Roses are red, violets are blue. Here's some new guff from Peter Molyneux...

[Animalmother]

He's either extremely naive (doubtful) or a dyed in the wool con artist. As Raid pointed out there's no way in hell this won't be used for money laundering. Once this venture goes tits up we'll no doubt get another tearful statement that he's quitting, the world is mean and he's retiring... until the next shady scam pops into his head.

[Raid]

I'm not even trying to suggest that Molyneux and the company are complicit in inviting money launderers to their software, although I'm also not denying the possibility, but that's the nature of unregulated transactions - I doubt the seller has any idea where that money is from. There was a story of a lad who made £290,000 from selling NFTs for his little pixel whales a few months ago, and while it's an adorable story, it just does not feel remotely right and above board. Who would spend that amount of money buying pixel art from a 12 year old? I'm under no illusion that the kid is involved in organised crime, but it's not like he's going to performing a rigorous background check. Hell, in my time as a bank cashier, there's a non-zero chance that I've inadvertently had a part in laundering money - my bank did have robust safeguards in place (to the point where customers using cash in any large transaction is so much more trouble than it's worth) and I've followed those rules to the letter, but there are ways around those safeguards if you know how to evade detection. My understanding of NFTs (and cryptocurrencies) at the present time is that they can be used as one of those ways of evading detection.

There is a distinct possibility that Peter Molyneux and the company he represents are processing the proceeds from child trafficking, from illegal arms sales, and funding terrorist acts, intentionally or not. That's what I have a problem with here.

[Mantis]

Law enforcement are still miles behind the times even when it comes to preventing cryptocurrency money laundering. It'll be years before any meaningful efforts are successful in preventing or intercepting NFT-based money laundering. It's a total wild west and completely open to be abused in such a way.

I work on a fraud team and half of my older colleagues are only just becoming aware of what Bitcoin even is after we ran an awareness session of things to keep an eye out for on a search.

[Animalmother]

Bit of an explanation on NFT's in gaming.
Ridiculous money is being made on this so it's no wonder gaming companies are getting into it.

[eny]

Melania Trump is releasing "art" as NFT's....a "portion" of proceeds will go to fostering children. Tells you all you need to know really doesn't it.

[Raid]

So I started watching a Youtube channel named People Make Games last week (it's an excellent long-form investigative games journalism channel that I'd recommend), and they have a video regarding blockchain in gaming. It's based on Ubisoft and was published in May, and things have moved on a bit since then, but it has actual numbers in it, and those numbers were already staggering.

The video says that every Ethereum transaction uses enough energy to emit 20kg of co2. That to me sounded like quite a lot, so I did a little research, and found that the carbon footprint of the average UK home is around 24kg co2. Unfortunately the video was published back in May, and was likely researched for several months beforehand. The carbon footprint of a single Ethereum transaction is now 104.64kg, using enough energy to keep an average UK home operating for an entire month. Energy consumption by the Ethereum blockchain has quintupled this year, presumably because it's being wildly adopted by companies rather than just being a currency thing.

I almost feel like I'm misunderstanding something here, because that's just absolutely barking. Every time Mr Molyneux or Mr Ubisoft sells an NFT, it's consuming enough energy to power a house for a month? And these companies are ok with this?

[Drarok]

As disgusting as the numbers are, I think you're mixing two things, are you not? It's the same carbon footprint, but that site has a separate stat for Electrical Energy so I don't think "using enough energy to keep an average UK home operating for an entire month" is right, unless USA houses are only 25% as efficient?! One transactions is "Equivalent to the power consumption of an average U.S. household over 7.44 days."

Like I say, absolutely appalling, but perhaps not quite as mind-bogglingly bad as first glance? I dunno.

[Raid]

I don't think I've accidentally equated two different stats, I just didn't link to the source I found the British home one from (I think I'd taken it from one of our energy companies' websites), I just probably should have said "electricity" instead of "energy". And yes, the average American home apparently uses substantially more electricity (around three times as much) than we do in the UK which is what the figures I've quoted refer to, but I believe we use far more gas than is used in the states. To be honest, we have such different energy consumption based on the age of our houses and the climate (Americans run electrically-driven AC through the summer, and we have gas-run central heating through winter), that I'm not sure we can really compare the two countries. The carbon footprint figures also refer to how that energy is generated, and I'm not sure what the split is between fossil fuels, nuclear and renewables in both countries, so the carbon footprint per unit of energy may also be different.

[Animalmother]

So Peter Molyneux is slowly killing the planet with his bullshit, sounds about right.

[Alan]

I always took it to be, and I’m probably wrong, that they were taking all the energy spent mining in a year divided by the number of transactions? My brain can’t fathom a single transaction being so power hungry.

[Raid]

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping I've misunderstood, but I couldn't find anything to support it. I've never seen anyone refer to the mining of a coin to be a "transaction". The way the PMG video I linked to above words it, it suggests it really is just the exchange between two clients of a single ethereum token. I guess it's just the nature of how blockchain works (a transaction has to be verified by a majority of users), meaning that every time a transaction occurs, it requires millions of verification checks. Presumably when it was created, it was never designed to operate at the scale it's at now. The more companies that decide to use it, the worse it gets.

It's worth noting that Ethereum are supposedly moving to a far more energy efficient model in 2022 (I've seen varying figures ranging all the way up to a 99% reduction in energy use), so perhaps this isn't going to be happening long-term, but it's just shocking how colossal a wastage this is right now.

[Animalmother]

Nothing to do with Molyneux or his latest arsefuckery but watched this video about Roblox and how utterly shady the whole operation is...


They are currently worth more than Nintendo by using the very unethical exploitation of young gamers. There's a follow up video as well that makes it even worse. Gaming is a cesspit!

[eny]

That video really is obscene, but it gets worse:




How is there no uproar and furore about this? It is grotesque and obscene how they are exploiting ignorance and naivety with gambling, internal stock markets, and black markets outside the platform.

[Medicine Man]

More Roblox related shadiness...

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ ... k-loophole

[Sly Boots]

Horrifying vision of the future of gaming via Square Enix boss:

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/square-enix- ... em-anyway/