361–364 of 364 posts
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Agreed. Super-smart people made these systems possible. Sad to see many people associate crypto with scams and illegal stuff. Well, I've bought a tshirt with Ether and VPN subscription to access Wikipedia and YouTube, from a country that blocks many common VPNs. Super, illegal. Let them keep saying crypto is scam, people who believe in it will win in the long run anyway.
Are you telling me that you're committing crime by using a VPN?
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> The whole point is that you're allowed to move, manage, and spend your assets as you see fit, without any government's ability to freeze your assets or block you from accessing financial services via sanctions That’s a selling point advanced by crypto advocates. Frankly, it’s ok to make that point. What is not ok is pretending that crypto isn’t also a high risk environment full of scams. I’m not trying to police an…
> What is not ok is pretending that crypto isn’t also a high risk environment full of scams. I don't pretend that at all. Like I've said elsewhere in this thread, "caveat emptor." I am sorry if others have told you that is not the case about crypto. Unfortunately, I cannot do anything about them. > I’m not trying to police anything. I can’t stop crypto advocates claiming it’s a good place for regular people to invest…
Yes, I agree with you on this.
However this is far from the dominant narrative coming from crypto advocates. That is all I am objecting to.
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I think the way you protect yourself is the same way people protected themselves before credit cards were widely used. By not spending your cash on things that are scams. Somehow people managed to survive before banks offered their rent seeking / fraud protection and I think they'd be OK without them if push came to shove.
Nope, because cryptocurrencies also removed all other protections. - The scams are online, so I cannot knock on the scammer's door with an angry mob and ask for our money back. - Pseudonymous identities means scammers have strong protections against being sued or prosecuted. - Digital wallets, as opposed to cash in bank vaults, means that you can lose all your savings in one mistake. - Complete lack of trusted third…
>- Pseudonymous identities means scammers have strong protections against being sued or prosecuted.
>- Complete lack of trusted third parties means there's no one to appeal to, or to raise alarms in suspicious cases.
I think that all these things are not fundamental aspects of crypto, but rather how the user chooses to use crypto. If I wanted to I could use crypto only for buying eggs from the local market, or paying a plumber to do some work for me, etc. Scams have existed for decades that involve essentially mailing cash to people that fit the criteria you listed - it's not an issue with cash, but an issue with how people are transacting (with remote unidentified people).
>- Digital wallets, as opposed to cash in bank vaults, means that you can lose all your savings in one mistake.
This is no longer strictly true, at least for loss of wallet keys. There are all sorts of solutions out there (Argent, for example) that allow you to have 'fallback' key methods for if your main key is lost. Yes, if you mistakenly send all your money to the wrong address in crypto you lose it, but that was true of cash as well. Once you spend it it's gone.
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It's the same as open source software, most people don't personally look at the source code of the Linux Kernel, but they trust it more than Windows because they know many thousands of others have looked at it and haven't found issues. Open systems lead to less trust required, because anyone can verify and report issues. Open finance leads to less trust required because anyone can verify and report issues with the sm…
Don't the smart contract systems not allow patching, so there's no point in reporting issues?