
Cryptocurrency Is the Next Frontier in the Quest to Abolish Cash Bail - ritchiea
https://injusticetoday.com/cryptocurrency-is-the-next-frontier-in-the-quest-to-abolish-cash-bail-928af4569ca5
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cloakandswagger
This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons:

> “If generating money out of thin air by using a computer program seems
> absurd, that’s because it is,” Grayson Earle, who dreamed up and co-leads
> the project, told In Justice Today

Does this person actually understand how crypto mining works? (Classy of them
to take a swipe at the very technology enabling their project, by the way.)
Even with a GTX1080 TI, at $0.12/kWH you'd be lucky to make $0.01 of profit
per hour mining Monero. Most people will be mining at a loss, meaning a direct
donation would be more efficient.

Secondly, the whole idea of raising a general fund to pay the bail for accused
criminals is absurd. How are the recipients selected? What happens when they
actually do abscond and the money from the fund is lost?

Bail serves an important purpose in mitigating flight risks. Why don't the
authors of this project work on a technology solution that accomplishes that
without collateral? Say, a cheap GPS tracking device or smart phone app.

~~~
bfuller
Hilarious. Does he not realize how the fed works?

~~~
adventured
You're spot on in pointing that out. There is one problem with that however.

The Federal Reserve system is directly supported by the economic output of the
entire US and the taxing power of the US Government (it's further supported by
the vast global demand for dollars and the dollar as the global reserve
currency; that global reserve status can be further ensured by the US
military). For example, if US budget deficits get too great, requiring support
in the form of QE by the Fed, which then causes the dollar's value to drop,
the US Congress can increase taxes to lower or eliminate the budget deficit. A
healthy US economy is critical to supporting the Fed's abilities as it
pertains to the USD. All of the Fed's actions and all of the things the Fed
can buy, are directly linked to the US economy.

You can certainly print incredibly vast quantities of fiat - that won't help
you at all if your economy is toast, if people don't fundamentally believe in
what backs the currency, just ask Venezuela or Zimbabwe. When the Fed debases
the dollar, what they're doing is taxing the wealth & economic output of the
US economy, not solely manufacturing value out of nothing, they're spliting
off value from an existing economy (and to a lesser extent global economic
value from eg dollars & commodities held overseas).

Absolutely nothing like that exists for Bitcoin.

~~~
cloakandswagger
Bitcoin's value is backed by its hashing power and all the resources required
for that. Arguably a foundation just as valid (and more ethical) than a nation
state's guns and bombs.

~~~
librarian42
Bitcoin's value is backed by people's belief in Bitcoin. Otherwise it wouldn't
be worth any more than Dogecoin.

And calling the massive waste of resources involved in Bitcoin mining ethical
is fucking hilarious. Congratulations, Libertaria has invented a new kind of
evil.

------
pm90
I just skimmed through the article, but the gist seems to be: download this
app in large numbers, we will use your phone as bitcoin miners and use the
mined coins to pay for bail.

This is just so fucking absurd. The problem with bail is not a technological
one, its a legislative one. I think Kamala Harris has taken the right steps
and publicly stated how absurd it is that we jail so many fellow citizens for
being poor (or unable to furnish bail money).

Overpromised technology hurts the people who try to use it but also erodes
trust in technologists. I can't believe this has survived the smell test. If I
missed something, please do let me know.

~~~
maxerickson
It uses Monero:

[https://bailbloc.thenewinquiry.com/about.html](https://bailbloc.thenewinquiry.com/about.html)

If it used Bitcoin it would clearly be absurd because CPUs are useless for
mining.

I don't pay enough attention to cybercoins to understand how worthwhile it
will be to mine Monero.

~~~
thisisit
And this from the whitepaper:

> We also compute a new XMR-to-USD price, modeled as a random walk (a monthly
> change is uniformly random on the interval [-5%, 5%]). For each miner, we
> also sample the XMR mined (directly as its estimated USD value) uniformly
> randomly from the interval [$1, $4]. This mined USD is added to the bail
> fund

Makes me wonder if they understand the volatility of cryptocurrency.

------
empath75
Cryptocurrency doesn’t come out of thin air and it’s not free. It costs money
for your electricity and your cpu. It would be much more efficient to just
write them a check.

I was trying to figure out if you could encode a bail arrangement with
ethereum somehow before clicking on it and was disappointed when it was just
fund raising.

~~~
davidkuhta
Completely agree and was thinking the same thing about it being some sort of
'bail contract'. I stopped reading after:

> If generating money out of thin air by using a computer program seems
> absurd, that’s because it is

If generating money out of thin air by using a computer program seems
_impossible_ , that’s because it is.

There are no free lunches.

If you're looking for a distributed computing initiative to support:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects)

~~~
SippinLean
Correct, generating money out of thin air is absurd.

Not sure what that straw man has to do with being rewarded for mining
cryptocurrencies and exchanging them for fiat though. That is clearly very
possible and often profitable.

~~~
cloakandswagger
Even being generous you'd be lucky to generate a $0.25/day profit mining
Monero with a normal desktop. Factor in wide variations in electricity cost,
the wear on PC components and fluctuating currency value and this is simply
not practical.

This idea is predicated on an intellectually dishonest premise that mining
crypto is "free". Naive do-gooders will run this app without realizing the
hidden costs.

~~~
SippinLean
It is predicated on the honest premise that mining Monero is likely
profitable.

~~~
davidkuhta
Do you feel the article does a suitable job of describing cryptocurrency
mining such that a non-technical reader of injusticetoday.com would be
adequately informed of the implications of installing the software?

~~~
SippinLean
>Once a user installs the app on their computer, it automatically harnesses a
small amount of unused processing power to mine for cryptocurrency

~~~
davidkuhta
It defaults to 25% CPU usage (and appears to be an electron app). Which I
would've placed as greater than small.

[https://github.com/thenewinquiry/bailbloc/blob/401cb4f288d88...](https://github.com/thenewinquiry/bailbloc/blob/401cb4f288d88a96f6116d5ef7e0648a538f641b/desktop/miner.js#L23)

Concede the point that users would be making an informed (albeit minimally)
decision.

~~~
SippinLean
That is false, it defaults to a _maximum_ of 10% CPU usage, which I would've
placed as small.

[https://github.com/thenewinquiry/bailbloc/blob/401cb4f288d88...](https://github.com/thenewinquiry/bailbloc/blob/401cb4f288d88a96f6116d5ef7e0648a538f641b/desktop/main.js#L35)

~~~
davidkuhta
Awesome, 10% is small [though that miner is initially instantiated at 25% ;)].

Thanks for engaging in a friendly, respectful dialogue with links to source!

------
dmitrygr
Classic silicon valley-like thinking. Try to "disrupt" a system without
understanding what it is for and why it was designed the way it was.

Bail is designed to prevent flight risk. It is set high enough that you'd have
a hard time coming up with that much money without being forced to stay and
appear. Having strangers pay your bail means you have no reason to stay. It
makes bail jumping more likely. People having a hard time making bail is
working-as-intended. It may be hard to swallow, but the system was
purposefully designed this way. If you dislike it, write to your senator.
Paying others' bail, even as inefficiently as this, will change nothing.

 _Very very_ inefficiently, actually. Mining on "unused cycles" on most PCs
will generate negligibly small amounts of money. Even multiplied by the number
of people foolish enough to enrol in this, it will still be a negligible
amount of money. So who decides 1/10th of which criminal's bail this will go
to?

~~~
tbrownaw
So, how well does that theory match reality?

Does it actually in practice prevent flight, or does it just fuck over people
who can't pay?

~~~
dmitrygr
Well, it _DOES_ prevent flight. Does it do it in the best way possible?
Probably no. But it does prevent flight. You cannot flee if you're stuck in
jail.

Like I said. This is a problem that need to be solved legislatively, not by
paying others' bail inefficiently.

~~~
gowld
No one's interested in hearing why their real-world solutions aren't as good
as your theoretical non-solution.

------
pwaai
I fail to see how they will be able to make this happen... Overall, I'm
skeptical of the narrative that continues to iterate that cryptocurrency
projects will usurp our modern legal and financial system which always seems
to market the notion that it's here today and with enough of your attention,
time (and money) we can somehow overcome the fortress of legal frameworks,
policies, international agreements that took at least half a millenia of
battle testing and it's still undergoing developments as new edge cases arises
forcing revisions, and cesspool of highly paid lawyers who poorly slave away
ensuring this system cannot be challenged and that it is the ultimate law.

I find it amusing how those pumping coins seem to be completely oblivious to
the fact that whatever fantasy world conjured up still lives within the
confines of our legislative & financial laws.

------
pqh
How did "Blockchain" and "Cryptocurrency" become mass nouns? It's interesting.

[http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-
speech/nouns/Coll...](http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-
speech/nouns/Collective-Nouns.html)

------
EGreg
What if we take out the bail part and replace it with any charity?

Mining Monero for charity.

Thoughts?

~~~
corford
Just donate the $ amount you'd have spent on a high end GPU and electricity.
Faster, easier, less damage to the environment and doesn't require paying ATI
or Nvidia more than you'd likely end up raising for the charity from your
paltry mining haul...

Or if you really want to use cryptocurrencies, buy some XMR/BTC/whatever off
an exchange and donate that.

~~~
SippinLean
This uses the CPU, not the GPU.

At current prices (depending on electricity price) it is more efficient to
mine Monero than buy it outright, especially off an exchange (which incurs tx
and trading costs).

~~~
corford
Are you sure? If I'm reading this correctly
[https://whattomine.com/coins?utf8=%E2%9C%93&adapt_q_280x=0&a...](https://whattomine.com/coins?utf8=%E2%9C%93&adapt_q_280x=0&adapt_q_380=0&adapt_q_fury=0&adapt_q_470=0&adapt_q_480=0&adapt_480=true&adapt_q_570=0&adapt_q_580=0&adapt_q_750Ti=0&adapt_q_1050Ti=0&adapt_q_10606=0&adapt_q_1070=0&adapt_q_1080=0&adapt_q_1080Ti=1&eth=true&factor%5Beth_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Beth_p%5D=0.0&grof=true&factor%5Bgro_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Bgro_p%5D=0.0&x11gf=true&factor%5Bx11g_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Bx11g_p%5D=0.0&cn=true&factor%5Bcn_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Bcn_p%5D=0.0&eq=true&factor%5Beq_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Beq_p%5D=0.0&lre=true&factor%5Blrev2_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Blrev2_p%5D=0.0&ns=true&factor%5Bns_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Bns_p%5D=0.0&lbry=true&factor%5Blbry_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Blbry_p%5D=0.0&bk2bf=true&factor%5Bbk2b_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Bbk2b_p%5D=0.0&bk14=true&factor%5Bbk14_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Bbk14_p%5D=0.0&pas=true&factor%5Bpas_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Bpas_p%5D=0.0&skh=true&factor%5Bskh_hr%5D=0.0&factor%5Bskh_p%5D=0.0&factor%5Bl2z_hr%5D=420.0&factor%5Bl2z_p%5D=300.0&factor%5Bcost%5D=0.1&sort=Profitability24&volume=0&revenue=24h&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=abucoins&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=bitfinex&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=bittrex&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=bleutrade&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=c_cex&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=cryptopia&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=hitbtc&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=poloniex&factor%5Bexchanges%5D%5B%5D=yobit&dataset=&commit=Calculate)

A 1080Ti will mine 0.0396XMR every 24hours (yielding $4.71 at current prices).

Presumably a CPU will fare significantly worse?

Exchange fees and tx costs are negligible (especially compared to the
variation in elec prices depending on where you live).

Edit: as I understand it there's really no such thing as an ASIC resistant
coin. Rather there's just an understanding that if ASICs get produced for
XMR/VTC the devs will change the algorithm and fork the coin. If that's the
case, surely these PoW coins are still susceptible to needing more and more
hash power for a return as difficulty goes up (though perhaps less
aggressively/rapidly compared to BTC?)?

~~~
dfox
For both CryptoNight (XMR) and DaggerHashimoto (ETH) you don't need that much
computing power but fast RAM. CryptoNight needs relatively small amount of
insanely fast memory (eg. CPU L2/L3 cache), while DaggerHashimoto requires
large precomputed dataset for mining (stored in GPU's RAM) which is designed
such that it is not necessary to verify single hash. The overreaching idea is
that the price of hypothetical ASIC miner is more dependent on RAM prices than
on random-logic prices.

~~~
corford
Didn't know that. Super interesting, thanks.

