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parent 44f8f7f90d4b35a15759cc5ea2de758d5172d7b5
Author: David Eisinger <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2024 16:10:31 -0400
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+---
+title: "Migrating from Github to Sourcehut"
+date: 2024-10-31T16:05:04-04:00
+draft: false
+references:
+- title: "Cryptocurrency is an abject disaster"
+ url: https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html
+ date: 2024-10-31T20:10:12Z
+ file: drewdevault-com-yuxzdw.txt
+---
+
diff --git a/static/archive/drewdevault-com-yuxzdw.txt b/static/archive/drewdevault-com-yuxzdw.txt
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+Cryptocurrency is an abject disaster April 26, 2021 on [1]Drew DeVault's blog
+
+This post is long overdue. Let’s get it over with.
+
+🛑 Hey! If you write a comment about this article online, disclose your stake in
+cryptocurrency. I will explain why later in this post. For my part, I held
+<$10,000 USD worth of Bitcoin prior to 2016, plus small amounts of altcoins. I
+made a modest profit on my holdings. Today my stake in all cryptocurrency is
+$0.
+
+Starting on May 1st, users of sourcehut’s CI service will be required to be on
+a paid account, a change which will affect about half of all builds.sr.ht
+users.^[2]1 Over the past several months, everyone in the industry who provides
+any kind of free CPU resources has been dealing with a massive outbreak of
+abuse for cryptocurrency mining. The industry has been setting up informal
+working groups to pool knowledge of mitigations, communicate when our platforms
+are being leveraged against one another, and cumulatively wasting thousands of
+hours of engineering time implementing measures to deal with this abuse, and
+responding as attackers find new ways to circumvent them.
+
+Cryptocurrency has invented an entirely new category of internet abuse. CI
+services like mine are not alone in this struggle: JavaScript miners, botnets,
+and all kinds of other illicit cycles are being spent solving pointless math
+problems to make money for bad actors. Some might argue that abuse is
+inevitable for anyone who provides a public service — but prior to
+cryptocurrency, what kind of abuse would a CI platform endure? Email spam?
+Block port 25. Someone might try to host their website on ephemeral VMs with
+dynamic DNS or something, I dunno. Someone found a way of monetizing stolen CPU
+cycles directly, so everyone who offered free CPU cycles for legitimate
+use-cases is now unable to provide those services. If not for cryptocurrency,
+these services would still be available.
+
+Don’t make the mistake of thinking that these are a bunch of script kiddies.
+There are large, talented teams of engineers across several organizations
+working together to combat this abuse, and they’re losing. A small sample of
+tactics I’ve seen or heard of include:
+
+ • Using CPU limiters to manipulate monitoring tools.
+ • Installing crypto miners into the build systems for free software projects
+ so that the builds appear legitimate.
+ • Using password dumps to steal login credentials for legitimate users and
+ then leveraging their accounts for mining.
+
+I would give more examples, but secrecy is a necessary part of defending
+against this — which really sucks for an organization that otherwise strives to
+be as open and transparent as sourcehut does.
+
+Cryptocurrency problems are more subtle than outright abuse, too. The integrity
+and trust of the entire software industry has sharply declined due to
+cryptocurrency. It sets up perverse incentives for new projects, where
+developers are no longer trying to convince you to use their software because
+it’s good, but because they think that if they can convince you it will make
+them rich. I’ve had to develop a special radar for reading product pages now: a
+mounting feeling of dread as a promising technology is introduced while I
+inevitably arrive at the buried lede: it’s more crypto bullshit. Cryptocurrency
+is the multi-level marketing of the tech world. “Hi! How’ve you been? Long time
+no see! Oh, I’ve been working on this cool distributed database file store
+archive thing. We’re doing an ICO next week.” Then I leave. Any technology
+which is not an (alleged) currency and which incorporates blockchain anyway
+would always work better without it.
+
+There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cryptocurrency scams and ponzi
+schemes trussed up to look like some kind of legitimate offering. Even if the
+project you’re working on is totally cool and solves all of these problems,
+there are 100 other projects pretending to be like yours which are ultimately
+concerned with transferring money from their users to their founders. Which one
+are investors more likely to invest in? Hint: it’s the one that’s more
+profitable. Those promises of “we’re different!” are always hollow anyway.
+Remember the [3]DAO? They wanted to avoid social arbitration entirely for
+financial contracts, but when the chips are down and their money was walking
+out the door, they forked the blockchain.
+
+That’s what cryptocurrency is all about: not novel technology, not empowerment,
+but making money. It has failed as an actual currency outside of some isolated
+examples of failed national economies. No, cryptocurrency is not a currency at
+all: it’s an investment vehicle. A tool for making the rich richer. And that’s
+putting it nicely; in reality it has a lot more in common with a Ponzi scheme
+than a genuine investment. What “value” does solving fake math problems
+actually provide to anyone? It’s all bullshit.
+
+And those few failed economies whose people are desperately using
+cryptocurrency to keep the wheel of their fates spinning? Those make for a good
+headline, but how about the rural communities whose tax dollars subsidized the
+power plants which the miners have flocked to? People who are [4]suffering
+blackouts as their power is siphoned into computing SHA-256 as fast as possible
+while dumping an entire country worth of CO₂ into the atmosphere?^[5]2 No,
+cryptocurrency does not help failed states. It exploits them.
+
+Even those in the (allegedly) working economies of the first world have been
+impacted by cryptocurrency. The price of consumer GPUs have gone sharply up in
+the past few months. And, again, what are these GPUs being used for? Running
+SHA-256 in a loop, as fast as possible. Rumor has it that hard drives are up
+next.
+
+Maybe your cryptocurrency is different. But look: you’re in really poor
+company. When you’re the only honest person in the room, maybe you should be in
+a different room. It is impossible to trust you. Every comment online about
+cryptocurrency is tainted by the fact that the commenter has probably invested
+thousands of dollars into a Ponzi scheme and is depending on your agreement to
+make their money back.^[6]3 Not to mention that any attempts at reform, like
+proof-of-stake, are viciously blocked by those in power (i.e. those with the
+money) because of any risk it poses to reduce their bottom line. No, your
+blockchain is not different.
+
+Cryptocurrency is one of the worst inventions of the 21st century. I am ashamed
+to share an industry with this exploitative grift. It has failed to be a useful
+currency, invented a new class of internet abuse, further enriched the rich,
+wasted staggering amounts of electricity, hastened climate change, ruined
+hundreds of otherwise promising projects, provided a climate for hundreds of
+scams to flourish, created shortages and price hikes for consumer hardware, and
+injected perverse incentives into technology everywhere. Fuck cryptocurrency.
+
+A personal note
+
+This rant has been a long time coming and is probably one of the most justified
+expressions of anger I've written for this blog yet. However, it will probably
+be the last one.
+
+I realize that my blog has been a source of a lot of negativity in the past,
+and I regret how harsh I've been with some of the projects I've criticised. I
+will make my arguments by example going forward: if I think we can do better,
+I'll do it better, instead of criticising those who are just earnestly trying
+their best.
+
+Thanks for reading 🙂 Let's keep making the software world a better place.
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+ 1. If this is the first you’re hearing of this, a graceful migration is
+ planned: [7]details here [8]↩︎
+
+ 2. “But crypto is far from the worst contributor to climate change!” Yeah, but
+ at least the worst offenders provide value to society. See also [9]
+ Whataboutism. [10]↩︎
+
+ 3. This is why I asked you to disclose your stake in your comment upfront.
+ [11]↩︎
+
+The content for this site is [12]CC-BY-SA. The [13]code for this site is [14]
+MIT.
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://drewdevault.com/
+[2] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fn:1
+[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)
+[4] https://www.rferl.org/a/bitcoin-blackouts-russian-cryptocurrency-miners-minting-millions-sucking-abkhazia-electricity-grid-dry/30968307.html
+[5] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fn:2
+[6] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fn:3
+[7] https://man.sr.ht/ops/builds.sr.ht-migration.md
+[8] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fnref:1
+[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
+[10] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fnref:2
+[11] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fnref:3
+[12] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
+[13] https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com
+[14] https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
