economic efficiency with making more money. It isn't. The economy as a whole is not producing any more value, as bitcoin is not a valuable output. It is not more efficient for the economy as a whole, we are not getting more for less, by mining bitcoin. You're using dramatically more, to achieve nothing useful.
posted by Dysk at 12:54 AM on September 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
If mining is harmless, why did the Texas grid just a little while ago need to pay off Bitcoin miners to stop during a heatwave? Those miners weren't taking advantage of a glut of power.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:43 AM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:43 AM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
The end point of these arguments is often a declaration of ones belief that Bitcoin is not useful.
People like myself, who are actually using it, will tend to disagree.
Bitcoin is being used to both stabilise the grid and increase the profitability of renewable energy investments.
In return we get a decentralised, secure digital money that anyone can use. It's a cypherpunk triumph.
posted by neonamber at 2:17 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
People like myself, who are actually using it, will tend to disagree.
Bitcoin is being used to both stabilise the grid and increase the profitability of renewable energy investments.
In return we get a decentralised, secure digital money that anyone can use. It's a cypherpunk triumph.
posted by neonamber at 2:17 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm just going to be over here imagining a metafilter where we can keep track of cryptocurrency news during its all-too-slow decline into irrelevance without someone immediately showing up to say "But cryptocurrency is good actually! I mean it's mostly good. By which I mean it's going to be good. Mostly. Some cryptocurrencies. My favourite one. At least partially. What I'm trying to say is, in principle it's possible to have a good cryptocurrency. Or at least to envision some good qualities I would like a cryptocurrency to have. A good quality. And in fact, if you change every single thing about cryptocurrencies then you can imagine something th-"
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 2:29 AM on September 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 2:29 AM on September 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
The end point of these arguments is often a declaration of ones belief that Bitcoin is not useful.
People like myself, who are actually using it, will tend to disagree.
Yes, we get that you disagree - the point that's being made is that your disagreement is based on arguments that not only are reaching, but show a fundamental unawareness of the actual state of the world and how these systems actually work. Case in point:
Bitcoin is being used to both stabilise the grid and increase the profitability of renewable energy investments.
The comment above yours literally pointed out how this statement is false, with ERCOT paying what is in effect a ransom to Bitcoin miners to not mine so that they wouldn't stress the grid. And if you read up on the story, the miners made several times more from the state paying them off than they did actually mining, further illustrating how false your argument is.
As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinions - but not your own facts. And the simple reality shows that cryptocurrencies are built on waste and fundamentally fail as currencies (and as we're seeing with the Great NFT Collapse, don't really work as securities, either.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:57 AM on September 22, 2023 [10 favorites]
People like myself, who are actually using it, will tend to disagree.
Yes, we get that you disagree - the point that's being made is that your disagreement is based on arguments that not only are reaching, but show a fundamental unawareness of the actual state of the world and how these systems actually work. Case in point:
Bitcoin is being used to both stabilise the grid and increase the profitability of renewable energy investments.
The comment above yours literally pointed out how this statement is false, with ERCOT paying what is in effect a ransom to Bitcoin miners to not mine so that they wouldn't stress the grid. And if you read up on the story, the miners made several times more from the state paying them off than they did actually mining, further illustrating how false your argument is.
As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinions - but not your own facts. And the simple reality shows that cryptocurrencies are built on waste and fundamentally fail as currencies (and as we're seeing with the Great NFT Collapse, don't really work as securities, either.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:57 AM on September 22, 2023 [10 favorites]
Oh, and in further evidence of crypto as ecological disaster, there's the mining concern that wants to go from a metaphorical tire fire to a literal one. And this is a firm that bills itself as “environmentally beneficial” as well!
Your argument at this point boils down to "who are you going to believe - me or your lying eyes?" And frankly, I trust my lying eyes on this one.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:06 AM on September 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
Your argument at this point boils down to "who are you going to believe - me or your lying eyes?" And frankly, I trust my lying eyes on this one.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:06 AM on September 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
You do not "stabilise the grid" but adding more demand. Power sinks that can respond orders of magnitude faster than a mining datacentre are trivial to build. The notion that a datacentre can respond at the speed needed for grid balancing, with no additional baseload, is just wrong.
posted by Dysk at 3:15 AM on September 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 3:15 AM on September 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
At a theory level, proof-of-work cannot reduce demand flexibly, Dysk, et al, so bitcoin cannot be green-ish even if we've no coal power anywhere, and mostly ignore the ewaste.
Any distributed system needs an underlying security assumption expresses as maximum proportion of byzantine nodes, or colloquially as a minimum proportion of honest nodes, aka 23rds honest. Bitcoin famously claims fewer than 50% here, but this ignores liveness completely, ignores many attacks (BGP, selfish mining, etc), ignores how halvings destroy their security, etc.
ASICs act like stake in proof-of-work coins like Bitcoin, well also corrupt power contracts but that's another topic. Now proof-of-work is typically insecure, but proof-of-work could become secure exactly like proof-of-stake does, only if the ASIC-stake owners delegate their power to honest pool operators (only people who control the tx flow). In fact, bircoin is insecure due to pool operators being too centralized, but anyways.
There is thus some small-ish proportion of ASICs who, if they must predictably go off-line due to fluctuation from renewables, then you cannot consider the network secure, because attackers could consolidate their ASCs to be online together. It's immediately clear solar miners would be off-line so much they cannot contribute to network security. It's less bad if you take diverse renewables but they still make the underlying insecurity worse. ASICs require much less materials than batteries, so you cannot power all ASICs by batteries while being green either. And humans want the base load elsewhere.
tl;dr Bitcoin cannot act like a polite energy consumer, except by making itself even more insecure as a distributed system. Aka miners who go offline often cheat the network by not providing he security for which they're paid.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:54 AM on September 22, 2023 [4 favorites]
Any distributed system needs an underlying security assumption expresses as maximum proportion of byzantine nodes, or colloquially as a minimum proportion of honest nodes, aka 23rds honest. Bitcoin famously claims fewer than 50% here, but this ignores liveness completely, ignores many attacks (BGP, selfish mining, etc), ignores how halvings destroy their security, etc.
ASICs act like stake in proof-of-work coins like Bitcoin, well also corrupt power contracts but that's another topic. Now proof-of-work is typically insecure, but proof-of-work could become secure exactly like proof-of-stake does, only if the ASIC-stake owners delegate their power to honest pool operators (only people who control the tx flow). In fact, bircoin is insecure due to pool operators being too centralized, but anyways.
There is thus some small-ish proportion of ASICs who, if they must predictably go off-line due to fluctuation from renewables, then you cannot consider the network secure, because attackers could consolidate their ASCs to be online together. It's immediately clear solar miners would be off-line so much they cannot contribute to network security. It's less bad if you take diverse renewables but they still make the underlying insecurity worse. ASICs require much less materials than batteries, so you cannot power all ASICs by batteries while being green either. And humans want the base load elsewhere.
tl;dr Bitcoin cannot act like a polite energy consumer, except by making itself even more insecure as a distributed system. Aka miners who go offline often cheat the network by not providing he security for which they're paid.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:54 AM on September 22, 2023 [4 favorites]
The comment above yours literally pointed out how this statement is false, with ERCOT paying what is in effect a ransom to Bitcoin miners to not mine so that they wouldn't stress the grid.
To be fair, the Texas grid is run by clowns. I also thought that was absurd but Bitcoin isn't responsible for commercial agreements between companies. However, this agreement did lead to the grid getting power it needed. Cherry picking an outlier doesn't negate my claims. You absolutely can stabilise a grid with a variable load. [shrug]
posted by neonamber at 5:17 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
To be fair, the Texas grid is run by clowns. I also thought that was absurd but Bitcoin isn't responsible for commercial agreements between companies. However, this agreement did lead to the grid getting power it needed. Cherry picking an outlier doesn't negate my claims. You absolutely can stabilise a grid with a variable load. [shrug]
posted by neonamber at 5:17 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Cherry picking an outlier doesn't negate my claims.
No, what negates your claims is a) a lack of evidence actually supporting them in the real world and b) evidence disproving your arguments being brought up repeatedly. Pointing out that ERCOT paid miners to not mine to protect the grid isn't "cherry picking", it's showing that the idea that mining as load balancing doesn't actually work in real life, and a No True Scotsman argument is thin gruel for a rebuttal.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:15 AM on September 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
No, what negates your claims is a) a lack of evidence actually supporting them in the real world and b) evidence disproving your arguments being brought up repeatedly. Pointing out that ERCOT paid miners to not mine to protect the grid isn't "cherry picking", it's showing that the idea that mining as load balancing doesn't actually work in real life, and a No True Scotsman argument is thin gruel for a rebuttal.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:15 AM on September 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
Mod note: Friendly note that going back and forth in a thread tends not to accomplish much, other than hijacking the thread. Consider moving on to a different subject, as arguing on the internet rarely changes anyone's mind.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:00 AM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:00 AM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
And in yet another argument against blockchain, we are now seeing malicious payloads being "hosted" via crypto blockchains.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:36 AM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:36 AM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
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posted by NoxAeternum at 1:10 AM on September 20, 2023 [64 favorites]