FaceDeer

Unlikely. Some new approach to paid journalism will need to be developed. But that's already the case, AI's just driving the existing trend further.

Since it's a common mistake when discussing cryptocurrency energy use, I should point out that it's really only Bitcoin specifically that uses significant amounts of electricity these days. Most other cryptocurrencies have switched to proof of stake systems, which uses negligible energy.

I just did a search, and according to the articles I've found Google abandoned the "Web Environment Integrity" API in November and removed their prototype from Chromium.

Oh no, we may have to go back to an Internet where people posted web pages because they wanted to share information rather than to make a buck.

I do not remember Google's attempt at DRM for the Internet, which is an indication of how well it went for their attempt.

In the original trilogy of novels by Timothy Zahn, Grand Admiral Thrawn is a legitimate strategic genius who keeps winning until the heroes manage to squeak out a final victory by finding exactly the right flaw in his plans.

In the Ahsoka TV series, Thrawn mumbles vapid syllogisms that only sound profound if you listen to the tone of voice instead of the words. He constantly makes basic Evil Overlord mistakes and oversights, and only achieves the barest minimum success in the end through plot armor and luck.

It's like they're two different characters.

Yes, it does.

No. The part I was objecting to was: " gives an unsecured, zero-interest loan to a company with unknown credit worthiness." That's the part that's incorrect. Some stabletokens don't involve a company at all, it's entirely on-chain controlled by smart contracts.

How is the smart contract updated with the current market prices?

The one I'm most familiar with is DAI, which is maintained by the MakerDAO smart contract. MakerDAO uses a collection of price oracles to determine prices, which are in turn managed by people who own governance tokens (MKR) for the MakerDAO smart contract itself. They vote on which oracles are used, and on other economic parameters used by MakerDAO to keep its peg table. If MKR holders do a good job then MKR tokens appreciate in value, "rewarding" them. If they do a poor job then MKR tokens lose value.

This is complicated, but it's a necessary complication to ensure that MakerDAO can function in a decentralized and trustworthy fashion. There are a number of pages out there that go into more detail, this one seems pretty good at a glance.

I had hoped that my question would make you realize that a debt is not a separate currency.

Well, I'm not sure what you mean here. Tokens that represent a debt can certainly be used as a currency if everyone involved considers the debt to be sound and trusts that it will be repaid.

I really don't see your point here. I'm agreeing that you can't use it for everything. But what's wrong with that? There are plenty of things in this world that aren't useful in every circumstance and yet that doesn't mean those things are worthless. Use them for the things that they're good for. Elsewhere in this thread I listed off a whole bunch of non-stock, non-currency applications that have been built on blockchains if you really don't like the monetary applications.

As a side note, though, I'm kind of amused and baffled that the Grand Nagus of all people is dismissing any monetary uses for cryptocurrency.

You can't use them as a currency everywhere. But the same can be said for any other currency too. You can't use US dollars everywhere. You can't use Chinese Yuan everywhere. And so forth. A currency doesn't have to be universally accepted everywhere on the planet for every application before it's useful.

Regardless, I was talking about using Ethereum as a distributed database.

At which point your local grocery store or gas station wouldn't be accepting whatever currency is your current local currency. The point would remain the same - a currency doesn't have to be universally accepted everywhere on the entire planet for it to still be a useful currency.

I'm sure there will be (or already are) Trump and Biden Loras.

Bitcoin, no, because it's a hopelessly out of date blockchain that actively resists having new capabilities added to it. Ethereum, on the other hand, is designed that way from the ground up. Many of the other smaller but more modern blockchains are also like that.