Interesting, I guess they managed to scrub the web pretty well, I can't find any mention of a specialized ai chip. It would be quite a feat to be able to produce something like that for such a low price.
A great way to really understand just how much Bitcoin and maybe some stablecoins are impacting the lives of people in poorer nations is to just go and talk to people. Spend a few weeks in Tbilisi or similar places and just walk around and talk to average people. Bitcoin is so popular amongst the average people there that many random little shops are even selling socks or Tshirts with the Bitcoin icon on them. So many lives have been saved, and the people there genuinely love Bitcoin.
There is a huge difference between crypto and Bitcoin. There are many shitcoins that try to pretend to be the next Bitcoin or whatever, but literally 99.9% of them are absolute garbage. Luckily, they are drying up and blowing away. For people who this stuff really matters for, they are able and willing to look deep enough to see the benefits of Bitcoin and are much less likely to fall into the BS traps of CyberCoin or whatever.
It is often the uneducated outsider that hasn't lived the horrendous harm of horrible government currencies that are so vehemently opposed to Bitcoin. It just screams privilege, like when some spoiled trust fund kid gets mad at homeless people because they won't just go home. When people are struggling to not drown and they find a life raft, they simply don't care if people in yachts tell them it looks tacky.
If you genuinely want to give this a fair shake, then Google things like "bitcoin encourages renewable energy after:2023" or "Bitcoin adoption in poor countries after:2022". Get recent information and be open to having your mind changed. Bitcoin threatens the imbalance of power, and this is why there is a push to get people in powerful countries to not think deeply about how much it is helping the less fortunate right now. It's just a matter of time though. Knowledge naturally spreads.
Poor people all over the world are less poor because they have used bitcoin to escape predatory devaluing fiat currencies. Go check out much of Africa, much of South America, Turkey, Georgia, and Southeast Asia. There are literally people eating better food and drinking cleaner water thanks to the fact that they can maintain their hard-earned value with bitcoin.
Nobody said capitalism is bad. Nobody said guns are bad, I have no idea why you would feel the need to conflate issues. I get that you can read headlines, but dig a bit deeper, and you will actually be able to argue from thought-out stances. The crypto oil thing was a scare tactic that got thoroughly disproven many years ago. Mining is rapidly ushering in the transition to renewable energy sources. It is also preventing waste of energy that would just dissipate.
The information is out there. It's just up to yourself to put in the work to educate yourself. I don't mean run around trying to find anything that will agree with your original hunches or whatever to try to guard your ego. I mean, look at it with fresh eyes and be willing to expand your view after critically analyzing the situation without bias. It is actually a good thing to be capable of arguing from both sides so that you are able to honestly weigh the situation. Right now you are just spewing old headlines that you once saw and not even attempting to make a coherent argument.
It will only help you to educate yourself. It's not nearly as daunting as it seems. The next step is to quit trying to defend a stance that you don't understand and to spend some time researching and asking questions. If you had understood what bitcoin was in 2013, then you would be in a much different situation than you are in right now.
Oh my. Hold your horses buddy. Nobody is forcing poor people to buy bitcoin. People are just faced with a choice, they can hold their value in fiat currencies that corrupt governments are printing like crazy, or they hold their value in a decentralized currency that nobody has control over and nobody can print on a whim. Just because you feel like you missed out on a good investment and so you are bitter towards an entire growing industry doesn't matter at all to people who are using it to escape corruption.
It really isn't nearly as complex or evil as you think it is. It really is just a way for people who have repeatedly been screwed over by corrupt politicians to escape corruption. It's just a matter of time until more and more people around you realize the same, and eventually you will join in, albeit a bit late due to your ignorant bitterness. You do yourself no favors by being against something simply because you don't take the time to understand it.
Read my comment again, you entirely missed the point. This has nothing to do with anything you pointed out. I guarantee you don't live In a poor country because there isn't a chance that you would have no idea how much they are benefiting from bitcoin. I'm sorry you're so offended, but you were your ignorance so prominently that it isn't hard to see at all. I'm also in the 1st world, but I desire to understand the whole picture enough to be able to tell. Use your anger over something you know nothing about as a guide of where to educate yourself.
Yeah, probably, don't worry about it, it's all a bit complex so probably all just the same thing, who knows. No way to tell really. You'll be fine without digging too deep into this stuff, it's difficult to understand.
If you were not living in a powerful first world country, you would like it a hell of a lot more. It is such a luxury to not have to constantly be worried about your currency collapsing. In places like Turkiye, crypto is massively popular because their currency is constantly devaluing. There are many countries like this that many Americans and Europeans seem to forget even exist.
It probably won't be too long until even the spoiled nations will want to be able to hold value somewhere that isn't free falling as well. The US is now paying more to service their debt than they are to the military. Not everyone can afford to hold their wealth in real estate and successful businesses.
Nobody has to have control of the production of money, it is especially bad when corrupt people have the power to generate it into their pockets. I know it is hard to understand how generating money for one's self is theft from everyone with money, but it is the case, you just have to try a bit harder to wrap your head around it.
It's such a first-world thing to not understand all the good that crypto has done. There are countless lives that have been financially saved by having a safe place to hold wealth while their countries' fiat collapsed. It's just a short matter of time until many first world folks understand this as well.
Very good thoughts. It sure would be nice if there could be some sort of area where only non-combatants could go. Precision knife missles have been around for a long time now. It does seem suspicious that they are not being used in this current conflict.
I was curious how this current war compared to other wars and conflicts in regards to civilian casualties. By the way it is often shown, I assumed it would be towards the top of the list, but surprisingly, it seems to be around the bottom. 69% of Israeli casualties have been civilians as opposed to 59% of palestian. The high end from this wikipedia list seems to be around 90%, the low end roughly 50%.
It's so crazy that stuff like this is still going on. I do wonder how much this particular conflict is caused by all the archaic superstition around spiritual thinking and magical land. If it wasn't such a "holy" place I wonder if it would be so awful. Hopefully, some soon-future generation can finally discard all this "love" inspired hate.
I pointed out that it seemed like Hamas is reportedly using human shields and asked a question about it. I never said anything remotely similar to Israel being innocent in this. Israel has lots of blame here. They are literally blowing up innocent children. The existence of a single bad actor does not make all other actors good. I get that it makes the situation seem much easier to understand and have answers for if we push everyone to extreme sides, but I think you will end up with a more realistic mental model of this(or any) situation if you accept that the world isn't actually so simple.
I'm not sure how you are picturing "human shields." I don't think it is literally holding a child in front of themseleves as if they are a literal shield like in a cartoon or something. If this is the case, then I agree with you, 13,000 does seem high.
I've never been in war, but the way I am picturing it is by having military headquarters in residential places so that if they get bombed, then a bunch of civilians get bombed at the same time. When you consider how many people could live in just a single apartment building, it makes that 13,000 seem much more realistic.
I don't know if they have all been killed as human shields, but I see no reason to think that's not possible. All hamas would have to do is to stay places that there are large groups of civilians.
I agree the famine is awful. I've also heard many stories of gazan civilians hating hamas for stealing all the supplies intended for civilians. I really just don't know which stories are true and which are false.
I know that I've been hearing for years how much the palestians hate hamas and hate having them rule over them. They haven't had any sort of elections or anything or any way to get new power there for like 30 years or something.
I know there are lots of people in the west that want to paint hamas as some sort of freedom fighters, but this is not the impression I've ever been under. I see them more like a weak version of the Iranian government, no regard for the lives of their people, and wanting all those awful sexist backwards ancient warlord "religious" teachings to be the official law of the land. Just like in Iran, many people want to join the modern world in regards to human rights, but the powerful over there want to hide behind a butchered version of a "god" to make themselves keep their power.