Listening to a recent episode of the Solarpunk Presents podcast reminded me the importance of consistently calling out cryptocurrency as a wasteful scam. The podcast hosts fail to do that, and because bad actors will continue to try to push crypto, we must condemn it with equal persistence.
Solarpunks must be skeptical of anyone saying it’s important to buy something, like a Tesla, or buy in, with cryptocurrency. Capitalists want nothing more than to co-opt radical movements, neutralizing them, to sell products.
People shilling crypto will tell you it decentralizes power. So that’s a lie, but solarpunks who believe it may be fooled into investing in this Ponzi scheme that burns more energy than some countries. Crypto will centralize power in billionaires, increasing their wealth and decreasing their accountability. That’s why Space Karen Elon Musk pushes crypto. The freer the market, the faster it devolves to monopoly. Rather than decentralizing anything, crypto would steer us toward a Bladerunner dystopia with its all-powerful Tyrell corporation.
Promoting crypto on a solarpunk podcast would be unforgivable. That’s not quite what happens on S5E1 “Let’s Talk Tech.” The hosts seem to understand crypto has no part in a solarpunk future or its prefigurative present. But they don’t come out and say that, adopting a tone of impartiality. At best, I would call this disingenuous. And it reeks of the both-sides-ism that corporate media used to paralyze climate action discourse for decades.
Crypto is not “appropriate tech,” and discussing it without any clarity is inappropriate.
Update for episode 5.3: In a case of hyper hypocrisy, they caution against accepting superficial solutions—things that appear utopian but really reinforce inequality and accelerate the climate crisis—while doing exactly that by talking up cryptocurrency.
I just wish people who complained about it would spend at least 5 seconds trying to think about an alternative way to achieve p2p electronic cash transactions that lacks the problems they see in cryptocurrency. But nobody ever does. At the very least, don’t try to convince me that the problems that cryptocurrency purports to try and solve aren’t real problems.
So I’m not sure I see how crypto is preferable to the non-crypto banking system? I don’t support either of them but if you can show that it’s better, then maybe it has some uses temporarily until we find a better solution.
It’s going to have to be a lot better in other ways to get over the issues around scams, volatility, and energy use though.
It only works better on a global scale and only for certain cases. And if you ignore problems present in the current banking system.
My examples would be:
people traveling (or refugees fleeing) across multiple countries would benefit from some kind of cryptocurrency in that their assets would be easier to access globally. No having to convert their money as they cross borders or dealing with banks and credit.
People living in places with unstable government and financial institutions would maybe benefit from having access to a decentralized global system to store some of their money in a system their government doesn’t have a hand in or control over
Cryptocurrency is still a new technology and idea. Centralized banking has existed for thousands of years.
Capitalists did what capitalists do and tried to prematurely scam and squeeze as much money out of the idea as possible. Potentially forever ruining the image and possible impact the tech may have had.
Im pretty salty over what happened with NFTs. There were a lot of exciting things it could have been applied to. But no. It turned into money laundering with ai generated images.
These examples are wishful thinking based on some anecdotes at best.
Crypto-currencies are a multi-billion dollar business largely run by the worst people from the existing banking and investment sector and people are surprised that it is predominantly used for bad stuff?
It’s not only an image problem and a few bad apples that spoil the rest, the technology itself is structurally predisposed for these kind scams and acts like a magnet for people with bad intentions, because they know this technology shifts the playing field in their favour.
Always a recommended read on this topic: https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html
I have yet to hear of a possible use of NFTs that would actually be useful. Stuff that was floated like in-game purchases or concert tickets don’t solve any problems compared to the current system.
NFTs died out because scamming was the only thing they were useful for.
Aside from all the scams, the other use I’ve seen is corporations trying to use them to create artificial scarcity of digital goods, essentially making NFTs a new flavor of DRM with an added, desperate hope of making DRM and FOMO marketing tactics seem cool, techy, and hip.
I don’t like DRM, I don’t like artificial scarcity, and the basic premise of NFTs reminds me of those old infomercials where someone promises to sell you the rights to name an actual star, except it’s only in their proprietary database and you have to go to their website to see that anything has changed. I’d rather just have a copy of the digital image itself than a receipt someone gave me claiming that I own it.
. . . someone promises to sell you the rights to name an actual star, except it’s only in their proprietary database and you have to go to their website to see that anything has changed.
That’s one of the best descriptions of NFTs I’ve heard, and really brings out its fundamentally scummy nature.
They do solve problems though. If there was a simple app that musicians could sell tickets direct to customers, you can loose all the predatory middlemen
You don’t need NFTs for that app. You can just make it with a frontend attached to a database and a payment system.
Venues are contractually tied to TicketMaster and the like. You can’t solve that with NFTs.
You don’t need it because we have ticketmaster? That’s your argument lol? It’s to prevent the next one.
It won’t work because contracts. Try to read next time.
Art, actually, once the BS has settled.
Copyrighted works that give owners a small sliver of resale purchases. Buy a used book/audiobook from someone, 2% automatically goes to the author.
Inventory tracking.
Fair trade proof of sourcing.
There are plenty of good uses, and plenty of bad ones.
Like anything, though, you have to apply effort for change. Crypto isn’t some panacea that solves the world’s problems. It is a tool that will be used for dystopic purposes, and can and will be used for more sound reasons.
So all you can come up with is some edge cases where traditional banking can’t be relied on? Seems like a very convoluted way of saying that crypto is usually worse than traditional banking.
Also just wait until you hear that if you can buy crypto, you can probably participate in forex as well. I know people who come from countries you describe, and they just use euros or dollars because a highly volatile currency with astronomical payment processing fees is the opposite of what one needs for daily life, no matter how much what the SV techbros wish it weren’t the case.
I’m only responding this to point out that I never said that it was preferable to the current banking system.
Well I guess I don’t understand why you want peer to peer cash transfers if not to avoid the banking system which already allows various methods of transferring money.
Or maybe you are saying both are bad and we need something better? If so I agree but otherwise I’ve lost what you’re trying to say here.
That’s not what peer to peer means. P2P means no middle man, nobody taking a cut eg.
I didn’t do a good job in my messaging, I was agitated. but really I was just trying to say these things
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The global banking system represents a far bigger fish to fry, maybe like 100 to 1000 times bigger (it’s quite difficult to assess, but the total wealth held by private banks is frequently estimated to be in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. Compare this to the total value of literally all cryptocurrency)
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I probably see a dozen posts that are just writing the same criticisms of “cryptocurrency” over and over again without ever actually addressing why people are drawn to it in the first place, for every one post that’s complaining about banks. despite the fact that banks have screwed over orders of magnitude more people than any crypto bro could ever dream of
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When you don’t actually clearly spell out the problems that drew those people in in the first place, and at the very least empathize with them explicitly, all you do is alienate those people and you don’t actually get them to stop using cryptocurrency
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You sure are going to bat for it as though it were
How do you figure I’m “going to bat” for cryptocurrency?
I’m extremely tired of criticisms of cryptocurrency without a very least acknowledging the problems with the global financial system that drew people to it in the first place
It’s weird to request that criticism of something first do PR work for said thing, that’s why
OK so you think that anybody who wants people to criticize the global financial system earnestly is doing PR work for cryptocurrency? Seriously? Please tell me I am misunderstanding you.
Enough of your reason. You said something that might put cryptocurrency in a positive light, and you have been judged justly as bad. That’s what makes us all feel good, and that’s what we’ll do. More downvotes for this guy please.
In case it’s not abundantly clear: this is sarcasm.
Gnu Taler is doing this. No new currency, no mining, and no fraud. https://taler.net/en/index.html
Okay but who gets left to hold the bag? What kind of hyper-volatile get-rich-quick scheme is this anyway?? /s
Its not a currency, you dont buy it. Its a way to transfer money safely
@xnx
A good explainer campaign of how it works practically is essential if it hopes to be adopted for sure. I know a bit, but still not clear on it. At some point credits need to be purchased. And as far as I understand it’s not something that is connected to a bank account.
I was curious of how it was supposed to function as well, this presentation cleared it up pretty well, and more specifically, the part at 10:24. The process involves sending money to an exchange bank, which then gives you the tokens of the amount sent to the bank. The tokens can then be sent to a merchant/person anonymously, who gives them to the exchange bank. The exchange bank then sends the real money to the merchant’s bank.
@ProdigalFrog
Thanks!!:)
Thank you for sharing this.
I don’t see where this post did that, though? It criticises crypto for failing to solve the problems it claims to solve and for adding additional problems on top, not for trying to address things that aren’t problems
It’s just the vibes i get after seeing the 30th mini essay with the same exact content as this, in which nobody ever actually acknowledges any of those problems as being real nor ever proposes a better idea. I guess it literally doesn’t try to convince me they aren’t real problems, but you sure can’t conclude from anything the author has written that they think they are real problems.
I’m pretty sure that nobody describes something as “a Bladerunner dystopia with its all-powerful Tyrell corporation” in a positive way
I’m a little confused by your response. What gave you the impression that I thought there was anything positive about what the author wrote?
I’m responding to the part of your comment that says “you sure can’t conclude from anything the author has written that they think they are real problems.” I mean that the author describes the extreme centralisation of power in currency in that manner; crypto is criticised for accelerating us towards that, but it’s clear that OP regards that situation as bad regardless of whether or not we end up in it via crypto. Sorry if my own comment was unclear.
Actually if you just take what they’re saying at face value and don’t make any assumptions or inferences about what they must believe, all you can conclude is that they don’t believe that we’re currently under the control of a Tyrell-esque corporation, and that it’s going to be cryptocurrency that gets us there. But personally I think that’s highly naïve and I do think we’re currently living in a global financial system which might as well be controlled by the Tyrell corporation
They don’t have to believe that we’re currently living in such a situation to believe that it would be bad whether crypto put us in it or not. I think you’re making more assumptions about their beliefs than you’re stating, here.
Personally I agree that we’re not in a position as extreme as that at the moment, because the ultimate powers over currencies are governments rather than corporations. Now, how much of a difference that makes absolutely depends on how democratically accountable the given government is to the populace, but for corporations it’s always zero accountability to anyone but shareholders, so there is definitely room for difference. And, of course, just because things can technically be worse doesn’t mean there are no problems with how things currently are.
Your last sentence
Excuse me, but they were describing a problem they perceived with cryptocurrency not with the current financial system. And all I’m saying is I’m extremely tired of criticisms of cryptocurrency without a very least acknowledging the problems with the global financial system that drew people to it in the first place, and making it very clear that they are indeed problems that we need to address, and that it’s gonna take a lot more than just complaining.
Well I think that’s a very limiting way to have a conversation. You are now placing an expectation on everyone to spend time to make their posts about topic A longer so it can include topic B. That makes it less likely people will engage because post length is a big factor in attention.
Secondly, many of the people excited by crypto, and nearly everybody engaging in solarpunk discourse, recognize the problems with the current system. So OP addressing people who have been led into thinking crypto will solve XYZ is a good thing. Those people know we need change, they just got excited about the wrong change, OP trying to steer them in the right direction is a good thing.
Sounds like you want a system that is distinct but similar to what we have. But that’s extremely un-solarpunk. Solar Punk is about imagining a better world that doesn’t rely on bad systems anymore. Crypto is still a tool of the capitalist system at the end of the day, and that makes it the enemy.
I’m honestly quite bewildered by your comment and I don’t even understand how you can make a single inference about my values based on what I wrote other than I think banks controlling the money supply is actually bad and that we should do something about it and if we don’t like crypto, we should think of a better idea
We do have a better idea, it’s called communism as imagined in the solarpunk movement
Yeah exactly. There is a problem, crypto is a solution. Fiat currency is also a ponzi scheme.
That is beside the point though. Crypto is very polluting, that’s really not compatible with solarpunk ideas.
How polluting is it?
That’s just Bitcoin though. What about other implementations of crypto?
Cryptocurrency is the online equivalent of the neo-Nazi bar.
You know how the story goes, with the bartender who tells the customer “you have to throw out neo-Nazis as soon as you see the uniforms or the tattoos, no matter how polite and well-behaved they are. Because if you let Nazis stay and get comfortable they’ll invite their friends, and word gets around that Nazis can drink comfortably at your bar, and customers who don’t want to drink with Nazis leave, and suddenly you have a Nazi bar”. You all remember that story?
Well, cryptocurrency in online spaces - especially futurist spaces and technological spaces - it’s a lot like that. Cryptocurrency supporters are constantly looking for opportunities to promote cryptocurrency. And they obviously see a movement like solarpunk, which talks a lot about decentralization, and mistrusts the global financial system, and so on, as fertile ground for shilling cryptocurrency.
And if you let cryptocurrency supporters hang out and talk about how awesome cryptocurrency is, they will inevitably start shilling their particular flavor of cryptocurrency. And that’s inevitably a capitalist scam and will inevitably harm anyone stupid enough to fall for it.
And the problem is not just that cryptocurrency is a capitalist scam. It’s that, if you don’t shut down cryptocurrency talk aggressively, you get more cryptocurrency supporters. Because the crypto bros see that cryptocurrency discussion is allowed, and they join in, and they invite their friends, and they start shilling their scams. And then you get crypto spammers and scam bots and the personal messages inviting you to elite investment opportunities and all the other scummy garbage that infests cryptocurrency websites. You either block cryptocurrency talk or you get a website full of crypto garbage.
In other words, cryptocurrency supporters need to be shut down as quickly and ruthlessly as any other bots and spammers. Because if you don’t you inevitably get a website full of bots and spammers.
Because the crypto bros see that cryptocurrency discussion is allowed, and they join in, and they invite their friends, and they start shilling their scams. And then you get crypto spammers and scam bots and the personal messages inviting you to elite investment opportunities and all the other scummy garbage that infests cryptocurrency websites
At this point any cryptocurrency discussion space by necessity has strict policies against promotion, people who like to talk about cryptocurrency have realized it’s generally rude and unwelcome to shill their bags outside of designated areas, and crypto scam bots don’t limit themselves to only those spaces. Not every group of people you don’t like is the equivalent of Nazis.
This is an emotionally charged post, yet everyone you disagree with is secretly trying to influence everyone else? How the fuck are you going to compare people who like a type of software to literal Nazis? Anyone who relies on emotional arguments like that is clearly not a rationalist.
How do you achieve communism without authoritarianism? This sub says they like decentralization, but if you decentralize based on computers, how do you stop adversaries from performing a Sybil attack? How do we establish command and control for a decentralized network, without letting authoritarians seize that command and control? How do you establish a decentralized identity system, without also establishing a decentralized system for data management and governance?
Now, should a Blockchain be that? Maybe not, I’m not trying sell whatever to you. I get being annoyed by all the advertisers, but to go an extra step to say that the principles of cypherpunk is something to compare to Nazis, is just proof you care more about emotional arguments and setting narrative.
Honorable mention: the GNU Taler project
https://taler.net/en/index.html
Could be a better alternative to crypto.
Thanks for highlighting it! Never saw it, and now looking into it.
For all I understood, it essentially resembles the banking system, except you have a digital cash option. But other than that, isn’t it just integrated into traditional finances, with national currencies and everything? Or is that the point?
Also, from all I understood, Taler is currently a demo and not an actual system for real-world transactions, right?
Or is that the point?
Kinda. You can think of GNU Taler as a standardized “Paypal” that your bank can self-host and that vendors can implement without having to do something special for each individual bank. In addition it offers cash like privacy protections for buyers.
The EU is currently funding a pilot with two cooperative banks (in Germany and Hungary) to scale this up a bit and NLnet is offering grants for projects like open-source online shop software to implement GNU Taler support.
But it could also be used for things like cash-less payments on music festivals, similar to how you often have to buy paper tokens on those. And of course it is not linked to a specific currency, so you can have many different currencies (even unofficial ones) in your Taler wallet, similar to how you could do that with cash.
- melpomenesclevage ( @melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee ) 4•7 months ago
If a government is backing it, color me skeptical on the privacy claims.
Its all open-source and well documented, and they make it very clear that sellers have strict built-in transparency, which is really what governments care the most about (for tax purposes).
So the privacy protections for buyers are very real and something most democratic governments actually support, no conspiracy required.
- melpomenesclevage ( @melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee ) 2•7 months ago
That’s still a very different understanding of governments than I have.
Thank you!
I certainly don’t like the fact commercial banks are still part of the equation here. To me, the system should either be controlled through a central bank, or use a network of decentralized middlemen (like crypto does), though the latter may be inefficient. Commercial banks are cancer.
I’m also riddled with the technical details of it, in that transactions rely on blind signatures instead of blockchain.
How do blind signatures replace some sort of ledger? Or is it still kept somewhere somehow? Did Taler solve the issue of locally storing money in a way that they can’t be tampered with?
Central banks could certainly also be Taler exchanges, in fact the Swiss central bank published a paper on exactly that and their outcome was: yes feasible but we don’t need that right now.
As for commercial banks: I think it is worth differentiating there a bit. IMHO cooperative banking is exactly the kind of decentralised structure you seem to want, yet technically you lump them with other commercial banks. Currently both banks that participate in the GNU Taler pilot are strong examples of coop banks. I was quite positively surprised when they announced the participation of these two banks.
As for the technical questions: you are looking at it through the warped perspective of blockchain. None of these issues are real and in fact had been solved long before block chain was even invented. They only become an issue when you enter the realm of “let’s pretend you can create an trustless system”, but that’s starting from a wrong premise.
Thanks for the answer! I’ll do my homework on that.
This presentation does a good job of explaining it. The gist of it is:
- People making payments are always anonymous, but people receiving money are not.
- Using already traditional currency infrastructure is relatively power efficient and cheap (especially compared to Crypto)
But I just learned of it from this thread as well, so that’s just what I’ve gleaned so far.
Thanks for the link!
There is time and place for everything.
For starters, most modern cryptocurrencies (not Bitcoin, though) use Proof-of-Stake or a similar validation model, which pretty much solves the energy hogging problem. But the issue of laissez-faire capitalism persists, and crypto, in my opinion, is poorly equipped to deal with it - that is, assuming it wasn’t meant as a perfect money model to force unregulated capitalism over everyone’s throats.
And that is why it shouldn’t suddenly become the main means for payments. But at the same time, that doesn’t mean crypto doesn’t have legitimate use cases. There are cases where anonymity, immutability and quick settlements matter, be it financially supporting protesters, moving money across borders, or, say, my use case of evading sanctions when trying to send money to my brother over the Russian border (outside of Russia, mind you).
There is so much misinformation here, it’s hard to know where to even start. Yes there are crypto scams, yes legacy technology consumes way too much energy.
These are all solved problems, but it you only know about crypto from scams you might think there is nothing else. Crypto solves real problems with our current financial systems.
Wouldn’t hurt to read from time to time. Solar Punk is as much about technology, as it is about knowledge.
Where’s the solutions? Don’t say “proof of stake”
Proof of steak.
Prime rib only.
I’m an anarcho-communist, so the future I would like has no money in it, virtual or otherwise, but we aren’t there yet, and as long as we live under capitalism, I see no issue with making use of tools there to create parallel systems to those of the existing institution, to not only undermine them, but create a secondary system independent of the state to rely on (aka dual power).
It should be expected that capitalists would co-opt these tools, but that doesn’t make our use of them less valid (or theirs desirable).
Them turning it in to an investment doesn’t mean you do - if you’re not buying (or mining) it to accumulate it, all it is is a token that allows you (if done correctly) to move money privately and securely, without capitalists knowing who is involved nor taking a cut or involving the authorities. I’m sure you can think for yourself of reasons why this would be beneficial for anarchists and other radical and revolutionary groups and individuals around the world, and the networks they create.
I don’t know the podcast you’ve mentioned, but I agree that marketing crypto for profit definitely isn’t punk in any way shape or form, but it’s the marketing for profit part you should be taking issue with, not the tool they happen to be using to make the profit with (AI being a perfect example of another tool that can be used to either free or enslave us, dependent on who is in control, not on the tool itself).
Edit just to be clear: crypto is a big vague term that covers all manor of sins, I’m not an advocate for all or even most of it, but again - used correctly, it can be a really useful tool to have at our disposal.
“… it’s not secure, it’s not safe, it’s not reliable, it’s not trustworthy, it’s not even decentralized, it’s not anonymous, it’s helping destroy the planet. I haven’t found one positive use. For blockchain, it was nothing that couldn’t be done better without it.”
—Bruce Schneier, Bruce Schneier on the Crypto/Blockchain Disaster
Bruce Schneier, dubbed the “security guru” by The Economist, has been decrying the value of blockchain and all its offshoots for more than a decade.
lol
I don’t know. I mean, the fact that if you forget your password, you can lose your life savings and you can’t go to any court is not a benefit to it. That’s the reason why governments issue currencies (and) why wildcat banks have been illegal for 107 years
Guys never heard of backup seedphrases?
It is not just because governments are mean and want to control. It’s because it’s really good reasons. What? You don’t want individuals minting money. You can’t just toss away all those centuries of banking regulation that really know what you’re doing.
Yeah, kk.
CPM—What about smart contracts?
Schneier—The contract where you make a typo when you lose your life savings? Yeah, I hate that. That seems dumb.
CPM—I’ve wondered about it because a smart contract is, number one is legal terminology. So you can get a lawyer that can help you with the terminology.
Schneier—And if he makes a mistake, there’s no recourse.
Oh no typos will ruin your life. Pretty sure if your lawyer makes a mistake without any block chain or crypto it can still ruin your life.
This dude sounds like a mouthpiece for the banks and offers no good arguments against cryptocurrency beyond his apparent disdain for blockchain
Them turning it in to an investment doesn’t mean you do - if you’re not buying (or mining) it to accumulate it, all it is is a token that allows you (if done correctly) to move money privately and securely, without capitalists knowing who is involved nor taking a cut or involving the authorities.
By participating in the market you provide liquidity to it, and that’s the most important thing the ponzi scheme needs as it perpetuates the illusion of others that their coins are actually worth something. Sure, there are rare situations where someone would have a use for crypto, like fleeing an authoritarian state or so, but in the end any kind of interaction with these systems is like frequenting a business where you know it is used as a front for money-laundering by criminal enterprises.
but in the end any kind of interaction with these systems is like frequenting a business where you know it is used as a front for money-laundering by criminal enterprises.
So most large corporations and banks then…
Look, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, I made it very clear I don’t support holding on to any crypto, just using it to circumvent oppressive systems, focusing on rejecting a tool (and one that can be specifically extremely useful in enabling revolutionary movements) because you don’t like how others use it, instead of a system where any and all consumptions involves multiple levels of unethical practices, seems like completely missing the point to me. ¯\(ツ)/¯
This kind of reasoning is too reductionist. Sure every tool can be used one way or another, capitalism is bad etc. But if you have clear evidence that a tool is predominantly used for criminal activities (and I mean that in a actually ethically harmful sense, not legalistic), and the legetimite uses are basically a rounding error, then there is really no point in reasoning that way.
Edit: also, currencies are a social tool, and not like a hammer that you can use in your shed and not care about what other people use their hammers for. A currency directly derives its function from how others use it.
But maybe this disagreement also stems from the fact that I see really no way crypto currencies could in any shape or form enable “revolutionary movements”. The most benign I can think of is them being used as a tool to opt out of some societies, but that is pretty much the opposite of revolutionary.
I see really no way crypto currencies could in any shape or form enable “revolutionary movements”.
I guess theoretically, if a state was persecuting a political faction, part of neutering that movement would involve blocking access to bank accounts of anyone suspected of being involved, similar to how Justin Trudeau froze the bank accounts of anyone linked to the ‘Freedom Trucker Protest’ (not that I have any sympathy for that movement).
Then again, cash or gold/silver would also function in that scenario (or maybe the GNU Taler project that @xnx@slrpnk.net mentioned?)
According to this article, Rojava is supposedly experimenting with using crypto to avoid high fees associated with using cash in neighboring countries (unsubstantiated claim). But the article is written by a pro-crypto news site, and is clearly trying to greenwash its extreme environmental downsides:
“You need technology to spend less water, you need technology to have an equal relation with the earth, you need technology to use networks, like the blockchain. We see blockchain as a practical network in society that people use,” Serdem said.
So their claims are suspect at best.
I think you’re right, I think you seeing crypto exclusively as a tool used for “criminal activity” (who is telling you this? who decides what’s legal and why?), but not fiat money and the capitalists who benefit from it (not criminals?) is where our disagreement stems, and I can’t help you with that…
If we’re taking about actual cryptocurrencies with fundamentally limited minting, then consider this:
The inflation we’re facing right now as a society is fundamentally due to the printing of money. Literally, this is a way for governments to take value from your existing pools of money, and redistribute that value as they see fit - not in some agreed-upon, standardized, UBI-esque kind of way, but in the ‘suck it bitch, I’m spending this for you’ kind of way.
Take the inflation rate for the last ten years. That’s the amount your savings has been reduced, and that your paycheck has been cut.
With a real, hard crypto, nobody gets to just print money, and if there is printing, it’s at a known pace. Bitcoin obviously has terrible power consumption issues, but the actual monetary aspect was superb. The miners get a reward, for running the network. Over time, the granted reward decreases, and the amount of bitcoin created decreases.
Proof of stake currencies that have a similar model are a good, solid option, because they only take the amount of power needed by any at-scale internet service. Low power usage, and governments can’t just print money.
A democratic government being able to quickly raise a lot of money for emergency relief is a feature of fiat currencies and not a bug.
The artificial scarcity that crypto-currencies enforce is (besides the obscene energy use) the worst part of them and only benefit those that hoard them.
P.s.: if your paycheck has been “cut” because of inflation, then your boss is engaging in wage theft.
It’s nice that you think that the government should be able to print money. They can make a token where they have the rights to print as much as they want, and the value will speak for itself. It’s also important to have value that is independent of that malleability, because that can be (and has massively been) abused.
The power usage of crypto is a non-issue technically speaking. There is no need to use power-hungry algorithms for crypto. But humanly, there is a lot of inertia and real value tied into existing power-hungry implementations of crypto, and that will be difficult to eradicate, precisely because of the real interest in crypto. When there’s a proof-of-stake bitcoin equivalent, though, bitcoin may wane - and illegalization of power-hungry cryptos may help in that regard.
Re: your ps: wage theft? No, not unless someone is literally paying less-than-agreed dollar amounts using inflation as an excuse. So if you’re talking literally, you’re just wrong. If you’re talking allegorically, then sure. The cost of labor has gone down massively in relation to the payment provided to ‘top tier’ jobs that simply squeeze the world for gain - and that’s some shit that will hit the fan at some point. But that’s not really related to inflation, other than the fact that unless you’re making almost double in wages what you made five or ten years ago, you’re making significantly less than you were in actual value.
What is relevant to inflation and theft is all of the bailouts. Largest thefts in history.
You are not going to solve shitty government decision by switching to crypto-currencies. All you will achieve with that is to prevent potentially good decisions in the future. Or to put it differently: crypto-currencies are deeply undemocratic.
And yes it is wage-theft in any way you can look at it because after inflation they earn (nominally) more from the same labor you put into it, but are not (nominally) paying you more. So in very real terms they are paying you less for the same labor. There is no need to beat around the bush on that one, it’s as clear as it can get.
A sane perspective… …I wasn’t really expecting that here.
Thanks for emphasizing this. I was a bit disappointed in that episode. I don’t remember any mention of decentralization which is integral to solarpunk. One of the hosts seemed to just respond to the other with a lot of whataboutism and negativity that just revealed a lack of understanding of solarpunk’s relationship to technology. For example, promoting electric cars instead of public transportation and reducing the amount of cars on the rode. Maybe that was the both-sides-ism to create discussion but it seemed like a missed opportunity to really dive into solarpunk technology. Maybe someone from this community could reach out about our approach to technology. They seem like they’d be open to hearing different viewpoints from the solarpunk community.
I call it ponzipunk
Not all cryptocurrencies are the same. Sounds like you don’t quite understand their differences and just want something to rage about.
Crypto is cypherpunk not cyberpunk.
You can create new alternative economic systems outwith existing monetary systems. Global mutual credit, local exchange trading systems, etc. There are plenty of solarpunks and leftists in crypto and have been since the start.
Not really. This usecase is infinitesimal compared to speculation.
For now.
Unfortunately an economic system is only as useful as its buy-in, and that’s the hard part. If you want you fight financial hegemony, don’t give wealthy people another lever of control.
What about local exchange trading systems?
It doesn’t have to be a wasteful if it’s generated with clean energy. It doesn’t have to be a scam, either. Just because it is those things IRL doesn’t mean it has to be in fiction.
- melpomenesclevage ( @melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee ) 5•7 months ago
But that energy could be used for anything else. Those chips could be used for anything else.
Instead of computing hashes you show proof how much of the sun’s energy you harvested this transaction block.
Boom I just solved blockchain and green energy. You’re welcome.
You could say a new algorithm was made that makes it barely use energy at all, too. It’s fiction. You can basically do whatever you want if you write it. lol
It’s Cypher punk, not Cyber punk. Ones a movie genre about swords and dystopian tech, ones a decentralized trustless protocol powered by encryption
I’ve been a fan of cyberpunk for years, and I feel like an unsecured currency backed in computational waste (proof-of-work style) is a perfect fit for a cyberpunk setting. If I’d read it in a story years ago I’d have said it was a little on the nose
How is it insecure? Schnorr signatures and the txID system literally make it quantum resistant. Even if you cracked a transaction’s key, you’d only have access to already spent funds. Like a receipt instead of a debit card, with no certainty who has the money until they spend it.
Oh, and in terms of computational waste, the fiat backed inflation based currency system we have now, has incentivized a world of endless growth which isn’t sustainable. Switching to an asset with finite supply like Bitcoin would remove those incentives. There’s other costs to using deflationary assets, but if you actually value the environment, switching to Bitcoin would economically inventivize a world where people are encouraged to save more instead of spend more
Unsecured, as in stuff like mt gox where the nearest thing to a bank for crypto just closed one day and stole hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins with no recourse. Unsecured like watching the crypto scene reinvent/rediscover financial regulation one theft, scam, or disaster at a time. That’s a perfect fit for a cyberpunk setting.
Unrelated to my point about the genre, I’ll admit I’m especially skeptical that it’s the devaluation of currency is what’s responsible for the endless growth mindset of capitalism, or that systems that seem to be used more like investment stocks than a currency are structurally capable of fixing it.
I’m sure the some of blockchain technology has some practical uses, there’s probably a way it can work as currency, but I have a hard time seeing any way to separate the modern cryptocurrency scene from investment capitalism
Edit: I really do wish you luck in doing so though
Ok here’s the thing, crypto as a concept it’s not a completely bad idea the main problem is that the entire ecosystem was kidnapped by scammers and vcs, most of projects are scams at this point and it’s extremely difficult to even talk about the concept without talking about bitcoin, which is the worst offender. But there are small projects like nano that tried to bring back the original concepts after fixing the principal flaws like mining and by extension the transaction fees, of course as you might guessed this project isn’t popular among crypto bros because there’s no profit to be made from the currency itself. I think all of this is still in it’s infancy and has potential to develop in a positive way, what it needs is to remove the idea of easy money and systems that prevent users from earning from trading, in other words remove capitalists from the equation
Solarpunk Presents Podcast is on Mastodon: @solarpunkpresents@climatejustice.rocks
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“But they don’t come out and say that, adopting a tone of impartiality.”
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“… nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” —Isaac Asimov
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