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Cryptocurrency Thread

Started by QDRPHNC, February 04, 2021, 12:17:46 AM

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Video Game Fan 2000

Quote from: Zetetic on April 20, 2021, 05:33:20 PM
And, importantly, this - here and now, in reality - ended the growth of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Not, on a sufficiently narrow view, slowed it, but ended it. Not "we can imagine a scenario that might end it"[nb]I mean the scenario of "something less terrible replaces Bitcoin" seems fairly inevitable but that seems a different discussion.[/nb], but has ended it.

That's very good.

People only mine bitcoin when its profitable to do so. There's this image of Bitcoin and Ethereum as autonomously growing "hungry mouths" for energy that take whatever is there, regardless of how profitable it is for people to be doing that.

This is clearly false. The value is as much generated by the intensity of the competition for blocks as it is by the energy consumed in order to mine them. You only have to look at the mining and price during China's cold season to see that people do stop mining when it ceases to be profitable for them to do so.

Every non-PoW chain that people place value into is value taken away from energy intensive chains. And vice versa. This has happened on a small and medium scale already. If it happened on a large enough scale, it would stop the annual growth. You sound a bit silly dismissing this just because it didn't totally halt Bitcoin's year-by-year growth in energy consumption. That's like dismissing cycling and trains because they haven't totally replaced cars yet.

Its absolutely not seperable from the inevitabilty of a 'less terrible' Bitcoin - eventually Bitcoin's parabolic growth will hit a ceiling, where maintaining its dominance will be so prohibitively expensive only the wealthiest backers will fund it. This is why fatalism about alternative coins and chains that already exist is probably a bad thing overall - the huge amount of cash being spent to push Bitcoins value high enough to justify the mining will soon have to be spent just maintain its relative dominance. At that point, I'd want it (and Ethereum, even a PoS ethereum) to be as weak as possible.

Zetetic

None of this has anything to do with the claim that speculation and the ongoing growth of Bitcoin and Ethereum can (and indeed currently do) co-exist.


Video Game Fan 2000

Speculation reduces the dominance of Bitcoin and Ethereum, driving competition away towards alternatives - many, but not nearly enough, being non-PoW - and incentivising the development of 'less terrible' (or actively good) alternatives.

I don't know what you want me to say? Pretend that isn't true just to humour you?

Zetetic

Quote from: Video Game Fan 2000 on April 20, 2021, 05:38:55 PM
You sound a bit silly dismissing this just because it didn't totally halt Bitcoin's year-by-year growth in energy consumption.
The extent to which I'm "dismissing" it, is almost entirely with respect to that point!

Video Game Fan 2000

What makes you so sure the effect would last year or this year, rather than over the next five years? People were making the same argument about Ethereum "if it was going to take 50% of bitcoin's dominance it already would have" - but that took three years.

"if it was going to do it, it already would have" is a bad argument about networks which take five to ten years to grow to the point that they have consistent user bases.

I highly doubt it, but the Bitcoin-Killer could already be around and people might already be trading it as a shitcoin.

Zetetic

I think you keep imagining that I've said things that I haven't.


Video Game Fan 2000

Maybe. I'm just not sure that you understand that Bitcoin's dominance has already dropped by over half and some of that has absolutely gone into speculative, non-PoW tokens and chains. Every % that goes into a non PoW chain has a negative impact on the demand for energy.

So this statement
QuoteThe speculation market isn't doing anything to undermine the extent to which Bitcoin and Ethereum are soaking up resources (and embedding themselves in other projects) though, which is the point.
is wrong.

I bolded the important part where I think we were talking past each other.

Zetetic

I grant that's a wider claim than my original one.

I guess I do still wonder about the immediate effects of specific instances of speculation in favour of a different currency (which, yes, generally transfers value from Bitcoin elsewhere and therefore reduces demand for mining) versus the wider effects of speculation attracting more cash into digital currencies overall (including Bitcoin).

(But this is a broader thing than "both these things have continued to exist".)

Video Game Fan 2000

Quote from: Zetetic on April 20, 2021, 06:01:08 PM
the wider effects of speculation attracting more cash into digital currencies overall (including Bitcoin).

This process ultimately reduces bitcoin's dominance. The question is whether this cash is going into opensource projects that try to solve the problems of Bitcoins, or just support the growth of huge chains that already have institutional or billionaire backing.

When people were buying ethereum in a frenzy it was driving Bitcoin's price up, but the dominance was going down and therefore bitcoin was less relatively attractive for miners to spend energy on and for developers to spend their labour on even if the overall energy use went up. This lock-step can't go on forever, however, as there will come a point where money flowing into Bitcoin towards other Cryptocurrencies will be enough to reduce its relative dominance but not enough to push the price of each mined block or the value of fees higher. It will take a vast amount of both real world use and speculation to maintain just to maintain demand for blocks.

There's also the fact that in recent years, you needed to buy ethereum or bitcoin in order to trade into a speculative coin. That is less and less true all the time. Transfering them is already prohibitively expensive. Could speculation eventually decouple from the biggest chains? Absolutely it could. Wouldn't bet on it, though I'm not as fatalistic as some.


Zetetic

Quote from: Video Game Fan 2000 on April 20, 2021, 06:05:14 PM
This process ultimately reduces bitcoin's dominance.
In terms of overall value within the cryptocurrency market, sure. But that's not the same as its growth - as we've seen.

But since Bitcoin seems fundamentally doomed by its own design - and I don't think we're terribly far apart on that point? - I'm not sure how much credit to give the process that happens to ultimately an select an alternative less terrible cryptocurrency (or a few).

Not forgetting that, in the meantime, in reality, Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to grow.

I appreciate that to an extent there's a meaningless counterfactual involved in quibbling about the overall effect of speculation, given the circularities involved between Bitcoin's value, the existence of a cryptocurrency market to speculate in and that speculation.

Video Game Fan 2000

#610
Quote from: Zetetic on April 20, 2021, 06:11:59 PM
In terms of overall value within the cryptocurrency market, sure. But that's not the same as its growth - as we've seen.

It is and it isn't. The market isn't just full of speculative shitcoins and valueless tokens, there are plenty of chains out there that are being used and do have a reason to exist independently from Bitcoin - so their impact on Bitcoin's dominance of capitalisation is an impact on otherall growth. However, they're a small minority and usually not the ones that attract meme-y investers. Useless Doge being the coin of the day tells you a lot.

Quote
But since Bitcoin seems fundamentally doomed by its own design - and I don't think we're terribly far apart on that point? - I'm not sure how much credit to give the process that happens to select an alternative less terrible cryptocurrency.

Def

Quote
I appreciate that to an extent there's a meaningless counterfactual involved in quibbling about the overall effect of speculation, given the circularities involved between Bitcoin's value, the existence of a cryptocurrency market to speculate in and that speculation.

The thing is that speculation doesn't always exist a total vaccuum where people taking tokens out of circulation to HODL is the only possible value driver. If speculative value flows into a project that intends to be open source, energy efficient and economically fair then that money in part goes towards people who then can be paid for their work on that kind of project and establish a community that cares about this - that isn't contributing to the growth of Bitcoin, its doing the opposite over the long term. I'm not a libertarian or an AnCap weirdo in the least- I recognise the enormous flaws in this kind of thinking. But it has to be said that this kind of thing is a greater and greater part of the cryptocurrency world and as the years go on it does have a definite impact on the year-on-year growth of Eth and Btc and their negative effects - which are mainly energy consumption, but I can't not mention how shite their economic models are or how scary ethereum's particular brand of 'smart contracts' are for world thats privatisation crazy.

I'd much rather 'normies' dabble and get to know the ins and outs, than Bitcoin and Ethereum just steamroll everything until they hit their parabolas and bubbles start to pop. If there are decent alternatives already out there, this is how to get them in the game (which isn't to say i'm valorising pumping coins just cos they're not bitcoin). I don't see how things that weaken Bitcoin and Ethereum can be bad even if they're only weakening them relatively.

Video Game Fan 2000

I think where I disagree is that you're talking as if "the cryptocurrency market" is a thing inextricable from Bitcoin and its growth directly drives Bitcoin fuel consumption.

This might have been more true four or five years ago but it is less true all the time. Just looking at the charts, Cardano (a PoS chain) hovers between 0.5% and 3% of the total market which is huge - and more or less independent from bitcoin at this point. If Ethereum goes PoS by the end of the year then half the entire market will no longer be involved in Bitcoin's PoW/Fee circuit.

So, yeah. Historically speculative markets have dented Bitcoins fuel hunger, just not substantially enough to halt year-on-year growth.


Noodle Lizard

Loved this bit of a Bloomberg reporter trying to do serious reporting about the DOGE whilst playing VT of all these ridiculous memes in the background. The world's a bit of a joke.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-04-20/dogecoin-s-400-rally-puts-valuation-in-blue-chip-territory-video

peanutbutter

Quote from: Video Game Fan 2000 on April 20, 2021, 06:32:32 PM
So, yeah. Historically speculative markets have dented Bitcoins fuel hunger, just not substantially enough to halt year-on-year growth.
Have they? I'd've thought it was largely more people were priced outta being able to mine bitcoin so by going for alternatives it's not necessarily right to assume that they would've mined bitcoin if these alternatives didn't exist.

Video Game Fan 2000

I think people being "priced out" is sign of Bitcoins limitation and perhaps successful competitors (and I think where I agree with Zetetic about it being 'doomed' - although I don't think its 'doomed' exactly, more like fatally flawed)

In the original whitepaper, the plan was that bitcoin would be universally accessible through CPU mining, so anyone would mine with their computer as the price went up the value of bitcoin would mean there was always an incentive to mine as an individual. GPU mining ended that and its definitely a bug rather than a feature of Bitcoin's design.

If people get priced out of GPU mining and go for other options, making tokens on those chains more desirable, its definitely slowing bitcoin's growth. Whether slowing the rate of growth can slow the overall growth itself is the question. But Bitcoin can't grow forever.  People do actually use the alternatives.

Noodle Lizard

Now Ethereum and Bitcoin are bouncing back while the DOGE suffers. And on Hitler's birthday as well!

oy vey

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on April 20, 2021, 07:00:30 PM
Loved this bit of a Bloomberg reporter trying to do serious reporting about the DOGE whilst playing VT of all these ridiculous memes in the background. The world's a bit of a joke.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-04-20/dogecoin-s-400-rally-puts-valuation-in-blue-chip-territory-video

That's first class. They handle it well the stuffy gits.

daimoniac

coinbase finally verified my account after i ended up kicking off with them big style over a supprt email. so i've pulled out of lumens and turfed the cash from that into enjin and more Algorand. both seem to be doing ok - no big gains but no losses either. plus i keep getting algorand in rewards from them.

the long game here is to quietly fulfil my childhod dream of being both a clumsy bastard and supervillain. i'm sticking with the algorand because of it being what the "SOV" thing that the marshall islands are supposedly working with is going to be based on. hopefully as this sits in my wallets it'll keep doing ok, and then when i pull out of it and demand the cash i'll end up wither owning an island or causing a civil war. happy enough with either to be honest.

BAND protocol appears to be bouncing back up a little bit. fingers crossed that will continue.

with all of this stuff about NFTs, what coins/chains/platforms are these things based on? might want a bit of that action


Harry Badger

Holy moly, Bitcoin's done another tankdozy.

ZoyzaSorris

Lost 12.5% of my pork-folio overnight ! Can't be bothered to do much about it though

colacentral

Combination of that cunt Elon Musk pumping doge, which took the momentum out of everything else; then that inevitably sinking back and causing further disruption; the blackout in China; the dodgy stuff going on with that Turkish exchange; and then Biden's capital gains tax announcement.

oy vey

Brown trousers, eh lads?

It'll bounce I expect...

I sold half my ETH yesterday before the dip (but not quite at the top either). I took the profits but put the capital straight back into ADA. Oops.

Ferris

I'm now only up 20% in 3 months. This is unacceptable.

katzenjammer

Quote from: oy vey on April 23, 2021, 12:40:58 PM
Brown trousers, eh lads?


Wish I hadn't remortgaged my house now

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Ether still doing relatively well and looks, albeit early days, like Bitcoin is already stabilising. Long term investors will probably be sat tight. Current position is still ludicrously fantastic for anyone who got in before Christmas and absolutely fine for anyone after that.

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on April 23, 2021, 01:29:19 PM
Ether still doing relatively well

$ETH reached a substantial all time high yesterday before the drop.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I checked all my trades, every single one since February, and there wasn't one where I wouldn't have made more by holding.