Yay or Nay on crypto?

I saw a report about some rural area where a crypto mining center had started running (I think in NC, but not totally sure). The type of area where you might expect something like a U-Store warehouse or similar, but not a real business.

Seems that besides the grid connection being a big issue, the noise from the cooling system was loud enough to bother the people living anywhere within a mile or so. Run, of course, by a Chinese company. No contribution whatsoever to the local economy, but a major PITA for the people there.

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Not 100% sure, but I think this may be about the operation I had read about. Not Chinese; SF based:

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This is an eye opening article about these two things, IMO, that mankind could do without

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happened here too

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IMO, anyone considering crypto as a serious investment should study up about tulip-mania. Seems to me that BitCoin is nothing more than an electronic tulip bulb.

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Despite the fact that we ourselves have pocketed a good deal of moolah in judiciously ‘mining’ that particular marketspace over the years since it first appeared, I’m constrained to agree with your assessment.

Many are the “economic bubbles” which have wound up bursting over the last ½-millennium or so in Recorded History (and, truth be told, even longer than that); I’ll be surprised if history doesn’t repeat itself on this particular front, sooner or later.

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Bitcoin and AI are stupid and worse for the planet than most people realize,

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When the aliens come

After we are gone

And begin digging

Through our society’s rusty entrails

In hopes of determining

“What was their Swan Song?”

They’ll pore, avidly, through the dusty details

And conclude that Humankind

In its blinkered greed

Rushing, heedless, to an early grave

Paid no mind -

Despite the clarion warnings from The Wise -

To those things worth the save,

By long-term & sustainable need,

Which might’ve gone far

To stave off our ultimate demise.

__

Handbaskets Abound.

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I’m pro BTC

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.

Much larger discussion and one that goes outside the forum rules - so having said that every new frontier attracts loads of charlatans - so the gold rush had entire businesses centered around it - and FTX happened.

As an analogy which hits closer to home. Ecommerce is viable - but look at how many charlatans sell the idea of its ease and profitability.

The future will have a place for BTC and Ethereum - I doubt at the level of currency/tender but as asset classes for sure for too many reasons. It will probably see a crazy high after summer followed by a crash when the liquidity crisis hits and everything falls…for whatever peroid.

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BTC is a solution in search of a problem.

To date its use is speculation or gambling. It may be one of the strongest options in gambling since there is less human activity short of the gamblers, and that can be automated like much of the stock market trading.

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I think that BlockChain (the tech behind BitCoin) is a promising technology, that will find many important uses in the future (and already has several).

But I don’t think BitCoin is going to be one of those uses. (and from what little I know about BlockChain, BitCoin is one of the most poorly designed and inefficient applications of it out there)

And I find it funny that when BitCoin starts hitting new highs, there’s a bunch of people clamoring for it to be more accepted as currency; not understanding that the very fluctuations they get excited about make for a very BAD currency.

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Excellent. BTC and altcoins is highly speculative and therefore the volatility - but the fundamentals of tech and wider applications (ETH filling in for BTC shortfalls etc) - as you mentioned are foundational shifts which are here to stay.

BTC will dip it seems a tad until the summer lull and then rip to new highs in line with the market - but alas as the elections near and after - isht will hit the fan - come next year we’ll all be having very different conversations.

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With the unprecedented heat lately, it’s gonna be a problem when Texas electricity consumers can’t run their A/C because bitcoin crashes the grid. This is so destructive!
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/10/texas-bitcoin-mine-noise-power-grid-cryptocurrency/

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Yay or Nay on EVs?