https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-graphics ... ling-raid/ the tears of crypto miners not getting their illicit graphics cards makes me happy.

I do not understand the entire non fungible token craze. But I don’t understand why Bitcoin has value either so shrug.

Same reason why actual money has value, enough people say and act like it does.

The value of a national currency like the Dollar comes from a national government backing it up. That’s a clear reason why they work.

Crypto atm just seems like a complex tax/regulation loophole enough people have bought into.

Since we left the gold standard, we believe the government when it says the money they print is worth something. Nothing other than the government's say so backs the money. We all agree with the government saying a five dollar bill is worth five dollars.

A fiat currency is a national currency that is not pegged to the price of a commodity such as gold or silver. The value of fiat money is largely based on the public’s faith in the currency’s issuer, which is normally that country’s government or central bank.

Well-known examples of fiat currencies include the pound sterling, the euro and the US dollar. In fact, very few world currencies are true commodity currencies and most are, in one way or another, a form of fiat money.

Like fiat currencies, Bitcoin is not backed by any physical commodity or precious metal. Throughout much of its history, the current value of Bitcoin has been driven primarily by speculative interest.


Posit: people think a bank might be financially shaky.
Consequence: people start to withdraw their money.
: Result: pretty soon it is financially shaky.
Conclusion: you can make banks fail.

Well I got the Subnautica platinum and will probably not 100% it.

The game crashes once every few hours; and it required me to hard reset my PS5 console once. I would not consider that acceptable. The game also takes forever to save, has a lot of loading issues, and has a large number of bugs around loading. Things like the game taking actual minutes to save , when combined with other issues and the game’s past history, makes me inclined to believe this is an optimization/coding problem rather than being fully blameable on the Hardware. It gives off Skyrim launch vibes with slightly less crashing.

Gameplay-wise the game feels only 95% finished. Some of the systems just lack polish or feel tacked on. For example most of the equipments’ negative trade offs do not matter; because they are completely negated by the Seaglide. The most common trade off seems to be decreased swim speed; but it has zero effect on Seaglide speed which is the fastest anyways. Another example is food/hunger. There are dozens of crafting recipes for food. Most of those food sources are completely outclassed by easily available early game options; and the hunger system itself just seems like they felt obliged to include it bc “survival game”. Thirst/Power do everything hunger does except slightly better. Speaking of thirst also feels obligatory tacked on; with the addition that it doesn’t even seem like they remotely thought the system through. It’s a completely oppressive time sink until it becomes a complete non issue a few hours in; with no real in between; and it doesn’t really add anything except on hardcore.

There are multiple other systems I could point out flaws with (ie plants/eggs). The above are just examples.

The game has serious problems loading in Sea Dragon Leviathans. ... They just randomly glitch through the ceiling until the next time the area is unloaded and reloaded. This is particularly bad w the final area. The final lava lakes area seems to have a >60% chance of it’s only real threat(s) just not being in bounds; which completely ruins the challenge/feel of the game’s final biome.

The actual atmosphere and exploration aspects of the game were fantastic. I would still recommend it despite the above issues; but I think whether or not someone will like it will be more based on A) how much they like exploration regardless of game mechanics and B) how well they are willing to put up with some major crashing/loading problems.

Edit: The game has a massive amount of loading problems related to eggs, scanner rooms, textures, pop-in, lighting, etc. The Bethesda comparison is really actually apt; except Bethesda should have much less of an excuse than an indie studio.

When the US government says the dollar has value; that means more to me than if a country like Greece or an unknown source such as some random internet poster says the exact same thing. This is because of the size/power of the institution.

As you’ve kind of stated, crypto is much more based on speculative interest. There is no imperialist superpower heavily invested in making sure it maintains a certain level of value. So it has fewer protections against a freak event. That is the difference between the two; despite both groups being fiat currencies.

It has an inherent value because there is a finite amount that will ever be produced. One day the last one will be generated.

The temptation is real....

You’re lucky I’m more inclined to be a dumbass than a smartass.

DJ can probably explain any economic topic significantly better; but limited supply by itself does not ensure demand.

There are a lot of examples of consumer goods designed and sold as “collectibles” that completely fail to generate the demand needed to sustain high value. The Pawn Stars used to have an entire mini speech about it before that show ended.

Bitcoin is something that has somehow managed to completely artificially generate and sustain sufficient demand. This seems to me to be somewhat hard? for a currency that doesn’t have a wealthy institution behind it. Thus I was expressing a lack of understanding of how people still have faith in it despite past wild fluctuations in value. I think? it’s because it fills a niche as a convenient way to transfer/store money internationally??; but that doesn’t explain everything. Shrug. It’s like stock. I see no connection between the price and the actual product once we get into things like GME.

Is this world a threat to you?

“No”

Do you have a particular reason to hate this world?

“No”

Wanna go bitch?

*Atraxi flee in terror*

Bitcoin offers an efficient means of transferring money over the internet and is controlled by a decentralized network with a transparent set of rules, thus presenting an alternative to central bank-controlled fiat money.

Bitcoin payments are processed through a private network of computers linked through a shared ledger. Each transaction is simultaneously recorded in a "blockchain" on each computer that updates and informs all accounts. The blockchain serves as a distributed ledger and obviates the need for any central authority to maintain such records.

1. User Autonomy
The primary draw of bitcoin for many users, and indeed one of the central tenets of cryptocurrencies more generally, is autonomy. Digital currencies allow users more autonomy over their own money than fiat currencies do, at least in theory. Users are able to control how they spend their money without dealing with an intermediary authority like a bank or government.

2. Discretion
Bitcoin purchases are discreet. Unless a user voluntarily publishes his Bitcoin transactions, his purchases are never associated with his personal identity, much like cash-only purchases, and cannot easily be traced back to him. In fact, the anonymous bitcoin address that is generated for user purchases changes with each transaction. This is not to say that bitcoin transactions are truly anonymous or entirely untraceable, but they are much less readily linked to personal identity than some traditional forms of payment.

Taken from : https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer ... itcoin.asp

Wuster talked about it but scarcity is a really big deal

I don't know what to say about BitCoin. The main point is that it isn't fiat money. Other than that, I see very little utility to it. It doesn't do anything, legal, that normal currencies can't do.

As for GME, BB would be better at this than I (works in the field), but stocks usually have pretty clear ties to the operational value of the underlying company. GME was, like bitcoin is, propped up by irrational market behavior.

I think both are variants of Tulip Mania. Anytime a good with no inherent value skyrockets in price, I start thinking about Tulips.

And GME demonstrates how bad these things can be; many of the investors have lost significant money. They are basically paying to make a stock price higher, and some of them are losing money to do so.

Hitman 3’s latest Elusive Target crashed on me because their servers are ****. The game considers this a fail. So through no fault/control of my own I can not complete it. I am just **** with no recourse.

Thus ended any and all desire to keep playing the game. **** this game.

————-

Since I’ve also finished with Subnautica; last night I started playing a brand new PS4/PS5 game where I’ve gone in 100% completely blind. I quite enjoy it so far.

DJ, stocks are, on paper, a representation of the potential of FUTURE earnings of the company (and dividends as well, if applicable). Depending on the industry, there are usually premiums applied to this which makes certain stocks and industries trade at high multiples to their price-to-earnings ratio. This typically measures investor sentiment and confidence about the company.

Now, common shares are freely traded on public exchanges so when there are more buy orders than sell orders, the price goes up as well. This effect is very muted on high capitalized stocks like GE, Toyota, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), etc. But on smaller stocks, it can have a material impact on price which is why someone like me can't trade in stocks that my company is trading in since I have access to material non-public information on the trading intentions of large institutional investors on these names.

Cryptocurrencies for the moment are largely speculative investments but Bitcoin is gaining more and more legitimacy as an actual currency. The fundamentals are very strong for making a case that it will increase in value going forward given very few new bitcoin are introduced into the market each year, making it a finite supply like gold. More and more retails are accepting bitcoin as actual currency, but the second that ANY central bank decides to make a move that involves bitcoin, that's the sign it's here to stay and the value should really spike since it would then be a possible safehaven investment that the U.S. dollar and gold have been known for.

What's your take on this article? https://www.investors.com/news/investin ... -on-mania/

It's a good article, covers a lot of key points. Only one sentence on the energy problem which is a major roadblock to blockchain. This was the only part that was ridiculous:

"Bitcoin is a speculative commodity with no use case," said David Gerard, an author of two books on cryptocurrency and blockchain. "There is nothing you can do with Bitcoin except sell it on to someone else. It's like a great big game of hot potato with a price tag."


You could say that over any currency or item of value, really. i would argue that bitcoin is a FAR more legitimate source of value than, say, diamonds. Diamonds have terrible liquidity and it's hard to get universal value really. It's only worth something because people think it's worth something. You can use bitcoin to buy lots of stuff and it's far easier to turn bitcoin into other forms of liquid currency