What makes this (or cypto) economy ‘artificial’, and why is our real-world economy not artificial?

Plenty of market manipulation and rug pulls happening on the regular stock market as well

They wrote the scarcity is artificial.

I'd say that's true: if you have one skin, there's virtually zero production cost to making more copies of said skin.

It's not that different for many things in the real world, I suppose (eg: if you sell way above cost, then your cost is also arguably zero), but I'd say it's magnified in the digital world (or even with NFTs).

I got really into Lorcana last year, spent $40 on a particular rare card I needed for a deck. Out of curiosity I bought some cards for $3 each from Aliexpress, and got myself a jewelers loupe.

The cards were literally indistinguishable even with the loupe. I quit buying cards after that. It’s a suckers game if I can’t tell the difference between a $50 and a $3 card even when I know one is fake. Sure enough, a few months later the prices have absolutely cratered for the cards.

The only ones they couldn’t copy exactly seemed to be the “enchanted” cards, which sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Probably the biggest possible investment for quantum computing today is all the abandoned bitcoins wallets ripe for taking

I weep for humanity if that's the best use we can think of for quantum computing.

Isn't most of our technology based on technologies invented to maximize killing in world war 2, or alternatively as a way to maximize monetization in sleazy ways?

World War 2 took at most about a decade (depending on who you ask). The history of development of our technology is much, much longer. I doubt 'most of our technology' is based on anything that happened in WW2.

It's just that technologies are all connected, so if you want to make them look bad you can do so. Is fixation of nitrogen into ammonia something that improved billions of lives through fertilizer, or something that enabled manufacture of many millions of tons of explosives? It's both.

Sure, no question about that. I'm just objecting to connecting everything to WW2. There were plenty of other wars before and after and even at the same time.

The general sentiment is still true, the reasons for engineering and (often science) are not always nobel (pun intended)

Sure. I'm just objecting to connecting everything to WW2.

There's not actually that many things quantum computers are expected to be good at. Material science perhaps?

Honest question why would anyone harvest Bitcoin after this? Wouldn't it lose all its value since everyone has everyone key now?

After? There is no reason. But between "only you have the keys" and that "after" there is literally tens of billions of dollars.

maybe it could be turned into a game.. hide the satoshis from the quantum ghosts

If you can get abandoned wallets, can't you just get any and all wallets?

Edit: minus some race conditions of people changing passwords/moving/emptying wallets.

I am making a lot of assumptions here which are not backed by much knowledge about bitcoin:

1. It's easier to extract funds from abandoned wallets without being noticed

2. There will be a transition to wallets with post-quantum cryptography

3. The abandoned wallets won't be able to make that conversion because these need new wallets/keys

Right, but that just sounds like the race conditions I added in my edit.

Actually, no. Even a perfect quantum computer can only attack a key if its public key has already been revealed on-chain, which is only the case for a small amount of coin. The other QC attacks rely on cracking a private key after it was broadcast, and before the transactions make it into a block.

You lost me... What is the difference between an abandoned wallet and a non-abandoned one in this scenario?

Technically, "abandoned wallets" is not something that exists, all you have are "unspent outputs" of transactions. For QC attacks to work the public key to a private key has to be revealed, for modern addresses that only happens when you spend coins, not when you send them somewhere.

I guess some people call early P2PK (pay to public key) addresses "abandoned", but we simply don't know if somebody still controls them.

Interesting. So as long as your wallet has only received Bitcoin, it's untouchable but the moment you transfer any of it, it's at risk of being emptied. The only way to protect any of the funds is to simply move it to another new wallet. We would be in a situation where any wallets (with known keys) can only be sold off in their entirety to prevent theft. However, who is going to want to buy any Bitcoin if the potential buyer's market decreases with each user exiting the market? The inherent value immediately drops to zero because each successive sale would be less than what it was purchased for. Kind of a Schrodinger's wallet, do you really own any Bitcoin if you can never withdraw from it?

The attack when sending a transaction has a time constraints. It will take many any years to go from being able to crack private keys in years/month to doing it in minutes.

Why would that only apply to abandoned wallets?

In a scenario where you have a powerful enough quantum computer and are able to break the encryption you can access any wallet (I.e. the system would be done, and the value would be zero).

Showing that you have access to all wallets will surely kill the market but silently getting abandoned ones and selling off would seem better choice.

But on the other hand there are people looking at those abandoned wallets and if money start to flow out from them someone will ask questions.

It's a dumb analysis of the situation that ignores what would actually happen:

A new wallet cert would be created that uses more bits. Enough that a brute force even with a quantum CPU would take too long. Then you transfer the funds to the new wallet. Abandoned wallets might be claimed during this transition but overall the deflationary trend of btc won't really be effected long term.

I think having Trump whisper in your ear before the next Truth Social post is the least effort way to win at Crypto. Inventing a viable quantum computer seems like way too much effort for the bros.