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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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You give up all advantages of fiat currency and turn control of your country's economy to some rando on the internet who could walk away untraceably with the entirety of a nation's finances?
All the problems of a commodity based currency, but all the ease of crypto theft.
Or some South African emerald-mine nepo baby can change how much is in your account just by shitting on social media.
You don't want your paycheck, mortgage, and groceries to change values based on what dank memes he reads that day???
To be fair, if there were any legit uses for crypto, like it being a national currency, I think those types of manipulations would be much less consequential and be more like stock market bubbles/bursts, which still aren't great, but not as crazy as crypto valuations go. Too many big and important people would be invested for one guy to have that pull.
Crypto also doesn't have the stability of either traditional fiat or commodity based currency, nor does it have intrinsic value that a commodity based money has. It's also not cheap to produce like paper money. If people can't rely on money's stability, they won't use it, just like other real world money that has tremendous amounts of inflation. If people won't go to work, you won't have much of an economy.
The only practical use for crypto I can see is an international business to handle internal accounting between branches in different countries. In that case, it'd still be based off the dollar, and would be for internal use only, not something for public trade.
This is a problem of scale not technology u can help prevent this by buying xmr urself.
Oh, so I can increase my $MEME_COIN by shit posting myself?
Holy shit, you've sold me!
You know I hate to sound like that absolute loon you're replying to but there's no one who can really run off with xmr.
The ledger is kept and verified across millions of independently run machines all working together to keep it operational.
The software that runs it is a free-as-in-freedom, open-source project. If the developers got any funny ideas, the community could opt to create a hardfork of the currency. Easier said than done, but painless compared to everyone losing their mula.
No worries. Most people in this thread seem a smidge more rational. ๐
I'm not super familiar with all the forms of crypto and their unite qualities, so I appreciate accurate details.
But let's look at this:
Motley Fool: What is Monero? (XMR)
Anonymous transactions absolutely have positives, but they can also have painful repercussions, no? We could come up with many wild examples, but let's check out some more plausible ones.
Chargebacks/Scams. Right now, pay me by cash, check ,or credit, and get a receipt for Product X. If I don't give you X, you have proof of a transaction. It says You gave Me said amount of money for X. With Monero, none of that data exists, correct? How are you protected or compensated?
Theft. You have an angry partner or unscrupulous family member with knowledge of your wallet. If they can guess/hack a weak password, you leave wallet open to go to bathroom, etc and they transfer out money, then what? Again, if sender, receiver, and amount are hidden, how do you prove someone stole from you?
Honestly ignorant on the answers to these questions.
If nothing else, its because easy, anonymous access to freedom and privacy respecting open-source computing is, as far as I'm concerned, a human right.
Unfortunately if you want to anonymously use a decent VPN, or host a vm on a static IP you need to pay for it. That if nothing else is a good reason.
I don't have good answers to these issues, honestly if you're not someone who puts a lot of effort into their computing then crypto isn't for you. Not against those who don't, it simply asks for a level of security and organization the average user is neither used to, nor willing to commit to.
Underneath the giant hotbed of scammers and dipshit venture capitalists is a genuinely useful tool for those who care to use it. Whether or not that's worth it depends on your priorities and beliefs.
At the end of the day scammers and predatory investors have existed, and will continue to exist as long as capitalism has and does. With or without crypto-currencies.
Advantages of fiat being what exactly inflation (hidden taxes), government control of personal finances (their ability to strip you of your financial freedom at will), tracking (their ability to limit what your allowed to buy) etc etc i see absolutely no upsides of a fiat currency unless you are a government who utilises the currency as a tool to control the masses.
As for some guy walking off the gdp of a country u dont seriously think ud just use standard wallet that is the countries finances. Its a block chain simply require a ring signature of elected officials hell u can probably also require they publish a transparent report of this as well.
Commodity based currency is objectively better. Crypto theft is an issue of rug pull schemes and bad digital privacy (cos no banks have ever been hacked ever right).
I feel the crypto hate is a psyop by the cia that used nfts and the scam coins to destroy public opinion because crypto was the only real threat the american regime faced. Why do u think 911 was the world trade centre america uses its fiat currency that is the global reserve to rule the world. Crypto once again give people freedom and countries sovergnty.
Yikes, that last paragraph really has me not wanting to engage, but let's proceed cautiously here.
If you are against fiat currency because you are against central banking, I don't know how much I can assure you on the basis of fiat. But just to play some devil's advocate with you, who do you think is controlling all those computers? If anyone can insert a backdoor somewhere, it's them. What electronic system do you know that's fed free?
Do you want your life savings in an online wallet in someone else's hands, like Mt Gox, or on a local drive someone with an electromagnet or hammer could take out?
And if you don't trust the government to run a central bank appropriately, what difference is it if they're using dollars, Euros, or crypto? They can manipulate it all the same. How are bank ledgers different than a block chain?
Using a globalised currency also reduces sovereignty. Look at any country that joined the EU and had financial woes afterward. I haven't heard much about it recently, but I remember many Greeks wanting to go back to the drachma for a bit. Someone is going to have control over whatever currency it is. If you have trouble with a government, you need to get control of that. Currency is just one tool in a toolbox of running a nation. If you don't trust the people using the tools, it isn't the tool that's the problem.
Not wanting to get in an argument about 9/11 either, but I can tell you a couple of differences between bank ledgers and blockchains. Blockchains are distributed across many machines and all are synchronised. I had the Bitcoin blockchain on my computer for a while, until I realised how much space it was taking. Anyone can view the contents of the entire blockchain, ask the bank to view all their ledgers and you'll see the difference. Blockchain means an end to most money laundering and corruption. All coins can be traced.
The software behind Bitcoin is open source, so no backdoors can be put in there (at least not without it being noticed, probably), many wallets are also open source. Things like mtgox happened because people weren't using wallets to keep their own coins in, and left it for someone else to look after.
The Euro is a great thing for most people. Greece has financial problems that need long term solutions. If they had the drachma, they would just print more, and devalue the currency, which would make all imports more expensive and prices go up. The Euro prevents this and they have to find another solution. That's more the problem with fiat, that governments will use an easy solution, that hurts people. A currency which is not controlled by the government prevents this and can lead to better solutions that don't make life difficult for most people.
This is just what I know, some facts may be wrong, let's talk.
You've filled me in on a few things a bit better crypto-wise, though I still feel many of the problems still exist. It still seems assets would either be easier to sieze vs cash or more of a liability to store on one's own. I imagine if it were to become an official currency, some more protections would get out in place, but that would probably compromise the anonymity of you were to make a claim about it.
While you can't look at all of a bank's ledger, there is still redundancy and a known route to clear up discrepancies and fraud. Benefits of traceable currency.
I'm not super techy, so I don't know if man in the middle attacks are still possible or other methods of intercepting transactions.
It didn't seem like a good idea to go back to things like the drachma, but I get why people would want it. Again, I think the blame gets placed in the currency rather than the things that lead to that currency being devalued, but that's another story.
We also didn't just print money thoughtlessly. I didn't agree with all the choices the Fed has made, but overall I think they've done ok, but it's not as though we can examine how the alternatives would have played out.
These are all things we could debate endlessly of course. I can't ever see a government giving up control of currency though. That's just too big a thing. I try to stay open to useful cases for crypto too, but most proponents just seem so off-putting.