I expect this cryptocurrency craze to end at some point and the bubble to burst.

Terrible for the environment *and* only a tiny elite profit from it? What's not to love?

to end at some point

Well, we still waiting for Bitcoin to burst, which will probably take other coins to the grave as well. But until then, we're stuck.

If any of this follows historical trends, it will end quickly in December when the bubble bursts. BTC might climb as high as $150k for all of an hour, then crash back down to the 50's, then perhaps slump as low as the 30's, where it will likely remain for years.

Still great returns if you'd been holding before 2021, but as usual everyone who FOMO'd in late gets burned, and the hype finally dies down.

Previous booms had ICOs and competing crypto currencies out the wazoo. Most of them were blatant get rich quick schemes, and vanished. You also regularly saw headlines about some hot new crypto thing that people 10x'ed their money on. Most of them seemed to be media inventions.

I remember a buddy of mine who wanted to get rich sent me some crypto's website. He wanted to invest, and wanted to know what I thought. Their whole gimmick was that they did the proof of work calculations through a cell phone app. Their white paper was nonsense, and nothing about their pitch laid out any improvements over existing crypto. It was just a marketing pitch about mining crypto using your phone, because everyone has phone. Probably the dumbest idea I'd ever heard.

My buddy didn't appreciate my negativity and went off to make his fortune on phone crypto. Never heard about it a second time. I think we all know how that turned out.

I fully expect Chia to be the same way. I'm highly skeptical this isn't anything more than the media making a mountain out of a mole hill for clicks. If it does somehow catch on, I'd be shocked if it created a SSD/HDD shortage the same way Etherium has created a GPU shortage. If it does create a shortage, it'll be over by December almost guaranteed.

I'm anticipating this being the last crypto boom that causes severe issues with consumer hardware. Etherium is moving to proof of stake, and Bitcoin has been on ASICs for years now. It's really just Etherium that causing the rush on GPUs, and in 4 more years when the next bull run occurs, their proof of work will be long in the rear view mirror.

At least, that's my hope.

I have a bunch of hard drives on ebay right now, I'm wondering if I should pull that listing and get on this bandwagon...

henryVK wrote on 2021-04-28, 14:56:

Terrible for the environment *and* only a tiny elite profit from it? What's not to love?

🤣, and true

and what does it mean anyway, imagine a scenario in which you want to buy a fridge

with regular money (very very simplistically) a government says "we have $2000 in the economy, or 10 fridges worth,", your fridge is $200, Its fixed in a way. If government prints another $2000 without any other changes taking place all that happens is $4000=10 fridges, each fridge is now $400. At least its backed up by the biggest gang in the region - the government and its ability to take control in some manner of assets of tangible value to assert the value of currency (the modern way of implementing a 'gold standard'). the fridge seller is then bound up in this enforced system and knows that selling the fridge for $200 (or $400!) means he can then be relatively confident that the money can be used for something else

sure there are lots of murky areas and dubious aspects to government and economy, but when that goes too far money economies collapse completely (regardless of how many fridges there are !)

Now say you spend ages wrecking some SSDs and HDD and 'get' a pattern of data which supposedly has a value - this doesn't cause a new fridge to pop into existence nor do the people who agree that the crypto has a value have any capacity to enforce it (like a government can), they are just agreeing and hoping the fridge seller agrees and at any moment, with no real safety net, it can fall apart and become worthless

whenever i read proponents of crypto they always (always!) wave away the role of force with faux technical stuff and social talk that's vaguely reminiscent of 60's communes about 'wow, like, individuals, were all sovereign yet together dude'

again, i know there's more to it - but for now it's still sufficiently far removed from the power to enforce it that its not unlike a bluff or gambling, and something of a 'who blinks first' situation between the bluffers

and those SSD's are much better running dosbox on a suitable 64 bit OS!

If "everyone knows" that this new thing will take off, then it probably wont.

thank you for that wonderful explanation x3 @gerry

crypto is just the biggest pyramid scheme ever.

So Gerry, in some ways you aren't wrong. Crypto is very much a more precarious value proposition than fiat. You are correct in this. The force of government to back the value of fiat is definitely a leg up they have on crypto.

But, the argument for crypto's value among believers doesn't come from it's proof of work/stake/storage. That's a technical detail about how a block gets minted onto the chain, and a detail easily changed, as can be seen. Assorted schemes have various upsides and downsides. But the point of the proof of work isn't that the work has innate value. It's to solve the Byzantine General's problem.

The value in, say, Bitcoin, is that only a set number of them will ever exist. Not unlike the physical quantity of gold. And also not unlike gold, the more that gets mined, the harder it is to mine more. Granted, this is artificial scarcity, unlike gold. And other crypto currencies think this is a bad idea and have done away with it. Etherium for example has no limit, and has staked it's claim to value on it's smart contract functionality.

But broadly, the market probably isn't valuing Bitcoin, Etherium, etc, on their individual merits like it should. It all just goes up or down as a basket, largely lead by Bitcoin, because people don't understand what these things are, or why they have any perceived value at all. The whole thing may yet goto $0. But if it does, it'll be because quantum computing ruins it faster than crypto resistant encryption algorithms can be devised. Or state backed actors, like China, launch 51% attacks on it, stealing billions and ruining it's security. Not because the entire scheme of proof of work and the blockchain is stupid. It's a remarkably sophisticated and elegant solution to a very real logistical problem.

dr_st wrote on 2021-04-28, 14:52:

I expect this cryptocurrency craze to end at some point and the bubble to burst.

The crypto market is in part driven by which currencies are most interesting or difficult to mine. It's feeding off its own speculation. Who knows how long it will last, but we can certainly expect to be volatile.

I have about 40 HDs in my closet 6TB and above. I'm ready to sell. 😁

Namrok wrote on 2021-04-28, 16:56:

The value in, say, Bitcoin, is that only a set number of them will ever exist. Not unlike the physical quantity of gold. And also not unlike gold, the more that gets mined, the harder it is to mine more. Granted, this is artificial scarcity, unlike gold. And other crypto currencies think this is a bad idea and have done away with it. Etherium for example has no limit, and has staked it's claim to value on it's smart contract functionality.

that would require that bitcoin had any value in the first place.

it doesn't. it's just fantasy numbers. they don't exist, they never did and they never will, it's all just made up.

https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurr … a-disaster.html

Every comment online about cryptocurrency is tainted by the fact that the commenter has probably invested thousands of dollars into a Ponzi scheme and is depending on your agreement to make their money back.

the mining should have the effect that the "currency" is worth less and less because there is more and more of it, the "value" going up requires more and more people investing in it... it's the textbook definition of a pyramid scheme.

Munx wrote:

If "everyone knows" that this new thing will take off, then it probably wont.

That's not how it work with cryptocurrency. At least at this moment.

DosFreak wrote:

I'm ready to sell.

I'll take your entire stock!

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-04-28, 18:39:

Munx wrote:

If "everyone knows" that this new thing will take off, then it probably wont.

That's not how it work with cryptocurrency. At least at this moment.

At least bitcoin is an actual currency that you can use as such. I bough speakers and an Xbox controller a while back and the store had an option to pay in Bitcoin, Etherium and a few others.

Things like Chia and many others are like 1'st edition comics or beany babies in the 90's - everyone bough them up to sell later, but not to actually keep and use, hence why there is no long-term viability for it.

How about we start using acorns as currency ? Instead of buying computer components and wasting electricity on virtual money, people plant trees which clean up the air and slow down climate change. As stupid as it sounds, it is not worse than what we have now.

antrad wrote on 2021-04-28, 21:39:

How about we start using acorns as currency ? Instead of buying computer components and wasting electricity on virtual money, people plant trees which clean up the air and slow down climate change. As stupid as it sounds, it is not worse than what we have now.

And have the economy collapse due to a squirrel infestation ?!? I don't think so. 😜

You can never go wrong with bottle caps.

or squirrel on a stick

antrad wrote on 2021-04-28, 21:39:

How about we start using acorns as currency ? Instead of buying computer components and wasting electricity on virtual money, people plant trees which clean up the air and slow down climate change. As stupid as it sounds, it is not worse than what we have now.

Except that "climate change" is a huge hoax and has been ever since it was made up. We are all just a little puff in the wind. Us humans couldn't change the climate in any significant way unless say we set off a massive amount of Nukes all at the same time. I'm not even sure that that would be all that long lasting except for the radiation poisoning.

The absolute best thing that could be done for cities that have issues with being hotter than they used to be is to get rid of all the black that soaks up heat from the Sun... such as blacktop and tar roofing. Change to cement for the roads and to lighter colored metal roofing and cities would drop temps like no other... no good in the winter, but in the summer it would help out. Electricity usage would be down in the summer and up in the winter.

Still would not effect the climate as a whole even if all roads were changed and all roofs were changed.

The climate is always changing and will always change up until the point that the Earth ceases to exist... a.k.a, when the Sun goes supernova.