Nothing efficient about blockchain, so when someone invokes the blockchain to defend crypto, it’s also a trick.
Nick Weaver: "I'm going to tell you why private blockchains are 20 plus year old idea and we'll see that public blockchains are grossly inefficient without actually being decentralized..."
I originally clocked cryptocurrency as some kind of scammy financial product. But later, I fell for this sleight of hand defense of the blockchain technology. What did I know when people said there were these potential usages for blockchain that sounded plausible. The problem is that even when I thought maybe there was something to blockchain, I still knew that’s what makes cryptocurrency so badly use energy. And so you can’t be for the environment and also for crypto, it just doesn’t work, and I already learned enough about climate change and public health to prioritize the environment decades years ago. So it didn’t win me over, but it did make me more hesitant about harshly criticizing of crypto, and I believe in retrospect that’s exactly the goal in talking up “The Blockchain” as a technology with a myriad of potentials.
Blockchain-based systems are not what they say they are by Molly White on Sunday, January 9, 2022 One extremely common phenomenon when discussing issues surrounding blockchain-based technologies is that proponents will often switch between discussing the theoretical implementations of these ecosystems and discussing the ecosystems we have today as it suits their argument.
But in fact, it turns out there’s no there there anyway, not even with blockchain, as I’ve come to know. I’ve been learning about this for years now from people who actually do have technical knowledge. This truth has been sitting right in front of everyone for years, with these people trying to warn everyone, but it doesn’t get boosted on any platform like hyping crypto and the blockchain does! There’s a reason for that.
This is a computer science lecture on cryptocurrency I found awhile back that explains it all. That there’s no there there. I highly recommend listening to the whole thing. It makes it clear it’s not of any benefit other than for maybe money laundering and even that isn’t as anonymous as they claim.
Computer Security 161 Cryptocurrency Lecture Nicholas C Weaver Feb 28, 2022 Lecture from Computer Science 161 on Cryptocurrency. Nicholas C Weaver: "Basically there's no value in this space none zero zilch zippo and I'm going to tell you why private blockchains are 20 plus year old idea and we'll see that public blockchains are grossly inefficient without actually being decentralized, like criminally inefficient, and only are good for cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrencies don't work as currency unless you're a criminal. The entire space is a self-assembled Ponzi scheme but it's refused to go away but it also touches on a lot of real-world security issues that often have nothing to do with actual security. So since this is a computer security class I have to cover this but a disclaimer this is mostly "blue slides": first of all this can't really be tested on and second of all i don't want people to worry about this. This is basically intellectual vaccination once you realize how bleeding stupid the space is, how incredibly brain-dead stupid it is, you'll be immune from wasting your time on them"
Cryptocurrency is bad, and it’s not bad despite “the blockchain” but also because of the blockchain, which is actually not some great newfangled thing after all.
But I’m sure it’s just a coincidence there’s always some new extraordinary financial finagle which promises to be so great that you have to accept it despite it being another energy hog that means we have to restart Three Mile Island, keep burning coal, or start burning tires.
I mention this in something else I wrote over a year ago about this constant diversion repeating in reinventions…
Many references to “climate engineering” are actually a part of climate denial & disinfo narratives. When media attempts to both-sides coverage of climate engineering disinfo, they walk right into the hands of controlled opposition, led up the garden path by tech hype decoys. Chloe Humbert Apr 19, 2024 The tech solutions touted as “solving the future” somehow more often are shown to be largely vaporware, or worse than that, sources of war profiteering scams,29 general disinformation production, exploitive data collection,30 and built on a house of techno-optimism cards that requires untold “huge amounts of water and energy” to operate.31 And the people wanting to use it are often drunk on their own tech hype and reciting hopium about geoengineering and radical breakthroughs in nuclear power.32 When in reality they’re using energy from right in my home state Pennsylvania, that comes with air pollution that people are worried about,33 and noise pollution that many are already finding unacceptable to live with.34 And this isn’t new, there’s been evidence of empty pointless financial grift for ages now as I cast my mind back to over a decade ago when I thought High Frequency Trading was a bridge too far in terms of pointless fossil fuel expenditure on behalf of essentially unfair profiteering.35 But then everyone collectively shrugged their shoulders and went back to sleep while they cooked up more machinations to sink the planet’s habitability faster. A clear explanation of High Frequency Trading’s power hunger was well explained in a WIRED piece from 2011 as a self-building influence.36 And the same ramped up demand for fossil fuel powered energy is absolutely expected with the AI boom.37 It’s really uncanny how there are repeating themes with all this stuff.38 We have new hype cycles and ways people are gaming the system, but the HFT issue never even went away, it’s still going on.39 The author of that WIRED piece, Jon Stokes, has since gone on to not only work in an AI business which provides tools for monetized publishing, he himself appears to be an AI influencer, promoting LLMs and pooh-poohing regulation of it with vague unclear hand waving criticism of “safety” in scare quotes.40 It’s not just scientists or doctors who have sold out to big tobacco, fossil fuel, big tech, or anti-vax. We live in a world where as Mark Galeotti says, there’s been a “Weaponization of Everything” where online influencers pivot from products to political causes and we’re heading toward having an Uber for PR lobbying.41 People say things that sound like science, but really they’re using sleight of hand tactics like decoys and distraction, fraudulent appeal to authority (the practice of citing a reference that doesn’t actually back up the claim), or truth with a lie chaser.42
