Ethereum Cryptocurrency

What does Holla Forums think of cryptocurrency, specifically Ether? It's been blowing up recently as it's an improved version of bitcoin.
This is what I found most interesting:
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Is this basically socialist money?

Money no matter what backs it is still a commodity, the mere idea of cryptocurrencies is ideology.

to me it feels like Leninism's labour tokens

stupid opinion

OP I think more """""empirical leftists""""" need to start seriously considering its viability for Local exchange trading systems. It's pretty compatible with Bookchinian communalist ideas

I've heard that people say that bitcoin is a good idea to be used as the currency of Rojava

Probably the one ancap that considered going there but instead stayed home to tend to his mentally retarded sister daughter.

ancaps don't care about retarded people user

why would anyone suggest that? bitcoin is the most retarded currency in existence, that is perennially tilted towards savers.

Its all the same thing, a commodity that is exchanged with other commodities.

it is borderless and can trade with any country in a short space of time.
Imagine trying to trade Rojava-bucks with someone outside of Rojava

Bitcoin is bad as a currency, because people don't see it or use it as a currency, but as commodity to speculate on. Cryptocurrencies in general don't necessarily need to have the same problem. They just need to be more widely adopted and for the speculation to calm down.

Have you ever heard about… Money as a Fetish? Commodity Fetishism?

Do you not see how cryptocurrency is the purest for of apotheosis of money?

"Yes, we know it represents nothing, we know we don't need it, yet some of us want to keep being rich on the expense of others, thus let's create credits to trade"

ALL HAIL THE CYBERPUNK DYSTOPIA!

Can someone explain to me what a blockchain actually is? As far as I can tell it's some sort of file that records every single transaction that happens on the entire system. Also there's encryption somewhere, I guess so you can't add an entry like 'everyone paid me all of their money a couple of minutes ago' or whatever. If you recorded every single transaction in a whole big system on a single file, wouldn't that file get ridiculously bloated in pretty short order? Also, how does this blockchain stuff relate to businesses?

I have no idea honestly. Ask /biz/

That's pretty much it, but also that file is on every user's computer so you can't forge the file without it being immediately obvious to everybody else.
Yup, a quick google search says it's growing at 1mb an hour.
The technology allows you to have a digital currency without people copy and pasting it like any other file. It has the potential of making a programmable form of money . So you can make rules like, this specific bitcoin can only buy food, or you have to spend it by a certain date, etc.

It's not one big file, but rather a decentralized set of files connected to one another and encrypted in a way so that they can't be tampered with.

It's the basis of bitcoin transactions, acting as a decentralized ledger for it. Both ends of the transaction are encrypted.

No, everybody using it has to download the entire file. It's decentralized as in there's no single authority.

are you guys watching ETH moon right now too?

No idea what that is. I played around with bitcoin a while ago but I eventually lost interest and sold it.

How exactly does labor transform into cryptocurrency value?

same as fiat currency, ratio between demand for currency and for (embodied labor in) commodities and services

This is honestly a horrible idea. Bitcoin is inherently deflationary as time goes on less and less is produced as a reward for mining, and beyond this completely rules out the ability for anyone to set monetary policy. Could a country use a block chain based currency, yes but they would need to have control over the amount of money created from mined blocks or more likely go with a proof of stake system and control money creation directly through interest. Even then you will have the problem of being in a economy which isn't primarily digital transitioning to a solely digital currency.

the currency from the OP has gone up by like 20% today