I was one of the lucky ones who bought bitcoin so I could buy acid on the internet. Years later I put a down payment on a house with the change that I forgot about. DARE was wrong.
I mined a few back in the day. I think I got a couple pizzas and a new router out of it. Could’ve bought a decent house at the peak value. Oh well.
We have a few 100k and it’s just gaining. Mined it several years ago. Definitely not something for people who don’t understand it but Definitely worth it if you did.
What crypto is gaining?
All of them are, as long as you’re measuring them in Argentine Pesos.
Alternative joke: Bitcoin is gaining right now… No wait, it’s dropping, gaining, dropping…
Doge to the moon obviously
1 doge = 1 doge
Stability achieved!
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It’s the American Dream
Sometimes i feel like im the only one living it, i see it as Karmic justice because i tip really well and try to be nice to animals.
I played around with it for a bit in 08/09. Got a few coins, but didn’t keep going with it and lost the wallet at some point.
2008? are you Satoshi?
yeah that’s an easy lie to call out. Genesis block was 2009. So 2008 is already a no go. And very few people would have even known about it… let alone get their hands on the original software let alone mine something.
or you know he just doesn’t remember the exact year because it was fucking 15 years ago.
Don’t attribute to malice what is adequately explained by spotty memory
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Hey, the 80s were 20 years ago.
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If you were in that early, you’d know.
what if he meant 2009/2010? that’s literally 1 year off.
And if you were in a couple years later, ya might not know
All those GWh wasted on “mining” only got us closer to the edge.
Which is why a lot of cryptocurrencies adopted proof of stake in favor of proof of work.
which is literally a rich get richer scheme on steroids…
It’s trickle up economics
Vacuum cleaner economics
Just like the cycle of water ! if it never rained
Too little too late.
They were using more power than the entirety of Switzerland, just so a handful of people could get rich.
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Not like the millions or billions of man hours wasted to make 50-ish removed into defacto-gods.
Don’t forget its not just man-hours, but man-lives too
Potentially our future as well considering the carbon and ecological footprint of crypto, both in terms of energy spent mining, and production of single-purpose hardware that can’t really do anything else, rival some medium sized developed countries.
The GPU mining got me a free GPU and several hundred dollars, for the cost of about 10 cents per KWh. I’d take that “scam” any day of the week, and so I mined until it was over for GPU mining. No regerts.
And that money came from someone. You can’t win in crypto unless someone else loses. Typically it’s vulnerable people wishing for a get rich quick hack who lose.
You probably don’t really know how much of it works. I was paid by a mining pool, for completing blockchain work segments. The mining pool being a for-profit enterprise that pays GPU workers to mine coins that they keep or sell for profit. If you want to extrapolate that to the extent that you imagine I’m harvesting someone else’s wealth, then you’re going to have to warm up for an intense workout of mental gymnastics.
No, you were given a piece of a worthless token by the mining pool. If you ever want to get anything with that worthless token somebody else has to lose money. That somebody makes the bet that another somebody will be an idiot and lose more money so he can get his back.
I bought gold with the crypto haha. Mined me up some gold with a computer.
I’m hoping the gold appreciates in value over time, but I also just wanted to see if I could directly get gold with the crypto and I could.
Electricity better spent than what is dimming our night skies with light pollution, IMO, but also proof of stake fixed that.
noo you don’t understand it’s going to the moon noooo hodl hodl hodl nooooooooo plz buy my crypto thank you :(
I have invested a total of $2000 in crypto.
I took out $2000 when I had like $12000.
I have no idea how much what is left is now. Probably $500-$700. Definitely less than a months rent.
Imma let it ride. I have rss feeds that’ll let me know if any of the coins I own spike for some reason. Otherwise, whatever.
This is the way to do it. What I’ve got is all profit too, whether that means a million dollars or just one.
I have rss feeds that’ll let me know if any of the coins I own spike for some reason.
Ooh, that sounds handy! Mind if I ask where those feeds are coming from?
Same. I had the money to spare and the means to mine so why not? We made more doing that than I have in working for the last few years and even if it were gone tomorrow it wouldn’t affect our livelihood. It’s just so nice thing to have when we are old.
I sleep well at night knowing nobody will steal my thing I don’t care about because I don’t own any. I just wanted you all to know that.
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You make more money as the cult leader but you have more fun as a follower
It also helps morons and crooks self-identify.
I have a friend who bought some eth in like 2015 (or whenever) just to see if he could make money on it. Same guy told me he once bought coke on the darkweb. As far as I know, he only did each of these once to see if they were true.
I would not associate with anyone who is an active participant in crypto. Much less anyone who owns and hypes NFTs. That’s like telling me you like cops / are pro-life / believe Jesus needs to save me. All of these are signs that we are not compatible.
The idea was great, but it was ruined by greed.
It’s always been a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
How did you buy drugs online before crypto? I think it’s made it much easier. Also for international transactions of large sums I used to pay fees for services and crypto allows for an easy universal standard with no middle men. Micropayments never caught on, but it would be a nice solution for that as well. This argument that we already have money, we don’t need different money never flew with me. Crypto has its place, it was just abused as an investment commodity way too early and this massive inflation completely suffocated any practical application.
So the use cases are:
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Buying illegal shit
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Scummy crypto exchange as middle men
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Small payments that never got used
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Trying to become rich by sitting on money
The argument is more that we already have better solutions than the one crypto tries to fill. Instead of finding a solution for a problem, crypto tries to find a problem to solve.
Blockchain may have some use case somewhere, but it is definitely not in money.
Buying illegal shit is important. I never would have accomplished the truama recovery I have in the care access desert we lived in without being able to buy psychedelics online. I’m thriving personally because of a few high quality darkweb dealers. I’m great at my job in part because they sent me accurately labeled and carefully grown cannabis when it was illegal, so I was gaining strain knowledge and experience when most of my coworkers were getting the best generic weed they could find in town. If the fascists succeed in making trans care illegal, I’ll use it buy my hormones. It pains me to see the intense turn against crypto, because, used for actual commerce rather than as an investment, it kinda saved me. We never used bitcoin unless we couldn’t help it. I’ve always been angry that using the least energy efficient coin as an investment became the norm. The value of crypto, in my opinion, lies entirely in its prompt and regular use as currency. Hodlers ruined things for everyone.
Yeah crypto critics often gloss over the fact that the war on drugs is an example of repressive government policy and that darknet markets where a lifeline for folks using drugs. As an example, psychedelic have genuine therapeutic uses and on the street level, many “research chemicals” with horrible safety profiles are sold as things like LSD or MDMA.
With a darknet market you get access to a community that can help vet sellers through forums, comments and rating that help keep users safe.
Moreover what this shows is crypto can help organizations or people under repressive governments. Another example was a group in Nigeria who was protesting against the police group SARS. The Nigerian government froze their bank accounts but the group was still able to fundraise using BTC.
Scummy crypto exchange as middle men
And you think the companies charging exorbitant fees to remit money aren’t scummy? Crypto has its myriad issues, but remittance is one rock-solid example of it disrupting an egregiously predatory industry in a very positive way.
You are just putting a negative spin on things that are not necessarily negative. The last one is not at all specific to crypto.
Let’s not forget that monitary structures are currently backed by governments, crypto offers a way out of the risks associated with that structure as well. Of course if crypto ever takes off it will end up controlled by corporations which is not inherently better, but at least it offers a choice / way out from governmental whims.
A lot of technological changes start as things trying to find problems to solve - that’s often how discovery works.
I don’t share your confidence. Clearly crypto isn’t going to sprout in popularity any time soon, but there aren’t nails in this coffin.
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It’s funny cause crypto can totally be traced, like the whole idea is everyone has a copy of a history of the transactions, although wallets can be effectively anonymous with certain caveats. The idea of providing my address for a shipment was the part that always put me off with darknet. Although knowing how the laws work with how police obtain warrants etc, I didn’t see a huge risk on that front. Also the things I wanted to obtain weren’t necessarily illegal, mostly Shulgin’s compounds, spores, certain species of wood bark, and we already had a huge medical grey market cannabis market. Plain old etransfers were always preferred because under $10k its not a red flag and nothing “illegal” is happening anyway in the supply chain.
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[greed!] The cause of and solution to all of our problems
- homer Simpson
I welcome you to my comment thread where people downvote me for being a living example of where cryptocurrency solves a problem better than anything else.
the idea was great
I have questioned this ever since I learned that the more adoption there is, the less efficient mining becomes, ergo more power is wasted accomplishing the exact same task for no extra benefit. Difficulty creates a back asswards system that makes adoption a con.
Mining is only one strategy for concenous, but yes it is a pretty rudementary and inefficient version.
And even in mining there are different protocols, Bitcoin is just intentionally inefficient 🤷
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Man, try to make maximalists understand that 🤣
My Excel spreadsheet remains efficiency champion!
Pretty sure there are more efficient databases than Excel for the kind of information stored on blockchains 🤪
Sure, but when even Excel is a more efficient database, that should say something about crypto.
My bad joke was that a real world cost is the point.
Well it’s been over a decade and Bitcoin is still PoW, as well as nearly 50% of the entire crypto market.
Ok… that doesn’t make what they said any less true?
My point is how great can it be if over a decade later the terrible system for mining is still dominant? The more people participating, the worse it gets. We just had texas power companies paying crypto bros to stop mining it’s gotten so bad - and we aren’t even at .01% adoption yet.
You’re chiming in in a way that ignores nuance and implied meaning. I feel like my intention has been pretty clear but if I need to spell it out so be it.
That’s more a question of being first on the scene and the financial impact if Bitcoin maximalists finally accepted that their blockchain is crap compared to other options, that’s what keeps Bitcoin at the top, not how good or bad it is compared to the tech’s potential…
And no your intention wasn’t very clear otherwise I wouldn’t have had to reply how I did previously.
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Bitcoin is more religion and cult than anything. Of course they think it’s great or at least able to hand wave criticisms.
And yeah, consensus is a hard problem to solve for. Many have taken the route of least resistance and implemented what is known to work.
Ethereum doesn’t use mining at all anymore. It can get expensive to use though, which layer 2 chains help with
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It allows you to send money overseas very cheap. If you moved to a different country, cryptocurrency saves you a lot of headaches with exchange rates and bank fees.
It also allows you to lock down money into a program and distribute it systematically without anyone being able to touch it. Think mass donations being automatically distributed to a select number of organizations, but instead of trusting that the fundraiser doesn’t pocket any money for themselves, you make it impossible for them to do so.
It also doesn’t run as a company so it needs no offices, no employees or bosses, so theoretically it is more cost effective than traditional banking. In a way it is like the fediverse where instead of relying on one big bank service, many people host their own ones, and just like the fediverse, you have some hosts that you can trust and some that you can’t, and while it is more expensive to keep track of multiple instances, that simply is the cost of decentralization.
You’re not really supposed to earn money with crypto (unless you host a node), just spend it or use as your own private bank.
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This sounds like everything ever.
Having a huge penis got worse the greedier I was
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And here I am sitting at the bank trying to resolve a credit card transaction being rejected to pay for my student loan, something that wouldn’t be an issue if they accepted cryptocurrency. But sure, whatever makes you feel better about yourself.
Update: there was nothing they could do, and I am forced to make an overseas bank transfer with a 50$ + 1/20% fee every month from now on. My bank fucked me hard by arbitrarily blocking these credit card transfers.
Credit cards allow chargebacks. Huge advantage for the consumer to get back their money from theft or scams. With crypto, once its gone, its gone (like cash or other physical possessions).
They allow chargeback because it is so easy to steal credit card information and illegally use your card. Which is why they also sometimes block legitimate transactions and put me in the position I am in right now.
I’ve never had any issues like this in crypto, neither have I ever been scammed or had funds stolen off of my crypto wallet.
I’ve never been unable to make a payment using my credit card therefore your anecdote is invalid.
Meanwhile I’ve made chargebacks on my credit card after being ghosted by the seller and never receiving anything. Nothing to do with having my info stolen. You’re shit out of luck if that happens with crypto.
you when you learn trusted escrows exist: 😮😮😮
You can get chargeback by your exchange if you use a crypto exchange with a crypto-linked credit card. Paying by a normal transaction is like paying by bank transfer, and just like bank transfers, once you have sent over the money, you’re not getting it back.
“Just regulate this currency that is supposed to be deregulated”
Or just use normal money and get all the security features without jumping through hoops and trusting scummy crypto exchanges that have been scamming users left, right and centre.
“Supposed to be deregulated” said no one.
Did you read my comment? I literally cannot use normal payment services to pay for my student loans unless I pay around 7,000$ extra in total.
First off, you’re a liar. Not a single person on earth has never had their transaction rejected.
Second of all, people make a choice when they use crypto. More control and cheaper transactions for less safety measures. That is all.
The safety measures cause me more issues than any risk of getting scammed because I have my own safety measures, and it is not like crypto doesn’t have any safety measures at all, just not the overprotective ones that cause me grief.
First off, you’re a liar. Not a single person on earth has never had their transaction rejected.
I think this situation is a lot less common than you think.
More to the point, use a debit card if that is your gripe. Then you can just deal with an empty account rather than a declined card.
Just like you’ve never had crypto stolen, I’ve never had a debit card stolen, so by our combined anecdotes both are equally secure.
Both my debit card and credit card are linked to my bank, and the transaction was denied by the bank when I tried to make a payment. I tried the debit card first.
This is the 5th time this has happened to me, but the first time that something as crucial as student debt payment was affected. And this isn’t about me running out of money. This is the bank arbitrarily blocking payments that I’ve been doing monthly for years, then telling me it is not their fault despite the error code clearly saying "rejected by bank ".
They’re simply blocking my payment because it is to a foreign entity, and are making up bullshit excuses.
Ethereum doesn’t do that. Monero doesn’t do that. Even rugpulls like shiba inu doesn’t do that.
True, but it can be mitigated by simply calling your bank, telling them the transaction isn’t fraudulent, and then it’ll allow every transaction to that vendor going forward.
You’re a bad liar.
That is absolutely not what happened. I don’t know what else to tell you.
Sounds to me like you’re living in a third world shithole with a terrible banking system. Maybe in your case crypto makes sense as an alternative, but that’s not how it is in the rest of the world.
Japan - the third world shithole.
crypto might have a few benefits
Sorry, you must be new to Lemmy. Here, talking about cryptocurrencies in any positive light is considered bad taste, and you absolutely deserve any flak you may receive for this transgression.
/s
the text is sarcastic but the circlejerk is real
edit: I agree cryptocurrency is not good but people here act like it’s going to personally shoot your dog
That is most of the internet though, and for good reason.
Except for maybe the crypto bro bubbles and the crypto exchanges where they invent new scams.
why should we talk positively about a ponzi scheme?
are you also going to defend MLMs?
They could also accept paypal
Paypal is horrible.
I’m not paying 1-4% extra out of my entire student loan and giving that to Elon Musk. And I guess the student loan organization agrees with me because they don’t accept PayPal.
If they accepted Nano (cryptocurrency) it would cost 0, Nada.
The fact that every crypto fanboy has their own favorite “currency” only adds to the joke. I guess crypto is so decentralized it cant even work.
Nano has no fees for simple transactions which is why it is the best in my specific scenario. That doesn’t make it my overall favorite, neither does it make me a fanboy. It just makes it the best payment method for me. Not your daddy musk service.
See if they will accept barter, and you can pay them in potatoes, or turnips, or carrots. If you buy them in a state that doesn’t tax groceries you’ll only have to pay for cost of transport to wherever the student loan place accepts vegetables!
Thanks for the tip, skinny penis, but the student loan place is in another country, and only cryptocurrency or visa/MasterCard lets me send anything abroad with next to no fees. Since visa didn’t work, it looks like I will have to send crypto to a family member and have them make a credit card payment for me locally.
Just tell them they have to accept whatever weird thing you consider currency!
So instead you pay 1-4% in order to exchange your money to nano, and give that money to scummy crypto exchanges. Well done.
First of all, it is a flat fee, second of all it is less than a dollar.
I genuinely tried to look for a legit way to make it an option for paying in a small online store without having to depend on paypal or a bank gateway.
Well transaction fees for any big coin are like many dollars per transaction. It’s ridiculous. For smaller transaction fees you have to go to smaller coins that can disappear or lose half their value one day to the next.
And still, if we forget thar people wouls need to pay like a 14€ fee for 1€ transaction. They still have to go to a exange to change their money, and then I have to change it back, because very little things can be bought with crypto, less with cryptos that doesn’t have ridiculous transaction fees.
Did I mention than transaction are not instantaneous either? Unless you pay big transaction fee or use some obscure coin that no one uses.
At the end, I ended up with paypal. I really wanted a way to be “independent” of big companies for transaction. But crypto is completely ruined (if it was ever functional that I doubt it). It’s not a coin, they are just speculation and bets. With cybercrime and drug dealing being the only “real” uses it has.
Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum resolve the issue of high transaction fees and still be able to transact in ETH. I get there is hurdles compared with the simplicity of PayPal, but at least some of us prefer decentralized payment options where possible.
Bitcoin Lightning Network would have solved your fee and speed problem. You can use BTC at many businesses
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I tried to do the same for an online marketplace I wanted to create so I didn’t have to fuck around with the legal stuff and the sellers could do whatever they wanted with the money and have them deal with legal when exchanging the crypto at an exchange. The closest project with some stability and something was the Blockchain Telos with their pinned Telos USD coin. It seemed promising, but I gave up.
I can’t wait for the crypto Bois to nuke this thread
I’ll fight them fisticuffs style 💪🏽💪🏽
But what’s wrong with using real money to buy imaginary money? /S
What is this “real” money you speak of? What makes it real?
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Nothing more than it’s widely accepted and that it’s backed by yet another widely accepted from of currency (usually; gold). Some systems don’t back it up, IIRC.
Because it’s widely accepted, there’s a degree of stability built into it. People generally agree on its value.
This is all gross-oversimplification, I realize, and I don’t particularly want to get into the weeds on this topic, because it’s only of passing interest to me. Regardless, my points around ‘real’ money being more stable and accepted are valid.
Nothing more than it’s widely accepted
Well, what’s wrong with Bitcoiners trying to make their currency widely accepted too?
that it’s backed by yet another widely accepted from of currency
So it’s turtles all the way down, is what you’re saying?
(usually; gold)
Not the USD, which is the worlds most widely accepted currency.
This is all gross-oversimplification, I realize, and I don’t particularly want to get into the weeds on this topic, because it’s only of passing interest to me.
Yes, I agree that this is gross-oversimplification. But if you don’t want to get into the weeds, why make a claim about something you don’t understand and don’t have interest in?
To troll; why else?
Not like I’m the first person to talk entirely out of their ass on the internet.
Your /S wasn’t loud enough. Next time try /S
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Like it was basically just digital gold… which is also a terrible currency in physical form.
I mean it is very very useful for specific purposes, like purchasing, uh, certain substances in certain, uh… unregulated online marketplaces.
As far as being a currency for other purposes goes though, I think it is incredibly unfit for purpose. And as far as being an investment vehicle goes it’s essentially a ponzi scheme.
Also the hands down best way to do remittances. No more will WorldRemit steal 15% of my remittance, nor screw me on the exchange rate.
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Wouldn’t say terrible. Just volatile and with a specific use cas. But incaseyour currency loses value you still have some wealth wich you can use for financial interactions (assuming you still have access to it)
Extremely relevant…
I love that “Web 1.0” link on the bottom for us NoScript users. Enough webs already!
Hah, cool! I didn’t even notice that until you pointed it out. 👍
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Funnily enough, the only people i know that made any actual insane gains from crypto were early adopters using it to buy cheap drugs from the dark web. Shit is a scam, just like fiat currency
One of my biggest regrets was not buying drugs on the dark web when I was willing and able. Would have had at least a handful of spare Bitcoin.
No kidding. Back in college I was kicking around the idea with my friends of dumping a few student loans for semester into bitcoin to buy quality mdma. It was like $0.50 a coin at the time.
I rest easy knowing that I would have sold it for beer money well before the price went absolutely nuts. I was never going to make real profit off of it
Idk isn’t a public ledger of drug transactions kinda naff?
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Word
Preach
This
Witch
It was until the authorities learned how easy it is to connect transactions to actual people.
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Cryptocurrency is our one and only way to be free from the banks,
Banks are shitty, but at least my government guarantees my debit and savings accounts up to €100k.
The crypto space is filled with cowboys and speculators.
Cryptocurrency is our one and only way to be free from the banks,
Stupid is as stupid does.
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…and yet here you are making a post about it. :)
