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Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

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Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#91

I've followed Coffeezilla for a while. I was doing an AI course from another youtuber named Siraj Raval in 2019. The course ended up being totally amateur and full of empty promises. Mr Zilla did a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jmBE4yPrOs 'AI Guru makes $238,800 with misleading paid course. doesn't credit developers. | Siraj Raval FGF' Then Zilla started exclusively focusing on crypto/NFT scams. Th…

Before this he had a long streak of exposing business gurus selling online courses.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#92
post #77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically, past performance is indicative of future behavior. This is why statistical modeling in social sciences works somewhat okay. But there are extrapolation regions or shorter memory missing prior events that cause behavior to deviate from status quo expectation.

"The reaper didn't come today, so he won't tomorrow"

The thing is, you're right many times until you're wrong. Unfortunately when you're wrong, it can be catastrophic.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t store wealth stably in inanimate things. Wealth is always social in nature. Currencies are claims on the future production of people who want them. Their future desires and capacities defines the value.

Gold. Other precious/rare metals. Property. You are speaking of collectibles, not wealth/currency.

Gold's value is other people's belief in it being worth something, so they will trade other things for it. Same with other rare metals. Property has something close to intrinsic value in that it provides shelter, but the value of property is only realizable if the social context allows it to be realized -- your claim to a house is only as good as the government's willingness to recognize that claim, and to protect it for you when it is challenged by others.

Point is, the devastating attacks people think they're lobbing at bitcoin when they say that it's not 'backed' by anything are neither devastating, nor unique to bitcoin: unless you're talking about a commodity that people are consuming directly, nothing is backed by anything other than socially held belief.

That's all money is, when you unwind it all the way. The important question is what is the relevant society, and what beliefs do they hold?

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unregulated stable coins have proven to be as stable as the titanic was unsinkable. When in the last five years have you had difficulty cashing out USDT, USDC, or DAI at dollar value?

Because past performance is _always_ indicative of future performance, am I right? > When in the last five years have you had difficulty cashing out USDT, USDC, or DAI at dollar value? You could have said the exact same thing about Terra/UST right until sometimes last week. It works until it doesn't.

1. UST hasn't existed for 5 years, the others have.

2. "Algostable" coins are experimental, and this one was propped up by ponzinomics on Anchor. It is not comparable to collateralized stablecoins, and claiming otherwise is intellectually dishonest.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#95
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remittances and online retail is already done quite well with centralized systems. "Trustless decentralization" is only relevant when you are doing things illegal. Which, as it turns out, is the main usecase of cryptocurrency.

“Nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide” goes back even further than 2012.

And does the mainstream crypto outside Monero help you to hide things? You are still dealing with some actors and surely they keep records if you don't solely do face to face activities. In which case why even bother and not just go with Euros or dollars...

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t store wealth stably in inanimate things. Wealth is always social in nature. Currencies are claims on the future production of people who want them. Their future desires and capacities defines the value.

Gold. Other precious/rare metals. Property. You are speaking of collectibles, not wealth/currency.

Property isn't always good investment. How well Detroit and other communities where manufacturing went away are doing?

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#97
post #61
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your talking points are from like 2012 man. off the top of my head: remittances, online retail, trustless decentralized computational systems

Remittances and online retail is already done quite well with centralized systems. "Trustless decentralization" is only relevant when you are doing things illegal. Which, as it turns out, is the main usecase of cryptocurrency.

I thought this too, but then looked into and saw that fiat currency use for illicit things is an order of magnitude more then crypto (as a percentage of total use).

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#98
And yet the livestream giveaway scams persist on YouTube. Scammers earning so much. At any moment you can find at least 10 videos running concurrently, each with money in the associated crypto addresses.

The smart scammers are not doing NFT tomfoolery, they are doing fake Saylor and Musk giveaways instead and earning far more money much more consistently. While YouTube does nothing. Cofeezilla is not going to stop people from continuing to fall for these much more persistent scams. Its going to have to come from youtube.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#99

Blockchain has two proven use cases: 1.) Speculative investment assets. 2.) Moving value outside of a financial system. Unregulated stable coins have proven to be as stable as the titanic was unsinkable. Number 1 is really a problem because of Number 2. Number 2 is a fancy way to describe a primary use case being money laundering. Of course though there are some instances where that’s helpful like backing a foreign g…

The main value proposition of crypto is cryptographic security. You cannot confiscate crypto like you can other assets (unless obv. you have the key or miners somehow collude). Is this worth $1 trillion? Probably not.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you could say that sometimes past performance can indicate future behavior, but it doesn't hold for crypto the same reason it doesn't hold for perpetual motion machines.

Algorithmic and partially backed stablecoins (like Luna's TerraUSD) are perpetual motion machines. Fully backed stablecoins (all other popular stablecoins with the arguable exception of Tether) are not perpetual motion machines.

What do you mean “fully backed”? The last time I checked on USDT (which was a while ago) I thought they admitted it was a fractional reserve, primarily denominated in undisclosed commercial paper. Additionally, they had not yet received an unqualified audit report from any of the big four. Has something changed in the last year or so?
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