To push back at your obvious facetiousness, I do think that both cryptocurrencies and machine learning are very powerful and useful technologies. Underneath the scammers, grifters and investors that jump on the hype train for their get-rich-quick schemes, and the general public that falls for it and fuels the hype train, both technologies have solid reasons for existing, and can be generally very useful to humanity.
So I reject the notion of throwing the baby out with the bath water as much as the hype bubble around them.
What we do need, as with any novel technology, is oversight and regulation. Which is difficult this time around when the grifters are also the ones in power.
> So I reject the notion of throwing the baby out with the bath water as much as the hype bubble around them.
I never mentioned throwing them out; I specifically mentioned that they are niche - they have useful applications in very specific domains.
That use isn't dependent on hype, because they don't need a bunch of investment dollars to somehow find a use-case and create artificial demand.
As an example, someone proposed a while ago that banks could use a blockchain to facilitate near instant foreign exchanges; for the sake of argument let's say that's a feasible thing for them to use it for, and is an improvement over their existing system for them.
The customer doesn't need to know and likely doesn't care that it uses a blockchain to facilitate the transfer. They care that the transfer was much quicker.
Eh, your entire comment was dismissive about the "technologies", and not unlike countless similar reactions about the topic. So any serious points you wanted to make were easy to miss within the sarcasm.
I do agree with your point that valid use cases don't need to rely on hype, but at the same time, the technology that powers it doesn't need to be invisible to users. Some amount of marketing around it shouldn't be an issue. The thing is that we've been flooded with it for the past decade+, and the critical thinking public has become desensitized to the bullshit. But this doesn't mean that underneath that there is zero legitimate value, as some people vocally claim.
Transparency logs like [Certificate Transparency](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6962) use permissioned chains (and other things) to distribute trust in the internet public key infrastructure.
My understanding is that CT uses Merkle trees, which can also be used in a Blockchain, but that seems to be where the association dies. Just because two things use the same underlying data type doesn't mean one is a use of the other.
My point is: when was the last time when K-means clustering or the Bayesian theorem got a cult, spawned a 10000 fake currencies and were touted as a panacea for all societal problems? The hype behind blockchain, which is just a distributed mathematically sound log of stuff, is just a bunch of misinformation shouted loudly by charlatans and uninformed enthusiasts.
It's the same thing with LLMs, they are basically an extremely sophisticated autocomplete, but I'll be damned if I don't see 1911 articles per day that claim they are sentient, and Sam the perv needs just a couple more billion dollars to reach AGI, just behind the corner. The average pundit's critical thinking is just so disappointing.
I'm not sure if you meant to reply to me? I generally agree with your points, but my specific reply was dismissing the idea that Certificate Transparency is a good use of Blockchain..
The problem is the crypto isn't used as a currency. It's used as a security, and a very speculative one at that. We don't need more securities, sorry.
Also, the benefits of crypto as a currency aren't all that. We already have instant money transfers that everyone uses day-to-day without any hitch. Crypto can do it too, sure. Keyword too.
There can be other benefits like transparency or anonymity but:
1. We can already achieve transparency through regulation and largely have.
2. Anonymity for currencies is pretty much bad. We tried that in the past, turns out lots of organized crime.
> The problem is the crypto isn't used as a currency.
False.
> We don't need more securities, sorry.
That's your opinion.
> We already have instant money transfers that everyone uses day-to-day without any hitch.
We do? Please let me know of an instant way to send money to any country on Earth, without exorbitant fees or trusting a single corporation.
> Anonymity for currencies is pretty much bad. We tried that in the past, turns out lots of organized crime.
Ah, yes. Let's abolish cash as well.
It's easy to strawman the case that all cryptocurrencies have no practical value. Groupthink is promoted on forums like this. What takes a bit of maturity and honesty is acknowledging that beyond the negative things cryptocurrencies have been used for, the technology is fulfilling the promise of evolving our financial systems. While you continue to scream and shout that it's a scam, millions of people will continue to benefit from it every day.
Okay, but most people aren't using bitcoin as currency.
> That's your opinion.
Okay, and most people's opinion. Yeah we don't need more securities, especially scammy ones. Sorry you're in the minority.
> We do? Please let me know of an instant way to send money to any country on Earth, without exorbitant fees or trusting a single corporation.
I don't pay for my fucking coffee in Venezuela. 99.99% of transfers don't go across countries.
And, if you need that, that's what credit cards are for. They're fast and I'm not going to get kidnapped and have my fingers stolen because I have an Amex blue card.
> It's easy to strawman
Really? You don't think appealing to usecases like "inter-country transfers" isn't strawmanning?
The reality is crypto-currency has exceedingly small usecases that aren't already covered by other technologies. And then, of those that are covered, the alternatives are proven, faster, cheaper, and safer.
> Ah, yes. Let's abolish cash as well.
Nobody ever said this, but we do put limits on cash to prevent laundering.
And it's saved a lot of lives. Sorry, I don't think letting organized crime flourish is worth for some principle of privacy you have. I don't care about you or your principles, I care about real outcomes, in the real world. And, fortunately, legislatures in pretty much every country agree with me.
It's hard to see the positives considering current cryptocurrencies are 99% rug-n-pull ponzi schemes with the longevity of a mayfly, and the ones sticking around like bitcoin, eth, etc, are just a long-run-con with a value volatility rivaling only the volatility of the currently in-fashion javascript framework.
I mean, most modern financial instruments are fairly similar, albeit slightly more regulated, so what do I know. In a short span, we have witnessed speculative buying of GPUs, crypto mining (aka using shit ton of electricity and hardware to produce NOTHING of value), dropshipping, and my favorite: the tremendous value that NFTs and all other web3 trash brought to society, I can't help but wonder why people are tired of the crypto fads, especially since crypto delivered NOTHING of its promises:
- you can buy limited amount of stuff with it and you often need to convert it to "real" money
- its unstable and unregulated, so it's just a breeding ground for scammers and snake oil salesmen
- It fails hard on its privacy/anonymity promise, as it's LITERALLY the most traceable thing in the world, especially considering wallet scramblers are outlawed in many places
So much negativity for no reason, all web3 so far has been super successful and extremely useful for society! /s
So I reject the notion of throwing the baby out with the bath water as much as the hype bubble around them.
What we do need, as with any novel technology, is oversight and regulation. Which is difficult this time around when the grifters are also the ones in power.