drewdevault-com-yuxzdw.txt (9252B)
1 Cryptocurrency is an abject disaster April 26, 2021 on [1]Drew DeVault's blog 2 3 This post is long overdue. Let’s get it over with. 4 5 🛑 Hey! If you write a comment about this article online, disclose your stake in 6 cryptocurrency. I will explain why later in this post. For my part, I held 7 <$10,000 USD worth of Bitcoin prior to 2016, plus small amounts of altcoins. I 8 made a modest profit on my holdings. Today my stake in all cryptocurrency is 9 $0. 10 11 Starting on May 1st, users of sourcehut’s CI service will be required to be on 12 a paid account, a change which will affect about half of all builds.sr.ht 13 users.^[2]1 Over the past several months, everyone in the industry who provides 14 any kind of free CPU resources has been dealing with a massive outbreak of 15 abuse for cryptocurrency mining. The industry has been setting up informal 16 working groups to pool knowledge of mitigations, communicate when our platforms 17 are being leveraged against one another, and cumulatively wasting thousands of 18 hours of engineering time implementing measures to deal with this abuse, and 19 responding as attackers find new ways to circumvent them. 20 21 Cryptocurrency has invented an entirely new category of internet abuse. CI 22 services like mine are not alone in this struggle: JavaScript miners, botnets, 23 and all kinds of other illicit cycles are being spent solving pointless math 24 problems to make money for bad actors. Some might argue that abuse is 25 inevitable for anyone who provides a public service — but prior to 26 cryptocurrency, what kind of abuse would a CI platform endure? Email spam? 27 Block port 25. Someone might try to host their website on ephemeral VMs with 28 dynamic DNS or something, I dunno. Someone found a way of monetizing stolen CPU 29 cycles directly, so everyone who offered free CPU cycles for legitimate 30 use-cases is now unable to provide those services. If not for cryptocurrency, 31 these services would still be available. 32 33 Don’t make the mistake of thinking that these are a bunch of script kiddies. 34 There are large, talented teams of engineers across several organizations 35 working together to combat this abuse, and they’re losing. A small sample of 36 tactics I’ve seen or heard of include: 37 38 • Using CPU limiters to manipulate monitoring tools. 39 • Installing crypto miners into the build systems for free software projects 40 so that the builds appear legitimate. 41 • Using password dumps to steal login credentials for legitimate users and 42 then leveraging their accounts for mining. 43 44 I would give more examples, but secrecy is a necessary part of defending 45 against this — which really sucks for an organization that otherwise strives to 46 be as open and transparent as sourcehut does. 47 48 Cryptocurrency problems are more subtle than outright abuse, too. The integrity 49 and trust of the entire software industry has sharply declined due to 50 cryptocurrency. It sets up perverse incentives for new projects, where 51 developers are no longer trying to convince you to use their software because 52 it’s good, but because they think that if they can convince you it will make 53 them rich. I’ve had to develop a special radar for reading product pages now: a 54 mounting feeling of dread as a promising technology is introduced while I 55 inevitably arrive at the buried lede: it’s more crypto bullshit. Cryptocurrency 56 is the multi-level marketing of the tech world. “Hi! How’ve you been? Long time 57 no see! Oh, I’ve been working on this cool distributed database file store 58 archive thing. We’re doing an ICO next week.” Then I leave. Any technology 59 which is not an (alleged) currency and which incorporates blockchain anyway 60 would always work better without it. 61 62 There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cryptocurrency scams and ponzi 63 schemes trussed up to look like some kind of legitimate offering. Even if the 64 project you’re working on is totally cool and solves all of these problems, 65 there are 100 other projects pretending to be like yours which are ultimately 66 concerned with transferring money from their users to their founders. Which one 67 are investors more likely to invest in? Hint: it’s the one that’s more 68 profitable. Those promises of “we’re different!” are always hollow anyway. 69 Remember the [3]DAO? They wanted to avoid social arbitration entirely for 70 financial contracts, but when the chips are down and their money was walking 71 out the door, they forked the blockchain. 72 73 That’s what cryptocurrency is all about: not novel technology, not empowerment, 74 but making money. It has failed as an actual currency outside of some isolated 75 examples of failed national economies. No, cryptocurrency is not a currency at 76 all: it’s an investment vehicle. A tool for making the rich richer. And that’s 77 putting it nicely; in reality it has a lot more in common with a Ponzi scheme 78 than a genuine investment. What “value” does solving fake math problems 79 actually provide to anyone? It’s all bullshit. 80 81 And those few failed economies whose people are desperately using 82 cryptocurrency to keep the wheel of their fates spinning? Those make for a good 83 headline, but how about the rural communities whose tax dollars subsidized the 84 power plants which the miners have flocked to? People who are [4]suffering 85 blackouts as their power is siphoned into computing SHA-256 as fast as possible 86 while dumping an entire country worth of CO₂ into the atmosphere?^[5]2 No, 87 cryptocurrency does not help failed states. It exploits them. 88 89 Even those in the (allegedly) working economies of the first world have been 90 impacted by cryptocurrency. The price of consumer GPUs have gone sharply up in 91 the past few months. And, again, what are these GPUs being used for? Running 92 SHA-256 in a loop, as fast as possible. Rumor has it that hard drives are up 93 next. 94 95 Maybe your cryptocurrency is different. But look: you’re in really poor 96 company. When you’re the only honest person in the room, maybe you should be in 97 a different room. It is impossible to trust you. Every comment online about 98 cryptocurrency is tainted by the fact that the commenter has probably invested 99 thousands of dollars into a Ponzi scheme and is depending on your agreement to 100 make their money back.^[6]3 Not to mention that any attempts at reform, like 101 proof-of-stake, are viciously blocked by those in power (i.e. those with the 102 money) because of any risk it poses to reduce their bottom line. No, your 103 blockchain is not different. 104 105 Cryptocurrency is one of the worst inventions of the 21st century. I am ashamed 106 to share an industry with this exploitative grift. It has failed to be a useful 107 currency, invented a new class of internet abuse, further enriched the rich, 108 wasted staggering amounts of electricity, hastened climate change, ruined 109 hundreds of otherwise promising projects, provided a climate for hundreds of 110 scams to flourish, created shortages and price hikes for consumer hardware, and 111 injected perverse incentives into technology everywhere. Fuck cryptocurrency. 112 113 A personal note 114 115 This rant has been a long time coming and is probably one of the most justified 116 expressions of anger I've written for this blog yet. However, it will probably 117 be the last one. 118 119 I realize that my blog has been a source of a lot of negativity in the past, 120 and I regret how harsh I've been with some of the projects I've criticised. I 121 will make my arguments by example going forward: if I think we can do better, 122 I'll do it better, instead of criticising those who are just earnestly trying 123 their best. 124 125 Thanks for reading 🙂 Let's keep making the software world a better place. 126 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 127 128 1. If this is the first you’re hearing of this, a graceful migration is 129 planned: [7]details here [8]↩︎ 130 131 2. “But crypto is far from the worst contributor to climate change!” Yeah, but 132 at least the worst offenders provide value to society. See also [9] 133 Whataboutism. [10]↩︎ 134 135 3. This is why I asked you to disclose your stake in your comment upfront. 136 [11]↩︎ 137 138 The content for this site is [12]CC-BY-SA. The [13]code for this site is [14] 139 MIT. 140 141 References: 142 143 [1] https://drewdevault.com/ 144 [2] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fn:1 145 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) 146 [4] https://www.rferl.org/a/bitcoin-blackouts-russian-cryptocurrency-miners-minting-millions-sucking-abkhazia-electricity-grid-dry/30968307.html 147 [5] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fn:2 148 [6] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fn:3 149 [7] https://man.sr.ht/ops/builds.sr.ht-migration.md 150 [8] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fnref:1 151 [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism 152 [10] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fnref:2 153 [11] https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html#fnref:3 154 [12] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ 155 [13] https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com 156 [14] https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT