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this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Exactly. I think lemmy is flawed, but it's a lot more exciting than the status quo, so I try to help out. Right to repair isn't Internet specific, but it'll likely have an ripple effect as people decide to take back ownership of their devices and data. Cryptocurrency is a ponzy scheme, but the idea of a decentralized service as important as a currency is exciting, especially for the ripple effect it's likely to cause (e.g. we could use similar tech to decentralize lemmy).
There's a lot of exciting stuff if you know where to look.
Do you think it was invented as a Ponzi scheme, or has that just become the perception based off the massive initial growth in value? I think that the goal was always for the eventual stabilization of the currency, which of course means that mining becomes less and less profitable. It needs to eventually hit a point where mining produces no new coins for the currency to hit stability. But then idk why anyone would run the servers required for verification. At that point the verification becomes massively power intensive. So maybe it was always a Ponzi scheme? I'm no crypto expert, so I don't really know.
It was corrupted in much the same way the stock market was corrupted. That whole thing is mostly speculative gambling now, when it was supposed to about profit sharing with companies that were either sound investments currently with steady profits or up-and-coming companies that had potential. Now it's just casino gambling betting on prices that are completely divorced from reality that expects infinite growth of made up value.
Go read a bit of Satoshi's white paper on Bitcoin. It was created in response to the banking industry as a way for individuals to securely own digital currency without a centralized institution.
I have. I know the stated goal. The question is do you think that was the actual intent, or was it always intended as an elaborate ponzi scheme? I think it has more or less lived up to its stated goal, but as a currency. People think it's a Ponzi scheme because it's treated as an investment. From that perspective I can see why they think that and I wonder if they think that's what it was originally created for.
If it was a Ponzi scheme from the get go he would have cashed out his billions by now.
No, it just didn't get traction for actual transactions fast enough and it just became a target for speculation. That's a positive feedback loop where volatility discourages use as a currency while encouraging speculation.
I think what we need is to establish an independent digital currency first, and then decentralize it. For example, GNU Taler, and then build out the infrastructure and a cryptocurrency could then be phased in. Once the mass market uses digital payments outside the banking network regularly, they'll be ready to adopt something like BitCoin for international use.