The anti-crypto thread

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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,560
10,175
126

5:35 in video

Ronin side-chain hacked by 51% attack, NFTs and ETH stolen.

Another stake in the coffin of Proof-of-Stake.

Proof-of-Work is the best decentralized consensus mechanism.


A more-specific video.
 
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Zorba

Lifer
Oct 22, 1999
15,282
10,879
136
right, i'm saying it's a speculative investment at best (really i think it's just a giant pyramid scheme). cryptocurrencies are not actually good at being currencies, because they don't hold steady values.

and the reason to "never sell" is because the value of bitcoin is essentially only going to grow, IMO, until it falls of a cliff. HARD.

1) finite coin supply
2) constant or decreasing coin release rate coupled with exponential network growth
2) progressively increasing difficulty of mining

to be useful as a currency, the number of coins in circulation needs to be modifiable, and coin release rate needs to be matched to the network size so the difficulty of mining coins ("value") is held essentially constant.

otherwise, the resources used to mine coins ("value") is going to increasing, making each new coin increasingly more valuable than the last, and not particularly useful as a currency.

why would i pay for something in 1 BTC today if it's almost mathematically guaranteed that in the future, that same 1 BTC will be more valuable because the amount of resources to mine any single BTC is dramatically greater? and why would i lend you 1 BTC today, only to be paid back in 0.1 BTC (or some arbitrary value less than 1) in the future for the same reason?
I.e. it is a deflationary "currency."
 
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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,233
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If you do, are those NFTs transferable to the main chain or to other competing L2s?

I was talking about loopring and the upcoming gamestop NFT marketplace (bybebye opensea). loopring obviously is EVM compatible so I just assumed yes but never tried. Of course you then loose the whole purpose of L2, low fees.

But sooner or later even that will likley go away, zkEVM. Which bascially means running the smart contracts on L2 directly for pennies with full L1 security. So yeah, the high fee thing will not be an issue going forward.

Ronin side-chain hacked by 51% attack, NFTs and ETH stolen.

Another stake in the coffin of Proof-of-Stake.

Larry, this is utter FUD.

For those not aware, this side chain had a whopping 9 validators. Meaning you need to hack 5 to get consensus (steal the funds). 4 of the 9 were operated by skymavis, the company behind this side-chain. These 4 were all hacked. Likely an inside job or all had the same security hole / ssh key. The 5th one had some historic RPC link to these 4 which never got removed and made it possible to steal the key as well.

Point it, the issue isn't proof of stake it's lack of decentralization and hence security. Same issue is happening on all side-chains or ETH-clones. polygon most notably or also avalanche or harmony or Solana. Why did Ethereum take forever to what will very likley happen in June/July? Because it's hard to get it right. To make it work in a way average Joe can run a validator from home. Only issue I have with ETH is that 32 is way too much for average Joe. But you can participate with RocketPool.
 

njdevilsfan87

Platinum Member
Apr 19, 2007
2,331
251
126
Yup, if there aren't at least a few hundred nodes, I don't really consider it what the original vision of crypto is (regardless of if its L2 or L1). And that goes for Solana too with its ~20 nodes last I checked. It's awesome how fast Solana is, but to me that's a highly experimental chain right now that I would not be launching commercial products on. It's like something in between what Ethereum is (a true decentralized blockchain) and Ripple (at 100% centralized corporate blockchain).

People are going to start learning, if not already, that launching an L2 isn't just a "go ahead and do it" kind of thing. Security is a major concern on them. And that's why Ethereum shards and Polkadot parachains are going to be so successful as they are will share the same validator nodes as the secure mainchain.
 
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njdevilsfan87

Platinum Member
Apr 19, 2007
2,331
251
126
Not really saying anything for or against DOT but

Ethereum is glacial. Been hearing about sharding since 2016/2017.

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum by now have many members that just want to maintain status quo for one reason or another. Speaking of Ethereum, along with its native token, over half a trillion resides on the Ethereum blockchain. So safety and security are a significant priority (just like with Bitcoin), and so updates will naturally take much longer than the newer, smaller competing blockchains which were built from the ground up with better/improved features in mind (but to what compromises if any we don't really know yet).
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,233
1,610
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Ethereum is glacial. Been hearing about sharding since 2016/2017.

It's not glacial, that just how software development works when there is zero room for severe bugs. It's not like with new windows versions or even worse games were the end-user is the beta or in game nowadays rather alpha-tester and it takes years to be good enough to replace the old version or in case of games never really gets fixed.

And even Vitalik himself has admitted by now that ETH main chain will never scale or have low fees. But with rollups which are new tech, this won't even be needed as L2 can have the exact same security as L1 at a fraction of the costs and "instant" speeds. You can see that now already with loopring for example. Polygon is not an L2 but a side-chain and suffers from similar issues as this hacked chain. Only really a matter of time...
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 13, 2008
7,741
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Anyone here also curious about ETC lately, and what may come of that?
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,065
11,693
136
It's not glacial, that just how software development works when there is zero room for severe bugs.

Sorry, but I'm not buying it. There has been software running much of the financial world for decades, with bugs being capable of threatening billions of dollars (or more!), and yet somehow things get done. Admittedly many legacy systems have been in place in financial institutions for years, but when new features are needed, they find a way.

There are testnets for a reason.

Anyone here also curious about ETC lately, and what may come of that?

It faded into obscurity. Ethereum Classic has never attracted much investor attention, even during upswings.
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 13, 2008
7,741
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Hmm, interesting. Though, not what I have heard/seen recently. Right now it is up reasonably well, and it is like 28th rank in market cap. I guess time will tell how it continues to do, especially once ETH 2 happens.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,065
11,693
136
Right now it is up reasonably well, and it is like 28th rank in market cap.

Eh. I guess some of the old guard still care about it, but in terms of the chain itself, it's not heavily utilized, which admittedly keeps txn fees rather low.



There's really no comparison.
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,233
1,610
136
Sorry, but I'm not buying it. There has been software running much of the financial world for decades, with bugs being capable of threatening billions of dollars (or more!), and yet somehow things get done. Admittedly many legacy systems have been in place in financial institutions for years, but when new features are needed, they find a way.

There are testnets for a reason.

These system exist and have been optimized since the 70ties. That is like 40 decades of head-start over crypto. And banks don't touch their core system. Mostly they are still in cobol. Everything else including the security!!! is on layers upon layers on top. The reason they don't touch it? Because it has proven to work and a rewrite risk bankruptcy of the bank.

On top of that which might be even more relevant is that crypto is implementing complete new technologies from research. This si true for PoS but also the different forms of rollups (eg zero knowledge proofs). This is leading edge research. And it is needed because of the decentralized nature of Ethereum. A centralized system will always be orders of magnitudes less complex (eg banks). And then crypto does not have parent organizations that make trillions. So the amount of developers you can throw at the problem is limited and it's probably also OK to not have too many at the cost of speed.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,065
11,693
136
That is like 40 decades of head-start over crypto.

The banks didn't roll out their core systems yesterday. Honestly I don't know how long it took them to switch to computerized banking systems, but then I doubt they ran ads in every bank branch across the country touting future advancements and then experiencing delays over what was promised.

Now when it comes to centralized vs decentralized, yes, there's a greater degree of complexity involved. It would have been nice if the EF had been willing to say six years ago, "you know what, we don't know how long this will take and we don't know which hard fork will bring about sharding or Proof of Stake" instead of what actually happened.
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,233
1,610
136
Now when it comes to centralized vs decentralized, yes, there's a greater degree of complexity involved. It would have been nice if the EF had been willing to say six years ago, "you know what, we don't know how long this will take and we don't know which hard fork will bring about sharding or Proof of Stake" instead of what actually happened.

True but hindsight 20/20. they greatly underestimated the complexity which is very common in IT projects anyway and even more so when you are more or less doing bleeding edge research at the same time. The issue here is decentralized and Proof of Stake. many chains which claim to have PoS (or similar) are not really decentralized.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
2,996
126
Another day, another illegal crypto bust:


According to Chainalysis, Hydra Market offered cash-out services designed to let users move large volumes of illicit cryptocurrency covertly, which allowed it to act as a money-laundering service for Russian entities.
 
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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,233
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You know where even more money laundering happens? Right with cash. And with Art. Why do people pay several 100k for some shitty jpg? Art is the proven method to launder and move money for the rich and there is no way anyone can proof anything because value of art is simply subjective.

But never mind. It is like talking god with a priest. A waste of time as you will never convince someone that is entrenched in his ideolgogy on such a personal level that changing course becomes nearly impossible regardless the facts and truth available.
 

androshud

Junior Member
Apr 6, 2022
2
1
6
Are you calling cryptocurrencies a cancer parasite because you failed in this area, or because you are just dumb? I have always wondered why some people speak so badly about this area, although they are actually a minority, if there is even an opportunity to earn some money without any investment. Well, for example, you can get free crypto instantly in many different ways. All you need is to go to some resource and get some free amount. I personally do this, without spending a dime I get some money from it.

Insulting others is not a particularly auspicious way to start your membership here. Please dial it back. If you have something to say that is actually contributive, we're all ears.

Administrator allisolm
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,560
10,175
126
And environmental impact.
One armchair-length study that I saw done on YouTube, showed that PC Gaming uses 50 times the amount of electricity than GPU miners.

And there's all this hubbub going on about the new PCI 5.0 12/16-pin power connector, and "gaming cards" taking 400-600W. (Some cards up to DOUBLE that.)

Whereas, most miners prefer highest power-efficiency.

The writing's on the wall, really. If GPU mining were to be banned purely on environmental-impact, then PC Gaming, MUST be banned likewise. Or some aximum power limit imposed on GPU power consumption, such as 110W per card.

So be careful what you wish for, PC Gamers, because a boomerang of un-intended effects CAN happen to you.
 
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ponyo

Lifer
Feb 14, 2002
19,688
2,810
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And environmental impact.
and salty because they missed once in a generation transfer of massive wealth. It's one thing for average Joe who didn't know about bitcoin, ethereum, doge, etc to miss the boat. But people here had easy and numerous chances to get in from the ground floor and knew about cryptos and even had the computers and video cards to easily mine it in the early days for free! Some probably did mine it for free but sold it way too early and are still angry they missed the massive price appreciation.