The Wikimedia Foundation's acceptance of cryptocurrency donations
blog.mollywhite.netDisclaimer: I have no assets or vested interest in cryotocurrency.
The author doesn't like cryptocurrencies and is articulate in describing why.
The author is free to support and use alternate payment methods.
Others seem to like cryptocurrencies. There are harms in its use, as with many actions. Does the author refuse to use airplanes too?
Airplanes provide a useful service that otherwise isn't available (the ability to quickly move from one place to another).
That said I've no idea why pushing back against a regressive technology requires you to have similarly strong opinions about every other potential harm or slight out there. This is whataboutism. Let's address one issue at a time, and if you have strong opinions on air travel, write a blog post and let's talk about it. Otherwise, one must be prepared to defend their position about the entire universe of ideas when challenging one - surely you can understand why this is counterproductive, untenable and harmful to the discourse?
> Airplanes provide a useful service that otherwise isn't available (the ability to quickly move from one place to another).
Cryptocurrencies provide a useful service that otherwise isn’t available (the ability to quickly transfer value from one place to another without censorship).
> That said I've no idea why pushing back against a regressive technology requires you to have similarly strong opinions about every other potential harm or slight out there.
The censorship resistance offered by cryptocurrencies is extremely progressive. The anonymity offered by some cryptocurrencies is extremely progressive.
I do not believe that 'without censorship' provides more value than it costs as for the overwhelming majority of individuals 'without censorship' means nothing. As evidenced by the fact the overwhelming majority of crypto 'transactions' take place on centralized, permissioned, censorable exchanges.
I think the costs dramatically outweigh the value provided. However, that is the meat of the conversation we're having.
> The censorship resistance offered by cryptocurrencies is extremely progressive.
Respectfully disagree. The ability to send money to North Korea and Iran in violation of international sanctions is regressive. The ability for folks on the OFAC and sanctions list to transact is regressive. Enabling ransomware payments is regressive. Enabling criminals to be paid for their crimes is regressive. Enabling crippling of infrastructure like the pipeline attacks is regressive.
Bitcoin revolutionized the drug trade, there’s huge value there.
People living in repressive societies like Russia are now able to safely buy weed thanks to cryptocurrencies enabling Hydra.
Before these people would risk prison to get a little stoned, but now they can just buy GPS coordinates on the internet and pick up their drugs without ever interacting with anyone.
It’s not a coincidence that most of the users come from such countries, not the west https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/darknet-markets-2021-ge...
Yes the broad enablement of crime and criminality is regressive.
You are a terrible person.
How can you genuinely suggest that it is progressive for some guy to prison in Russia because of a joint?
Your position is simply indefensible.
Let's take drugs for instance. I'm pro legalization.
The bulk of the harm created by drugs isn't from the drugs, it's from the cartels, gangs, the mafia - and from the police imprisoning users. Allowing the cartels to transact directly with customers doesn't stop that. It allows the narcos to kidnap, murder, rape and fund their empires - so some Russian kid can smoke a joint.
It's actually a way to make the joint smoking kid more likely to be imprisoned because they paid for their drugs not with an envelope of cash nobody will ever be able to trace - but with an immutable, plaintext, public ledger. Entries on the blockchain are prosecution futures for the little guy. As the technology to de-anonymize them automatically becomes more and more mature, it looks less like a great way to pay for drugs and more like a list of people unaware they're awaiting indictment.
It does nothing to reduce the level of imprisonment of users. It makes the harms associated with drugs significantly worse on both ends. The only way to mitigate the harms is to push for legalization.
However, keep in mind that ad hominem attacks are against site rules.
[edit] So you're clear, no, you did not read this reply correctly. I do not believe in accelerationism. Accelerationism is not progressive. Have a good night!
Am I getting this right? You’re pro legalization, but you’re so upset with some people in Mexico(?) that you’re happy to see consumers around the world jailed in order to spite the Mexicans?
> It's actually a way to make the joint smoking kid more likely to be imprisoned because they paid for their drugs not with an envelope of cash nobody will ever be able to trace - but with an immutable, plaintext, public ledger.
People in more repressive countries usually source their cryptocurrencies anonymously, western markets all use anonymous monero. Hydra will probably move sooner than later too.
Anyway, in the real world people buying from “traditional” dealers are far more likely to go to jail than those buying dead drops off of hydra.
The truth is that enabling the cartels is extremely progressive. This will eventually force the governments to play ball and liberalize their policies.
> However, keep in mind that ad hominem attacks are against site rules.
In philosophy ad hominem reasoning is often considered an essential part of moral debates. Some opinions are vile and reflect poorly on you, that’s just how it is.
https://news.bitcoin.com/ciphertrace-enhanced-monero-tracing...
Prosecution futures.
> In philosophy ad hominem reasoning is often considered an essential part of moral debates.
No it is not lol.
And I strongly suggest you re-read what I wrote because it appears to have bypassed you entirely.
Bitcoin kept Wikileaks going for years after Visa, Matercard, and Paypal cut off service for no reason.
Crypto in general has an edge case use as a payment mechanism of last resort in certain very limited circumstances - however Bitcoin isn't the one anyone should be using because it's public and transparent making anything you write up there prosecution futures. Not to mention the insane volatility, long transaction times, climate impact and high fees.
>Not to mention the insane volatility, long transaction times, climate impact and high fees.
Not correct, transactions on bitcoin's lightning network take 1-2 seconds to complete and cost a fraction of a penny.
Not quite. Because you still need to open a channel and probably eventually close a channel on the L1. Doing so for everyone on earth would cost 75 years, the entire block reward and about a half a trillion dollars. Double if you plan to close. So yeah it's fast so long as nobody's using it, but if they ever (god help us) start, you'll be putting in your payment requests like a Soviet phone line. Then, you have to deal with the quadratic routing complexity which would likely make it completely untenable past a certain number of users. This is why even the Chivo and Strike wallets don't actually use LN - they have a couple of their own nodes, that they don't allow external peering with, and only in certain circumstances. Mostly they just use MySQL.
Either way, it's not relevant because everyone uses centralized exchanges.
Yes, it's whataboutism.
Asking "what about X" is useful to ensure we're focusing on useful changes (at the margin), rather than the flavour of the month.
"Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in 'what about…?') is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument." [1]
It's a logical fallacy (a form of ad hominem [2]) that doesn't do anything productive in re: the topic at hand.
I think you might have fallen victim to the fallacy fallacy :)
In what way does 'oh you hate crypto? what about airplanes?' add something valuable to this conversation? I'd rather have something concrete I can point to explaining my sentiment rather than simply being rude about it.
People complaining about cryptocurrency rarely have internally consistent values, instead they’re just chasing the flavor of the month to virtue signal.
It would be fallacious to suggest that someone is wrong because of this, but it works as a standalone observation.
I’m sorry, does Wikipedia now take donations in airplanes? Or are you making an ad hominem attack?
What an odd article. The value of most state fiat currencies has many of the problems cited - the value of the US dollar and GB pound is non-trivially based upon slavery and unquestionably significantly driven by environmental damage, but there is no mention of those in the article. That isn't whataboutism, the consequences of not accepting Bitcoin would be to take either not take anything at all, or to take those currencies with the problem that it entails.
I am no Bitcoin evangelist, it has many issues. But it's censorship resistance is important for an encyclopedia. We've seen in recently weeks discussions by the UK government of "regulating" (i.e. censorship) of websites via blocking and payment removal, with Wikipedia specifically brought up as an example by legislators. This is not a hypothetical risk. MasterCard's BRAM rules frequently cause censorship to sexual topics.
Poor stuff.
Yes. We all get that Bitcoin has failed in payments and is a complete disaster to the environment. Its characteristics alone make it extremely easy to make an argument against using it.
But once again, not every cryptocurrency has the same properties as Bitcoin. The author continues to yet again create a sweeping generalization on this. I would only agree with that if Bitcoin was the ONLY cryptocurrency or if PoW was the only system used. It is not.
It’s like making an argument against driving anything with a wheel for environmental reasons, because most vehicles are still running on either petrol or diesel. (And willfully ignoring alternatives like electric cars)
Instead of continuing to generalize all cryptocurrencies as Bitcoin (and PoW), criticize the others that are either PoS, or use their own consensus algorithm and assess them if they are environmentally unfriendly or are unsuitable for payments.
Since clearly the author keeps recycling the same known predictable critiques on Bitcoin which does not apply to all cryptocurrencies.
Crypto is in a rough spot rn regarding consensus mechanisms. POW is seen as unsustainable, but pos is sheer plutocracy. I would rather have pow and accept the environmental damage rather than centralize the fuck out of what was supposed to be a financial revolution “for the people”.
XMRs randomx pow algorithm is a step in the right direction for sustainability and decentralization.
Inb4 “pow actually has a larger barrier to entry!”
Consider this: at least mining operations have to cover their op expenses by selling their rewards.
With pos, there’s an incentive to put your rewards back into your validator pool further restricting supply for the general public.
The crypto community has been so bad at denouncing and excluding the bad elements and ideas from within itself that more and more people simply want to have nothing to do with you. We know you can spend pages and pages on your yes-buts but we're just tired and would prefer if you moved along.
To me, it reeks of a new form of virtue signalling.
The author acknowledges what you are saying in the second half of the fourth paragraph. They did not name alternate cryptocurrencies, but it is implied in the text.
> The author acknowledges what you are saying in the second half of the fourth paragraph.
Exactly. The authors argument against Bitcoin is recycled and is already widely known. Bitcoin is the easiest to attack and everyone knows it is still unsuitable for payments. Hence this, how does Bitcoin’s unsuitability apply to all cryptocurrencies which that is her argument?
As for the rambling on about the re-centralization of the web3, that is reserved for another another debate since they are talking about using cryptocurrencies for fast and efficient payments and donations. Not web3.
> They did not name alternate cryptocurrencies, but it is implied in the text.
The only one they can name is Bitcoin or any other PoW cryptocurrency.
The author chooses to generalize where it is unsafe to do so as if only PoW cryptocurrencies exist.
Which are these climate neutral crypto currencies?
Err, you are aware that electric cars are not more environment friendly than diesel or petrol cars? You more or less just shift the environmental damage to the location of production (batteries, etc).
Especially if you consider how modern cars are not meant to be driven for 20+ years. My diesel van is over 25 years old and still going smoothly. Can you imagine to drive a current Tesla for the next 25 years? How many cars will you "use up"? Let's compare the environmental damage.
The environment cost of electric cars is via battery production, and happens to be via the grid. That is, producing electric cars is as dirty as the grid.
We're cleaning up the grid, which will clean electric car production cars.
Combustion engines have no such path.
The CO2 break-even is around 8 years for an electric car, and the bulk of the other materials are recyclable.
In some sense, anything is "recyclable". What does that mean in reality? How much "recyclable" material is actually reused, how much resource transformation does it take to reuse or recycle? Which economic incentives exist, and are they working? "co2" is a single data point, and of course you can tune the process to minimize one, at the cost of something other. How about all the "rare materials" that are required, and all the other pollutants?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/20/electric...
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56574779
https://undark.org/2021/01/21/electric-car-looming-recyclabi...
Cars are getting bigger and heavier, people buy more cars than ever, and transportation still becomes more and more individualized. The overall environmental damage continues to rise. All these are sad facts, and there is an abundance of "proof" to be found everywhere.