x
This website is using cookies. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. More info. That's Fine
HPC:Factor Logo 
 
Latest Forum Activity

Cryptocurrency?

thcrw739 Page Icon Posted 2021-03-08 1:54 PM
#
Avatar image of thcrw739
H/PC Sensei

Posts:
1,007
Location:
Las Vegas, NV
Status:
I myself just jumped on the train a couple of months ago.....Wish I would have taken the time 10 years ago to understand why magic internet money was worth anything, Instead of just shrugging my shoulders and going about my business with out really digging into it...

I still have a lot to learn but getting there, Anyone else here investing, mining etc ?
 Top of the page
Karpour Page Icon Posted 2021-03-08 3:35 PM
#
Avatar image of Karpour
Subscribers
H/PC Philosopher

Posts:
439
Location:
Austria
Status:
There are huge red flags when it comes to proof-of-work cryptocurrencies

First of all, energy usage

If you look at https://cbeci.org/, you can see that the Bitcoin network is using about as much energy as the entire country of Sweden right now.
Other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Dogecoin use less for the simple fact that the network is not as big (yet)

Energy usage is indirectly tied to transactions, resulting in one Bitcoin transaction using about 650kWh of energy, or about 20-30 days of a typical household's energy usage.

Please read up on it. Mining is done by datacenters on an insane scale, mostly in China, and mostly using non-renewable energy. It's undoing years of effort to reduce energy usage and CO2 emissions just for some volatile play money that isn't viable as a currency.

Secondly, it's a ponzi scheme at it's core

What determines the value of Bitcoin? Supply and demand. There is nothing physical or regulatory that determines the value, it is not really used as a currency, 99% of people buy bitcoin to re-sell it once it rises in value.
This is at its core a Ponzi scheme, and it's foolish to think that Bitcoin will always go up or will eventually plateau and neither rise or fall in value. Its value is determined by hype, and if it's not rising anymore people start panic-selling.

As with any Ponzi scheme, you can make good money with it, same as with Wall Street pump & dump schemes, and if it wasn't for the environmental impact, sure.

Thirdly, it's not viable as a currency
Currently, the Bitcoin network is processing tens of transactions per second, because as time progresses, validating transactions (which is what Bitcoin mining actually is) gets harder.
Usually, financial systems are made to be fast and energy-efficient. Bitcoin is the opposite, making validating transactions as hard as possible where it is barely profitable.
If you scaled up the Bitcoin transaction volume to the entire size of the US, you'd quickly find out it would use more energy than was ever produced on this planet.
Sure, some will say, Ethereum scales the mining difficulty according to transaction volume, but it still means all mining efforts will always run at 100%, no matter what volume, and at a high volume and new investing, the mining effort expands

Bonus: e-waste
Apart from causing a years-long GPU shortage, crypto mining produces an insane amount of e-waste. Mining rigs only stay profitable for a short time because newer hardware that can mine even faster is always around the corner, also hardware is essentially used until it breaks because it's running 24/7 and is of course overclocked.

So yeah, I can't recommend it.
TL;DR: Proof-of-work crypto is an environmental disaster and Ponzi scheme.

Edited by Karpour 2021-03-08 3:36 PM
 Top of the page
C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2021-03-08 4:15 PM
#
Avatar image of C:Amie
Administrator
H/PC Oracle

Posts:
17,955
Location:
United Kingdom
Status:
I'm sceptical, always have been and haven't put any investment into it. It's the generation of value from nothing, based on nothing, backed by nothing running on a human designed, computer system that very soon will get utterly steamrollered by a Qubit processor.

It's like Tesla's share price. A lot of hyper with no underlying value.

The instant that there is a shock to it, it'll devalue faster than the US stock market on COVID-19 and never regain trust.

I had forgotten, until this reminded me that I do actually own 0.00000264 BTC, which I CPU mined some 3 years ago for the experience. I am reliably informed that this is worth £0.10.

From what I understand, BTC is too expensive to become ubiquitous. The transaction costs are too high for it to support things like contactless card payments, so it will have to be wrapped up in Etherium or some other platform that has lower transaction charges. It'll also be mined out by the end of the 2070's, assuming current processing performance improvements.

Of course it would have been great if I had mined that 13 years ago and could now keep HPC:Factor online forever without asking for donations :lol: Alas, I didn't.
 Top of the page
thcrw739 Page Icon Posted 2021-03-08 4:18 PM
#
Avatar image of thcrw739
H/PC Sensei

Posts:
1,007
Location:
Las Vegas, NV
Status:
I chose to invest in proof of stake coins. non minable.. backed by the tech they offer, Other wise its like my country's fiat backed by nothing....I don't have any of the major mining coins..


Just to add, I like playing mmorpgs, and I can't tell you how much money i have wasted in those for a fake economy in a game...So i might as well try this and see if it pans out, its still worth something real world, and perhaps will become tradable for goods like fiat one day like some of the bigger coins have become.


Edited by thcrw739 2021-03-08 4:29 PM
 Top of the page
C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2021-03-08 5:44 PM
#
Avatar image of C:Amie
Administrator
H/PC Oracle

Posts:
17,955
Location:
United Kingdom
Status:
If you have the disposable income, it's like any other investment; part luck, part betting on a horse and part intuition that it can actually succeed. Where I am right now, it's just too ephemeral for my tastes and I'd rather get my main line investment life in order rather than play on the fringes.

I do worry though that once city/national level governments start to get on the bandwagon and invest into it, all of BTC's shortcomings will become irrelevant because institutional investors will now know that BTC will have become too big to be allowed to fail. Right now, no central bank will mourn it if it collapses because of some zero day hash exploit. Once they have a stake in the game however, governments and investment banks will wind up spending our money to prop-up something that should have collapsed like the house of cards that it may well be. That transition is the long-game here for those pushing BTC. Not the coin price.
 Top of the page
thcrw739 Page Icon Posted 2021-03-08 6:29 PM
#
Avatar image of thcrw739
H/PC Sensei

Posts:
1,007
Location:
Las Vegas, NV
Status:
Well there's always stable coin, USDC for instance 1:1 usd, Just incentives on certain exchanges to hold it because they offer much higher interest rate than a bank will give you in a savings account, Again backed by usd.
 Top of the page
C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2021-03-08 6:47 PM
#
Avatar image of C:Amie
Administrator
H/PC Oracle

Posts:
17,955
Location:
United Kingdom
Status:
Never heard of it.


One away Stephen, make it a good one!
 Top of the page
thcrw739 Page Icon Posted 2021-03-08 6:50 PM
#
Avatar image of thcrw739
H/PC Sensei

Posts:
1,007
Location:
Las Vegas, NV
Status:
Quote
C:Amie - 2021-03-08 10:47 AM

Never heard of it.


One away Stephen, make it a good one!



LOL, Decided to make a entirely different topic for that 1000
 Top of the page
Karpour Page Icon Posted 2021-03-08 7:05 PM
#
Avatar image of Karpour
Subscribers
H/PC Philosopher

Posts:
439
Location:
Austria
Status:
Jeez I write up this whole essay about proof-of-work crypto and then it turns out you were into proof-of-stake all along

I didn't look into proof-of-stake much yet, but my current wild ride is Gamestop! Since retail investing became very accessible, I figured that I'd give it a try and invest in some companies I believe in (depending on how Gamestop goes, I'll invest either a lot of just a smaller amount for now )
 Top of the page
roychanyl Page Icon Posted 2021-03-09 1:21 AM
#
Avatar image of roychanyl
Factorite (Senior)

Posts:
86
Location:
Malaysia
Status:
I have been reading about these crytocurrencies (not a LOT) and I couldn't grasp the whole idea behind it. You name it a currency and you do not really use it. Karpour's explanation more or less provided me slightly clearer picture, but still to me it's a blur. Anyways, investments stuff always sound like a foreign language to me.
That part C: Amie mentioned about governments taking up stakes is scary, though. Then again, which part of those decisions made by our Malaysian government aren't scary, like for instance, the East coast rail link (part of the boastful Belt and Road hoohah) which gobbles up 720 billion MYR. Worst when you find that the bank that provided the loan is the construction company itself, which is why 80% of the monies were disbursed even before they completed clearing land for the terminal building. And then, in the name of INVESTMENT, Malaysians would have to bear the consequences up till 2039 (!).
To me, INVESTMENTS is a killer word for embezzling taxdolllars.
 Top of the page
yeek Page Icon Posted 2021-03-09 2:04 AM
#
Avatar image of yeek
Factor Fanatic

Posts:
57
Location:
Scenic New York
Status:
I can see the appeal of crypto, not any specific one exactly, but in general as a means of obscuring who's doing the purchasing/selling. I get that it's become an investment vehicle for a lot of people but to me that's secondary (and questionable for the reasons others have mentioned). At the end of the day it's really just looking like all the obscurity of cash with the convenience of digital transactions. If you're not looking for anonymity I don't see the appeal of actually using it. Even then it seems like a bad idea to rely on the exchanges, I mean Bithumb, Mt. Gox, BitGo, Coincheck, and those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. Doesn't exactly build confidence. I think we'll only see more and more hacks too. Considering the user base it seems obvious that there are going to be more hacks in the future.
 Top of the page
Jump to forum:
Seconds to generate: 0.191 - Cached queries : 65 - Executed queries : 12