Comment on Paul Krugman. Former Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 9 hours agoThat’s a shame
“What problem does this technology solve? What does it do that other, much cheaper and easier-to-use technologies can’t do just as well or better? I still haven’t heard a clear answer."
Bitcoin (not crypto) solves the problem of centralization and control of money. It is a harder form of money than gold. You can send a billion dollars for pennies across the world in 10 minutes. It is completely transparent. It can provide access to finance to people who are traditionally excluded. It cannot be censored.
If he hasn’t heard a clear answer, it’s because he’s willfully ignorant at this point. And again, crypto is 99.9% BS. Bitcoin was not the first crypto, and it won’t be the last crypto, but it is the only one of its kind and if north of a trillion dollars doesn’t convince you of that, including institutional money, then nothing will and I invite you to invest in the stock market instead and hope inflation doesn’t steal your retirement away.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
No it doesnt, 51% attack, please do hush. It’s the same reason TOR is probably compromised - we can’t actually detect if one has happened.
khannie@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I can’t even fathom what the cost of trying to implement a 51% attack on bitcoin would be.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Among the many feasible vectors you could accomplish that: Bitmain’s HQ is in Beijing, and while there is some scrutiny on the subject there has never been a (public) investigation into what’s actually baked into the silicon. Antminers are a fucking stunning percentage of the nodes out there, and although nothing like 51% of all nodes are just antminers, it still wouldn’t be difficult (for a powerful nation-state) to repeat the process across multiple manufacturers and get that kind of distributed influence.
It’s completely possible that the classically imagined 51% attack has never occurred, but having that kind of large influence over the blockchain would trivially allow for subtle manipulations that would have world-spanning impacts. We have no way of demonstrating that it’s happened, nor preventing it if it does, which is a big part of why bitcoin is regarded as such a joke by everyone that isn’t part of the cult. And to be clear, I have no idea if this has happened - that’s the problem, there’s by design no way of checking or verifying integrity on that scale.
Bitcoin was a half-baked idea that’s only stuck around because of the speculative market.
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
I just bought another $100, thank you
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I do applaud you choosing not to make any more comically unfounded claims. The form leaves a little to be desired, but overall I’m glad to see improvement…