• who8mydamnoreos@lemmy.world
    1411·
    10 months ago

    I was one of the lucky ones who bought bitcoin so I could buy acid on the internet. Years later I put a down payment on a house with the change that I forgot about. DARE was wrong.

    • nik282000@lemmy.ml
      102·
      10 months ago

      Not like the millions or billions of man hours wasted to make 50-ish removed into defacto-gods.

        • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.mlEnglish
          21·
          10 months ago

          Potentially our future as well considering the carbon and ecological footprint of crypto, both in terms of energy spent mining, and production of single-purpose hardware that can’t really do anything else, rival some medium sized developed countries.

    • parpol@programming.dev
      513·
      10 months ago

      Electricity better spent than what is dimming our night skies with light pollution, IMO, but also proof of stake fixed that.

    • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
      723·
      10 months ago

      The GPU mining got me a free GPU and several hundred dollars, for the cost of about 10 cents per KWh. I’d take that “scam” any day of the week, and so I mined until it was over for GPU mining. No regerts.

      • jaaval@sopuli.xyz
        103·
        10 months ago

        And that money came from someone. You can’t win in crypto unless someone else loses. Typically it’s vulnerable people wishing for a get rich quick hack who lose.

        • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
          36·
          10 months ago

          You probably don’t really know how much of it works. I was paid by a mining pool, for completing blockchain work segments. The mining pool being a for-profit enterprise that pays GPU workers to mine coins that they keep or sell for profit. If you want to extrapolate that to the extent that you imagine I’m harvesting someone else’s wealth, then you’re going to have to warm up for an intense workout of mental gymnastics.

          • jaaval@sopuli.xyz
            32·
            10 months ago

            No, you were given a piece of a worthless token by the mining pool. If you ever want to get anything with that worthless token somebody else has to lose money. That somebody makes the bet that another somebody will be an idiot and lose more money so he can get his back.

            • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              I bought gold with the crypto haha. Mined me up some gold with a computer.

              I’m hoping the gold appreciates in value over time, but I also just wanted to see if I could directly get gold with the crypto and I could.

  • Veraticus@lib.lgbtEnglish
    447·
    10 months ago

    noo you don’t understand it’s going to the moon noooo hodl hodl hodl nooooooooo plz buy my crypto thank you :(

  • foggy@lemmy.world
    35·
    10 months ago

    I have invested a total of $2000 in crypto.

    I took out $2000 when I had like $12000.

    I have no idea how much what is left is now. Probably $500-$700. Definitely less than a months rent.

    Imma let it ride. I have rss feeds that’ll let me know if any of the coins I own spike for some reason. Otherwise, whatever.

    • db2@sopuli.xyz
      81·
      10 months ago

      This is the way to do it. What I’ve got is all profit too, whether that means a million dollars or just one.

    • Sordid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      10 months ago

      I have rss feeds that’ll let me know if any of the coins I own spike for some reason.

      Ooh, that sounds handy! Mind if I ask where those feeds are coming from?

    • Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works
      25·
      10 months ago

      Same. I had the money to spare and the means to mine so why not? We made more doing that than I have in working for the last few years and even if it were gone tomorrow it wouldn’t affect our livelihood. It’s just so nice thing to have when we are old.

  • anakin78z@lemmy.world
    342·
    10 months ago

    I sleep well at night knowing nobody will steal my thing I don’t care about because I don’t own any. I just wanted you all to know that.

  • Nurgle@lemmy.world
    251·
    10 months ago

    Like it was basically just digital gold… which is also a terrible currency in physical form.

    • Rambi@lemm.ee
      184·
      10 months ago

      I mean it is very very useful for specific purposes, like purchasing, uh, certain substances in certain, uh… unregulated online marketplaces.

      As far as being a currency for other purposes goes though, I think it is incredibly unfit for purpose. And as far as being an investment vehicle goes it’s essentially a ponzi scheme.

      • BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tfEnglish
        4·
        10 months ago

        Also the hands down best way to do remittances. No more will WorldRemit steal 15% of my remittance, nor screw me on the exchange rate.

    • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml
      10·
      10 months ago

      Wouldn’t say terrible. Just volatile and with a specific use cas. But incaseyour currency loses value you still have some wealth wich you can use for financial interactions (assuming you still have access to it)

  • daniskarma@lemmy.world
    296·
    10 months ago

    I genuinely tried to look for a legit way to make it an option for paying in a small online store without having to depend on paypal or a bank gateway.

    Well transaction fees for any big coin are like many dollars per transaction. It’s ridiculous. For smaller transaction fees you have to go to smaller coins that can disappear or lose half their value one day to the next.

    And still, if we forget thar people wouls need to pay like a 14€ fee for 1€ transaction. They still have to go to a exange to change their money, and then I have to change it back, because very little things can be bought with crypto, less with cryptos that doesn’t have ridiculous transaction fees.

    Did I mention than transaction are not instantaneous either? Unless you pay big transaction fee or use some obscure coin that no one uses.

    At the end, I ended up with paypal. I really wanted a way to be “independent” of big companies for transaction. But crypto is completely ruined (if it was ever functional that I doubt it). It’s not a coin, they are just speculation and bets. With cybercrime and drug dealing being the only “real” uses it has.

    • deadlyduplicate@lemmy.world
      75·
      10 months ago

      Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum resolve the issue of high transaction fees and still be able to transact in ETH. I get there is hurdles compared with the simplicity of PayPal, but at least some of us prefer decentralized payment options where possible.

    • MashedTech@lemmy.world
      1·
      10 months ago

      I tried to do the same for an online marketplace I wanted to create so I didn’t have to fuck around with the legal stuff and the sellers could do whatever they wanted with the money and have them deal with legal when exchanging the crypto at an exchange. The closest project with some stability and something was the Blockchain Telos with their pinned Telos USD coin. It seemed promising, but I gave up.

    • BobGnarley@lemm.ee
      35·
      10 months ago

      Bitcoin Lightning Network would have solved your fee and speed problem. You can use BTC at many businesses

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
      85·
      10 months ago

      It also helps morons and crooks self-identify.

      I have a friend who bought some eth in like 2015 (or whenever) just to see if he could make money on it. Same guy told me he once bought coke on the darkweb. As far as I know, he only did each of these once to see if they were true.

      I would not associate with anyone who is an active participant in crypto. Much less anyone who owns and hypes NFTs. That’s like telling me you like cops / are pro-life / believe Jesus needs to save me. All of these are signs that we are not compatible.

          • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.netEnglish
            24·
            10 months ago

            Nothing more than it’s widely accepted and that it’s backed by yet another widely accepted from of currency (usually; gold). Some systems don’t back it up, IIRC.

            Because it’s widely accepted, there’s a degree of stability built into it. People generally agree on its value.

            This is all gross-oversimplification, I realize, and I don’t particularly want to get into the weeds on this topic, because it’s only of passing interest to me. Regardless, my points around ‘real’ money being more stable and accepted are valid.

            • Radioactrev@reddthat.com
              4·
              10 months ago

              Nothing more than it’s widely accepted

              Well, what’s wrong with Bitcoiners trying to make their currency widely accepted too?

              that it’s backed by yet another widely accepted from of currency

              So it’s turtles all the way down, is what you’re saying?

              (usually; gold)

              Not the USD, which is the worlds most widely accepted currency.

              This is all gross-oversimplification, I realize, and I don’t particularly want to get into the weeds on this topic, because it’s only of passing interest to me.

              Yes, I agree that this is gross-oversimplification. But if you don’t want to get into the weeds, why make a claim about something you don’t understand and don’t have interest in?

      • imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee
        162·
        10 months ago

        How did you buy drugs online before crypto? I think it’s made it much easier. Also for international transactions of large sums I used to pay fees for services and crypto allows for an easy universal standard with no middle men. Micropayments never caught on, but it would be a nice solution for that as well. This argument that we already have money, we don’t need different money never flew with me. Crypto has its place, it was just abused as an investment commodity way too early and this massive inflation completely suffocated any practical application.

        • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
          5·
          10 months ago

          It’s funny cause crypto can totally be traced, like the whole idea is everyone has a copy of a history of the transactions, although wallets can be effectively anonymous with certain caveats. The idea of providing my address for a shipment was the part that always put me off with darknet. Although knowing how the laws work with how police obtain warrants etc, I didn’t see a huge risk on that front. Also the things I wanted to obtain weren’t necessarily illegal, mostly Shulgin’s compounds, spores, certain species of wood bark, and we already had a huge medical grey market cannabis market. Plain old etransfers were always preferred because under $10k its not a red flag and nothing “illegal” is happening anyway in the supply chain.

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
          99·
          10 months ago

          So the use cases are:

          • Buying illegal shit

          • Scummy crypto exchange as middle men

          • Small payments that never got used

          • Trying to become rich by sitting on money

          The argument is more that we already have better solutions than the one crypto tries to fill. Instead of finding a solution for a problem, crypto tries to find a problem to solve.

          Blockchain may have some use case somewhere, but it is definitely not in money.

          • LegionEris [she/her]@feddit.nl
            82·
            10 months ago

            Buying illegal shit is important. I never would have accomplished the truama recovery I have in the care access desert we lived in without being able to buy psychedelics online. I’m thriving personally because of a few high quality darkweb dealers. I’m great at my job in part because they sent me accurately labeled and carefully grown cannabis when it was illegal, so I was gaining strain knowledge and experience when most of my coworkers were getting the best generic weed they could find in town. If the fascists succeed in making trans care illegal, I’ll use it buy my hormones. It pains me to see the intense turn against crypto, because, used for actual commerce rather than as an investment, it kinda saved me. We never used bitcoin unless we couldn’t help it. I’ve always been angry that using the least energy efficient coin as an investment became the norm. The value of crypto, in my opinion, lies entirely in its prompt and regular use as currency. Hodlers ruined things for everyone.

            • deadlyduplicate@lemmy.world
              2·
              10 months ago

              Yeah crypto critics often gloss over the fact that the war on drugs is an example of repressive government policy and that darknet markets where a lifeline for folks using drugs. As an example, psychedelic have genuine therapeutic uses and on the street level, many “research chemicals” with horrible safety profiles are sold as things like LSD or MDMA.

              With a darknet market you get access to a community that can help vet sellers through forums, comments and rating that help keep users safe.

              Moreover what this shows is crypto can help organizations or people under repressive governments. Another example was a group in Nigeria who was protesting against the police group SARS. The Nigerian government froze their bank accounts but the group was still able to fundraise using BTC.

          • ObiGynKenobi@lemm.ee
            71·
            10 months ago

            Scummy crypto exchange as middle men

            And you think the companies charging exorbitant fees to remit money aren’t scummy? Crypto has its myriad issues, but remittance is one rock-solid example of it disrupting an egregiously predatory industry in a very positive way.

          • imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee
            4·
            10 months ago

            You are just putting a negative spin on things that are not necessarily negative. The last one is not at all specific to crypto.

            Let’s not forget that monitary structures are currently backed by governments, crypto offers a way out of the risks associated with that structure as well. Of course if crypto ever takes off it will end up controlled by corporations which is not inherently better, but at least it offers a choice / way out from governmental whims.

            A lot of technological changes start as things trying to find problems to solve - that’s often how discovery works.

            I don’t share your confidence. Clearly crypto isn’t going to sprout in popularity any time soon, but there aren’t nails in this coffin.

      • parpol@programming.dev
        52·
        10 months ago

        I welcome you to my comment thread where people downvote me for being a living example of where cryptocurrency solves a problem better than anything else.

    • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
      222·
      10 months ago

      the idea was great

      I have questioned this ever since I learned that the more adoption there is, the less efficient mining becomes, ergo more power is wasted accomplishing the exact same task for no extra benefit. Difficulty creates a back asswards system that makes adoption a con.

      • NewDark@unilem.org
        7·
        10 months ago

        Mining is only one strategy for concenous, but yes it is a pretty rudementary and inefficient version.

        • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
          42·
          10 months ago

          Well it’s been over a decade and Bitcoin is still PoW, as well as nearly 50% of the entire crypto market.

            • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
              71·
              10 months ago

              My point is how great can it be if over a decade later the terrible system for mining is still dominant? The more people participating, the worse it gets. We just had texas power companies paying crypto bros to stop mining it’s gotten so bad - and we aren’t even at .01% adoption yet.

              You’re chiming in in a way that ignores nuance and implied meaning. I feel like my intention has been pretty clear but if I need to spell it out so be it.

              • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                1·
                10 months ago

                That’s more a question of being first on the scene and the financial impact if Bitcoin maximalists finally accepted that their blockchain is crap compared to other options, that’s what keeps Bitcoin at the top, not how good or bad it is compared to the tech’s potential…

                And no your intention wasn’t very clear otherwise I wouldn’t have had to reply how I did previously.

          • NewDark@unilem.org
            11·
            10 months ago

            Bitcoin is more religion and cult than anything. Of course they think it’s great or at least able to hand wave criticisms.

            And yeah, consensus is a hard problem to solve for. Many have taken the route of least resistance and implemented what is known to work.

      • AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        10 months ago

        Ethereum doesn’t use mining at all anymore. It can get expensive to use though, which layer 2 chains help with

          • parpol@programming.dev
            22·
            10 months ago

            It allows you to send money overseas very cheap. If you moved to a different country, cryptocurrency saves you a lot of headaches with exchange rates and bank fees.

            It also allows you to lock down money into a program and distribute it systematically without anyone being able to touch it. Think mass donations being automatically distributed to a select number of organizations, but instead of trusting that the fundraiser doesn’t pocket any money for themselves, you make it impossible for them to do so.

            It also doesn’t run as a company so it needs no offices, no employees or bosses, so theoretically it is more cost effective than traditional banking. In a way it is like the fediverse where instead of relying on one big bank service, many people host their own ones, and just like the fediverse, you have some hosts that you can trust and some that you can’t, and while it is more expensive to keep track of multiple instances, that simply is the cost of decentralization.

            You’re not really supposed to earn money with crypto (unless you host a node), just spend it or use as your own private bank.

  • Beowulf@unilem.org
    113·
    10 months ago

    I can understand monero since you can actually use it as a currency on some certain websites, but that’s basically it. I do not care about crypto anymore because of the almost toxic culture it can brew.

    Back when reddit was a thing, I asked how to even start with crypto (what type of wallet, general set up general use etc) and just didn’t even talk about the actual mining (I remember saying something around the lines of “I’m looking to mine because it’s supposed to get extra cold this winter, I do not care about actually getting any crypto” and those dense mfers kept linking a website that calculates how much I would make with the cost of electricity and the efficiently of it all… like… I didn’t even care about making anything, I just didn’t want it going into the ether)

    Anyways that’s my rant

    • infernalaudit@kbin.social
      41·
      10 months ago

      I ran a very small mining operation at home back in the day and it definitely was all about trying to optimize everything.
      Today, I don’t think mining is economically viable without running a data center, but I still mine in the winter and turn my computer into a space heater for my home office. It definitely doesn’t cover the power cost but it does offset a small portion of it.

      Not affiliated in any way but Nicehash is what I use now since it (mostly) runs out of the box with minimal configuration.

      As a side note, don’t mine on laptops - you won’t get enough heat to keep a room warm and you might end up with something failing from overheating.

      • Beowulf@unilem.org
        3·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, I knew it wouldn’t be cost effective since my old rig had an AMD RX580 8gb, but if I could play games and already have a space heater, I may as well mine crypto to heat up the whole house. Nowadays I’m just using Folding@Home during the winter

        • infernalaudit@kbin.social
          2·
          10 months ago

          That makes sense. CPUs and GPUs convert most of their energy use into heat. May as well do something slightly useful with that.
          No idea what the numbers are now, but last winter, I think my 3080Ti cost ~$2/day to run and generated ~$1/day in crypto.

        • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
          1·
          9 months ago

          If you are doing folding@home you can earn !gridcoin@lemmy.ml and Curecoin at the same time for your folding. Helps w the electric bill :). Gridcoin also rewards !boinc@sopuli.xyz so you can do other medical & space research as well if you get bored of folding.