Small rant re: Linus vs NFT's

[CerealExperimentsLain]

6 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

1. Rent out your rare items - or games themselves

 

Wow, renting out your games?  Something we've never been able to do before.  ...Owait...

 

[Giganthrax]

As far as I can tell, Being the owner of a NFT is like having a golddigger wife that gets railed by everyone, and thinking yourself lucky because you have the marriage certificate.

 

Seriously though, I'm pretty sure NFTs are a form money laundering, or just people looking to get some money off of a fad before the sheep wake up. The only thing that surprises me is that huge corporations like Twitter seem to think NFTs are legit. I wonder what their endgame is. 

[Heliian]

2 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

I wonder what their endgame is.

Haha, same as always, bleeding the customer dry.  They dgaf. 

[Mark Kaine]

19 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

But talking so negatively about the NFT ecosystem as a whole is short-sighted.

i would say the opposite, thinking crypto as a whole is anything remotely positive is extremely short-sighted.

 

And NFTs, are so far, the thing that exposes the absurdity of "crypto" the most, so expect more negativity, and indeed resistance in the future, i would think.

 

19 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

Very big industry names talked about here daily are behind some of it.

As long they can profit from it surely, but you know that VALVE is actively fighting against the right to resell games, dont you, so how would "NFTs" change this? Actually i agree its one of very few use cases where it would maybe make sense, but VALVE and publishers would still lose their "cut" so why the hell would  they "encourage" something that they're actively fighting against?

 

Im not saying crypto couldn't be used in a sensible way (in the far future), but whats happening currently, that any Joe Shmoe can use it to make money out of thin air (or rather co2 *cough*) might as well taint that idea forever.

 

[mr moose]

On 1/27/2022 at 8:36 AM, CryptOGamers said:

Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft.

 

Because due to copy right law this is illegal. It doesn't matter how you prove ownership.  If you want to rent out a product that has copyrighted content (anything from music/movie to video games) you have to buy a special license from the CR owner. 

 

 

To the rest of your post, I don't think Crypto/blockchain or NFT actually offer anything serious that we don't already have.   If you have a receipt for the transfer of money and you have a receipt for the actual sale then you have proof of ownership.     Blockchain simply removes the ability to forge ownership documents for digital assets (for now).  But honestly who cares about digital assets that aren't movies/music and games?

[Sauron]

On 1/26/2022 at 10:36 PM, CryptOGamers said:

Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers

Can already be done without crypto, if it's not implemented in a game it's because the developer doesn't want it done.

On 1/26/2022 at 10:36 PM, CryptOGamers said:

Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.

Easy my butt, games have completely different mechanics and in-game currencies, this idea is just stupid. Even if it weren't stupid, it could theoretically be done without NFTs.

On 1/26/2022 at 10:36 PM, CryptOGamers said:

Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft. You have 500 games in your digital library? Why not let it work for you when you're not using them. 100% possible.

NFTs are stolen all the time because once you give the go-ahead to a transaction there's nothing you can do to revert it. It's perfectly possible to do this without NFTs and if anything NFTs make it harder and more expensive. I don't see why you'd do it though, since renting out games from your library seems like such a lame way of making money - consider that you can just buy most games for less than 30 bucks a few months from release and buy them new for 60.

On 1/26/2022 at 10:36 PM, CryptOGamers said:

Modders could create content (e.g. a dungeon) and get rewarded by players who interact with their content

This is paid mods, it has been tried (showing it can be easily done without NFTs) but was instantly rejected by the community because it's garbage. There are better ways you can contribute money to modders.

On 1/26/2022 at 10:36 PM, CryptOGamers said:

even without the players paying for it themselves. (e.g. if the game has a tradable & valued currency, a portion of the found loot goes to the modder)

This is self contradictory, if the money is going to the modder rather than the player then the player is paying for it. Also... who would decide how much goes to whom?

 

All of the "use cases" for NFTs you people always bring up are often pointless and can be done without NFTs. There is a reason it's almost exclusively used for ugly computer generated ape pictures - it's completely useless for anything that isn't raw speculation on tokens with no intrinsic value.

[lewdicrous]

20 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

As far as I can tell, Being the owner of a NFT is like having a golddigger wife that gets railed by everyone, and thinking yourself lucky because you have the marriage certificate.

Never seen it described this way, but it fits so well.

20 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

Seriously though, I'm pretty sure NFTs are a form money laundering, or just people looking to get some money off of a fad before the sheep wake up. The only thing that surprises me is that huge corporations like Twitter seem to think NFTs are legit. I wonder what their endgame is. 

Will probably go the way of the dodo, like some of the other features that they added, then removed shortly thereafter.

Fleets, for example. I think that only lasted a year or so before being banished.

[Sauron]

59 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Blockchain simply removes the ability to forge ownership documents for digital assets (for now).

As far as I know the blockchain holds no legal weight so you can't even use it to meaningfully prove ownership. All that it guarantees is that in that specific copy of the blockchain no transactions were added without following the blockchain's rules. You can still fork that blockchain indefinitely so it all comes down to which "authority" you trust to have the "real" version.

[COAGULOPATH]

Quote

Talking about what NFTs could be used for isn't particularly compelling when they aren't used for that

Something to remember where cryptocurrencies are concerned: "could" or "might" is just marketer-speak for "doesn't".

 

Quote

As far as I know the blockchain holds no legal weight so you can't even use it to meaningfully prove ownership.

That's right, unless there is a contract saying otherwise.

 

And if there's a contract, the NFT becomes pointless. You might as well scribble "I, [person1], confer ownership of [picture] to [person2] on [date]" on toilet paper, get it signed by both parties, and save the ETH fees.

 

No point to having a decentralized smart contract system if you're relying on the government to enforce it.

[darknessblade]

On 1/26/2022 at 10:59 PM, Kilrah said:

Most people who are against NFTs are against crypto in general...

Crypto enthusiasts have for about a decade been saying "yeah the current popular thing is not great, but the tech is capable of much better stuff!"... but they still haven't shown an example of that yet.

 

None of these require NFTs, blockchain or crypto. 

Blockchain is just a storage/database medium like any other except for the location it's stored at and how terribly inefficient it is, anything done with it could be done with any standard database, usually better. 

 

The reason these things don't exist isn't that the tech needed to make it doesn't exist, it's because the market actors involved aren't interested in making it happen, or at least not enough to put the effort in.

If they end up doing it with NFTs it'll just be because they see an opportunity to cash in on the artificially-generated hype, not because the tech is the miracle that was needed to make it happen i.e. again the quick buck.

 

Dropping that here is now inevitable for everyone's information too:

 

It's long but detailed and worth watching for someone really interested in the whole crypto topic.

Watched the vid at 2x speed. just to look for a certain thing:

-TAXES

Sadly could not find how the IRS would hunt down "american" NFT owners, and force them to pay millions of USD in taxes for the Cryptocoins they own/convert to actual money

[ADarkBard]

To me this seems all pointless. All the crypo technology does is feedback on itself to maintain the integrity of the money tied up in crypto. I seems like a huge circle jerk to me. When you think of what all that computing power could be put to use for, it just is so wasteful. Call me old fashioned but I don't see much of a future here.

[Beerzerker]

11 hours ago, darknessblade said:

Watched the vid at 2x speed. just to look for a certain thing:

-TAXES

Sadly could not find how the IRS would hunt down "american" NFT owners, and force them to pay millions of USD in taxes for the Cryptocoins they own/convert to actual money

You won't know about that until they actually have the way to.... And then it's already too late.
Was proposed recently to bring ALL banks in the US in under the Treasury Dept's oversight making your records instantly available to them since your bank will no longer be "Independent".
With alot of other things I knew about when it first appeared crypto was a bad thing and moving us towards a cashless society which is not the utopia you may think it is.
China has already setup their verson of it, complete with rewards for being a good little commie or penalties if you defy or just don't tow the party line.

45 minutes ago, ADarkBard said:

To me this seems all pointless. All the crypo technology does is feedback on itself to maintain the integrity of the money tied up in crypto. I seems like a huge circle jerk to me. When you think of what all that computing power could be put to use for, it just is so wasteful. Call me old fashioned but I don't see much of a future here.

Crypto currency to me is worthless - If you can't literally place it in my hand it's 100% bullshit to me.
I mean let the web go down, the power go out...... And then need to buy something, then you'll see exactly HOW valuable crypto isn't.

[Giganthrax]

11 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

Crypto currency to me is worthless - If you can't literally place it in my hand it's 100% bullshit to me.
I mean let the web go down, the power go out...... And then need to buy something, then you'll see exactly HOW valuable crypto isn't.

Even after all these years, I still have no idea what's actually the purpose of cryptocurrency for the average person. Like, why would I ever use a cryptocurrency instead of regular money? It just seems to me like a way for criminals to secretly exchange money. 

 

It's also completely baffling to me how any system where people are literally "mining" cash, ie. just pulling money out of their asses, can be sustainable or lead to anything good in the long run. A cryptominer contributes nothing - no service or product that may be beneficial to someone else - yet at the same time expends large amounts of energy by running mining rigs.

[Error 52]

47 minutes ago, Giganthrax said:

Even after all these years, I still have no idea what's actually the purpose of cryptocurrency for the average person. Like, why would I ever use a cryptocurrency instead of regular money? It just seems to me like a way for criminals to secretly exchange money. 

 

It's also completely baffling to me how any system where people are literally "mining" cash, ie. just pulling money out of their asses, can be sustainable or lead to anything good in the long run. A cryptominer contributes nothing - no service or product that may be beneficial to someone else - yet at the same time expends large amounts of energy by running mining rigs.

Truthfully, there is actually something to be said for the idea of a decentralized currency free of governments, especially if you happen to be living in a fascist one. The execution, however, is...lacking, to say the least.

[tikker]

12 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

Crypto currency to me is worthless - If you can't literally place it in my hand it's 100% bullshit to me.
I mean let the web go down, the power go out...... And then need to buy something, then you'll see exactly HOW valuable crypto isn't.

How much cash do you have on hand? While I understand your point, good luck with your traditional system when the web goes down and the power goes out, any card payment method, automated digital paychecks, all the money you "have" in the bank are all gone as well, unless you keep everything in cash under your bed.

33 minutes ago, Giganthrax said:

Even after all these years, I still have no idea what's actually the purpose of cryptocurrency for the average person. Like, why would I ever use a cryptocurrency instead of regular money? It just seems to me like a way for criminals to secretly exchange money.

For the average person there won't be much use unless/until it becomes legal tender and regulated. It's more like casino chips. Want to bet your money in casino X? You'll have to buy their in-house chips first. Similarly, if you want to use the BItcoin, Ethereum or Stellar network, you'll have to use BTC, ETH or XLM.

37 minutes ago, Giganthrax said:

It's also completely baffling to me how any system where people are literally "mining" cash, ie. just pulling money out of their asses, can be sustainable or lead to anything good in the long run. A cryptominer contributes nothing - no service or product that may be beneficial to someone else - yet at the same time expends large amounts of energy by running mining rigs.

What would you define as a service? The service is securing and facilitating things on the network for people using that network. Rewarding a miner for verifying transactions is an incentive for people to do it, just like your employer givein you a paycheck is an incentive for you to do use your time and effort to do your job. What gets lost in the speculation and vocalists claiming how crypto/blockchain is the future or the greatest thing ever, is that it's just an example of how to move to a more decentralised something and how to move away from central authority. I don't think crypto will catch on as a front-end thing necessarily and for money even less. People need the ability to fix mistakes through a mediator and to have a little hoops to jump through as possible. However, the immutability and creating a system of trust even with malicious actors aspects, for example, are definitely interesting aspects of a such ledger system which I can see working its way into the back-end of things.

 

People should also know that it's not at all only about replacing money and that there are prefectly functional blockchains that don't use mining. Even ETH is trying to move away from it, because people are correct that that is not really sustainable. As a non-money example, things like VeChain aim to create trust in supply chains, allowing you to track things from start to end. There it can be a powerful tool to verify the product has gone through authorised sellers only, has been treated well etc. On a blockchain those records would be verifiable for anyone dealing with the product if it's a public one and also be verifiable very quickly.

[Kilrah]

56 minutes ago, Error 52 said:

Truthfully, there is actually something to be said for the idea of a decentralized currency free of governments, especially if you happen to be living in a fascist one. The execution, however, is...lacking, to say the least.

Crypto was meant to be decentralized but it's been centralized again, towards entities that can arguably be less trusted than governments... and IMO that centralization is inevitable, a truly decentralized system is simply not feasible. 

[Giganthrax]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

What would you define as a service?

Certainly not printing money out of thin air.

 

The entire "need to mine crypto instead of simply having a certain amount of it in circulation as you would with real money" is supposed to create security (at least that's what google gives as the reason for it), but to me it just seems like a system for creating artificial scarcity and artificially slowing down crypto inflation. It's just one of the many bizzare things that make the fact crypto managed to take off as well as it did so strange to me. 

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

On 1/26/2022 at 10:36 PM, CryptOGamers said:

1. Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers
2. Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.
3. Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft. You have 500 games in your digital library? Why not let it work for you when you're not using them. 100% possible.
4. Modders could create content (e.g. a dungeon) and get rewarded by players who interact with their content, even without the players paying for it themselves. (e.g. if the game has a tradable & valued currency, a portion of the found loot goes to the modder)

None of the applications mentioned need NFT to be implemented. NFT are a way to do things we could always do since decades past with centralized databases, but less efficiently.

 

Developers could always implents such features, which would be good for consumers. The reasons so few games implement them is because of publishers. It's more profitable to sell the same thing over and over again just to reset microtransactions (EA FIFA). Steam has an item marketplace, grey market key resellers are a thing (barely legal and a laundering money den), Diablo 3 had an action house (which made the game worse).

[tkitch]

Crypto was an entertaining and interesting thought, but, not one that will work out long-term.  Guaranteed.

 

NFTs are a much worse, and more blatant, cash grab.

 

Burn the whole thing TF down for the raw bits in it.  

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

2 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

Even after all these years, I still have no idea what's actually the purpose of cryptocurrency for the average person. Like, why would I ever use a cryptocurrency instead of regular money? It just seems to me like a way for criminals to secretly exchange money. 

BTC and Crypto were born as an anarchic statement.

 

How it (would) work, is you have a network of nerds with their laptop in their basement running a database, with an algorithm that makes it nigh impossible to falsify the database. Everyone agrees one Internet Money (IM) is worth one bread. A bread maker in Zimbawe can receive 13IM to deliver a slice of bread to Angola, paying all intermediaries in IM thus bypassing all sovereign currencies and sticking it to the man.

[Beerzerker]

2 hours ago, tikker said:

1: How much cash do you have on hand? While I understand your point, good luck with your traditional system when the web goes down and the power goes out, any card payment method, automated digital paychecks, all the money you "have" in the bank are all gone as well, unless you keep everything in cash under your bed.
 

2: For the average person there won't be much use unless/until it becomes legal tender and regulated. It's more like casino chips. Want to bet your money in casino X? You'll have to buy their in-house chips first. Similarly, if you want to use the BItcoin, Ethereum or Stellar network, you'll have to use BTC, ETH or XLM.

 

1: And that's why crypto is crap.
Thank you for making the point for me - It's when all that goes down you can't access ANYTHING crypto related but while you're looking for power and a web connection I'll be pulling a few bills out of the mattress and I'll be just fine.
In such an event my problem is covered - Will yours be?
Probrably not.

If not bills I'll have something of value, inhand to use for that purpose at the very least. I also wonder how many bitcoins you can stuff you pocket with when the lights do go out?
Good luck.

2: As for the casino reference, you know like I do when in a casino the house never loses. You only win because you were allowed to by the house and everytime you use those chips it's a gamble on that chance of them letting you, in particular win that time which won't happen often.

[Sauron]

51 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

BTC and Crypto were born as an anarchic statement.

 

How it (would) work, is you have a network of nerds with their laptop in their basement running a database, with an algorithm that makes it nigh impossible to falsify the database. Everyone agrees one Internet Money (IM) is worth one bread. A bread maker in Zimbawe can receive 13IM to deliver a slice of bread to Angola, paying all intermediaries in IM thus bypassing all sovereign currencies and sticking it to the man.

Except the worth of bread is not decided by a single guy in Zimbabwe but by Bread Incorporated^tm, an international megacorp that controls the supply of corn and cornered the bread market by buying out or bankrupting smaller competitors. If you divorce the value of currency from the state and leave it up to the market you're asking for feudalism.

[Error 52]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Crypto was meant to be decentralized but it's been centralized again, towards entities that can arguably be less trusted than governments... and IMO that centralization is inevitable, a truly decentralized system is simply not feasible. 

Depends on the government, really. Personally, I'd trust my government with the money more than I would crypto, but if you happen to live in a really corrupt hellhole, I can see why the shady crypto banks might still be the lesser of two evils.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Except the worth of bread is not decided by a single guy in Zimbabwe but by Bread Incorporated^tm, an international megacorp that controls the supply of corn and cornered the bread market by buying out or bankrupting smaller competitors. If you divorce the value of currency from the state and leave it up to the market you're asking for feudalism.

Indeed. BTC was born as an anarchic statement and has become one of the most concentrated assets there is. Instead of having currency controlled by corrupted central banks, you have a slow inefficient currency controlled by anonymous billionares.

That's the problem with anarchic statements, once they face the real world, reality ensues

I think one could make a truly anarchic currency with the right algorithm:

• Inflationary, to prevent early investors from hoarding the supply (BTC was made to be deflationary to favour early adoption and lift off)
• Limit the amount of currency that can be exchanged in a single block to 1/1000000 of the supply. Prevents price manipulation.
• Limit the amount of currency a single address can hold to 1/100000 of the supply. Prevents whales and centralized exchanges.
• Embedded transaction fees to pay for mining
• Proof of Stake, but with maximum Stake limited to 1/10000 of supply and scaled to number of active addresses to prevent individual stakers to gain majority control
• Hefty penality to stakers with currency burning to increase risks and limit maximum and minimum staking
• Transaction reversal and burn of fraudolent addresses

It's not a crypto anyone would want since you can't speculate with it, but it would be anarchic.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, Giganthrax said:

Certainly not printing money out of thin air.

 

The entire "need to mine crypto instead of simply having a certain amount of it in circulation as you would with real money" is supposed to create security (at least that's what google gives as the reason for it), but to me it just seems like a system for creating artificial scarcity and artificially slowing down crypto inflation. It's just one of the many bizzare things that make the fact crypto managed to take off as well as it did so strange to me. 

 Mining indeed secures the network. The reason behind that is that you proof you have put a certain amount of work into obtaining the right to verify the transactions and that that amount of work is large enough such that bad actors can not easily modify stuff. If you want to undo a transaction, for example, you'd have to go back to the block it happened in, make your fraudulent change, then first catch up with the current chain (as by definition the longest train is considered the correct one) and then stay ahead of the real chain as well such that your fake longest chain remains seen as the real one.

 

Bitcoin's scarcity comes from the fact that Satoshi chose to implement halving of the block reward every 4 years. The 21M aren't an explicit limit, it's just what this halvening cycle leads to. Why it was implemented is anyone's guess, I don't think there's an accepted explanation for it. I think you are correct that that drives price high. If you look at XLM, Nano or other coins they either have a massive fixed or otherwise supply, which you can see reflects in their price not being insane and lower to no fees. XLM and NANO are therefore much more usable as actual currencies than BTC or ETH. In the end nothing can act as a "real" currency without regulation though, as something as fluctuating as crypto would be quite problematic for the economy.

35 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

1: And that's why crypto is crap.
Thank you for making the point for me - It's when all that goes down you can't access ANYTHING crypto related but while you're looking for power and a web connection I'll be pulling a few bills out of the mattress and I'll be just fine.
In such an event my problem is covered - Will yours be?
Probrably not.

I don't really see why people think this is such a strong argument. Yes, it is indeed a valid weakness, but at the same time that's like asking what good a sailboat is without wind, or what good a gas-powered stove will be once gas runs out, well none, because it was designed with wind or gas in mind. Similarly crypto was designed with the internet in mind, what a surprise that it doesn't work without it. Our current monetary system is not any better in that regard. If internet and power would go out you can't access ANYTHING of your money and savings and because of our great invention of fractional reserve banking the bank likely doesn't have the cash to back your assets up either. I don't know how much you have under your mattress, but for the average person and younger generations I don't think that is more than something like a week's worth of groceries in this day and age where so much handled digitally. I doubt people will have a year's worth of rent/mortgage, groceries and other expenses just lying around their house in cash. It wouldn't really matter either, because you wouldn't be able to pay your rent anyway as the bank wouldn't be able to make a transfer.