The crypto industry is making its mark on this year’s elections to the tune of some $119 million.
The funding has largely come from two companies — Coinbase and Ripple — which are funneling money into super PACs like Fairshake PAC, which is dedicated to “elevating pro-crypto candidates and attacking crypto skeptics,” according to Public Citizen.
At the 2024 bitcoin conference in Nashville in February, Trump — who called bitcoin “highly volatile and based on thin air” in 2019 — said he’d lay out a plan “to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world.” Trump has already won the backing of several crypto enthusiasts, including his running mate JD Vance, who owns at least $250,000 in bitcoin.
The new currency that’s backed by the old currency and uses a shit ton more electricity. What a time to be alive.
Can’t tell if this is shill, but I dislike cryptocurrencies and anyone who defends them. Not that you did, per se, but it’s close.
There’s a huge difference.
Fediverse uses almost no energy compared to Reddit and Twitter. This is because few people are using fediverse alternatives.
Bitcoin uses more energy than entire countries, despite few people using it.
And also the fediverse serves a purpose. Crypto is just a shortsighted pyramid scheme fueled by greed.
Decentralization isn’t the reason, and conflating it with fediverse services is disingenuous.
The reason many cryptos use a lot of power is because of proof of work.
Proof of stake and proof of work have the same effective result for voting power. In order to effectively mine, you need a large capital investment and in order to stay competitive in mining you need to continue spending capital, the same is true for proof of stake as the larger overall stake the lower the payouts, so it requires more capital investment.
Without old currency denomination. But as soon as you can start clearing debts with crypto, its effectively a third-party printable currency that the federal government has endorsed.
The entire crypto industry is basically propped up by the existence of Tether, which is (notionally) backed by the US dollar.
Without Tether you lose any remaining institutional investment. Big companies want to be able to trade in crypto but they don’t want to hold crypto, because it’s volatile, and convertong fiat to crypto takes too long for effective trading. Tether is the middle man.
So yes, since Tether basically facilitates all meaningful crypto trading, and Tether is supposedly just tokenized USD, their statement about crypto being backed by the old money is perfectly cromulent.
Why choose? Use electricity and destroy living creatures: https://time.com/6982015/bitcoin-mining-texas-health/
It’s not just nerds with a spare laptop mining anymore. This money wants returns in ‘not being regulated.’
I was referencing the FIAT system. I’m sure you’ll agree there’s much more blood cost (in terms of lives ruined and indirect life lost), although it’s harder to directly relate.
Which includes mining all the rare materials used in manufacturing the GPUs and ASICs (that we’re actually running out of) .
It isn’t, it’s a technology. People use that technology to scam.
Same as phone calls aren’t scans and email aren’t scans but people can use them to scam.
Crypto has a purpose, just one that doesn’t apply to many people.
We’ll find that use case any day now. The one that isn’t enabling crime, that is.
Define enabling crime.
Is payment for private VPN enabling crime? Is sending money to and from relatives in sanctioned jurisdictions enabling crime? Is supporting opposition leaders enabling crime?
Crypto enables freedom, and yes, criminals are kinda into freedom. Imagine cash has never existed and try to pitch that. It would never make it past the board. You are correct that crypto may not help your average American. But its use as a safer haven are important in places like El Salvador, Nigeria, and Curacao.
Usually, if there’s a scam, someone’s making money off it. This is them. They want to keep making money.
Casino owners put a lot of money into elections too.
Would you say casinos aren’t a scam? I’d call them a scam.
Ehhhh… Kinda. It’s like asking if BitTorrent or Usenet is piracy. Technically crypto isn’t a scam, but that’s mainly what it gets used for.
In reality only a small part of crypto could be the classified as scams. I know that’s the main crypto narrative on lemmy, but there is nowhere near much of scams as talked about here.
It sure is.
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A yes, what a truly democratic country
Oh yeah, Paris Marx covered this on his Tech Won’t Save Us Podcast with Writer and Crypto Skeptic Molly White.
Not that it needs bearing repeating, but Fuck All Crypto Bros.
Crypto absolutely does have utility, but it’s not currency of the future.
People going against all crypto lack nuance, and people promoting crypto as solution to all problems are either naive or deceptive.
As long as I have not seen blockchain do anything even remotely useful that couldn’t already be done better before without it, I will keep calling it useless.
So then what do you think it does solve? “Blockchain not money” is a phrase popular with scams too.
Blockchain has more utility than crypto, but keeping focused on the latter, crypto may allow for anonymous (pseudonymous) transactions* that are also immutable, which can preserve your privacy and also allow you to financially support whoever government doesn’t want you to support - be it protesters, or your relatives in sanctioned jurisdictions, or, say, Ukrainian army if you are Russian**, or whatever.
It also gives you Internet money you’re in full control of - no one can freeze or seize your assets***.
*This does not apply if you use open ledger cryptocurrency and bought it from a traceable source, especially an exchange that requires KYC
**I am Russian, and I do not transfer money to Ukraine. Rest assured, dear FSB agent. But many people do, and they should be protected
***Assuming you use a trusted non-custodial wallet and adhere to basic DeFi hygiene if you use it. Also, sometimes, like when you do crime, inability to freeze your assets is bad. But I did happen to be in a situation when all my bank accounts were wrongfully arrested, and it took me 3 weeks to make my appeal approved by the court to restore access to my own money. Makes sense for me now to keep some money in cash and crypto.
