The purpose of bitcoin and proof-of-work crypto currencies is to generate value by decrypting blocks of data. They become harder to break as the computational power used churn them out increases, right?
What is being used to produce these currencies? Hardware and energy, right? And how is this equipment being purchased? Cash or crypto?
The resellers of those videocards and processors aren’t mining; they’re selling and they accept non-crypto currencies. Using crypto functionally adds extra steps to a two step process: take money; deliver item.
So isn’t it all kinda pointless? Increasing the overhead to produce more of a given coin eventually means sinking the coin out of the system and into cash money, so the only aspirational goal is to either get it into wider use and acceptance, or to continue promoting it to investors. The third aspirational goal - getting it recognized as a currency - is dead in the water if you can’t get the government on board. And that’ll be hard because, by design, they cannot be easily tracked (this is one of its selling points), and can’t be insured. Sure, cash can’t be tracked, but then we just… use cash.
If the only purpose of convincing a company to use bitcoin is to provide some real-world value to it, then what actual purpose does a company have in using it at all? Whether they accept bitcoin/crypto currency or not isn’t a zero sum game for them, but it provides no benefit and in fact might burden them as a capital gains instrument instead of currency. You’d probably have an easier time convincing Visa or Mastercard or whoever to accept it as a payment method, and you’d rack up reward points to boot; at least they’re in a position to assess risk.
In short: if anybody wants crypto currency to be accepted, don’t argue with businesses; deal with the government. And if they’re not on board, then companies are only going to open themselves to it if the gains outweigh the volatile nature of the market and the costs of doing business with it.
Who can be trusted? The mob? No, I do not trust my fellow man and while clearly a central authority has is pitfalls(just look at Congress playing Russian Roulette will the value of our currency) pretending that a modern return to the gold standard is a boon to society is burying your head in the sand to my thinking
Bitcoin and all crypto for that matter are fiat currencies, they have no purpose beyond a means of exchange, just like the euro or dollar or yen
I’m leery of 51% attacks and automatic or algorithmic changes in the value of currency-if the value of a coin can vary for day to day so wildly, it has no use as currency
Inflation is certainly real and I would argue that the Fed keeps the prime rate artificially low to goose consumption-after all why should I save money for it to lose value when I could spend it on durable goods that might retain value?
Crypto is a scam waiting for the ax to fall…again
The current system isn’t ideal but your solution is worse than the problem it proports to solve
As someone who is pro-crypto and has been in the space for awhile, and honestly kinda feeling like the only Framework user who is atm, I really enjoyed reading this thread. I did have a few comments though:
You really shouldn’t make purchasing decision based on whether or not someone accepts crypto as a form of payment. Especially considering all the good Framework stands for and what they are trying to do and how much this industry needs it, why would you hold that against them?
I did buy my Framework with crypto (and got 3% back in crypto), using a crypto visa card, and it was super simple. Honestly, there are so many ways today to spend and buy things with crypto I am not sure why you would put the burden on Framework when they have enough on their plate getting a company running smoothly and getting laptops out to people.
And honestly if they did choose to accept crypto as a form of payment, Bitcoin wouldn’t be my first choice. It’s a good store of value which is what it was designed to be, but there are a lot better crypto options for a payment system.
@Josh_Cook
As more and more institutions are coming into the space this is getting better but what is really irritating is when those same people clearly know what they are doing, and turn around and buy a bunch more in the dip they caused. Since crypto isn’t regulated yet they aren’t going to be held accountable.
@Zax
Moves pushing 30%-40% in crypto is pretty normal. People who have been in the space for a bit are just going to short on the way down, buy the dip and wait. The people who I’ve seen really struggle with this though are people who are new to crypto and people who come from stocks where 3% is considered a big move. From a company perspective though, unless holding crypto is in your company’s strategy, you are just going to turn around and sell the crypto off ASAP. Of course, if you are accepting a crypto that can take 30 minutes to get enough confirmations… a lot can happen in that time.
@nrp
That’s really awesome! I’m glad it helped you start such an awesome company!!!
Guys if you are reading this and newly getting into crypto both @nrp and @Louis_Rossmann make really good points here. Crypto isn’t a good way to get rich quick unless you get really really lucky. While you are starting out look into holding long term (HODLing) or perhaps swing trading on a higher time frame like weekly or monthly until you get a good grasp of the space and try to learn as much as you can. Stay away from meme coins and do not leverage trade. Anywhere money is involved their are going to be ponzi schemes and scams. Crypto is no different. I wouldn’t suggest investing in any low cap coins until you learn how to research them.
I would love to talk for days about quantum computers and theorize how many qubits would actually be needed to pull this off for the current state of bitcoin and who I thought would get there first… fortunately blockchains can be updated and so can the encryption technology being used. Fun fact quantum computing has actually already hit bitcoin once in it’s early days due to Shor’s. But bitcoin was updated to a different encryption algorithm and other protections were put in place so that it would be much harder until quantum computers get more advanced. This will definitely be a cat and mouse game though just like everything else in cybersecurity but luckily there are already multiple researching groups working on quantum safe encryption algorithms since we use encryption for… well everything.
I am too. I’m heavy into some others that are already proof of stake and I like it a lot better. There is nothing better than “mining” (if you can call it that anymore) from your hardware wallet while it sits somewhere safely.
I’ve been looking into a crypto called PaxG (Pax Gold) as a possible diversification. Each token is backed by one fine troy ounce (t oz) of a 400 oz London Good Delivery gold bar, stored in Brink’s vaults. What is really cool about it is that you can redeem it for physical bars from them or smaller amounts from gold resellers. I do not know a lot about buying gold but I just thought it was neat.
As far as OEMs go Dell was the only one I was aware of and they stopped due to low demand. I think the best you could get right now (and isn’t an OEM anyway) is probably NewEgg.
Don’t get me wrong Bitcoin uses a ton of power and I vote for proof of stake… but that page is a bit misleading especially when it comes to per-transaction power usage.
You can’t calculate per-transaction energy usage by taking the total energy usage of a blockchain and splitting it across the number of transactions. And then they are “calculating” the energy usage by taking how much miners make and using the power output of one specific miner across all of that work. If we are talking about just a regular transaction (eg. me sending to you) that is highly skewed. In fact they say on the same page that if it switched to proof of stake (so no miners) they would expect the energy usage to go down by 99.95%. So a more realistic per-transaction usage is probably 99.95% less than what they are showing. I also didn’t like that they originally had a section for people to talk about their methodolgy and to either validate it or talk about issues with it and they removed that section. You can see it on the wayback machine though. I found this guys blog giving his opinion on it: Serious faults in Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index. If nothing else the back and forth between him and the beci’s author is interesting. Either way thanks for sharing it.
Proof of work doesn’t decrypt any data. It’s who ever is first to find the correct way to generate a hash gets the block. And bitcoin can absolutely be tracked. In fact it’s one of the most track-able currencies. Every transaction is on a public ledger in plaintext. The only attempt at privacy you’ll get is if you create a wallet that no one knows is tied to you but people usually slip up. If you want privacy it would be better to use something designed for it like Monero. And you are right we need government changes for widespread adoption.
I think the only crypto that meets the definition of “fiat currency” is China’s digital yuan. However I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of them start to pop up.
Hopefully this doesn’t come across as too rude but either you or I don’t understand what fiat currency is
So far in this thread I’ve seen 2 non-fiat currencies, gold and a crypto backed by gold
If a currency only has value a means of exchange and has no intrinsic value then it’s a fiat currency, who decides the value is ultimately irrelevant to the point, a central bank isn’t the only entity capable of issuing fiat currencies
and no crypto has intrinsic value, you can’t do anything with them currently besides use them as a means of exchange-ETH is trying to change that but it’s not there yet
You can use gold to make jewelry or any number of other uses, it has intrinsic value
Whether Bitcoin or other cryptos are fiat money is highly debated and there are lots of great articles on the subject from both sides. This is one of those subjects that people are really passionate about regardless of the side they are on and once people make their decision, they tend to have a hard time seeing the other’s point of view even if things change in the future. I tend to stay away from topics like these for my own sanity which is why I didn’t really say anything about it or voice my opinion on the matter.
However,
I brought up China’s digital yuan because it’s the only crypto I could think of that meets everyone’s definition of what a fiat currency is, which is why I find it really interesting. What’s even more interesting is that China is responsible for the very first fiat currency as well.
I would say that if anyone is interested in this topic google a ton and read as much as you can from everyone’s point of view. Then also take a little dive into economy and look at the different types of money and what they are and why.
I do not fault Framework for choosing not to accept BTC or any other cryptocurrency at the outset. At the very least, it would increase the accounting overhead on a small company significantly.
The private sector controlled, government mandated fiat ccurrency + fraud known as fractional banking system is very broken and incredibly unfair (from here on out I’ll just call this system GEF for “government enforced fiat”). Read “The Creature from Jekyll Island” by G Edward Griffin for a look at just how intentionally this unfairness is designed in, and how pervasive the evil that rides along with this monetary model really is. I think this is the true source of most of the angst, animosity, and butthurt in this thread are really rooted in. To me it’s just like the Occupy camps that I visited, where people knew something was wrong with “the system”, but rarely could voice what exactly was wrong well enough to advance a real solution, so the anger came out in really ugly ways that had nothing to do with the real reason they were protesting.
BTC was a proof of concept, that individuals could get together and make a store and exchange of value without the government and banking cabal, without basing it on debt, and without relying on exponential growth on a finite planet. The me existence of such a currency is a giant middle finger raised to those who work so hard to keep us trapped into using and pumping value into the GEF currency model, despite GEF’s inevitable “right sizing”/“collapse”. BTC is not the first “side currency” to do so, but probably the first one to be traded globally that does so. In that one respect alone, BTC is a success.
In almost every other measurable way, BTC has not “fixed money”. I agree that it still has more in common with ponzi schemes and the tulip rush than with being an actual, workable system of recordkeeping and transport of value for the globe. However, that does not mean that there cannot be a future generation of crypto that can step up and take that role more elegantly. I look forward to seeing that future currency be what we measure value in, versus converting back to the GEFs…
Proof of work has shown its inefficiency and problems, especially in scaling. Proof of stake will also exclude the global poor just as efficiently as the GEFs have, in my opinion. Tangible goods backed currencies are a way to stabilize the value long term, at the expense of the global ecological damage of mining, refining, transporting, and storing whatever those durable goods are. Proof of service is a model I really would love to see take off instead (for an example, look up filecoin ).
So, in summary, I understand why Framework as an individual actor said “not yet” to accepting BTC and similar cryptocurrencies. I think the “blame” should not go on Framework itself, but rather just how hard governments have made it to trade in and use any other non-GEF currency, to the point where it will take a revision of crypto that is nearly perfect in every way to make it worth the switch…
What is the “Bitcoin community?” People who invest in Bitcoin? If the goal of cryptocurrency has met, they should have no collective back to be stabbed.
Regardless, it’s not like people don’t change their views on things. I absolutely believed in crypto when I was younger (though I never invested) and it is only now, once I see the true impact of it on our society, that I realize how flawed the idea is. I think a lot of people share my sentiment here. In 2011, Bitcoin mining was regarded as a “silly hobby.” Now it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry populated mostly by wealthy hardware sharks who are destroying the physical goods markets so they can get rich with theoretically infinite ROI.
Yeah, there have been times in the past where supply can’t keep up with demand, because some product is very desirable. This is a different situation altogether, because instead of the limited (albeit high) demand of new products in the past, there is functionally unlimited demand for GPUs and other hardware. Our economy can’t sustain this. And this is not even mentioning the energy costs, which in many nations are literally causing brown-outs and black-outs. I’m going to hold off on talking too much about power consumption because I really have not researched it.
I totally agree with you that wages are stagnating and saving has become nigh on impossible, but that is a separate issue. I fail to see how crypto will do anything but exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor.
Bitcoin is simply too volatile to run a business in a predictable manner. Maybe if you have a lot of extra cash it’s fine to speculate a little but you can’t manage your balance sheet with a currency that goes up and down by >10% all the time. So they would have to convert their BTC quickly to cash which has very high transaction costs. Unless you are trying to speculate on price increases bitcoin is not very useful at the moment.
To me bitcoin feels like .COM stocks in 1999 and real estate in 2007. Most people are pouring their money into these investments not because of a deep understanding but because they have the fear of missing out. And I bet, like before, some people will make good money and many more people will lose a lot of money.
Honestly, Bitcoin is the worst payment method to use in this type of situation. It would be better to use ETH when Proof of Stake eventually drops since that consumes hundreds of levels less energy. Still the problem of the currency dropping 10% in one day, but maybe the payment could go from the consumer’s wallet straight to an exchange address set up for the company so it can be turned into cash, just my suggestion.
Having just read through this thread … One thing I have not seen mentioned is that FW does not necessarily need to accept cryptocurrency transactions themselves. They could use a payment provider and receive fiat, with little impact on their accounting. Some will say this is not a good solution either, but it works for many other companies.
Regarding tokens / crypto “backed” by “something”. I would be really careful about recommending any of those unless the “backing” procedure is fully publicly understood and audited.
Not to come across as an a**, but are there any studies of the energy impact of the current financial system? For example, what is the environmental cost of a credit card transaction? I think there a many factors to be considered, not just the power and IT side, but also the manufacturing of plastic items etc. I actually would be genuinely interested to see something like that.
@mustart the energy consumption of credit cards will be much, much lower almost by definition. Credit cards are based on trust in a single institution (the card provider) which keeps a single privately managed ledger, designed specifically to be faster and easier than its primary competitors (cash and checks). It’s basically an http call back to a private server and internal reconciliation.
I’ve seen arguments that BTC requires less power than banking in general, but banks provide a number of services that BTC does not such as loans, auditing, interest, etc.
BTC’s selling point is that it distributes the ledger and currency creation across multiple parties to eliminate any necessary trust relationships. It has many advantages compared to credit cards. But from a strictly policy perspective, I suspect BTC will never have an electricity advantage over a trust-based centralized process.
If people dont learn first before they make some assumptions then they have many misconceptions in their head.
Bitcoins is greener (>70 sustainable energy usage, >50 pure green) than rocketman Musk or Tesla with it’s dirty Lithium. How is your energy mix at home? Mine is 100% green.
Bitcoin is energy efficient af. All energy goes into security.
Bitcoin can not live on expensive coal or nuclear energy because if you try you will pay more for mining than your compatitors and your will go bankrupt.
If you say Bitcoin uses the energy of country XY and this could be the end of the world then we are f.cked. Because there are 191 other countries and the end of the world is aready here.
Bitcoin is not slow. Try to make a fully settled international transaction. And wait some weeks. Bitcoin does this in under 1 hour with one 8th of what the banking system uses (people working there not included). Or try this this Gold bars of 100 dollars or 1 billion dollar.
Bitcoin is faster than VISA. VISA does not work on the settlement layer. It is just a database. Lightning can process millions of transactions per second. VISA can only handle 25k transactions per second.
Bitcoin has many usecases. But the Top 2 are bank the unbanked and move money between people without discriminating them for their gender, age, heritage, continent, country, political opinions, economical history or background, sexual orientation, religion, … just name it.
Bitcoin is volitile. Not within seconds. strike.me would not work if there would be big problem.
… and there is so much more to explain. Just learn the next 2 or 3 years before you give a near to educated answer. I’m in this since 2011 and I’m still sturggling to understand it fully. In 10 years many processes will rely on Bitcoin (Layer 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 …) and you would be ashamed to read these old comments knowing that you are just at the beginning of understanding Bitcoin.
I would say it is a “dumb” move to accept BITCOIN as it is more of an “investment vehicle” then an actual currency and is WAY to unstable
I LIKE “crypto” and believe ETHER and smart contracts has a LOT of future and there are coins talking about “POPW” proof of PRODUCTIVE work where the miners are say chewing through big data sets for AI learning OR DNA sequencing ETC
This conversation started around the Framework statement, so I don’t see any value in straying beyond that discussion space, particularly with geopolitical statements without complete context; there are subreddits for that.
Every country is dealing with 5-7% inflation in the wake of a global pandemic, including (among others) Canada, the US, and the UK. But when it comes to Bitcoin, you can’t really have inflation when going in the only direction left for an already inflated currency; a 57%+ loss is pretty harsh, and it’s still just as energy inefficient and inaccessible as it ever was.
Bitcoin has no intrinsic value except the hope and hype propagated by it’s holders and amplified by it’s hypers, whether it’s Musk et al, or the President of El Salvador.
This kind of mentality is what drives the Bitcoin ‘haters’, though (including myself). Burning through lots of energy (which is not sustainable) just to do useless computations without anything productive coming from them is just…stupid. There are other cryptocurrencies out there that force you to do useful work (e.g. Gridcoin), for example. While that’s potentially equally unsustainable in terms of burning through lots of energy, at least then there’s some sort of productive research or knowledge coming from it (akin to running a distributed research project with a small payoff).
