Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Discussion Thread

[daniel]

I will say holding is easier than pushing the sell button for me, but I have to start getting better at it because most of my money is in crypto right now.

Eggs. Baskets. You might get very rich. Or you might get wiped out. There's risk in every investment. That's why smart money diversifies. High returns are always coupled with high risk.

It's hard because I know a lot of the projects I'm in are good long term holds and I know they'll go up,

A lot of people can't grasp the distinction between knowledge and belief. Nobody can know what any investment will do because nobody can know the future. Your conviction that your investments are good is a belief, not knowledge.

And as noted above, the high energy cost of crypto is disastrous to the environment and to people who must pay more for their needed energy because of the demand from crypto miners. Crypto is a Ponzi scheme that benefits nobody but the early investors, who have become fabulously wealthy, and black marketeers who use it to trade in illicit goods, from drugs to slaves.

 

[daniel]

Its one take, hard to tell if its only due to bitcoin mining...

Bitcoin mining is clearly a big factor. There are always multiple factors. Nobody says that it's the "only" factor. But you cannot dispute that bitcoin mining has made it worse. Much worse.

 

[aubreymcfato]

Bitcoin requires heavy energy use to mine as part of it's security protocol -- if it was easy to mine it wouldn't have the value that it has.

Anyways we are moving into the finale of the four year cycle, expect $250k BTC by EOY or Jan/22 -- followed by an insane alt season, prepare your cashout strategies now.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[aubreymcfato]

You can also put crypto in auto-compounding farms for extra leverage on that yield, but yah basically staking is the safest thing.

I'm not a believer in the "own your keys" crowd. I respect them and love that in crypto you genuinely get to hold your physical bars of gold that way, but it's not super realistic for mainstream context. And with crypto, you have much better transparency over the entire ecosystem (vs. putting it in your local credit union).

I personally do different things with my Luna.

1. I stake a decent amount of it for the 5%+ interest rate
2. I use some of it as collateral to take out loans to buy more crypto (like a true degenerate)
3. I do strategy #2, but put it into an auto-compounding protocol for leverage (and will automatically de-leverage to protect me from liquidation. Which IMO weirdly makes strategy #3 safer than #2)
4. I buy bluechip NFTs, because I treat NFTs as leverage on a crypto ecosystem. For example, I buy an NFT for 100 Luna and sell in a year for 200 Luna. I still capture the value of the price appreciation in Luna, and with the increased # of people in the ecosystem the raw # of Luna required to buy the NFT increases (because you don't have fractionalized NFTs like crypto tokens, meaning there genuinely is only 10,000 pieces of a bluechip NFT).

I don't do liquidity mining. Just not my style. Both in having to deal with impermanent loss and with recognizing those insane APY% drastically correct over a period of weeks (if not days) and that farm tokens long-run are all basically worthless. Respect those who do it though, it's super necessary in cryptoland for liquidity within various exchanges.

Where do you stake Luna? (I already have a Celsius app, Binance, Coinbase but I don't use it anymore).
Also, why do you think it's a good coin? Not an expert by any means, I mostly like Cardano and Algorand, plus a few other coins for fun.

 

[amolina]

Where do you stake Luna? (I already have a Celsius app, Binance, Coinbase but I don't use it anymore).
Also, why do you think it's a good coin? Not an expert by any means, I mostly like Cardano and Algorand, plus a few other coins for fun.

One of the best places to stake Luna is with Anchor protocol. They got something like 10B worth locked in. Check out the details here

Anchor Protocol: overview and step-by-step guide

Today we are going to talk about Anchor Protocol (www.anchorprotocol.com), a new protocol born in Terra that offers stable and attractive…

medium.datadriveninvestor.com

You can also check out some help with Youtube

 

[heltok]

Business insider are citing a known scammer regarding mining with a Tesla:

A Tesla owner says he makes up to $800 a month mining cryptocurrency with his car. He says it's worth it, even though it could void his warranty.

Siraj Raval told CNBC his Tesla Model 3 mined bitcoin and ether for about 20 hours a day. "It's so simple to hack into this computer car," he said.

www.businessinsider.com

See:

 

[betstarship]

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Global_Risks_Report_2022.pdf (page 47)

 

[JRP3]

Business insider are citing a known scammer regarding mining with a Tesla:

Total scam, he's using the battery pack to power mining rigs which is just a stupidly inefficient use of grid electricity.

 

[CorneliusXX]

What's happening to the value of NFT's with the crypto crash. Anyone have any links to a valuation site?

 

[Knightshade]

What's happening to the value of NFT's with the crypto crash

They're still 100% worthless non-assets, just like before.


I liked this piece especially (so did Elon) where the guy explains buying an NFT is essentially just buying a pointer to something at a URL anybody who controls the URL can change the contents of at any time:

My first impressions of web3

Despite considering myself a cryptographer, I have not found myself particularly drawn to “crypto.” I don’t think I’ve ever actually said the words “get off my lawn,” but I’m much more likely to click on Pepperidge Farm Remembers flavored memes about how “crypto” used to mean “cryptography” than ...

moxie.org

Instead of storing the data on-chain, NFTs instead contain a URL that points to the data. What surprised me about the standards was that there’s no hash commitment for the data located at the URL. Looking at many of the NFTs on popular marketplaces being sold for tens, hundreds, or millions of dollars, that URL often just points to some VPS running Apache somewhere. Anyone with access to that machine, anyone who buys that domain name in the future, or anyone who compromises that machine can change the image, title, description, etc for the NFT to whatever they’d like at any time (regardless of whether or not they “own” the token). There’s nothing in the NFT spec that tells you what the image “should” be, or even allows you to confirm whether something is the “correct” image.

 

[JRP3]

A guy was able to access a crypto wallet by accessing the chip directly.

 

[heltok]

Really good podcast about inflation etc:

 

[heltok]

I’ve been waiting since 2012 for someone to run the experiment with a deflationary currency. Finally it seems to be happening:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1522085672483438592

Bumping the image to the full one:

 

[JRP3]

Greenidge is a power plant originally re-permitted to burn fracked gas and produce power for the grid in times of high demand, like during the summer when many New Yorkers are running our air conditioners. But only operating sometimes isn’t the most profitable, especially for a power plant that is now owned by a private equity firm. So Greenidge changed its business plan — after receiving an air emissions permit — and now emits greenhouse gases 24/7/365 to power its nearly 20,000 energy-intensive Bitcoin mining machines, with even more machines being installed.

Many have suggested using renewable energy as a solution to this problem, but it’s not. The Coinmint plant in Massena, New York, is powered by enough green, baseload hydroelectricity sourced from the public grid to power 14,000 homes. Instead of this green power being used to reduce New York’s dependence on fossil fuels, we’re squandering it on fake money.

NY should follow the science on climate and ban crypto mining (Guest Opinion by Anthony Ingraffea)

Seneca Lake Bitcoin operation undermines commitment to cutting greenhouse gases. Gov. Hochul should end it, writes Cornell professor.

www.syracuse.com

 

[SomeJoe7777]

NY should follow the science on climate and ban crypto mining (Guest Opinion by Anthony Ingraffea)

Seneca Lake Bitcoin operation undermines commitment to cutting greenhouse gases. Gov. Hochul should end it, writes Cornell professor.

www.syracuse.com

It must be noted in any discussion of the power consumption of crypto mining that:

1. The crypto community is well aware of the problems this causes.
2. The structure of many of the crypto blockchains relies on a concept called "proof-of-work". This is the operation that requires massive amounts of energy.
3. There is different concept that a blockchain can use called "proof-of-stake", which does NOT require high amounts of energy.
4. Older blockchains, like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and the current incarnation of Ethereum use proof-of-work (POW). But Ethereum is in the process of a years-planned upgrade that will transition the entire Ethereum blockchain to proof-of-stake (POS) which will get rid of the high energy requirement.
5. Newer blockchains like Polka Dot are already POS and do not consume high amounts of energy.

Most of the blockchains out there that are POW-based could theoretically be converted to POS. Economics will be the driving force for that. If you're a miner, and you could mine coin A but have to pay a large amount for electricity, or mine coin B where you don't, which do you choose?

Every system evolves and solves it problems when there is a free market. Only when outside forces like heavy regulation, political grandstanding, or personal vendettas come into play do you no longer have an efficient system.

 

[JRP3]

Every system evolves and solves it problems when there is a free market. Only when outside forces like heavy regulation, political grandstanding, or personal vendettas come into play do you no longer have an efficient system.

In this case the opposite is true, the inefficient system is unregulated and allowed to waste energy. Only outside forces and regulation can put a quick stop to this pointless waste.

 

[zigmeister]

Bitcoin mining is clearly a big factor. There are always multiple factors. Nobody says that it's the "only" factor. But you cannot dispute that bitcoin mining has made it worse. Much worse.

Mining is where the money is, not investing unless you get lucky with timing. Mining and performing transactions, just like CC companies like V and MC where they take a few percent of every transaction is how they will make money and do. Have you ever tried to just cash out bitcoin for USD? It’s like a crazy 15% fer or more by them. As bad as Ticketmaster.

 

[daniel]

Crypto has no use that generally benefits society. It's great for the inventors and early investors of a crypto that happens to get popular and take off. These people can get rich, but they are not creating anything. It's the best thing since sliced bread for black marketeers, who need an easy and relatively untraceable way to transfer money. From drugs to human trafficking, crypto is the currency of choice. It has transformed ransomware from a niche criminal activity into a true big business for organized crime. And it's an opportunity for speculators to gamble and get rich or get wiped out, depending on their luck or skill timing the market. And the costs to society are immense, from the wasted fossil fuels and resulting carbonization of the atmosphere, to the crime that crypto facilitates.

For normal financial transactions it is terrible: You cannot dispute a fraudulent transaction, and the value is horribly unstable. Every purchase or sale becomes a speculation: Will a coin be worth double when I spend it compared to when I got it, or will it be worth half? The only near certainty is that it will not be worth the same unless I spend it the instant I receive it.

It's a scam from start to finish. It probably cannot be stopped, because of the nature of the internet, but the people running the scam are accessories to the crime which is its only real use.

 

[bkp_duke]

Crypto has no use that generally benefits society. [snip]

Had this conversation with a real-estate broker (not agent) just last week.

Crypto/blockchain in general would be FANTASTIC for long-term tracking of real-estate transactions. He and I both agreed it would pretty much overnight put the (worthless) title insurance business sector out of business, and do a far superior job for tracking title ownership in a manner that would be nearly impossible to forge.

 

[daniel]

Had this conversation with a real-estate broker (not agent) just last week.

Crypto/blockchain in general would be FANTASTIC for long-term tracking of real-estate transactions. He and I both agreed it would pretty much overnight put the (worthless) title insurance business sector out of business, and do a far superior job for tracking title ownership in a manner that would be nearly impossible to forge.

That would be a legitimate use of blockchain (if it works, which I'll take your word for.) Has no bearing on the Ponzi scheme which is cryptocurrency.