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diff --git a/content/entry/documentary-line-goes-up-the-problem-with-nfts.md b/content/entry/documentary-line-goes-up-the-problem-with-nfts.md index 0e4d70d..af4b2f6 100644 --- a/content/entry/documentary-line-goes-up-the-problem-with-nfts.md +++ b/content/entry/documentary-line-goes-up-the-problem-with-nfts.md @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ --- -title: "[Documentary] Line Goes Up - The Problem With NFTs" +title: "[Documentary] Line Goes Up — The Problem With NFTs" date: 2022-03-15T00:00:00 tags: ['computing'] draft: false @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ IOTA had a centralized coordinator, meaning that it wasn't even decentralized. I In hindsight, I never should've had anything to do with IOTA to begin with. It's a cryptocurrency with the goal of transacting internet of things data. As a privacy guy, I don't even like the internet of things. So it made very little sense for me to invest in it. ## Safe Network -After IOTA, I still didn't see the full picture. I thought IOTA was a scam project going nowhere, but there still had to be projects with real promise. So I found yet another ponzi to throw my money at - [Safecoin](https://safenetwork.org/). Safecoin didn't use a blockchain or a directed acyclic graph. It was entirely new and much more aligned with my goals. +After IOTA, I still didn't see the full picture. I thought IOTA was a scam project going nowhere, but there still had to be projects with real promise. So I found yet another ponzi to throw my money at — [Safecoin](https://safenetwork.org/). Safecoin didn't use a blockchain or a directed acyclic graph. It was entirely new and much more aligned with my goals. So naturally, I did some careful research and only then invested. Just kidding. No I didn't. I "invested" (gambled) before doing sufficient research. I did learn a lot about the technology. It's meant to be an open, decentralized, encrypted data store. They have a distributed hash table for routing and data storage. They developed a novel consensus mechanism. The Safe Network team recognized the [scalability problems of blockchain](https://yewtu.be/embed/i-RLdU8Y0Qc?local=true). Self-encryption seemed to make sense. @@ -30,14 +30,14 @@ I even [promoted](/2021/01/06/on-blockchain/) the project on this very journal j Just like with IOTA, for every question I asked about Safe Network, I seemed to get vague and indefinite answers. Every problem had a solution. And every problem within the solution had a solution. It was like an infinitely recursive [gish gallop](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop). I eventually got tired of the non-answers and went to dump my holdings. -Unfortunately for me, almost no exchange accepted Safecoin any more. It was built on the dated Mastercoin protocol and pulling out my funds was a huge hassle. I was glad that at I least realized the mistake I made and pulled out before losing it all though. +Unfortunately for me, almost no exchange accepted Safecoin anymore. It was built on the dated Mastercoin protocol and pulling out my funds was a huge hassle. I was glad that at I least realized the mistake I made and pulled out before losing it all though. ## Monero I also made a new entry promoting [TheHatedOne's video promoting Monero](/2021/03/18/video-monero-more-anonymous-than-cash/). In fact, I even accepted Monero as a donation method at the time. I didn't invest in it. I just found Monero useful for performing anonymous online payments since there was no other way to privately buy things online. I knew all about the massive energy usage of proof-of-work coins at the time. Like most cryptocurrency enthusiasts, I just dismissed it as "not a waste". But over the next four months, I realized I had just been making excuses for the energy usage because I found the technology cool. It was the only way to transact privately online, so it would be really inconvenient for me if I also believed it was destroying the planet. -Eventually, I found I could no longer deny the energy impact any more. I decided to remove cryptocurrency as a donation method and make an entry [recommending that people don't use proof-of-work-based cryptocurrencies](/2021/07/18/avoid-using-cryptocurrency/). I even began criticizing others who promoted proof-of-work cryptocurrency. I reasoned I would accept cryptocurrency again after a mass-adopted proof-of-stake currency was released. +Eventually, I found I could no longer deny the energy impact anymore. I decided to remove cryptocurrency as a donation method and make an entry [recommending that people don't use proof-of-work-based cryptocurrencies](/2021/07/18/avoid-using-cryptocurrency/). I even began criticizing others who promoted proof-of-work cryptocurrency. I reasoned I would accept cryptocurrency again after a mass-adopted proof-of-stake currency was released. ## A Cryptocurrency Startup Then, in the summer of 2021 while I was on vacation with my family, something unexpected happened. We heard a knock on the door of our beachside hotel. It was hotel security. They told us someone ran into our car in the parking lot. @@ -61,14 +61,14 @@ In November of 2021, I wrote an entry titled [Future-Proof Digital Timestamping] ## Stephen Diehl A month later in December 2021, I stumbled across [the blog of Stephen Diehl](https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog.html), where I found extremely harsh criticism of cryptocurrency which I'd never heard before. Here's an excerpt: -> "Crypto is a cesspit of people swapping claims on non-economic nonsense in one giant orgy of internet memes and fools trying to screw each other playing mutual harm negative-sum games while chanting “we’re all going to make it”. All this while the house takes an enormous rake and changes the rules of the game to its liking whenever it likes." - Stephen Diehl, The Internet’s Casino Boats +> "Crypto is a cesspit of people swapping claims on non-economic nonsense in one giant orgy of internet memes and fools trying to screw each other playing mutual harm negative-sum games while chanting “we’re all going to make it”. All this while the house takes an enormous rake and changes the rules of the game to its liking whenever it likes." — Stephen Diehl, The Internet’s Casino Boats Pretty much all of his blog posts about cryptocurrency are this critical. I read several of his posts and found myself largely in agreement. I actually started to feel dumb that I ever put money into cryptocurrency or even considered being a part of a cryptocurrency project. ## Present Day The culmination of this story happened just recently when I found Line Goes Up. I watched the documentary all the way through and found it highly informative. Thanks to Line Goes Up, I finally feel like I have the full picture when it comes to cryptocurrency, blockchain, and everything built on top of it. Now that I'm fully informed, I want nothing to do with it. -Unfortunately it's not going to be easy for me to stop using it entirely. Ponzi as it may be, it's still the only way to buy certain things online anonymously. I'll have to figure out ways around that. For online services where I identify myself anyways, I can switch to a credit card. But acquiring a VPN anonymously without cryptocurrency is going to be tricky. I'll have to come up with a solution. +Unfortunately it's not going to be easy for me to stop using it entirely. Ponzi as it may be, it's still the only way to buy certain things online anonymously. I'll have to figure out ways around that. For online services where I identify myself anyway, I can switch to a credit card. But acquiring a VPN anonymously without cryptocurrency is going to be tricky. I'll have to come up with a solution. I would say the two overarching lessons I learned from my experiences in cryptocurrency are: |