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Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

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Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#111

Post by javert »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #58
oefrha wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on board if charities* could somehow get in on the action and convince the bored rich to part with their money. * Real charities, not those billionaire tax avoidance schemes.

> Real charities, not those billionaire tax avoidance schemes. No such thing.

Do you even know what you're talking about?

In the US, a billionaire has more money at the end of the day if they just pay taxes on it than if they give it to charity and take the deduction.

The only other way a charity helps a billionaire save on taxes is if they use the charity's assets (e.g. boats, helicopers, real estate) as personal assets. But that's felony tax fraud. A billionaire wouldn't be likely to risk prison for that kind of chump change.

The crooked thing about charities is the people who run them, focus on fundraising, and pay themselves a huge salary. But those people aren't billionaires.

Now, you could rent your real estate to a charity you control at an inflated price, or sell them other services, but I think that's probably an edge case.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#112

Post by WJW »

shawnz wrote: post #78
WJW wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always, but wrongful civil forfeiture is just one of many possible ways to steal. In other cases using the court system will be possible. With bitcoin, it is never possible.

So if you think the risk of permanently losing your assets via legal channels is, let's say, 99-to-1 compared to the risk of losing your assets to cryptocurrency attacks, then wouldn't it make sense to hold 99% of your assets in the bank and 1% in cryptocurrencies? Cryptocurrencies don't have to replace all existing financial instruments to be a useful hedge. They can just be one tool of many to diversify your risk p…

If you think it is indeed 99-to-1, then perhaps. My perception of the trustworthiness of most crypto projects is certainly much lower (see the endless parade of crypto horror stories on https://www.reddit.com/r/SorryForYourLoss/), so personally I would think the odds of a crypto project going under or just simply losing my wallet keys is way higher than the chance my bank or my government will steal my money or my stocks or whatever. Then again, I do live in western Europe so YMMV if you live in Venezuela or someplace like that.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#113

Post by useful »

Selling a future that hasn't happened is fine. If you saw the initial version of the internet or a cell phone you'd likely dismiss them.

Crypto is rebuilding the same things that already exist but that process has the chance to remove people from a system who used to provide services and replace them with an algorithm. Most people would dimiss a NFT but some of the use cases could be great. If most laws/rules were enforced in code for business transactions would you need to spend as much money on a lawyer in your lifetime? That's the future of money and it's exciting. Will that happen? Maybe not, which is why it is speculative.

The problem is that a large majority of people who are speculative and most crypto assets are highly centralized, which defeat the point of decentralization to remove a few large actors from having control. Plus the scams and idiots in the space that income without labor always attracts.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#114

Post by 99_00 »

New technology often goes through a phase of wild speculation, touting by liars, and impractical business models that people throw money because they are afraid of missing out. The bubble eventually pops. But people keep improving the tech and it becomes practical and eats the world.

First there was Railroad Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania

After the initial bubble, rail roads changed the world

First there was the dot-com bubble, and then internet changed the world.

Both sides can be right in this debate. Crypto can be a bubble and a scam and it can also change the world.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#115

Post by marcus_holmes »

lostcolony wrote: post #109
21eleven wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about NFTs is that many people who buy them "don't get NFTs". All an NFT is is a token that represents ownership, like if the title to your car or house deed was on a blockchain. NFTs have some sane use causes like designating the owner of a valuable asset or creating electronic tickets that can be resold or transferred without some centralized entity like ticketmaster. Prior to NFTs existing, would you pur…

Yep. It's a completely made up problem. It's maybe useful in enforcing existing IP law (i.e., I can prove that that picture is mine), but even that is questionable (proof of ownership of digital IP has already been proven satisfactorily for courts of law to rule on it). The fact there is a new way of proving ownership doesn't make the thing owned valuable.

As far as I'm aware, the NFT doesn't itself convey any transfer of copyrights (or any other form of IP). That has to be done by a separate document (and therefore it's that document that transfers the rights, not the NFT). So I don't see how the NFT is doing anything to help enforce existing IP laws?

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#116

Post by larsiusprime »

TomGullen wrote: post #84
marban wrote: post #5

The whole NFT craze lost me when tech founders I once highly respected started pushing and showing off their ugly gifs and trading cards on Twitter. Bad taste of the bored rich is not a new thing, but I hope NFTs won't become a noble tradition.

I must be getting old because I just don't get NFT's. They look stupid and I don't get why anyone would buy them. Declining tech companies and startups seem to be trying to crowbar them into their products much like Blockchain when it was new and shiny. Perhaps younger me would of seen something I can't anymore.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing to "get": https://www.fortressofdoors.com/the-degraded-blockchain-prob...

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#117

Post by ARandumGuy »

roenxi wrote: post #10

Someone sees cryptocurrency as exactly what it is, and at some point in the future we will know who. But in the interim, lets not compare crypto to some utopian world that doesn't actually exist. In the current world which we inhabit, the many major currencies are either controlled or heavily influenced by people who: 1) Believe prices constantly rising is good for poor people. 2) Advocate that governments can spend…

> 1) Believe prices constantly rising is good for poor people.

I mean, inflation actually does benefit poor people, when wages and prices rise at the same rate. Devaluing savings accounts isn't a big deal if you don't have any savings in the first place. Inflation also makes debt less valuable over time, making it gradually easier to pay off.

The real problem is that (in the US) wages have been stagnant for decades. That's not an issue that cryptocurrency is going to solve.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#118

Post by Geee »

DanHulton wrote: post #108
Geee wrote: post #103

Bitcoin has nothing to do with all these scams like NFTs and "internet computers" like Ethereum, which are pushed by tech gurus, influencers and marketers. It's time to stop conflating these under the same umbrella. Bitcoiners are not the same people who push these useless things.

Absolutely correct. Bitcoin isn't the domain of NFT grifters, it's the domain of ransomware hostage-takers. We need to be accurate when discussing the various scams proposed.

That's not even remotely true.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#119

Post by mahidhar »

codingclaws wrote: post #71

Off topic. Did anyone else's AI generated text radar go off on this article? Seems like too many fancy words. I wonder how many media outlets use GPT-3 to help generate content.

Actually it's pretty weird. This is a sports blog and content engine. And the author is someone who started this publication. I'm not sure what the motivation/context is at all here.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#120

Post by overlaid »

cfup wrote: post #72

I was involved in a blockchain (DeFi) startup. All the blockchain companies are mostly a huge pyramid scheme. The company I worked for has a lot of big claims, raised millions, wanted to solve world hunger, prioritized partnership, marketing, while having no working implementation. Others in the eco system are the same. The NFT scene is even more BS. It could destroyed uninformed people's life, just like gambling. Ho…

How did the pyramid scheme work? Who was recruiting (not in an abstract sense)? What were the rewards for getting new recruits?
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