Author of damus[1] here. We’ve seen a crazy growth in nostr in the past couple of months. Damus itself sees about 1000 to 10,000 download per week, and we’re up to about 500k to 1mil+ users (hard to get exact numbers on a decentralized network). Exciting times for social networking protocols!
I am neutral on cryptocurrencies, but I agree that whenever I see people lumping cryptocurrency and cryptographically-secure messaging together it’s a huge red flag.
The UX for key management should be monstrously different between shitposting and the instantaneous loss of money, for starters.
Bitcoin started a literal tsunami of financial crimes, I feel bad for hyperinflated countries and if they find some use in bitcoin that's great for them, but I for one will stay the fuck away from anything blockchain related if I can help it.
On a similar note, cellphones/internet allow all sorts of crime. Cars, make it easy to commit crimes. Food, allows people to use energy to fuel themselves to commit crimes. Water/boats/international trade: huge for crime. Cash, great for crime. Government, could be complicit in crime.
ChatGPT says you used "hasty generalization" fallacy, but I'm not sure that is the correct fallacy. You have a fallacy here.
Nah, that’s not the hasty generalization fallacy. They didn’t say “bitcoin allows for crime to happen”, they said bitcoin has been the center of a huge amount of actual financial crime.
I think that’s the observation fallacy, where you look at what’s happening and then state it out loud.
If you don't like Bitcoin, you could always just get an address and if you get tipped, sell immediately. I don't see how this is any different than an app with "gems" you can buy and re-sell back to the app. Some games like Entropia[0] have a fixed exchange rate with the dollar, allowing you to "cash out" of the game, if holding game currency isn't your thing.
It's just game currency essentially for the social app. When I think about it like that, it makes me less nervous.
> I don't see how this is any different than an app with "gems" you can buy and re-sell back to the app.
The difference is that the Bitcoin transaction will cause millions of computers to waste a serious amount of electricity calculating hashes over and over.
It uses the Lightning network, which is a separate network using off-chain transactions. The Lightning network crams upwards of infinite transactions into a single on-chain transaction, called a payment channel.
IIRC lightning network transactions only use as much electricity as 10 emails, although I guess at some point a real Bitcoin transaction will happen eventually.
Yeah pretty much. A lightning channel is a bit like putting money down as a retainer for a lawyer, or putting a deposit down in a hotel.
The real transaction happens at the beginning, and another transaction happens at the end when the channel closes and we settle out who gets the remainder.
It’s okay, it’s only technology. It’s been around for almost two decades and it’s open source. Nothing to be afraid of. You can conquer your fear through diligent studying. Good luck!
100% of it is a scam, the only reason you said 99.99 is because blockchain as a technology is worth something. But crypto coins themselves have no value at all in the real world.
One pizza place here, and one bitcoin ATM there does not make a difference. As long as you can't trade real goods and services for crypto coins it is absolutely worthless. And that is why any association with crypto makes intelligent people scared. Because it's inflated by confidence, like a true scam.
The only real goods and services that have kept bitcoin going is a black market of illegal goods and services.
Your last point directly contradicts the claim that "100% of it is a scam". People do actually buy and receive those illegal goods and services; you might not like that fact, but it certainly isn't a scam at that point.
And just so that we're clear, said "illegal goods" include, for example, generic drugs from other countries.
I don't think Silk Road etc constitute the actual majority of the black and grey markets enabled by cryptocurrency. It's just where most of the media attention is because of stuff like "assassination brokers" etc. Most of it is really mundane stuff, mostly drugs (of either kind). Which is also where long-term repeat customers are valuable, so sellers are hesitant to lose reputation through outright scams.
> As long as you can't trade real goods and services for crypto coins it is absolutely worthless.
As long as you can sell it for USD it's not worthless - you don't other goods/services - although that said the list of those is still growing.
The fact that I can send money (liquid fiat) to a friend without going through paypall/zello/etc. is valuable.
The only thing that could make it a "scam" is the promise of money, which I 100% agree that using crypto to "make money" is stupid and is a massive problem.
> The fact that I can send money (liquid fiat) to a friend without going through paypall/zello/etc. is valuable.
You can do that only because Bitcoin is currently underregulated. Governments will eventually regulate it to enforce money laundering laws and starve DPRK, and then Bitcoin will become even more expensive relative to other options.
> You can do that only because Bitcoin is currently underregulated... Governments will eventually regulate it and then Bitcoin will become even more expensive relative to other options.
Sure, and if that happens then it's value as a liquid fiat will decrease. The idea that "it only goes up and to the moon!" is what has made everyone declare it a scam.
If it currently has a use case then it has value. The currency is not a "scam" but this horrendous idea of treating it as an "investment" is delusional.
I think cryptocurrency has a few very valid use cases, but I think it's been shoved onto everything when it's not even needed (CSGO has been fine without NFTs).
> If it currently has a use case then it has value
The use case is not due to the technology having any benefit but due to current underregulation. The reason people declare it a scam is that the technology does not solve any practical problems better than centralized ledgers.
It isn't just that though. Anything crypto coin related attracts scammers, and changes people's posting incentives. Instead of pandering to the userbase for likes and upvotes, it'll now be for crypto coins.
How does damus relate to nostr? Your landing page does not explain this at all. Is this because already the concepts of (distinguishing) client and network would be considered too technical for your target audience?
I don’t think it’s important to dive into tech details on the damus homepage. Gmail doesn’t attempt to explain the email RFCs when creating an account.
[1] https://damus.io