Yes, I know that it still exist, and yes, decentralized currency which utilizes distributed, cryptographic validation is not actually a strictly bad idea, but…
Is the speculative investment scam, which crypto substantially represented, finally dead? Can we go back to buying gold bars and Pokemon cards?
I feel like it is, but I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen. Maybe crypto scammers moved on to selling LLM “prompts?” Maybe the rug just got pulled enough times that everyone lost trust.
I’m a fan of cryptocurrencies, and I would dearly love for the “speculative investment scam” aspect of it to be dead. It’s been a massive drag on the technology’s reputation for many years, preventing it from being used for all kinds of applications that would really benefit from some form of cryptocurrency integration. Unfortunately even if the “speculative investment scam” aspect dies the bad reputation will linger, so hopefully those applications will find ways to sneak it in where useful without drawing too much attention.
It’s been 13 years and the only applications found have been in fraud.
Over and over, blockchain is a solution to a question nobody asked.
Hey. Biplanes are actually much more relevant in today’s world than crypto. They aren’t common, but there are still new biplanes made because they are a valid solution for certain problems. Unlike blockchain.
It’s nice-to-have if shit really did hit the fan economically and hyper inflation took over. Glad the hype is over though.
I’m not actually interested in the value of the tokens, I only own a few tens of dollars’ worth myself. I’m interested in the application-related aspects of it.
For example, something applicable to the Fediverse that comes to mind is the Ethereum Name System. That’s a blockchain-based mechanism that allows for DNS-like “domain names” to be claimed by users. Something like it could serve as a way of registering a username for the Fediverse and then having it be completely portable between instances without the need to rely on any centralized authentication provider. Since they do cost a small amount of actual money to register they’d make for a good spam prevention method - a regular user only needs to register a name every once in a rare while, but a spammer needs to register a new one each time their existing name gets blocked. It’d get expensive real fast for a spammer.
Unfortunately this adds some complication to the registration process that the Fediverse really can’t afford right now. And worse, it has the dreaded “NFT” label hanging around its neck because technically a username registration is indeed an NFT if you want to categorize it like that. So I can only sigh and watch a perfectly useful technology go unused due to the bad name it’s been given.
Oh well. Someday the usefulness will overcome the perception.
The one SIMPLE trick crypto bros HATE: Blockchain -> “Distributed Ledger” NFT -> “Unique Identifier”
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People already can’t handle signing up for an account. You think having to get a crypto wallet, figure out how to use it, and pay money into it before you can even start actually signing up for a social media account is ever gonna fly? Not in a million years.
NFTs truly are the best imaginable example of a solution in search of a problem.
I explicitly said in my comment:
You don’t appear to have actually read it all the way through, just triggered a standard anti-NFT rant off of the fact that the word “NFT” was present in it. Which is ironically exactly the problem I was complaining about.
Have you heard of hashcash, it’s POW precursor to bitcoin. It stops spam, was originally developed for email but could be incorporated into Lemmy eventually on sign up. Principal is similar to what you suggest.
@Senseibu @FaceDeer POW was one of the biggest issues with crypto in general. Let’s not kill a tree everytime someone wants to sign up
@shipp Ethereum switched to Proof-of-Stake consensus nine months ago, it no longer burns a significant amount of energy to operate. I’m primarily interested in Ethereum because it’s got smart contracts, allowing a huge variety of applications that older, simpler cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin can’t handle.
It’s a small foot print for a real user and expensive for bots who are generating enmasse. It worked on Windows 98 PCs so isn’t really an issue like you describe.
@Senseibu PoW should just be straight up illegal everywhere. It’s a plague on the planet.
Except it’s been around for decades and put to good use but you’ve only heard of it from crypto and are referring to crypto.
Yeah i guess you’re right, a biplane would be pretty useful in that scenario.
Technology rarely advances for reasons that benefit the majority. It advances to make a few people rich, kill people very efficiently, or to increase profit margins on porn sales (see item 1, I guess).
If you think about the really good applications of things like crypto, NFTs, blockchain, etc., you quickly realize that they are things that aren’t marketable or profitable for the entities that would need to implement them. If all the banks and credit companies bought into something like blockchain or NFTs, then transaction fraud and identity theft would disappear overnight… but what would THEY get out of it? The only way it’s ever going to happen is with coordinated government mandates, and nobody running for office has the faintest idea of what crypto tech is other than “dumb way for the nouveau riche to waste their money”
I don’t think transaction fraud or identity theft would disappear overnight, they would just take on different forms.
I think a big part of why cryptocurrencies don’t take off as actual currencies (beyond speculative investors ruining everything), is the fact that there are a lot of clear benefits to a centralized system that blockchains have yet to adequately replace.
Scale. The amount of processing power it would require for all McDonald’s global credit card transactions on a blockchain is many orders of magnitude greater than that of using Visa or Mastercard. Even when you account for proof-of-stake coins like Ethereum.
Reversibility. If I buy something from a stranger on the internet and use my debit or credit card, my bank can issue a chargeback if said stranger tries to screw me over. This is fundamentally impossible on a blockchain without relying on some kind of middleman to hold funds in escrow, at which point you’re basically back to using big centralized banks to do all the heavy lifting.
On top of that, one of the big problems that blockchain solves can be solved through centralized systems as well. The big one that people bring up is credit card fraud, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that credit card fraud is a lot less common outside the US than within. This is because places like the EU have mandated security measures such as chip-and-pin (the US only requires the chip part). Smartphone-based contactless payment systems like Apple Pay also provide effective 2-factor authentication at the point of sale. And while blockchain is theoretically more secure, in practice these mechanisms are “good enough” for everyday use.
How does crypto stop identity theft or transaction fraud? Crypto does nothing for credit, which is basically what identity theft is, and if you’re missing how widely there’s transaction fraud on crypto you haven’t been paying attention.