Mozilla's founder on it taking bitcoins
 

https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1478022085737803776?s=20

And on cryptocurrencies generally
https://www.jwz.org/blog/tag/dunning-krugerrands/

JWZ. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Someone else retweeted him on twitter and I checked what he posted and followed him. I'd almost forgtten him.

And Peter Linss agrees

TBH, "founder of Mozilla" doesn't have anywhere near the authoritative cachet with me that it did 20+ years ago. When he cashed out in the late 90s and opened a nightclub in San Francisco, that was interesting to me as a budding IT/IS professional.

Fair comment.

People do know they don't have to invest in crypto currency, right?

Weird point. I don't have to invest in fossil fuels either. Or the fast food industry. Or the Catholic church.

Yet, you do. All of them massive pollution creators and most have caused more damage to humans than crypto.

I just don't understand the hate. If you don't want to get into it, just ******* don't. No one is asking you to. No one wants you to. There are now 3 running threads with people complaining about crypto\NFTs. It's extremely odd to me.

What do you mean? People complain about fossil fuels all the time. There is no special hate reserved for crypto. It's just another thing that's harmful for the environment, and I can go on about it just as I can go on about the meat industry.

Ok, are you actually doing anything to make a difference or just complaining about it? Crypto is currently working on decreasing its environmental impact. Are you working on decreasing yours?

Well, yes, but that's not really the point. Large changes are necessary, and large changes require a majority of people to be on board. If enough people complain, others might take notice.

I corresponded with him briefly about IMAP4 implementation for work, IIRC, many years ago. Not someone who leaves you in any doubt about their opinion.

Sure, and you don't really need any special vantage point or insight to see that cypto is a dumpster fire. Nothing about this comment is untrue, but it is neither particularly interesting or unique.

Hell, I imagine many of the crypto people would broadly agree, they just don't care because they hope they are one of the lucky ones that wins at the casino.

Exactly. For all I know, JWZ's opinion is just knee-jerk anti-crypto curmudgeonry, completely unrelated to, and uninformed by, his technical background.

Nice to see more people calling the crypto-nuts on their Dunning-Krugerrands.

Absolutely, it's definitely making a huge difference. Crypto is almost gone now.

Business is booming:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/06/cryp...box=1641459762

Terrible. I'm happy there's no scamming that goes on anywhere else and that this is completely unique to crypto. Anyway, I'll let you all bitch about it. Cheers.

Tell me how you really feel, don't be shy

Because it is quite literally a pyramid scheme, and we should be bad-talking those things any time they're brought up.

If a friend of mine mentions Avon or Herbalife, I explain to them what pyramid schemes are and how they work, and that I cannot recommend strongly enough to not get involved with them, even experimentally. Every single time. Sometimes I convince them and a lot of times I don't, but I always make the effort and I will continue to do so.

Same thing with crypto and NFTs and things like this. It's a scam. A tulip mania. A star-name registry. I'm not going to simply content myself with personally avoiding the trap and silently watching other people fall into it.

Okay, look. If crypto can be converted to real currency, then Mozilla would be idiots to not accept it while it lasts. Take in BTC, flip it to dollars, move on.

JWZ is getting hung up on the ecological impact of crypto mining. This is an activist dead end, as Saint Thunberg has discovered. Nobody cares about the ecological impact of getting rich, if they're the ones getting rich.

It's all a pyramid scheme. It's just a matter of how convincing it is.

One of the nicer things about a new crypto thread is that you can recycle all of the ancient arguments from the bitcoin thread.

.. which is more environmentally friendly than crypto mining.

...and therefore people that want to prevent the damage should do what?

Why though? There's no crypto person out there that doesn't also have easy access to regular money which is way easier to deal with and doesn't come with all the baggage.

As the JWZ link says "They promised us Bond villains with lasers and unhackable data centers in atmosphere-evacuated vaults in international waters. What they gave us was the banality of day-traders, armchair finance-bros with laser-eye avatars, who are unable to give up on the grift because the grift requires that they must always find the greater fool"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

If some crypto-jackass wants to pay me in crypto, and I have a convenient way to convert their crypto back into dollars, why wouldn't I just shut up and take their money? I'm already happy to take their credit card instead of cash, even though they have easy access to cash as well.

Well his point is basically that there are other values than money. If that doesn't work for you then I guess that's your choice.

That's an argument for doing anything, no matter how unethical, as long as it brings you profit and is legal.

Some companies don't do that, I think.

Individually, could be. But if many people refuse to be paid in bitcoin it will lower its usefulness, and thus its value, reducing the incentive to waste electricity mining for it.

I am waiting for the invevitable Bitcoin crash. The only question is whether it will be big enough to take the world economy down along with Bitcoin. I think it's quite likely that it will be.

Claims about the imminent demise of bitcoin (this time for sure!) belong in the other thread.

OTOH I don't expect to see a single word about the technology in this thread. :boggled:

So? Does coming across as an eco scold ever actually work?The energy requirements of crypto mining are well known. The current Mozilla leadership are making an informed decision. Does JWZ really think they hold the Memory of Dear Founder so highly that if he rants at them they'll change their minds?

Mozilla doesn't run on happy thoughts and rainbows. They need money. You think maybe they've already considered the trade offs? Already weighed Greta Thunberg's future against the present circumstances of their employees and their current operations?

Do you think less Mozilla is a worthwhile price to pay, for some drop in the bucket of global emissions reduction? Do you think the people who work there would agree?

From a cynical point of view, bad PR can make a company rethink its policies. There's also something to be said for the benefits of good PR. More donations might start pouring in if they take a stand.

Is it because Mozilla are non-profit? I don't think that absolves them of everything.

Some numbers regarding Etherium costs. https://www.usenix.org/publications/...ine/web3-fraud

"So a mere second of Ethereum’s virtual machine costs 25 times more than a month of my far more capable EC2 instance. Or could buy me several Raspberry Pis."

Etherium ? What's that ? It's not mentioned in the article.

Is it really useful to pick on a one character misspelling? Especially when it's spelled correct immediately afterward?

But that doesn't make sense. The article is about web3, not Ethereum itself.