UlyssesT [he/him]

None of this is defending cryptocurrency. I am not defending it

Is there even a purpose to your “the bad thing is actually good if almost everything about how it’s being used and what it’s doing to society and the planet was different somehow with very different societal conditions” devil’s advocacy, besides sharpening the katana of you wit or whatever you’re going on about then?

It’s not just a trivial technicality, using appropriate crits is the difference between being credible and being ridiculous

Your motives here at this point seem trivial and ridiculous to me, especially if I take your claims at face value about how you’re not actually supporting cryptogrifting, then throw dictionaries at me about what fraud actually is and how SCIENCE!™ can totally be furthered by way of the planet burning carbon dumping cumulatively worse waste of electricity that is technically not fraud at a coding level so that makes it innocent of all the fraud done with it.

You’re willingly replying to me and I’m willingly replying back within a thread. That’s called a conversation.

If you really wanted a conversation, you wouldn’t be talking like a condescending douche as you did in the above quoted part. It wouldn’t fly offline, or very far outside of . At all.

I explicitly said it wasn’t ok, multiple times. Nor did I suggest either of those would make it ok. Nor is there anything ‘technically’ about the concept of a scam, and why that’s different to a wrongdoing.

Sure, but you keep dae le devil’s advocating for it anyway, under pretenses of what it could be if only so many things were different to the point that there’s nothing left but pretenses of DAE LE SCIENCE™ in such a fantastical different world. In short, I’m accusing you of bad faith argumentation and I haven’t seen anything to convince me otherwise.

If you’re a leftist in any form, stop making bullshit assumptions

We have a world to take, comrade, and this kind of false-premise ranting isn’t how we do it.

No wonder you don’t want bullshit, because you brought a heavy heaping steaming pile of your own, and it involves either credulously buying into the lie, or spreading the lie, that your transactional number magic is totally key, essential, or somehow just very useful, pinkie promise, for taking that world for… who exactly? Roughly the same group of rich assholes that have staggering majority stakes in the blockchain magic you keep hyping up, even while supposedly accepting how damaging and problematic it actually is in the living world that actually exists and not the fantastical alternate scenario you keep hinting at where the pedantically-pure number magic is allowed to work its miracles and somehow does it without further burning the planet down and wasting even more energy?

I don’t believe what you claim your intentions really are, you’ve already gone full in sheer condescending arrogance in your last comment, and even if I took what you said at face value, what you’re talking about doesn’t even really seem productive, meaningful, or even interesting if you totally don’t believe cryptocurrency grifts but just want to argue for the sake of arguing about what they could be if so many variables were changed that cryptocurrency (and the sheer energy and pollution disaster that is currently applied blockchain technology) is best not being a factor at all.

TL;DR You’re just congratulating yourself at this point with sheer arrogance and announcements about how you’re refining the sharp katana of your wit so you may cut down the ignorant and show them the light of The True Uncorrupted Blockchain or… whatever. I don’t want to give you a hand with that.

Oh, also:

Sea-lioning is stalking across the site like a debate pervert, it’s not replying to replies.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/sealioning-internet-trolling

You just failed at sea lioning me about sea lioning.

So it is all pedantic arguments for the sake of some theoretical version of something that does not actually exist in a functioning and usable form right now without all of the net negative consequences that already exist, right now.

But you did a transaction! And in theory it can be for science™! That makes it all okay because technically a dictionary absolves the holy code of all the wrongdoing done with the holy code.

And also seeing if I’m able to have a constructive conversation

Bring me one that isn’t pedantic sea lioning and sure, maybe.

But that’s not it’s purpose or main use

It is the purpose and use for people buying into it, right now, and that’s what gets people interested and investing, no matter what claims are made by the grifters themselves.

it’s good practice for real labour conversations in the workplace.

If you’re a leftist in any actual form please reconsider peddling internet funny money to people that can (and often have) lost a lot of money buying into it, whether through volatility or outright fraud/theft done with the technically not theft holy code you’re apparently trying to peddle.

You forgot the human trafficking potential. Checkmate

It would still be environmentally ruinous (insofar as the energy production where miners live remains ruinous, which I guess is the foreseeable future) but at least the PoW would be actually contributing to tasks we wanted to do anyway that require large amounts of work. Hence the heavy emphasis on ‘somewhat’. I’m not saying it would be justified, but it would be far far far more useful to society.

“Less of a net negative” is still a net negative if it requires a massive and ever-growing bloated blockchain to verify every accumulating transactions for the vague and non-enforced promise of FOR SCIENCE™ benefits.

If we can find an alternative to expensive PoW, wonderful!

At present the alternative is not doing it because it’s still a net negative when it comes to wasted energy and environmental damage.

Alright, what about Bitcoin is fraudulent? We agree it’s bad, but that doesn’t make it fraudulent (i.e. a scam)

Sea lioning at this point is very bad form and I’m quite confident that you’re not going to accept any example or definition I give because you’re already sold on your particular investment, but fine.

Let’s start with the actual fucking fraud done with it, from phishing to theft to holding data hostage and demanding payment to decrypt that data before it’s destroyed, as is a growing common “use case” for Bitcoin when it isn’t being used for human trafficking and the like. You can piously claim in some pedantic “CODE IS LAW” thing that there’s no fraud in the code itself but splitting hairs like that doesn’t remove the incentive (or the risk, or the ongoing caseload) of fraud done with, around, and even against your favorite investment vehicle.

https://www.cryptopolitan.com/3-4-billion-penalty-in-cftc-bitcoin-fraud/

https://www.theblock.co/post/226534/silk-road-hacker-sentenced

https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/bitcoin-fraud-cftc/2023/04/28/id/1117850/?ns_mail_uid=8b680911-ae97-4076-9bbe-2f0447621e49&ns_mail_job=DM466889_04292023&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010102ydx2id

now that I think about it could be somewhat excusable if they adopted a PoW algrothim that actually solves socially-useful expensive problems like protein-folding, through distributed computing.

You’re claiming that cryptogrifts can theoretically cease being environmentally ruinous energy-wasting grifts (for Science!™) and so on, so why not go one further and state that such applications theoretically DON’T need Bitcoin or related blockchain monetization at all?

If it’s already an environmentally ruinous energy-wasting grift, and you’re claiming it can do good things while also being an environmentally ruinous energy-wasting grift, why not take the speculative fantasy a little further and lose the environmentally ruinous energy-wasting grift entirely?

There’s not really any trickery.

It can have legitimate utility

Sure, sure. But does it and can it actually stay that way?

I haven’t seen a functioning example actually out there yet of a planet-burning electricity-wasting math busywork generator that actually does anything it supposedly can do besides become another ruinous and wasteful grift that does more damage to the planet than whatever convenience it supposedly offers to comfort the comforted.

You brought the yourself, uncapped each bottle of the case, and power chugged them without even bothering to share with your uselessly smug condescending post.

Cryptocurrency in general. Even on the surface, as presented, the main appeal to buy in is “to get rich from it” and the main way you’re supposed to get rich is “other people buying in, get in early while you can.”

Ponzi. Schemes. All of them.

It’s how cults become religions.

in general.

When some talking head talks about why today or today, the real reason is “insiders traded it that way” with a mix of “this is how rich assholes feel.”

I wish I had that much opportunity to write (or fabricate) my own teaching material. I’m in a standardized testing hellscape where almost every month there’s yet another standardized test or preparation for one.