twovests

twovests OP wrote

Reply to comment by devtesla in Twin Peaks update (spoilers) by twovests

I can't believe I've never known this!! I just read up on it now.

Tangential, following the analogy of ALttP --> OoT, then LA --> MM. Because of the whole "Link enters a small town and things are real funky."

A person on the internet said the new Twin Peaks season has big MM vibes, and kindly avoided spoilers, so I'll get back to you later on that point...

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twovests wrote (edited )

Reply to Cryptocurrency is an abject disaster by cute_spider_ni_srsly

I agree with the "disclosure" thing. I have about $1000 in Ethereum (which used to be $100), but I think it'll get a lot higher, so I haven't sold it yet. I've also made several donations on ERC tokens, worth about $300 total (summing for the value they were at the times of payment.) I don't have a significant amount of any other cryptocurrencies (except possibly Dogecoin from that old Reddit tip bot, back when Dogecoin was a joke.)

But there's a lot of wrong things in this article, which is disappointing because I generally like this author. But I don't think the author is being intentionally misleading.

TLDR of the parts I disagree with

  1. Free CPU cycles have always been subject to abuse. I do agree the recent spike in magnitude of abuse is from miners. But the author states this is an entirely new thing, which is untrue.
  2. Software has always had a profit incentive. I don't know where the "integrity and trust" the author used to have in the software industry comes from.
  3. Proof-of-Stake isn't being blocked by those with money. They don't have any reason to. Those with money want Ethereum to move to Proof-of-Stake. The author doesn't explain the reasoning behind arguing that "they" don't want PoS to succeed.
  4. As an example: Ethereum is the prime example used by PoS fans, because it is strictly necessary for it to move to PoS. It's 100% going to move to PoS.
  5. Also, 'hard drives' are already used for many different proof-of-space cryptocurrencies. It's not "coming", it's already here. EDIT: I think the author is talking about a very new Proof-of-Space coin, Chia, which is causing HDD shortages.
  6. There are a lot of parts I agree with though, this is just a list of parts I disagree with.

Ahem, here's my full reply, part by part:

Cryptocurrency has invented an entirely new category of internet abuse.

The way this is written makes it sound like botnets have never existed and that free CI/CD (and similar services offering free CPU cycles) have never been abused. Like, the author is obviously aware of password databreaches and SHA256 hashes, but also asks "what kind of abuse would a CI platform endure?"

Like, the pieces are already in the blogpost. DDoS botnets, password cracking, etc. I can show you tutorials on how to install hashcat or jtr on Google Colab to crack passwords, but I don't know of any tutorials to use it to mine cryptocurrencies. I definitely agree that cryptocurrency mining has increased the magnitude of abuse and that absolutely sucks. But it doesn't weaken the author's point to acknowledge that these services have been subject to abuse since their inception.

The integrity and trust of the entire software industry has sharply declined due to cryptocurrency. It sets up perverse incentives for new projects, where developers are no longer trying to convince you to use their software because it’s good, but because they think that if they can convince you it will make them rich.

Like, this gives the impression that the author is deep in some silicon valley nightmare bubbles. Does the author believe nobody was writing code for money before 2009? Has the author really not seen any open-source projects that aren't related to cryptocurrencies since then? Like, the author goes on to say "Which one are investors more likely to invest in? Hint: it’s the one that’s more profitable," and, yeah, this isn't a new problem either. They then go on to mention the DAO, which implies the author is pretty knowledgeable in this area, and then mentions how "they" forked the blockchain, as if it's something special only a reserved "they" can do.

The conspiratorial "they" continues on later, with this line:

Not to mention that any attempts at reform, like proof-of-stake, are viciously blocked by those in power (i.e. those with the money) because of any risk it poses to reduce their bottom line. No, your blockchain is not different.

Which is kind of wildly untrue. This point is the most misinformed, it's completely false. Like, I'm literally betting $1000 that the author is wrong here!

Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency and it's migrating to proof-of-stake. I'd love to know any reason why it wouldn't. Those with the big money are also willing to bet that, since they are extremely incentivized to move to proof-of-stake.

For starters, Ethereum on PoS is an eco-friendly, deflationary, and all of Ethereum's cool parts get better under PoS. Investors want those improvements to happen. More and more regular non-tech people will be interested in investing once that whole "eco-friendly PoS thing that will never happen" actually happens. You also have to keep in mind that regular people use Venmo and PayPal like it was a bank, and also don't know what FDIC means. Investors are extremely aware of how much money Proof-of-Stake can make them. But this huge profit incentive doesn't even matter, because it is strictly necessary to move to Proof-of-Stake, or it will die.

For context, Ethereum is effectively designed so that it will kill itself if Proof-of-Stake is not used. This is because of the "Ice Age", which makes mining exponentially more difficult over time. Within a few years, it will be impossible to mine new blocks. But there are currently two forks, one with PoW and one with PoS. Almost every new cryptocurrency you hear about is implemented on top of Ethereum, and most of them are running on the PoW fork.

It's not all just speculation and investment either. There are people running actual, useful software services for money on Ethereum, so there are actual software companies who's function entirely depends on Ethereum existing. So, even if you think it's all stupid, Ethereum is definitely going to finish its migration to proof-of-stake.

As a note, Ethereum's migration to PoS isn't a panacea. For starters, anyone can hard-fork and remove the difficulty bomb and keep mining if they want, but they'll be leaving the dApps and the other coins behind. But more realistically, they'll just sell their GPUs or repurpose their mining rigs for some other purpose, probably mining another cryptocurrency. The energy consumption will just be shifted out of Ethereum's hands.

As a final note, the author says "Rumor has it that hard drives are up next." I think the author is being misleading here as well, because that implies it hasn't already happened yet. "Proof of storage" / "proof of capacity" cryptocurrencies have already existed for many years. EDIT: I believe the author is talking about the Chia coin, which is a proof-of-space coin, which is getting popular for some reason and is causing storage shortages already.

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twovests OP wrote

Reply to sexy trudeau apocalypse nightmare: horseshoe theory by twovests

i wrote this after i woke up from a dream where someone on this site made a "horseshoe theory" meme about how only centrists and people on the left / right want to fuck Justin Trudeau, but the meme was shaped like an 'omega' and just happened to match a demonic script which would cause the end of the world

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twovests OP wrote

Reply to comment by ellynu in cryptocurrencies are good actually by twovests

then its not really a cryptocurrency in any way brought about by bitcoin and all its successors, its just centralized servers with info on it.

to specify, by centralized i mean centralized disbursement

the majority of money is done via changing numbers on private ledgers anyways already, and this was true before bitcoin. banks and nations aren't mailing pallets of $100 to each other.

they are, when it's necessary. the difference is that every $1 a bank has matches $1 worth of a bill (or treasury note) somewhere.

if i sign a message saying that there are now 2000 jstpst Coins, and that i'll give you a jstpst Coin for $1, and you pay me that and then i sign that message to your public key... then we just made a new crypto currency 8) and everyone can see our account balances

this is different than if, say, you gave me $1 and i stored that in a special vault and i stored that information in an SQL database and i double-pinky-promised the government to keep it safe.

tangential: just as banks "build on top" of paper dollars with this system of accounting and balancing (so they don't need to mail paper bills to one another), something called the "lightning network" builds on top of bitcoin. it's meant to make payments fast, tiny, and cheap. it actually works, but not everyone uses it.

why not just have money in a bank account at that point, and then its regulated and insured by the FDC

yeah you can do that. nobody is forced to stake. staking is entirely optional.

this is taking for granted that everyone would see it and immediately take countermeasures. there is none built in, its just expected that people will see it and stop.

there are plenty of countermeasures built in, like slashing. that's automatic. human eyes and hands correcting for bad behavior is the worst-case scenario that none of the countermeasures work.

that sounds less like a currency to me and more like a speculative commodity, where people buy into it in the hopes of making money. that seems to be the primary use of any cryptocurrency.

yeah, it is right now, except in some places where it's commonly used as a currency. as noted, you can use a stablecoin if you want something that doesn't vary greatly in value.

ethereum is one good example because it allows you to do computation using the blockchain as a computer. this is because ethereum's scripting language is stronger than bitcoin's. this is basically how DAI and other ethereum tokens (specifically, "ERC20" tokens) exist.

in addition there is a tiny list of places where you can use it to exchange for goods. i could trade a magic card for my friend to buy me lunch, but that doesn't make it a currency.

it does if a lot of people are using magic cards as a standard. if there were a tiny but noteworthy list of places using magic cards as a standard for trade, then yeah, it'd be a currency.

tangential, but one of the big reasons to use cryptocurrencies is that you can kind of see how the money is spent. if i give UNICEF 0.1 ETH, i can see how they're spending their cryptocurrencies. if i give UNICEF $200, then i just have to trust them on their reputation.

and, as awful as this sounds, item-duplication glitches in MMOs would basically disappear if transactions existed on a blockchain. there's a lot of reasons that kind of datastructure makes sense in the design of an MMORPG. there is so much blockchain/cryptocoin snakeoil bullshit but this is like... one of the three legitimate usages of NFTs.

why not just use the USD instead of a stablecoin? and what is backing it? other coins, or USD?

one would buy DAI if they want a coin that has a stable value while also being able to be converted (for free) to other ethereum tokens.

i don't really know how all the technical details of how DAI works so i can't answer that for you any better than their whitepaper can: https://makerdao.com/en/whitepaper/

Apparently it's "collateral backed", so it seems USD.

Anyways, this conversation has really diverged from the original discussion. to circle back, i was responding to this criticism of proof-of-stake:

so whoever has the most for the longest is determining who gets more? what is even the point of cryptocurrency then? it all just seems like grifts upon grifts, reinventing the current state of things but even worse this time.

which (1) proof-of-stake is better than proof-of-work in terms of "trickle up", but that's just a problem with capitalism. math and software isn't gonna fix it. (2) it doesn't impact the value of cryptocurrency. (3) i feel like we've had substantial discussion to agree that cryptocurrency isn't a "grift".

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twovests OP wrote

Reply to comment by ellynu in cryptocurrencies are good actually by twovests

especially considering how slow they are at doing transactions and you would expect people to be creating and then destroying one like, once a day or so?

they're slow when design to be slow. e.g. bitcoin is designed to take 10 minutes on average, while litecoin takes bitcoins exact mechanisms but chooses 2.5 minutes. ethereum takes about 15 seconds.

either way, this is a problem with a decentralized / distributed design, but implementing labour tickets would probably be centralized. there'd be no mining, no network fees, just the government signing transactions to citizens.

the reason for choosing cryptographic currencies is that you have a choice between paper currencies (and so you enter an arms race of counterfeiting) or a digital currency (which you'd probably want to secure, using cryptography). (i know, it's technically not a currency

so everyone gets 1/6900 or 0.014492753% of what ever percent chance of a reward whenever more ethereum is made?

The block reward would be small, but each party would be making some amount of interest on their stake. So, each party might earn 5% of their stake (rather than 5/6900 %.)

why wouldn't rich people have, say, 51%+ of the value of ETH in rich stakeholders split their holdings into 32 ETH chunks, become a ton of validators, then only validate themselves getting anything?

so, this is a good question. i don't have a Mathematically Correct Answer here because i don't understand all the innards of Ethereum's PoS. (it's more complex than 'traditional' PoS.)

one thing to note is that if they're just taking 51% of block rewards, that's not breaking ethereum or anything, they're just making some money. it's still a flat 2% per block, but they'll make about 51% of those rewards.

but what if they're misbehaving? one thing to note is that the 51% means they break a threshhold of probability assumptions, but won't have total control over the cryptocurrency. and when other validators see their bad behavior, their stake gets "slashed", so their coins just disappear.

but what if it's not 51%, it's something like 90%? the common thing is that, in addition to a 51% attack being costly, everyone will see it and either (1) fork the currency, or (2) stop using it.

proof-of-stake is better than proof-of-work here because, when we fork the currency, they lose all their power to perform the attack. with proof-of-work, they still have their ASICs / GPUs.

why assume that a bunch of people with tons of money are gonna act rationally? i mean... have you seen markets?

the thing is that this is well-known. like, it's not just "rational" as in "acting perfectly", it's "rational" as in, everyone knows it would just be throwing away money. in fact, the only way i could see such an attack is if someone wanted to destroy ethereum, such as by hacking numerous exchanges and staking. but i imagine in such an extraordinary and absurd case, the exchanges and the community would just hard-fork to a previously known good state.

more techy stuff here: https://eth.wiki/concepts/proof-of-stake-faqs

except it is a problem with it because the value of it is a bubble, and it apparently doesn't even work as a currency? doesn't have to be unique to cryptocurrencies to be a huge problem with them.

i mean, we won't really know if it's a 'bubble' or not until it bursts. and even then it can still have value. e.g. DAI, built as an ethereum token, will retain a value pegged to $1 USD. also, who's saying it doesn't work as a currency? wherever you can buy things with cryptocurrencies, bam, it works as a currency

re: the problem, i mean that it's not a problem with ethereum or any other cryptocurrencies that rich people get richer by investmenting, it's a problem with capitalism. but if anyone knows of any software or math that encourages wealthy people to give away their wealth then please let me know because that'd be cool as hell

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