If someone is trying to get to the moon by climbing successively higher trees, are you doing them a disservice by reminding them that the highest tree is not tall enough to reach there? Especially when they are burning large amounts of resources trying to get there?

If people are genuine about solving the world's poverty and inequality problems, recognizing that cryptocurrencies are unlikely to help with those problems is a valuable first step.

So using Fiat that corrupt governments worldwide print as a hidden means of taxation and control has noting to do with inequality?

Avoiding that is the original and prime goal of crypto currency.

Like anything new get rich quick schemes exist, but that's not Bitcoin and it's not Monero.

Wait, am I reading this right? Are you saying tax evasion is the original and prime goal of cryptocurrency?

If so, excuse my lack of respect for your goals, but they strike me as dishonest/villainy.

If not, well then I just have no idea what you were trying to say but apologise for misinterpreting.

They're describing the printing of fiat as "taxation." While I'm not sure how that differs from cryptocurrencies minting coins, GP isn't talking about direct tax evasion.

> People shitting on crypto, while sitting on their ass without addressing the problems in other ways are doing society a disservice.

But cryptocurrency doesn't address any real problems. The claims that it does are mostly BS and marketing.

The problems cryptocurrency solves are ones that are created by holding to peculiar ideologies and/or speculating about problems that haven't happened and may never happen.

The one thing cryptocurrency has succeeded at is being something for financial speculation, which has given a lot of people strong incentive to hype it relentlessly.

Crypto has addressed real problems for Ukraine's military.

> “In a situation like this, where the national bank is not fully operating, crypto is helping to perform fast transfers, to make it very quick and get results almost immediately,”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/technology/bitcoin-ukrain...

Is this BS and marketing?

> Crypto has addressed real problems for Ukraine's military.

>> “In a situation like this, where the national bank is not fully operating, crypto is helping to perform fast transfers, to make it very quick and get results almost immediately,”

>> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/technology/bitcoin-ukrain...

> Is this BS and marketing?

Here are the next two paragraphs after your quote:

> But Mr. Bornyakov [Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation] seemed wary of overstating crypto’s importance to the Ukrainian cause.

> “I don’t think crypto is playing a major part,” Mr. Bornyakov said. “But its role is essential in this conflict in terms of helping our army.”

Ukraine needs every bit of support they can get, and they won't turn away tens of millions in donations from cryptobros, but it's a minor part of their effort. You can also easily donate USD or do a bank transfer to send them money:

https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-sp...

And they've gotten far more donations that way:

https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/nbu-pererahuvav-na-potrebi-v...

You're moving the goalposts. I responded to:

> But cryptocurrency doesn't address any real problems.

Nobody was comparing the market share of different forms of currency or anything like that. We can discuss the viable rate of market share growth for new forms of currency some other time.

This is a high ranking government official saying that bitcoin is helping solve a real problem. Can you at least acknowledge that maybe he's telling the truth? Or when the next bitcoin thread rolls around will you just repeat the same tired old complaint about no use cases?

> But cryptocurrency doesn't address any real problems.

...that aren't better addressed by other, existing technologies. There might be some weird corner cases where it makes sense, but that's not anywhere close to the "future of money" hype.

> This is a high ranking government official saying that bitcoin is helping solve a real problem. Can you at least acknowledge that maybe he's telling the truth? Or when the next bitcoin thread rolls around will you just repeat the same tired old complaint about no use cases?

Sure he's telling the truth. I'm not saying cryptocurrency can't be used to solve problems, what I'm saying it's not anything special as a solution and is often a pretty bad one.

If I add some horse-drawn carriages to my fleet of trucks, because I'm so desperate to haul the absolute largest quantity of something that I can that I'll do anything, that doesn't mean horses are the future of transport or are even a good transportation solution in the modern world.

> Is this BS and marketing?

A lot of that money has been withdrawn via an exchange registered in an offshore. My bet is that someone who set it up has profited nicely during the war.

Has it actually helped Ukraine? Who knows.

I would characterize this situation (of crypto helping perform fast transfers) as a very temporary "advantage" that would almost certainly disappear over time.

For one thing, this advantage over the national bank, is during a WAR. Assuming the war disrupts the national bank, yet over the long term will not also disrupt all the infrastructure that bitcoin needs (cheap high speed computing, available networking, reliable electricity, etc) strains credibility.

In the case of Ukraine, yes, this is probably a temporary state of emergency. But on a global scale, there is always a disruption somewhere. Or as one google SRE put it (I couldn't find the exact quote) "on our scale, once-in-a-million events happen every day". And, for many people out there, crypto is still the fastest way to transfer money, and the situation is very much not temporary. It's just that they are not the people that typically feature in the NYT.

Speaking of Ukraine, the banking sector is working fine there at the moment, for what it's worth. Not for moving wealth out of the country and out of the local currency, but otherwise works.

From the other day: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/04/1090952156/how-ukraine-kept-b...

> Russia's invasion has caused untold damage to lives, buildings, and roads. It also threatened to destroy Ukraine's banking system.

> But a month into the war, Ukrainians in most of the country can still put their money in savings accounts, pay their telephone bills, and withdraw cash easily.

> Today, we speak to the CEO of Ukraine's second-largest bank to learn how the country's banks are continuing essential business in the wake of devastation on the homefront.

"We must do something. This is something, so we must do this"

There are costs and benefits to every action. If former are bigger than latter, we should be dismissed the action.

I really appreciate how like four of us simultaneously drilled into this one fractally bad take but I do think this is the most concise of all of them so far.

nah you don't know how people spend their time. I'm very active in attempting to address all sorts of problems as I find them, it's my major activity other than working for survival. shitting on crypto is like 2% of my time and energy, it's very easy to fit it in alongside.

that said, given the ecological and economic costs of crypto and its failure to produce anything of value so far. sitting on your ass is more a service to society than getting involved in it is.

If you see someone pounding nails into his dick and when you ask what he's trying to do, he says "I'm building a house". It is fair to tell him that he's doing it wrong. That his proposed method will not get him any closer to a house than he already is. It does not matter that you are not also trying to build a house. It does not matter that you are not going to build him a house.

Knowing what will not work is important. And just because there is no proposed alternative does not mean we should keep doing the thing we know won't work. Especially when the thing we know won't work might even exacerbate the problem it is trying to solve. Sometimes, nothing is the right thing to do.