Why does the left hate crypto so much?

forclosure

Well-known member
Well 'they' can bum off.
that's the thing they won't, none of these people ever leave or just gently fade away because there's always a new oppertunity for them to get their ideas out there and profit off of it (and this is what created a culture where people who were effectily terrible at their jobs get rewarded)

tech is one example but especially now it's all over politics
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
nothing "left" about these people though i would say?
No no, you misunderstand me. I'm not saying that - I'm saying you don't have to be a committed socialist to find the idea horrific.

It's obviously a terrible idea in and of itself, but I'm probably even more hostile to it as a result of watching that Line Goes Up video the other day.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
i feel like i might be out of my depth but isn't "real" money like my bank balance imaginary too? ie based on trust? don't they call it fiat currency and should i invest in real monkeys?
Yeah probably. But some money is more imaginary than others. Currency backed by a central bank doesn't (generally) evaporate overnight.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Eg

Brazilian hyperinflation lasted from 1985 (the year when the military dictatorship ended) to 1994, with prices rising by 184,901,570,954.39% (or 1.849×1011 percent) in that time[31] due to the uncontrolled printing of money. There were many economic plans that tried to contain hyperinflation including zeroes cuts, price freezes and even confiscation of bank accounts.[32]

The highest value was in March 1990, when the government inflation index reached 82.39%. Hyperinflation ended in July 1994 with the Real Plan during the government of Itamar Franco.[33] During the period of inflation Brazil adopted a total of six different currencies, as the government constantly changed due to rapid devaluation and increase in the number of zeros.

But I do agree that some imaginary things are more imaginary than others
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well yes, obviously - that's why I added the (generally). But that was caused by specific external events and not simply over-speculation and the inherent volatility of the currency.

I mean, dollars, pounds, yen and euros go up and down against each other, a bit, but they seem significantly more stable than some bad cartoon drawings of an ape. Of course, the instability is precisely the attraction - when it's unstable in an upwards direction.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Between the end of 1945 and July 1946, Hungary went through the highest inflation ever recorded. In 1944, the highest banknote value was 1,000 pengő. By the end of 1945, it was 10,000,000 pengő, and the highest value in mid-1946 was 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1020) pengő. A special currency, the adópengő (or tax pengő) was created for tax and postal payments.[43] The inflation was such that the value of the adópengő was adjusted each day by radio announcement. On 1 January 1946, one adópengő equaled one pengő, but by late July, one adópengő equaled 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 2×1021 (2 sextillion) pengő.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Well yes, obviously - that's why I added the (generally). But that was caused by specific external events and not simply over-speculation and the inherent volatility of the currency.

I mean, dollars, pounds, yen and euros go up and down against each other, a bit, but they seem significantly more stable than some bad cartoon drawings of an ape. Of course, the instability is precisely the attraction - when it's unstable in an upwards direction.
Yeah, I just find these things quite fascinating, how did people manage? They always do though.
 

william_kent

Well-known member
Dear U.S. Congressional Leadership, Committee Chairs and Ranking Members,

We are 1500 computer scientists, software engineers, and technologists who have spent decades working in these fields producing innovative and effective products for a variety of applications in the fields of database technology, open-source software, cryptography, and financial technology applications.

Today, we write to you urging you to take a critical, skeptical approach toward industry claims that crypto-assets (sometimes called cryptocurrencies, crypto tokens, or web3) are an innovative technology that is unreservedly good. We urge you to resist pressure from digital asset industry financiers, lobbyists, and boosters to create a regulatory safe haven for these risky, flawed, and unproven digital financial instruments and to instead take an approach that protects the public interest and ensures technology is deployed in genuine service to the needs of ordinary citizens.

We strongly disagree with the narrative — peddled by those with a financial stake in the crypto-asset industry — that these technologies represent a positive financial innovation and are in any way suited to solving the financial problems facing ordinary Americans.

Not all innovation is unqualifiedly good; not everything that we can build should be built. The history of technology is full of dead ends, false starts, and wrong turns. Append-only digital ledgers are not a new innovation. They have been known and used since 1980 for rather limited functions.

By its very design, blockchain technology, specifically so-called "public blockchains", are poorly suited for just about every purpose currently touted as a present or potential source of public benefit.

from Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

signed by 1500 tech types so far...
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
from Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

signed by 1500 tech types so far...
I've actually written up a draft for a response letter to this, for the incipient Lobby3 DeSci Coalition (Decentralized Science). We'd basically be agreeing that the space is filled with predatory and ersatz enterprises, but that non-speculative (IE not just purely speculative investment) applications of the tech shouldn't be overlooked. Check out Molecule, a sort of crowdfunding for research projects. Also there are experiments with decentralizing the peer review process.


 

toko

Well-known member
from Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

signed by 1500 tech types so far...
the letter is laughable. what's most striking is that it paints with such a broad brush. it doesn't contain a modicum of nuance. probably because it adopts the naive view that technology has an overwhelming causal role in determining social outcomes. once you take this view, you lose nuance, some given technology is either good or bad. ofc the reality is that outcomes from technologies are determined both by its design structure/limitations and its milieu. this is why regulation via democratic process is good. it asserts political agency over how a technology is employed. we *should* think critically and carefully about technologies, not dismiss them outright like the letter does or adopt them uncritically like we have done in the past. Luddites are wrong not because technology is good or bad but because technology is only conditionally either. only the first part of the letter is fair everything else is hot garbage and techno-determinism. jared diamond can smd.


Dear U.S. Congressional Leadership, Committee Chairs and Ranking Members,

We are 1500 computer scientists, software engineers, and technologists who have spent decades working in these fields producing innovative and effective products for a variety of applications in the fields of database technology, open-source software, cryptography, and financial technology applications.

Today, we write to you urging you to take a critical, skeptical approach toward industry claims that crypto-assets (sometimes called cryptocurrencies, crypto tokens, or web3) are an innovative technology that is unreservedly good. We urge you to resist pressure from digital asset industry financiers, lobbyists, and boosters to create a regulatory safe haven for these risky, flawed, and unproven digital financial instruments and to instead take an approach that protects the public interest and ensures technology is deployed in genuine service to the needs of ordinary citizens.

unironically fair. but ofc would love if we took this approach to just about everything else.


As software engineers and technologists with deep expertise in our fields, we dispute the claims made in recent years about the novelty and potential of blockchain technology. Blockchain technology cannot, and will not, have transaction reversal mechanisms because they are antithetical to its base design. Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers. Financial technologies that serve the public must always have mechanisms for fraud mitigation and allow a human-in-the-loop to reverse transactions; blockchain permits neither.
Ah yes this makes perfect logical sense. Like did the signers even read what they were signing?
Public blockchains are bad because privacy, but privacy-focused blockchains are also bad because "money-launderers." Human-in-the-loop *can* be added if you want. There's no design constraint that says you can't have traditional credit card fraud prevention with public blockchain settlement t after tx was first submitted to credit card company. Plenty of centralized/decentralized finance company exist. Just outright false that blockchain permits does not permit either. Fraud and crime arguments are the worst arguments against crypto never understood why they always lead with it.

By its very design, blockchain technology, specifically so-called "public blockchains", are poorly suited for just about every purpose currently touted as a present or potential source of public benefit. From its inception, this technology has been a solution in search of a problem and has now latched onto concepts such as financial inclusion and data transparency to justify its existence, despite far better solutions already in use. After more than thirteen years of development, it has severe limitations and design flaws that preclude almost all applications that deal with public customer data and regulated financial transactions and are not an improvement on existing non-blockchain solutions.
just because you don't understand the problem it is trying to solve doesn't mean there isn't one. fucking retards its in the first line of the bitcoin whitepaper. you can argue that its problem that its trying to solve is not significant but saying there isn't a problem that it solves is stupid.

Screen Shot 2022-06-07 at 1.21.29 PM.png
Finally, blockchain technologies facilitate few, if any, real-economy uses. On the other hand, the underlying crypto-assets have been the vehicle for unsound and highly volatile speculative investment schemes that are being actively promoted to retail investors who may be unable to understand their nature and risk.
fair.
Other significant externalities include threats to national security through money laundering and ransomware attacks, financial stability risks from high price volatility, speculation and susceptibility to run risk, massive climate emissions from the proof-of-work technology utilized by some of the most widely traded crypto-assets, and investor risk from large scale scams and other criminal financial activity.

lmao. won't even bother with this.

We implore you to take a truly responsible approach to technological innovation and ensure that individuals in the US and elsewhere are not left vulnerable to predatory finance, fraud, and systemic economic risks in the name of technological potential which does not exist.

The catastrophes and externalities related to blockchain technologies and crypto-asset investments are neither isolated nor are they growing pains of a nascent technology. They are the inevitable outcomes of a technology that is not built for purpose and will remain forever unsuitable as a foundation for large-scale economic activity.
yes because we can't possibly be wrong. again pure and naive techno-determinism. political and social outcomes of technology use are determined as much by their social-economic context in which they are used as much as the technology itself.

Given these vast externalities, together with the-at best still-ambiguous and at worst non-existent-uses of blockchain, we recommend that the Committee look beyond the hype and bluster of the crypto industry and understand not only its inherent flaws and extraordinary defects but also the litany of technological fallacies it is built upon.We need to act now to protect investors and the global financial marketplace from the severe risks posed by crypto-assets and must not be distracted by technical obfuscations which mask an abject lack of technological utility. We thank you for your leadership on financial technology and regulation and urge you to consider our objective and independent expert judgments to guide your legislative priorities, which we remain happy to discuss anytime.

seriously who wrote this lol.
 
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