SwimSwimHungry

In addition, the dollar is guaranteed to be diluted, meanwhile for Bitcoin, there's no such certainty.

People having to HODL tell themselves whatever they need to to feel confident in their so-called investment. Frankly, people that bought towards the top in Bitcoin are still massively down and that lack of certainty isn't exactly a comfort.

Besides, although I tend to think of your comment painting USD in a poor light, the USD is actually working as designed; to be nominally inflationary to encourage spending and investment in productive aspects of society and business and not to encourage hoarding. The USD is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

Which certainly reinforces the notion that Bitcoin is not a good "hedge" that is often claimed by bitcoin maxis.

Digital gold my butt.

Sure. But one thing cryptocurrency is terrible at is requiring that you do your own op-sec. Maybe you're good at that sort of thing, but because of the inherent lack of controls to reverse transactions made by mistake or accidental fat-fingering other details, such as the address, it's pretty bad for the less tech-savvy.

Did you ever bother to check that "single link from a donation page" to make sure it's really the correct one?

I love being able to call a bank if my VISA card gets stolen and charged up to high heaven and get that all reversed.

Meanwhile, good luck with that NFT that mysteriously landed in your wallet that has bad coding in it to wreck your day. But yes, mass adoption imminent!

Agreed. I think this is simply cashing in on the cryptocurrency craze while it's still fashionable. Then again, Moxie Marlinspike was never the most transparent fellow I've seen.

At this rate, I'm probably going to go with a Matrix + element style chat system with my family and friends. I'm getting fed up with the outright grift.

Does everything have to be an exploitative grift though?

With reddit also announcing cryprocurrency based karma, I'm starting to think that this is all an effort to cash out on whatever goodwill they may have.

Frankly I wish this stuff would calm down already, but it may have to run its course and people will have to get hurt or die when the next black swan event occurs.

Dude this made my day. Thanks! xD

I'd argue the WWW was instantly useful, even during its halcyon days.

IPFS on the other hand is a horrible "jack of all trades" that has mediocre performance even in the best of times, and it hasn't really gotten any better since it first launched 6 years ago.

And that's not even bringing up the cryptocurrency cohort souring the project with its stench.

I don't object to the existence of IPFS, rather I prefer more efficient and focused projects instead. Someone in the comment threads mentioned Solid, which sounds like a decent decentralized information protocol or system of sorts.

And for those that want censorship resistance... who can forget Freenet? That project has been around since 2000 and seems to do a pretty bang up job, even if the performance is not much better.

@dang runs a great site here.

I will admit, I haven't always been the most level headed commenter all the time, but I've been trying to improve where I can, and I think what he says resonates with me.

I try to pretend I'm in an actual room with actual people IRL when I write. Being mindful of my tone and never name calling is always a great start.

What do you mean? Of course it is. How else has ransomware been able to thrive as of late?

The sooner governments abolish fiat to cryptocurrency exchanges and make such transactions illegal, the sooner this clown car of sadness will come to an end.

As much as I'm not a fan of China and the CCP, they are making some good moves in this department recently to eliminate unneeded capital flight. The US should follow in their steps here.

Nice subtle humble brag.

Who cares what Satoshi said back then. What Bitcoin has become now is a complete sham with early adopters stoking the flames of FOMO to get rich quick at the expense of everyone else.

I wish cryptocurrency fans would stop smelling their own farts for once and realize they aren't the absolute geniuses in finance that they claim to be. It's arrogant.

At least with Bitcoin, the ledger is open for all to see. The privacy angle is specious at best.

Are we going to forget the exorbitant network and miner fees of Bitcoin as well?

Apparently? There is no real proof this has brought mostly normal people in Nigeria out of poverty, at least at large enough numbers to be believed. This is just some yarn spun up by proponents of cryptocurrency to rally more to their cause.

I'd be shocked if most people in Nigeria even have a personal computer and reliable internet. That's how impoverished most of them are.

Honestly, I vastly prefer OpenPOWER over ARM from a consistency in implementation perspective. Not to mention, at least with POWER9, no mandatory binary blobs or opaque management engine chips that can't be properly audited.

I might be interested. Definitely consider posting some of this on eBay and I'd be happy to give it a look. :)

Fun fact: Ari Weinstein, the fellow mentioned in the article, is the guy behind the Shortcuts app baked into iOS (formerly known as Workflow - which I believe acquired Y Combinator funding). He's a world class prodigy, so seeing him tinker with Amigas before most of us even started Kindergarden is something to behold.

I'm still not sure I agree that Satoshi did nothing wrong, per se. But I really appreciate what you're saying, as this does afford some separation of the art (Bitcoin and Co.) from the artist (Satoshi).

Satoshi (whether it be he, she, or they) went into creating Bitcoin intended as a peer to peer cash that was easy to spend and outside of government control. Unfortunately, at least in the case of Bitcoin, it has turned into this slow, unwieldy "commodity" that is now rebranded as digital gold.

Thanks for your perspective, atweiden.

They just want someone down the line to buy in to keep the grift going, honestly.

Fair enough. My suspicions could be bunk and this GS employee really just made a leap of faith Hail Mary pass and won this way.

I wish you well and all the best, nly. I hope we get out of this relatively unscathed.

Perhaps... but cryptocurrency makes this far more blatant and obvious. It really is sold as some kind of pipe-dream and a miracle financial instrument.

Yet tell that to those who lost their shirts on Mt. Gox, Binance, any of the black swan events within the past few years, etc.

It's really a technology-packed MLM.

>I look at ransomware as a positive, finally a forcing function for companies to take security seriously. Energy, it's pushing us towards greener energy sources and there are less energy intensive alternatives being developed.

I keep hearing this "green energy" being pushed harder by proponents of cryptocurrency and I find this rather disingenuous. We are already pushing towards this goal, crypto or not, but unlike a world blissfully free of this long con, green energy will not be appropriately allocated to areas of greater need, like infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals, etc.

Plus, a true capitalist that wants the maximum value will go for the cheapest and easiest source of electricity. Coal fired and gas via fracking will still be easier to pursue for increased bang for buck. I think you assume the cryptocurrency community has the best interests of everyone else and the planet at heart.

Let's not forget that cryptocurrency miners and stakeholders are not shy from leeching off other countries that may offer subsidized electricity, sometimes even causing blackouts for those that need the electricity the most. Seems very parasitic.

Just my two cents.

I wager once people have to start going back to work and all the free government money dries up, there will be a run on crypto to realize their gains en-masse, and this will trigger a massive wipe out for many latecomers.

Frankly, cryptocurrency being invented and created was a huge mistake for society at large. I hope the comeuppance isn't super destructive outside of cryptocurrency circles.

I do liken cryptocurrency as a sort of voluntary "redistribution of the wealth" but from the peanut gallery to early adopters and the already objectively "rich".

This really feels like a kind of "screw you, I've gotten mine" form of capitalism.

Over 10 years in and it's still "early days" for crypto? When do you think this entire thing is considered mature?

I'm very much a crypto skeptic, mostly because I see a lot more harm than good that comes out of the space (ransomware enablement, horrendous waste of energy on PoW coins, egoists that make up the majority of the community, etc)

I do feel jaded by all of this, but I can only hope that people who lose their shirts on all of this actually learn not to try this mess ever again. Greed really can be our biggest downfall.

Honestly, it seems to me like this may be a case of having some insider knowledge or knowing ahead of time that the coordinated pump and dump was going to occur. Any rational person would have looked at DOGE over the past however many years and seen it for the true joke it was. It barely made any meaningful movement on pricing until very recently.

I can understand if someone may have mined it for fun and forgot about it, or some Robinhood user messed about with DOGE, but this feels a bit more unusual to me. Perhaps working at Goldman Sachs afforded him some additional advantage on insight?

I'm not sure I could sleep easy at night knowing I fleeced the rubes, but then again, I'm not this gentleman.

As someone who has owned an HHKB at one point, then switched over to a full-size Topre Realforce board, I have to say you should consider giving Topre-based switches another chance, but on a proper Realforce board instead. Unlike the HHKB, Realforce keyboards use a metal plate internally, which seems to make for a more satisfying "thock" if you will. Plus, you can also acquire a Realforce board with varied key weights instead of the uniform 45g weight found on the HHKB.

That's not what I'm arguing here. If you mean to say you like to take the chance on having your number over a short time go up OR down, and you like to consider gambling, then yes, I'd say Bitcoin is more aligned for that purpose. Also... I did say the word "volatile"... both positive or negative wild volatility are not something you want in an instrument meant to protect your savings. You want slow and steady gains and, most importantly, consistency, so my critique is still valid here.

As the old saying goes "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." Bitcoin could get legislated into oblivion causing a massive decrease in the value of your holdings (especially if world governments take climate change seriously, they may see Bitcoin mining as a major threat), a quantum computer could literally "break" into wallets and steal, Satoshi's wallet could suddenly move and expect billions of USD to be extracted out at once.

Too many variables here to suggest that your savings are secure. You're a braver man (or woman) than I would be.