mozilla is just using a payment platform to let you donate the crypto which is instantly converted into US Dollars

they don't even accept crypto, it's their payment processor. You might as well get mad that they accept chinese yuan or iranian rial

@fluffy
If Mozilla used diamonds mined in Africa by child labor as a payment processor, would that be ok? They don't accept the diamonds, they're instantly converted into USD.

I don't think the issue is necessarily just that they accept crypto, but rather that they pretend to be this holier than thou company, that cares about every social justice topic possible, while partaking in the shittiest tech that has been incredibly damaging in numerous ways.
For example I don't give 2 shits if Gab uses crypto, because they're not self-righteous pieces of shit. I mean... they are pieces of shit, but just in other ways.

@alyx what's incredibly damaging about crypto?

@fluffy
Environmental nightmare and a massive disruption of the chip market (and not in a good way).

@alyx you really think it's an environmental nightmare?

@fluffy
Considering most of the energy humanity uses is not "green", yes.
Even IF all electric energy was obtained via renewable sources, it would still be a massive waste. I'm not seeing the crypto craze dying, so I can only assume this waste will increase in the future.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/27/bitcoin-mining-electricity-use-environmental-impact

@alyx is your argument that this technology uses electricity at any level at all?

or is it that it's not as efficient as alternatives? so what then, modern banking which requires an army of people driving cars and buildings of mainframes and bankers and accountants is more environmentally friendly? i'm not sure it is friend

or what exactly are you saying because it honestly sounds like you're saying it's a disaster to use electricity at all. which i mean if you are going full uncle ted i have never found an issue with his logic though that frightens me deeply

@fluffy
Actually refine the technology and make it efficient. You're still getting an army of people that maintain the hardware with crypto, buildings, mainframes, all of that. So that's hardly a good criticism of regular banking.

@alyx if you ran the numbers, and you saw that it was much more efficient, would you be satisfied and adopt it?

is this truly your beef with it?

@fluffy
I mean... I already stated my biggest beefs, since they were the first to come to mind.
Another beef (that I still hope it will resolve itself in time, but I constantly get proved wrong) is that crypto has yet to actually stabilize itself to where it would work well as a currency. The market fluctuations are no where near what you'd want from a currency, but rather what you'd want from a stock. Which is why you don't actually see people using it like they do money. They either invest in it like stock, or immediately convert it to local currency upon receiving a payment in crypto (as you stated Mozilla is doing).
But this is not a flaw in crypto itself as a technology, but rather a flaw in how people use it.

@alyx that used to be true, but this isn't true anymore. not for a few years. there exist many cryptos for example Circle USDC which are pegged to the dollar like the chinese yuan. I employ several people and pay them all in USDC monthly. There are numerous companies who make payroll entirely in crypto and have been for years.

so this much at least is resolved. the power consumption is rapidly being resolved (here is a chart of the big power eater ETH losing market share). The stuff about graphics cards is painful I won't dispute that. I think though it just goes to show how important and innovative and helpful to people this really is.

Think about how much good it's done. Maybe you don't like his website, but would someone like graf have been able to do what he did with poa.st without crypto? It's raised an entire generation out of poverty of people who otherwise would never have had a shot at it.

@fluffy
>Circle USDC which are pegged to the dollar like the chinese yuan
wait... I'm completely baffled right now. I thought the entire premise of crypto is to remove reliance on USD. But your tying crypto value to USD? (well, not YOU specifically, but you get what I'm saying right). How does that make sense?

>the power consumption is rapidly being resolved
Great. But so far no one has heard of Terra, Avalanche, Polygon etc., and the most common one you see everywhere is still beta Bitcoin. Whenever someone like Mozilla markets that they take crypto, they still advertise Bitcoin & Ethereum at best.
Your claim of "power consumption being resolved" is all the more reason to shit on Mozilla. If there are indeed better solutions, why didn't they research them and advertise those instead?

>but would someone like graf have been able to do what he did with poa.st
I don't know much about graf or poa.st. If you're claiming he used donations to make poa.st... well... are you telling me donating money was not possible before crypto?

Or maybe he's a miner, and mining "raised an entire generation out of poverty"... in which case, I don't believe that someone with the skills to understand crypto and maintain the hardware & software for it "would never have had a shot at it".
And if the skills to do this are not transferable to anything else (which I HIGHLY doubt), then fuck 'em. In that case you'd be defending an industry just because it gives some people something to do. You might as well say we shouldn't replace coal energy because you leave miners out of a job, and otherwise they are useless and doomed to poverty.

@alyx > I thought the entire premise of crypto is to remove reliance on USD. But your tying crypto value to USD? (well, not YOU specifically, but you get what I'm saying right). How does that make sense?

sure, you can do it. anyone can do it. I can write you a sticky note and say "redeemable for one us dollar", put a little fluffy tail logo on it, and we can financially transact with these fluffy tail notes. Anyone can redeem it for a dollar, but, since actual dollars are pretty bothersome to work with compared to crypto, they are not often redeemed.

>Great. But so far no one has heard of Terra, Avalanche, Polygon etc., and the most common one you see everywhere is still beta Bitcoin.
i think perhaps you are just listening to people who don't know anything about it. of course clueless people will be wrong, they are clueless.

>I don't know much about graf or poa.st. If you're claiming he used donations to make poa.st... well... are you telling me donating money was not possible before crypto? ... Or maybe...
graf purchased some shitcoin which went 100x and became financially set for life

the rest of your post is kind of a rant bro, calm down you are sounding like a woman it's just a fedi chat

@fluffy
>but, since actual dollars are pretty bothersome to work with

>mozilla is just using a payment platform to let you donate the crypto which is instantly converted into US Dollars

Sounds like crypto is more bothersome to work with, if people convert it to USD when they get paid. And if you're pegging a crypto to USD, you basically removed any relevancy of that crypto. The beauty of crypto was that it wasn't supposed to be affected by the market bullshit the government was doing.

>i think perhaps you are just listening to people...
I'm "listening" to every "pay me in crypto" link I've ever come across in the wild. Most will be Bitcoin & Ethereum. The ones that will include something like Monero, Dogecoin start being more shady people. That list you put there, first time I've heard of any of those (except ETH).

>graf purchased some shitcoin
So he played the stock market. Whoopty doo...