The ongoing cryptocurrency crash

[wallabra]

1 hour ago, dasho said:

 

Anarcho-communists have perfected this part; shame about the rest.

 

What's more, while altruism is natural to humans and is simply suppressed by society as it exists, this still means we can't just instantly transition to a new society and expect all the existing people to magically have their altruism unsuppressed. It would have to be a gradual transition, and cultural values would have to shift gradually accordingly as well. Which means revolutionarism would be a harsh process for most people. At the same time, that means the path to anarchism is a very, very bumpy road.

 

For that reason I've mostly reconciled to moderate positions, at least for the time being. Cozy market socialism is cozy.

 

Anyway, how could you tell I'm in the middle of reading The Conquest of Bread?

[Mr. Freeze]

According to layoffs.fyi, layoffs for prominent crypto sites are currently at: 

 

* Coinbase (-20%), 
* crypto.com (-40%), 
* ByBit (-30%), 
* Bitpanda (-27%), 
* Gemini (-10%), 
* BitMEX (-25%)
* Huobi (-30%)
* OpenSea (-20%)

 

We're all going to make it guise!!!111!1!1

[YoshizinGordin]

The Ongoing Cryptocurrency Crash Makes Me Happy. That`s all i wanted to say.

[YoshizinGordin]

On 5/14/2022 at 12:43 AM, Woolie Wool said:

Does this mean I can finally afford a new video card?

no.

[mrthejoshmon]

If anyone wanted to get into crypto then now is the time I say, the quicker this is learnt as a terrible idea the better.

 

All I can do now is pray that the reselling community eats shit next, resellers contribute literally less than nothing to society.

[Antkibo]

Fuck everything that involves speculative markets. Can't buy a single shit made by more than 3 persons nowadays.

[wallabra]

On 7/15/2022 at 12:14 PM, Antkibo said:

Fuck everything that involves speculative markets. Can't buy a single shit made by more than 3 persons nowadays.

 

Yes. Speculation introduces artificial market forces, and are only one in the plethora of reasons that wholly unregulated market systems are undesirable ways to framework an economy.

 

They also assume that a person will always expect retribution for their labour (conveniently glossing over the historical fact of gift economies). A person is willing to put in the labour to that which interests them without expectation for retribution, as long as it makes them feel gratified for it. Why is it then, that all our economical systems assume that transfers of worth must always be corresponded by an equal and opposite retribution? This isn't physics, there is no Newton's law of action and reaction! People are selfish because that's the culture and society they grew up into.

 

The idea of surplus in a market economy is that a person who has a higher subjective valuing (use-value) for a good will be more likely to buy it from people who don't have as much of a subjective use-value for it. We can extend upon that context. Maybe people are willing to work in that which they enjoy, and give away at least a good chunk of their production, merely because it makes them feel gratified, joyous; the value, for them, comes both in enjoying the interesting methods of labour, and in watching the needs of others be satisfied in a vicarious warmth.

[Chezza]

3 hours ago, diegoalv said:

Elon Mask sold yesterday 900million worth bitcoin and the price dropped again. When is the best time to buy then?

It's essentially gambling. But the price for coins are currently very low compared to the previous standards.

 

*if* crypto jumps back up anywhere near it use to be then buying now will pay off big time. Again that's *if* to recovers.

 

It hasn't had a crash this big in years.

[Ludi]

If there's probable cause to assume the price will jump back up, I still wouldn't. Just invest in a mutual fund, for fuck sake

[Shibainumaster]

 

[Gez]

On dimanche 17 juillet 2022 at 8:42 AM, wallabra said:

They also assume that a person will always expect retribution for their labour (conveniently glossing over the historical fact of gift economies).

Or conveniently glossing over the historical fact of slavery.

On dimanche 17 juillet 2022 at 8:42 AM, wallabra said:

A person is willing to put in the labour to that which interests them without expectation for retribution, as long as it makes them feel gratified for it.

Isn't gratification retribution? Hobbies can result in things that are useful to the rest of the world, but not necessarily so.

On dimanche 17 juillet 2022 at 8:42 AM, wallabra said:

Why is it then, that all our economical systems assume that transfers of worth must always be corresponded by an equal and opposite retribution?

It's definitely not "equal and opposite", the jobs that are the most useful for the common good are also the least remunerated; while the highest-paying jobs are usually the most harmful. For example, it pays a lot more to sabotage a country's economy through vulture capitalism or speculation than it does to provide quality public services that increase everyone's productivity.

[wallabra]

11 minutes ago, Gez said:

Or conveniently glossing over the historical fact of slavery.

 

Slavery is the most obvious form of class oppression.

 

 

Just now, Gez said:

Isn't gratification retribution? Hobbies can result in things that are useful to the rest of the world, but not necessarily so.

 

Yes, but the sense of gratification comes from the person who gifts and labours, not from the recipient. It's not a retribution in the sense of a payment.

 

It's an innate retribution. Much like we are born with an innate drive to learn, which is eroded by schools and by modern society, we are born with an innate drive to create, which is also eroded by modern society.

 

Which inevitably leads me to find hypocrisy in modern economically-liberal thought. They justify the material inequalities by saying that "money isn't everything" and "money can't buy happiness", but simultaneously outrage at the mere thought of interference in the doings of private enterprises. Either material worth matters, or it doesn't matter! And if it does matter, then that leads to some pretty grim conclusions about the society we participate in, live in, breathe in!

 

And that leads us to Historical Materialism. This is an idea which says that, throughout the vast majority of history, conflict was the result of material interests; either between an upper and lower classes, or between distinct upper classes.

 

When most of the upper classes of the world are merged into one, which is what we see in the West today, there is only one kind of conflict that still makes sense to happen.

 

 

1 minute ago, Gez said:

It's definitely not "equal and opposite", the jobs that are the most useful for the common good are also the least remunerated; while the highest-paying jobs are usually the most harmful. For example, it pays a lot more to sabotage a country's economy through vulture capitalism or speculation than it does to provide quality public services that increase everyone's productivity.

 

This is a result of, among other things, the financialization of society — the creation of uncountable financial instruments, whose concrete contributions are dubious at best, and negative at worst. Indeed, cryptocurrency is just a newfangled addition to the long list of financial miscarriages, which includes IPOs. It's a complicated subject.

 

But in any case, "common good" is something that economically-liberal models of the economy are seldom preoccupied in establishing. When they do, they define it as the total "surplus" of all transactions in the economy.

 

What's "surplus"? Well, in a transaction, a buyer sets a maximum price, and a seller a minimum price. Then they agree at a price somewhere in between those bounds to carry out a transaction. As a result, the buyer gets a "surplus", which is the difference between the maximum price they'd agree to, and the price they ended up paying. Whereas the seller gets a similar surplus, which is the difference between the minimum price they'd agree to, and the price they ended up paying.

 

In paper this is great! People get additional value from making transactions! Indeed, it makes sense that some persons value the same things more than others, and are willing to pay a higher value in exchange for that.

 

But there is one small problem. There are many things for which there will always be demand; those, the buyers have to buy or otherwise acquire in some way or another. For example, food. You can't just not buy food today because you disagreed with the prices. Same goes to shelter from the elements, or water. Much like someone who is addicted will always find a way to get their fix. This is called inelastic demand, and it's something neoliberal economics utterly fail to solve.

 

After all, the whole idea of an economy driven by market forces, is that the more people need something, the higher the price of that something goes, incentivizing people to produce it more to supply that demand! But with inelastic demand, the prices can go as high as ever; there will still be people buying, because everyone needs food, and therefore there will still be profits, but whatever these prices happen to be, will also be a line below which people will starve and die, with no other option.

 

Then, why don't grocery shops just raise their prices to astronomical heights? Are they just good and pious in their hearts?

 

Not necessarily. You see, it's useful to have people not die. Because then you can have those people work for you. Grocery shops are run by their employees, but not owned by them; a staggering chunk of the profits they make will go to the pockets of those whose pockets are already full.

 

For that reason, those at the top are willing to give a minimum of livability in exchange for raising a population of labourers. You might not be shackled in the same way people of colour were throughout the New World hundreds of years ago, but when you really think about it, you are materially shackled to the condition of underclass, for as long as classes continue to exist.

 

—————————————————

 

Capitalism, privately owned enterprise, market economies, the state, etc., are merely the mechanisms through which the class divide maintains and manifests itself. However, the state is unique from all the others, in that it does not necessarily lead to a class divide by its definition.

 

A core idea of Marxism-Leninism is that any attempt to dethrone the upper class by force cannot immediately abolish the state, as anarchists of the past would propose, because there would be organized, centralized resistance from this upper class, which needs to be countered by organized and centralized power. It believes that, only once the entire world is purged of such class antagonisms, would it be safe to fully abolish the state once and for all; but that, by then, the state's responsibilities would already have been greatly reduced, to the delight of libertarians. Or, in Lenin's own words, "the state would be not just withering, but already in an advanced state of decomposition" (The State and Revolution).

 

Of course, Marxism-Leninism itself does not come with inherent guarantees of checks and balances when it comes to state power. It's not that it can't have them, but every revolution has been so preoccupied with being able to consolidate itself in the face of enormous pressure from a larger enemy, that it is faced with an inevitable dilemma.

 

Either it adds those checks and balances, and risks eroding too much its ability to resist to pressure from capitalist forces, or it doesn't, and risks letting a strongman sociopath ascend to power, kill all his political opponents, and sink his faith into "one-state socialism" (aka I don't care about the world, I just care about having my power and my personal well-being).

 

Modern anarchism preoccupies itself with rearranging the state, having it become a bottom-up structure, rather than a top-down one. People would get together to found associations in a variety of responsibilities: some would make defense associations (like the militaries of yesteryear), some would make technological associations (like the IETF), some would make labour associations (worker-owned companies and cooperatives), those are just a few examples. Through a variety of associations, and a commonly held belief (ideology) driving them to not only maintain this society but also defend it—from forces interested in its ruin and domination—, the people would execute every function a state already can.

 

There is however, also a caveat here. Societies are heterogeneous; you can't assume that everyone will understand the idea of this self-sufficient anarchist society, let alone make an effective social structure of sorts to run it and defend it.

 

For this reason there is a perhaps eternal divide between Anarcho-Communism and Marxism-Leninism. A crossroads I find myself into, forever deliberating which path to walk down.

[act]

2 hours ago, wallabra said:

whole bunch o' words

PRAY FOR THINE SOUL AS I ARDENTLY TAKE A TREACHEROUS JOURNEY ACROSS THIS ESSAY!

But in all seriousness, I appreciate your effort. So have a reply and a like, even though I didn't read it (yet)

[Mr. Freeze]

3 hours ago, wallabra said:

words words words

 

I can't parse this. Good for you! Or, sorry that happened. 

[dasho]

Have any of these historical examples ever happened in a group above the size of a tribe, in a location that doesn't provide the necessary resources for food and shelter, and aren't ethnically homogenous?

[RDETalus]

Well, he does mention the caveat that "societies are heterogeneous," which makes the entire proposition difficult. It's a pretty big caveat though.

[dasho]

Well just in general, yeah sure it's great to think that you can sit back and do nothing if you feel like it and a group of benevolent hippies will tend to the neighborhood hydroponics farm (I guess meat has ceased to exist) so that you can eat, but at the end of the day there is eventually going to be undesirable work that needs doing to keep everything humming along. You either have to incentivize people or force them.

[Mr. Freeze]

It's like the inverse of Bioshock's Rapture: Where in Rapture there could only be so many titans of industry, there can only be so many poets daffodil pickers and dressmakers in the commune. Eventually someone has to mine the damn iron. 

[Doomkid]

I don’t know how this thread devolved into a weird assumption that we either need extreme capitalism with absolutely no social programs (since that’s communism), or a full-on hippie commune where no one does any work, but frankly I’d prefer new topics to be started in new threads if an argument over these positions absolutely must be had.

[Mr. Freeze]

So before I get sent to the shadow realm, let's get this back on track. 

 

Most NFT sales are people buying their own NFTs, evidence suggests.

 

The Gamestop NFT Marketplace is selling a, NFT of the famous "Falling Man" image taken on September 11th but with an astronaut photoshopped in. Once again, these hucksters and wannabe artists are absolute ghouls. 

[Shibainumaster]

i just googled it and that's how much Bitcoin is worth in my country:10 702 683,78KZT

And it dropped in price by  significant (i guess) amount yesterday:−249 557,73 (2,28 %)

Also it's barely legal to mine that shit here.

[RDETalus]

Bitcoin will probably crash again down to around $10,000. I wouldn’t buy until then.

[Pirx]

On 5/13/2022 at 4:47 PM, vyruss said:

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO :(

 

If only someone could have warned us :(((((((((((((((

 

Fucking crypto bullshit.  I shouldn't have to wait and lottery to get a PS5 or a decent graphics card for a whole year because of these assholes and their shit practices.  Good riddance.

 

 

there wasn't 1 trillion of value lost because there was no value to begin with. sure, one can calculate a value based on investment in hardware and electricity, but most of crypto's supposed value was the amount people were willing to pay for it, and this in turn because of sheer greed and fear of missing out, not because of any intrinsic value.

 

one can just hope that this criminal nonsense stays irrelevant, for all the good it did to the pc market.

[nolongeramnion]

[blanked]

Edited October 25, 2023 by amnion

[Daytime Waitress]

3 hours ago, anon said:

cryptbros

 

That's definitely not a prescient typo and you absolutely shouldn't worry about it.

 

Spoiler

Imagine there's a humorous jpeg of The Crypt-Keeper here.

 

[ducon]

Tales from the crypto?

[Biodegradable]

4 hours ago, ducon said:

Tales from the crypto?

 

This thread's definitely run its course if we're going to start repeating jokes people already made on page 1. :^P

[Clippy]

3 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

 

This thread's definitely run its course if we're going to start repeating jokes people already made on page 1. :^P

 

This thread is crashing almost as hard as cryptocoins

 

🍗

[TheFocus]

there's a few individuals i've stopped supporting because of their heavy involvement in crypto, NFT's, shit like that. it's very disappointing to watch people try to take advantage of their audience, especially people who fell on hard times, can't support themselves etc.

so on one hand, it's really satisfying seeing the market implode on itself, but then the regular people who had faith in these guys get dragged down with it.

 

[Eurisko]

I was surprised to hear about Jim Carrey getting involved in NFT's.