Live data from Hacker News

Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

newyorker.com

181–190 of 208 posts

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#181
post #44

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…

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

remittances - money laundering.

online retail - drug & illegal sales - essentially money laundering

trustless decentralized computational systems - There is still trust, it's just in the code. Which also tells you how "decentralized" they are.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#182
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever redeemed Tether? As opposed to selling it to another chump on am exchange? Have you ever taken your Tether holdings and redeemed them at Tether.io for US Dollars?

My impression is that at certain exchanges that accept USDT (eg. bitfinex), you can withdraw your USDT for "real" USD wired to your bank account. Isn't this effectively redeeming it, even if you're not directly transacting with Tether Operations Limited?

No. That’s you selling your usdt for usd to a non tether entity.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#183
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm saying. What I am saying is that cryptocurrencies are so horrible in every way except anonymity that the ONLY reason you would use it is for illegal activities, speculation, or paranoia.

s/cryptocurrencies/encrypted communcation

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trustless or distributed trust (up until the point of a 51% attack)?

fair enough, but in the same way that conventional systems are only 'secure and encrypted up until the point of being beaten with a wrench'

Conventional systems don't tell you all the time how they save the trust issue.

And conventional systems are old and grown and have a ton of security features and is still getting finetuned.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same could be said for US dollar as a world currency, couldn't it? Do you think its model is sustainable? British pound has enjoyed a long history and was used as a currency for international trade until early 20st century. Then dollar took over. One could argue it's because USA emerged from WW2 as a super-power. But it would be foolish to say that only a major war or a fall of the empire will change what currency pe…

What you're describing is totally different in scale though. When the British pound got displaced as the currency for international trade it didn't suddenly lose 99.9999% of its value in a weekend. And whilst the Dollar isn't guaranteed to be the most popular currency for international trade, it's still going to be the currency a bunch of guys with guns insist Americans pay taxes in. There are real reasons people must hold real currencies. There are no reasons that anyone needs to hold crypto.

I'm not saying crypto has no value, but I'm saying it's not comparable to a modern currency. You might be right that it's similar to some historical examples of weak upstart currencies most of which failed, but even those were backed by a lot more than just... what? In this case we're literally comparing to currencies that are often backed by nothing.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same could be said for US dollar as a world currency, couldn't it? Do you think its model is sustainable? British pound has enjoyed a long history and was used as a currency for international trade until early 20st century. Then dollar took over. One could argue it's because USA emerged from WW2 as a super-power. But it would be foolish to say that only a major war or a fall of the empire will change what currency pe…

> British pound has enjoyed a long history and was used as a currency for international trade until early 20st century. Then dollar took over.

The British Pound is still worth about the same proportionately to the dollar as it always was, and no-one would look at you funny for paying for stuff in pounds.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#190

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…

What do you mean it’s a “solution in search of a problem”? It solves a very clear problem: lack of scalability of traditional Ponzi schemes. That’s why most of the answers to criticism of cryptocurrencies is usually “it’s not much worse than the kind of thing that led to the 2008 crash”. For crypto enthusiasts the problem is not that scams exist; it’s that they didn’t get to join them early enough.

Traditional ponzi schemes didn't have a scalability problem, they had a marketing problem. Cryptocurrency solves that by adding hand-wavy tech hype.
Post reply on HN