disruptalot (u/disruptalot)

disruptalot commented on SEC has not approved Bitcoin ETFs [fixed] twitter.com/SECGov/status... · Posted by u/pawelduda

rpz · 2 years ago

Has anybody else poked around in a bitcoin blockchain block explorer recently to look at the individual transactions of a block?

Honestly I find it kind of suspicious but I could easily be missing something. I see multiple transactions spend more on fees than the amount exchanged in the transaction. A number of transactions looked enormous but turned out to be some form of washing. E.g address X sends $100MM worth of bitcoin to two addresses, with ~$1k going to address Y and the rest going right back to address X.

What’s the point? Why not just send $1k to address Y.

I originally started looking around to get a sense for how much bitcoin is being transacted relative to the block reward. As the halvings continue I can’t imagine how miners can profit without exorbitant transaction fees. Many of the transaction fees in the block I looked at were comparable to wire transfer fees.

Why would anybody want to use bitcoin outside of speculation after nearly all 21mm bitcoin are mined? Why would anybody want to continue mining as well?

disruptalot · 2 years ago

Recently there has been a trend of inscribing data on the bitcoin chain representing issuance of new assets and in some cases media (images etc.). Keywords here are "inscriptions" "ordinals" "brc-20"

The speculation component of these new asset types has has created a high fee environment where instead of paying for bitcoin moving around, ownership of secondary assets encoded as data are being transferred.

There is currently a big controversy where one tribe says that these transactions are spam and should be banned via opt in from miners.

disruptalot commented on SEC has not approved Bitcoin ETFs [fixed] twitter.com/SECGov/status... · Posted by u/pawelduda

kevingadd · 2 years ago

Are you claiming that video games waste more electricity than crypto mining PoW? Do you have evidence to support that? It's a pretty strong claim, since most of the power being used to play a video game is doing something (rasterizing images/synthesizing audio/simulating physics in order to provide the game experience) while most of the power used to do PoW mining is Wasted On Purpose.

disruptalot · 2 years ago

Why do games have to use so much electricity? They should be fine with a few kb of storage and maybe some minimal networking. Back in the day games were completely fine and playable in tiny cartridges. Games should be regulated to not consume a certain amount of network and processing power.

On the other hand, without the PoW mechanism of Bitcoin, it's impossible to have the properties that bitcoin has - global decentralised money and payment network. If you believe otherwise, make one! Very quickly no one will be willing to pay for Bitcoin, and all those "wasted electricity" will suddenly become available again.

disruptalot commented on SEC has not approved Bitcoin ETFs [fixed] twitter.com/SECGov/status... · Posted by u/pawelduda

paulpauper · 2 years ago

Blackrock is huge. This is a rounding error to it. The people who got rugged were retail who bought into the hype since October.

disruptalot · 2 years ago

You may be misreading the effects - Bitcoin is trading above what it traded yesterday, and 50% higher than october.

disruptalot commented on Why Britain doesn’t build worksinprogress.co/issue/... · Posted by u/Twixes

Jochim · 2 years ago

> Space is limited by regulation and zoning. 90% of the UK is rural. Market rates are high because of the supply not matching the demand, or being allowed to match it.

This does not square with the fact that private builders are leaving nearly half of approved developments unbuilt. It's almost like private builders are incentivised to squeeze the market rather than bring prices down.

> The same number of people would need housing, regardless of whether the houses were privately owned or state owned.

Publicly owned housing: The state makes an initial capital investment which it recoups through a low monthly rent payment. After 30 years the state only pays maintenance costs for the property, covered by the monthly rent. Any excess rent can be reinvested towards the cost of another unit.

Privately rented housing: The state pays market rate rents forever, burning the money. The private landlord pays off the mortgage and gets to pocket more of the money. There's no benefit to the state.

It's the same with social care. The government could build social care, instead we're paying up to £50k/week per child[0] towards some cunt's yacht.

And it's the same with the NHS. Nurses have a hard time and poor pay and some quit. The government then bring in an agency nurse, paying the agency 2-4x the salary of the NHS nurse that will have to babysit them because they aren't familiar with their ward and refusing to raise the rate of pay for their own nurses. The remaining nurses see this and some more quit, agency work pays more and you get to choose when you work. This spirals into a very avoidable staffing crisis.

> I don't understand this. I didn't say no regulation. But there's a huge gap between that and making it incredibly difficult to build. Citing some basic anti-zero regulation argument in response to what I said is disheartening.

I didn't claim you were arguing for no regulation, arguing that regulations should be made more lax in the face of those events is what's disheartening. Those disasters occurred because existing regulations were not sufficiently strict/enforced.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/apr/18/english-coun...

disruptalot · 2 years ago

You highlight a bunch of examples where government policy/implementation has failed miserably in the backdrop of higher and higher demand from it. I wonder how far this needs to stretch before we realise that the problem isn't that the government doesn't behave correctly, but that the whole idea that a government is a good allocator of capital and resources is flawed.

disruptalot commented on McDonald's just dropped a brand new Game Boy game retrododo.com/mcdonalds-g... · Posted by u/outime

cazum · 2 years ago

But that's not what's happening.

They made a Gameboy game and now you're buying hamburgers.

If you're doing a 'vote with your wallet' thing to try to convince them to make more retro games that at least makes sense, even if id argue it's a little naive, but that's not even what were talking about. They made a videogame and now people are pledging to buy their hamburgers.

disruptalot · 2 years ago

It makes perfect sense. McDonalds did something unconventional and apparently popular. People that found that valuable send the strongest signal you can send in an economy - money. "Corporate profits" take a look at the bank and they think "hmm, that seemed to work, we'll do more of that". They might not produce another gameboy game, that signal might need to be calibrated over further attempts to figure out why people bought more hamburgers. But certainly some signal concerning the approach they took will be loud and clear.

disruptalot commented on Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative itcommunity.stanford.edu/... · Posted by u/ryzvonusef

disruptalot · 3 years ago

"Karen"

Context: "This term is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors."

Consider using: "demanding or entitled White woman"

This example is truly a tell all for this movement. To redefine language from a position of moral superiority where they can make no mis judgment.

disruptalot commented on Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals trends.aax.com/important-... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

roflyear · 3 years ago

Then it proves that crypto is flawed for other reasons.

disruptalot · 3 years ago

Alternatives:

- Crypto is being used and abused by people and purposes that don't need it.

- Fundamental practices haven't matured yet.

disruptalot commented on Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals trends.aax.com/important-... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

gzer0 · 3 years ago

"At this point I'm convinced Satoshi Nakamoto was actually a public administration professor trying to teach kids why financial institutions have the rules in place that they do.

Given enough time, the entire crypto space will have reinvented every regulation they tried to get rid of and understood why they existed in the first place."

disruptalot · 3 years ago

This was a failure of traditional financial institutions and people who are ok with them, not of crypto.

Satoshi wouldn't be encouraging people to put their coins on a trusted third party like that. All fundamental crypto values say this.

disruptalot commented on Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do? · Posted by u/whyamibad2

overkalix · 3 years ago

Let me interject with a related issue I've seen in HN and its "Who's hiring" posts. I'm tired of having to waddle through the crypto/blockchain/web3 offers that are seemingly and permanently 6 months away from solving most of humanities issues. Most of them are grifters and they should not be rewarded with visibility in this forum.

disruptalot · 3 years ago

It's an open hiring board. Who is going to fairly judge the openings without falling into some sort of bias?

Actually I can barely find any crypto posts on the hiring threads. Maybe 5%.

disruptalot commented on Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible? blog.mollywhite.net/is-ac... · Posted by u/Liron

dmitriid · 3 years ago

Molly White consistently writes concise and precise essays about problems in the crypto space that the crypto "community" consistently fail to address or even respond to in as concise and precise a manner.

Well, except "it's too early" and "these articles are wrong and a smear campaign".

disruptalot · 3 years ago

Speaking personally, they might be concise and precise but the arguments are nothing new and too often have simple counter arguments. That's the reason they're not addressed, there really is no reason to except to directly address the Molly white audience.