Cryptocurrency

Ames

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Interesting video - I wouldn't say the interviewer was very professional, but the interviewee is a typical NFT snake oil salesman type. His argument is "these things could potentially have value if people decide they will" which is true as far as it goes. But he provides no reason as to why they will or should. He just tries to hype people up on the idea that they might get big, so buy now! And I will grant you, something out of this will get big. But most of it won't.

Miners on oil rigs - not a bad thing, but I would imagine a very niche and minor portion of overall mining.
Energy Provider Control on East Coast - one individual, using the type of demand side management that is common practice for large utility customers. I would say this behavior makes this person better than many miners, but still fundamentally bad.

The bottom line is that you are using huge amounts of energy for something that is unnecessary. You can argue the value of crypto in general and I'm willing to listen, but the proof of work method is certainly unnecessary.

GaryV can definitely pump NFTs, but he has also said that most NFTs will go to near zero. Some of them will become brands. Some will become gaming companies. Some metaverse brands. Some of them art.

I've been involved in mining since $50 BTC. I don't think 75% type numbers are doing something like the oil rigs. But I also think the numbers we get told are way off. Power is the biggest cost input. Even people that don't care about the environment are driven to some pretty creative ways to get it. I was at one pitch meeting where the miners were going to setup in a remote, green energy, very cold area. They would use the exhaust heat to warm green houses and grow fresh vegetables; which they were going to give away to the community.

Unnecessary is literally just your opinion. I would call Christmas lights totally unnecessary. I'd call gaming rigs and consoles unnecessary. I'd pretend that air conditioning is completely unnecessary because really it is but I'm not going to stop using mine.

But I've really tried to stop arguing energy use with people. A bunch of NFT blockchains are already on proof of stake. ETH 2 is proof of stake. The ones that stay on proof of work can try to justify it.
 
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JustAnotherTimeline

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Interesting video - I wouldn't say the interviewer was very professional, but the interviewee is a typical NFT snake oil salesman type. His argument is "these things could potentially have value if people decide they will" which is true as far as it goes. But he provides no reason as to why they will or should. He just tries to hype people up on the idea that they might get big, so buy now! And I will grant you, something out of this will get big. But most of it won't.

Miners on oil rigs - not a bad thing, but I would imagine a very niche and minor portion of overall mining.
Energy Provider Control on East Coast - one individual, using the type of demand side management that is common practice for large utility customers. I would say this behavior makes this person better than many miners, but still fundamentally bad.

The bottom line is that you are using huge amounts of energy for something that is unnecessary. You can argue the value of crypto in general and I'm willing to listen, but the proof of work method is certainly unnecessary.



I can appreciate that the energy cost of Bitcoin will eventually go down once all the coins are mined. There will probably be some point toward the end where (assuming Bitcoin is still viable by that point) even the large value of a coin will not be enough to justify many people mining. But as the value of the coin goes up and as it becomes harder and harder to get those few available coins - isn't this just going to proportionally increase energy usage? And I do get the point - the reason for proof of work is to make it too costly in terms of electricity to generate a 51% attack so an attacker would get less than they spent. I've also heard people say the value of a bitcoin is basically the value of the electricity used to mine it. I get the concept. And I get that there are people who don't like Proof of Stake because it requires a trusted authority to at least some degree. I get why crypto enthusiasts like proof of work and what advantages it has. I think it's just something that isn't good for our society, when applied at a large scale.

In terms of how much is too much - I'd say when it costs 10-20% more energy than any other currency system, that's when it's too much. Currently, on a per user basis Bitcoin consumes 30x more energy than traditional banks. Total use by banks is higher than Bitcoin, but they serve many more users. 5% of all the world's electricity is used on Bitcoin alone. Put the energy use of cryptocurrency in a +/-10% range of regular banks and I think you'd see the problems go away.

Only for awhile. Energy use is directly tied to hash rate which is the computing power of the network. As the year over year price increase in Bitcoin continues to drop and the halving continues to drop mining rewards the energy consumption will plateau. The network will slowly shift towards a closed transaction fee based economy. As this happens only the cheapest and most efficient energy sources for miners will survive. Then the costs will go down. So in the future there is reason to believe per user costs could be more competitive with other currency systems.

My point is, energy spent now is an investment in the future of a much greener and safe economic system for those who want to participate. With the system only getting better cheaper and greener I don't think it's reasonable to cut it off at the knees based on your present figures.

The nice thing is the system has a hard coded economy. There wont be a fed meeting to delay the halving. Bitcoin inflation will crawl to zero. The rules are set beyond our lifetimes.

I respect but oppose your opinion that this value proposition isn't worth the energy. In some ways this comes down to how much you value an opt out global economic system free of government control. There is a ever growing group of people that are crying out for a hard money alternative asset. Like me, these folks a tired of rediculous sums of stimulus, 7.5% inflation, and the politics of our monetary decisions. Have you seen what the Turkish government did to the Lira? 36% inflation and only going up. They are flocking to Bitcoin. No by decree (fiat) money system has ever succeeded in the history of the world. Many Americans are too proud to think it could happen to us.
 

DreamyFred21

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I recently started staking USDC on Crypto.com and collecting 12% interest on it. Since it's always been $1 (essentially), seems like minimal risk and an unexciting, but consistent 12% return on my money. Anyone else do something similar? Can someone smarter than me tell me if this is a dumb thing to be doing?

I do own and stake other cryptos as well - ETH, BTC, Algorand, Harmony, Loopring, CRO, but I have a heavier weight in USDC.
 

JustAnotherTimeline

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I recently started staking USDC on Crypto.com and collecting 12% interest on it. Since it's always been $1 (essentially), seems like minimal risk and an unexciting, but consistent 12% return on my money. Anyone else do something similar? Can someone smarter than me tell me if this is a dumb thing to be doing?

I do own and stake other cryptos as well - ETH, BTC, Algorand, Harmony, Loopring, CRO, but I have a heavier weight in USDC.

In my opinion holding usdc is extremely low. It is fully backed by cash or equivalents which are held by regulated institutions.

The risk of holding in crypto.com, Celsius, or block fi is relatively low, but higher then just holding the currency. When you deposit on those platforms you are trusting a centralized entity to be responsible for your coins and to be prudent in their lending. That is how the interest is so high.

Personally, I like to spread my risk around between cold storage, defi, and several centralized accounts.

I think the risk of holding a dollar at current rates of inflation in a savings account is far more then getting 8-12% on a stablecoin. In other words, I think people are nuts in this environment if they sit on dollars when stables have such excellent returns.

Others will disagree, but I think then risk/reward here is obvious.
 
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JustAnotherTimeline

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I recently started staking USDC on Crypto.com and collecting 12% interest on it. Since it's always been $1 (essentially), seems like minimal risk and an unexciting, but consistent 12% return on my money. Anyone else do something similar? Can someone smarter than me tell me if this is a dumb thing to be doing?

I do own and stake other cryptos as well - ETH, BTC, Algorand, Harmony, Loopring, CRO, but I have a heavier weight in USDC.

Also, you are smart to be heavy stablecoin and risk off is this economic environment.
 

clonehome

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Examples of why NFT’s are one of the dumbest things ever. It’s hysterical that Dorsey tries to sell his first tweet as an NFT and for 2 months can’t get a bid for more than $3500 then suddenly the CEO of a blockchain tech company pays $2.9 mil in an effort to legitimize and pump up this ridiculously stupid concept. Then I just downloaded a copy of the tweet for free.



1644771585952.jpeg
 

Ames

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Examples of why NFT’s are one of the dumbest things ever. It’s hysterical that Dorsey tries to sell his first tweet as an NFT and for 2 months can’t get a bid for more than $3500 then suddenly the CEO of a blockchain tech company pays $2.9 mil in an effort to legitimize and pump up this ridiculously stupid concept. Then I just downloaded a copy of the tweet for free.


I'd call this more of an example of you don't know enough about NFTs to be commenting on NFTs.

Jack is a BTC maxi. People with ETH are buying NFTs. So not ideal to have the people buying your NFT the same people that don't like your stance on crypto. Then since Jack is a BTC maxi he manages to completely do the NFT wrong on a crap platform. Not really a surprise.

I do NFT auctions every day. I always wait until 10 min left. Then either try to guess at a price that will win or go really big to just end it. On any of the real platforms a bid extends the auction 10 min. All of the price action on NFT auctions are at the end. You can literally look at any NFT auction and all the big bids are at the end.

I can download a copy of the Nike logo. Great. But I don't own it. My BAYC NFT I do own the IP rights for it. Some have licensed their apes out. Some have agents. You'll start to see them in advertising. It's a brand so if BAYC can get the brand into pop culture who knows.
 
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clonehome

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Dorsey sold something as an afterthought or maybe even a joke and found someone to pay $3 mil for it. That has nothing to do with him being a BTC maxi, rather it just points to the absurdity of the NFT market.

The bored ape thing is probably fun for people. You spend a couple hundred bucks worth of ETH to be a member and you get access to certain sites. Is there more to it than that? Pokemon GO was really popular for a few months in 2016 and is still around, and generated a lot of revenue along the way. After watching the cryptocurrency and NFT markets for several years they still seem to be more like games or hobbies than useful assets. Which is OK because online gaming is a multibillion dollar industry. And online betting is even bigger.
 

swiacy

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I have been attempting to get up to speed on the NFT cryptocurrency arena. Didn’t think it would amount to much in low populated rural area such as mine but changed my mind when I saw a funky looking machine in the mom & pop grocery store in our 1400 pop town along the Ia/Mo border. Closer exam it was a Bitcoin ATM for buying & selling that had a screen that showed the up-to-date fluctuations in value of the Bitcoin. Asked the check out lady if anybody ever used it and she said lots of folks daily. Eye opener. I’m guessing bankers, the Fed, politicians and the public are in for an adjustment in monetary regulation and how economic transactions take place, similar but on a larger scale when credit/debit cards replaced cash/checks.
 
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Ames

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Dorsey sold something as an afterthought or maybe even a joke and found someone to pay $3 mil for it. That has nothing to do with him being a BTC maxi, rather it just points to the absurdity of the NFT market.

The bored ape thing is probably fun for people. You spend a couple hundred bucks worth of ETH to be a member and you get access to certain sites. Is there more to it than that? Pokemon GO was really popular for a few months in 2016 and is still around, and generated a lot of revenue along the way. After watching the cryptocurrency and NFT markets for several years they still seem to be more like games or hobbies than useful assets. Which is OK because online gaming is a multibillion dollar industry. And online betting is even bigger.
Jack is very much into crypto. There is no chance he did it as an afterthought. He might have picked a bad platform because he is a BTC maxi and didn't want to be where ETH NFTs should be minted. Maybe he wanted to make NFTs look bad. Who knows. Had he just been an any crypto person and minted on Super Rare or Opensea it most definitely would have gone a lot different.

Do some research and see where you land on NFTs. BAYC are 6 or 7 figures. You could end up licensing it to Pepsi, Budweiser, or Adidas for commercials. You could use it to get on a yacht and see Lil Baby, the Strokes, Questlove, Chris Rock, and Aziz Ansari. You could use it to play BAYC only games. You could use it as a PFP to flex like Tyrese Haliburton.
 

JustAnotherTimeline

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@agrabes

Any thoughts on this? Conoco supplying a US bitcoin mining operation with natural gas which would otherwise be flared. Flaring is pretty bad for the environment as far as I understand. Score one for bitcoin?

 
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agrabes

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Any thoughts on this? Conoco supplying a US bitcoin mining operation with natural gas which would otherwise be flared. Flaring is pretty bad for the environment as far as I understand. Score one for bitcoin?


Good timing, happened to stop by and see this! As for how I feel about it, sounds like it's efficient business for Conoco. This individual miner is doing something good. These are all edge cases though. Is this a significant portion of US or world bitcoin mining? Probably not. More than anything, I see most of these things as attempts at PR repair. But it takes a lot of waste gas flaring to make up for firing up one old coal generator.

Jack is very much into crypto. There is no chance he did it as an afterthought. He might have picked a bad platform because he is a BTC maxi and didn't want to be where ETH NFTs should be minted. Maybe he wanted to make NFTs look bad. Who knows. Had he just been an any crypto person and minted on Super Rare or Opensea it most definitely would have gone a lot different.

Do some research and see where you land on NFTs. BAYC are 6 or 7 figures. You could end up licensing it to Pepsi, Budweiser, or Adidas for commercials. You could use it to get on a yacht and see Lil Baby, the Strokes, Questlove, Chris Rock, and Aziz Ansari. You could use it to play BAYC only games. You could use it as a PFP to flex like Tyrese Haliburton.

Come on - do you really believe that BAYC characters will be licensed in any meaningful way? You might get the top one or two. That's great that for that specific NFT you do get copyright. Many don't grant that. In fact, many NFTs are stolen images.

Sorry to bail on the previous conversation, got busy over the weekend. In terms of unnecessary - I was referring to the additional energy use of Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake. You can argue about whether crypto or blockchain is useful and at least have reasonable arguments on either side for at least some use case. I don't think there's much of a good argument for proof of work.
 

Ames

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Come on - do you really believe that BAYC characters will be licensed in any meaningful way? You might get the top one or two. That's great that for that specific NFT you do get copyright. Many don't grant that. In fact, many NFTs are stolen images.
There are already a bunch licensed. A band, books, one as a logo for a restaurant, some have signed talent agents. And brands buying them. And brands asking for ones with certain traits to apply to be licensed.

I think BAYC itself will become a brand. Probably clothes and merch. License it out.

Nike, Adidas, Bud, Pepsi, they are all doing NFTs and buying up parts of the NFT space to try to sort this all out themselves.

Yeah anywhere there is money to be made someone will try to cheat. So yeah people will steal art and try to mint. Opensea has the blue verified checkmark. It's pretty trivial to check with the artists Twitter or Discord or website and see what's real. Most of the NFT artists and creators are pretty accessible. If someone gets burned with fakes they really aren't doing even the slightest bit of research.
 

JustAnotherTimeline

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Good timing, happened to stop by and see this! As for how I feel about it, sounds like it's efficient business for Conoco. This individual miner is doing something good. These are all edge cases though. Is this a significant portion of US or world bitcoin mining? Probably not. More than anything, I see most of these things as attempts at PR repair. But it takes a lot of waste gas flaring to make up for firing up one old coal generator.

Yeah, the article doesn't say if this is a meaningful amount of energy or not. I would be nice to know those details. More interestingly, it makes me wonder if there could be a trend in energy companies starting to mine their own btc. It's basically free money they are flaring away. Why not keep it in house? Mining BTC is really easy and the ROI on miners is reasonable. Maybe just a pipedream for a bitcoin guy like me, but, it's fun to dream!
 
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BryceC

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There are already a bunch licensed. A band, books, one as a logo for a restaurant, some have signed talent agents. And brands buying them. And brands asking for ones with certain traits to apply to be licensed.

I think BAYC itself will become a brand. Probably clothes and merch. License it out.

Nike, Adidas, Bud, Pepsi, they are all doing NFTs and buying up parts of the NFT space to try to sort this all out themselves.

Listen, I'm 40 now and officially old but I literally had no idea what BAYC was until the articles came out about those guys' identities getting released. It has a long, long, long way to go before it gets any meaningful brand recognition like the other things you mentioned.
 

agrabes

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There are already a bunch licensed. A band, books, one as a logo for a restaurant, some have signed talent agents. And brands buying them. And brands asking for ones with certain traits to apply to be licensed.

I think BAYC itself will become a brand. Probably clothes and merch. License it out.

Nike, Adidas, Bud, Pepsi, they are all doing NFTs and buying up parts of the NFT space to try to sort this all out themselves.

Yeah anywhere there is money to be made someone will try to cheat. So yeah people will steal art and try to mint. Opensea has the blue verified checkmark. It's pretty trivial to check with the artists Twitter or Discord or website and see what's real. Most of the NFT artists and creators are pretty accessible. If someone gets burned with fakes they really aren't doing even the slightest bit of research.

This is something where I'm willing to say I'll believe it when I see it. Right now, BAYC seems to be a situation where a few wealthy, influential people have bought these up for high prices and that's what has sustained the value. That a few brands have picked up some of these Apes is not surprising, they're either NFT believers themselves or just cynically thinking it's not a bad idea to buy cheap insurance. A dedicated community of NFT/crypto enthusiasts are currently buying into each others' projects to help prop each other up, which is the source of most of those uses you're talking about. And I do agree - most of the enthusiasts are not going to fall for something stolen off Newgrounds. But, there are enough newcomers or people who get pulled in by the hype to make it worth these scammers while to do it or they would have stopped. I also think there are group of people in that community who believe that once you have an NFT related to something, you've taken over ownership and forget that there are already existing copyright laws in place, etc which are not negated by NFTs.

Things like Nike, Adidas, etc generating NFTs is generally because NFT is the current buzzword among investors who are active and talk with the executive teams and boards of directors at these large companies. There is a lot of pressure out there from these people to jump into NFTs because it's buzzing right now. And, the people who actually do the work at these companies probably figure it's most likely to be worthless in 5 years but if it makes us some money and keeps the shareholders off our backs then sure let's do it. Look at how this has backfired in the video game industry for example - the vast majority of end users hate the concept and public outcry has forced many developers to abandon NFT plans which were never popular with their intended audience or even the rank and file employees forced to work on them.

I won't say it's impossible that Bored Ape Yacht Club becomes a brand on its own. It's getting more and more eyes on it all the time. Then again, the decentralized nature of it kind of fights that right? Each individual Ape has its own owner, so there is no unified brand. But all that said I feel totally comfortable saying that if it turns out that BAYC takes off and goes mainstream, I'll be willing to sit on the sidelines and scratch my head and won't feel an ounce of regret.
 

JustAnotherTimeline

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Listen, I'm 40 now and officially old but I literally had no idea what BAYC was until the articles came out about those guys' identities getting released. It has a long, long, long way to go before it gets any meaningful brand recognition like the other things you mentioned.

Age is just a number man!

Paris and Jimmy bought one! Keep up! :)

 

Ames

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Listen, I'm 40 now and officially old but I literally had no idea what BAYC was until the articles came out about those guys' identities getting released. It has a long, long, long way to go before it gets any meaningful brand recognition like the other things you mentioned.
I'm old also. Just don't tell anyone on Discord.

You don't follow Haliburton? Steph Curry, Von Miller, The Biebs, Jimmy Fallon, Snoop, Eminem, Kevin Hart? Haven't ever wondered about the shoes some of these NBA or NFL guys are wearing?

Yeah it's all early days and has a long ways to go. 1 day in crypto land is like 1 week in the real world so it will come soon enough.