Nobody Cares: the Non-Fungible Thread

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Bitcoin (and by extension, cryptocurrency in general) was originally billed to be a replacement for fiat money - you were, it was alleged, eventually going to be able to use Bitcoin for everything you'd use dollars for, with the bonus being that Bitcoin wasn't "controlled by the banks", or "the Fed", or "the Jews", or whomever else your ideology puts secretly in charge of the world's money. 12 years later of course it's pretty obvious that cryptocurrencies don't really work well as currencies. Whatever benefit "decentralized validation" bestows is far outweighed by the drawbacks - slowness and cost. Nobody has the time to wait 25 minutes at the gas station or the drive-thru window for a transaction to make its way through the validation process; your landlord isn't going to accept $1000 "worth of" Bitcoin for your rent payment that's going to cost him 20, 30, 40 or more percent to cash out. And then there's crypto's volatility - while you're waiting those 25 minutes at the gas station, Bitcoin's value can just suddenly fluctuate by 30% between the time you send the money and the time the store actually receives the validated transaction, meaning one or the other of you has taken a heavy loss in terms of money or product.

To "fix" this problem, crypto enthusiasts have created other, differently-managed cryptocurrencies. The answer to the volatility problem in particular is called a "stablecoin" - a cryptocoin whose value is basically static, usually pegged to a real-world fiat currency like EUR or USD. You use some of your Bitcoin or Ether or whatever other non-stable coin you use, to buy some of this stablecoin, and then you and your landlord can trade the stablecoin for your direct transactions, with confidence that what an individual stablecoin is "worth" won't have changed much between the start and end of your transaction. And then either of you can exchange some of that stablecoin for Bitcoin again or whatever. And this is kind of how the cryptosphere works, it's why there's a bajillion different "coins", more and more cryptocurrencies are continually invented to handle the shortcomings of earlier cryptocurrencies, which in turn have shortcomings of their own, and the beat goes on.

But anyway, the most important thing about a "stablecoin" is that peg to a real currency. Most often that peg comes from the coin being backed by the real currency - the makers of the Tether stablecoin for instance have (or CLAIM that they have***) literally X number of actual dollars in a real bank account somewhere for every Tether coin that exists, and that they will always let you exchange your Tether for exactly that amount of real dollars whenever you want. That basically ensures that a Tether coin more or less remains worth exactly $1USD, which is a little hilarious because at that point the cryptocoin is basically redundant, but whatever. Another kind of way that a stablecoin can maintain this peg is called "algorithmic". In this case there's two coins - the stablecoin, whose value is supposed to remain steady, and a secondary governance token that is traded, fractionalized, printed, manipulated however is necessary so that its value props up the value of the stablecoin and keeps it stable. I'll be honest with you here, I'm not really a hundred percent sure of how exactly this is supposed to work - it's math magic that's beyond my understanding; but I take solace in the fact that every attempt at creating an algorithmic stablecoin this way has eventually failed, which probably means that the math magic underlying it is just bad and flawed and therefore not worth even trying to understand.

Terra, as mentioned in the tweets above, is an algorithmic stablecoin. Its governance token was called Luna. These were some of the very largest and most commonly-traded cryptocurrencies that exist. A couple of days ago, Luna crashed from a price of over $80 down to less than a cent; and Terra, whose peg was maintained by Luna, began to tumble with it. So Terra decided to halt trading.

"Wait a second," you ask, "how can a decentralized currency just...decide to stop trading?" Well, it's because unlike say Bitcoin, which uses a huge network of hundreds or thousands of different peoples' computers that are all over the world to validate the transactions (which is why the transactions take so damn long), smaller blockchain cryptocurrencies like Terra are able to deliver speed by having very small validator pools - like say, a dozen or so people. This small group of people can come to a consensus far more easily than a "democratized" network of thousands of validators. In practice, they can work more like a company's board of directors; so getting them to all agree to halt validations in order to "save" the capital, is easy. SO DECENTRALIZED.

The thing about the Terra crash is that the guy who created Terra is an arrogant and bombastic arsehole and he might've cause the crash just by running his mouth at the wrong people. See this video for background:

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

SO, they're completely funged?

 

[Noodles]

If its pegged to real world currency, why not just... Use realmworld currency?

I mean, $1USD is roughly $250L$, but why would I convert $10 to $2500 L$, then convince say, a pizza place, into taking $2500L$ for a pizza. That they have to then cash out.

 

[Lexxi]

If its pegged to real world currency, why not just... Use realmworld currency?

I mean, $1USD is roughly $250L$, but why would I convert $10 to $2500 L$, then convince say, a pizza place, into taking $2500L$ for a pizza. That they have to then cash out.

I can only think of illegal transactions; people deep into conspiracy theories, or the like who would want this opossum dung.

Course "real world" currency took forever to be "accepted". At least certain types. Which is why Spanish currency became the unofficial currency in the colonies through 17th and 18th centuries. Not because it was backed by silver or gold or the like. It literally contained silver. "With its distinctive design and consistent silver content, the Spanish dollar was the most trustworthy coin the colonists knew. To make change the dollar was actually cut into eight pieces or “bits.” Thus came the terms "pieces of eight" from these early times and "two bits" from our time." So colonists in North America used Spanish currency instead of native colonial currency (which was, technically illegal - England banned native coinage; though some did issue coins, like New England, which issued all coins with 1652 on them, regardless of date of actual creation).

Paper money? Might be usable for toilet paper. Otherwise, worthless. Technically backed by coinage, but they basically were worthless upon issuance - "Most colonial notes were "bills of credit" notes meant to be redeemable in coin. Colonial paper money rarely lasted very long because the colonies generally issued too much of it and the resulting inflation made the bills worthless. Thus the term "not worth a Continental." - so, again, use Spanish coin instead of paper money, or colonial coin (which might, at any, moment be seized and worthless to the holder - because they were illegal).

So, got people used to using currency which was literally made out of something of value (silver, gold, etc.), then once people "accept" that kind of thing, switch it for things backed by gold but not made out of it (technically, you'd be able to go to the bank and switch out your "backed by" currency with gold); then gold was removed (and literally made illegal for a time). So now people pass around paper currency, coins not worth what they are made out of (it literally costs more to make a penny than a penny is worth), or store their money in federally insured banks (if people actually make sure that the bank is, technically, a bank federally insured; and even then there's a limit on how much is covered) and use debit cards, or use credit, or use figments of people's imagination which can be wiped out at any moment by the people who pretend that these virtual things are worth something (digital/virtual currency).

People didn't/don't tend to go around slapping down a stock share, and use it as currency, so I didn't mention it. Though I'm reminded of the 1920s great depression - or something that I've seen advertised, again, on tv: buy partial shares! In the '20s that's what people did, buy parts of shares, or buy stocks on installment plans, or, on credit, or capital, or . . . basically, buy stock using something other than cash. "Stocks on the installment plan, stocks via investment clubs, stocks bought with capital rather than income, stocks on margin." Then stock market collapsed, but people still owned money on the stocks. Say they get stock valued at $10, they buy all of it on credit, hope/assume it to go up in value, sell - pay off the debt they owe (the $10), take the rest as profit. Except the stock they own is now worth $1, but they still owe $10 on the stock. So, sell the stock (in a panic, because, hey, gold is illegal, banks are failing, need to get money somehow), get $1, owe creditor $9 that you don't have . . ..

Sometimes it's hard to think of money as anything other than fake money, "monopoly" money (literally money from the game Monopoly). You hear of people using shells as money? Currency? And think that's weird? Well, look at what you are using as currency.

And I realize I now sound like a nut-job. eh.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

To peg it to real currency you need to have enough currency to cover the value of the NFT money. Opps, cryptocurrency. The value comes from promising to exchange one for the other on demand. If you don't have currency or an equivalent like gold, you have to worry about a large withdrawal triggering a panic leading to a run on the bank, wiping out the reserve and therefore the trading currency. That's why they tried to use control of the supply of crypto instead, since the can issue and withdraw as needed. Works great until the market drops and you can't move fast enough to keep it balanced.

 

[Free]

And I realize I now sound like a nut-job.

When you're talking about "currency," it's hard not to.

 

[Noodles]

Madonna: ‘A lot of thought’ went into fully nude NFTs of her giving birth to centipedes

“I wanted to investigate the concept of creation, not only the way a child enters the world through a woman’s vagina, but also the way an artist gives birth to creativity,” the artist explained.

www.al.com

The entertainer, 63, teamed up with digital artist Beeple to create the collection “Mother of Creation,” which depicts a nude Madonna giving birth to trees, butterflies and other insects.

I'm sorry, what now?

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Like a virgin.

 

[Free]

Like a virgin.

Funged for the first and last time.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Hahaha no.

Spotify experiments with musician NFT galleries

Spotify’s first NFT test is like what Instagram is planning.

www.theverge.com

More companies are trying to catch the NFT wave, but it looks like that initial surge could be petering out (at least for the time being). According to The Wall Street Journal, daily NFT sales have dipped 92 percent from 225,000 in September of last year to just 19,000 as of May 3rd. The number of active NFT wallets is also on the decline, from about 119,000 in November to 14,000 toward the end of April.[/quote]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

This magistrate enjoys their job entirely too much

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

This magistrate enjoys their job entirely too much

I read that and now I have Yakkity Sax playing in my head.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Madonna: ‘A lot of thought’ went into fully nude NFTs of her giving birth to centipedes

“I wanted to investigate the concept of creation, not only the way a child enters the world through a woman’s vagina, but also the way an artist gives birth to creativity,” the artist explained.

www.al.com

I'm sorry, what now?

How about men giving birth to sailing yachts, Ferraris and bread? (Sorry, was unable to find an English version).

 

[Noodles]

The German kind of makes this extra surreal though.

(Sounds like German, but I am not positive).

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

thread

 

[Free]

"Bitcoin mining" was not meant to be taken literally!

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Seth Green still exists

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Seth Green still exists

And is apparently an idiot >.>

 

[Free]

Seth Green still exists

Stupid monkeys.

Also, that last one has an eye floating off his face. Whomever put these things together, can they draw?