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Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

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Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#191

Post by practice9 »

Traster wrote: post #188
practice9 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mus…

> it's still going to be the currency a bunch of guys with guns insist Americans pay taxes in

Well, yeah, most currencies are defacto backed by military force. That fact creates bad incentives.

Crypto doesn't have this luxury, it can be only be backed by the trust in code. If the currency is trusted - because it's open-source, open for all to use, is well designed - it's value is going to go up. See Bitcoin and Ethereum as best examples of this.

This make a decision whether to use a particular coin similar to choosing Python vs JVM and their ecosystems.

To be fair, I don't think stablecoins work well in that context. The information on how they are backed is not completely public, the companies issuing stablecoins are not that well audited...They are blobs of closed-source "stuff" that look like 1$

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#192

Post by dns_snek »

ouid wrote: post #22
Nextgrid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto has exactly one non-scam use-case: a way to transfer value that's more resilient to government interference. Can be used for crime, grey areas or in the very rare case where there's no other financial infrastructure to transfer value. Cryptocurrencies make various trade-offs around efficiency, energy use, user experience, etc to operate in such a hostile environment, therefore they should really be used as a l…

Why do you think cryptocurrency solves this problem? Is it because you hope cryptocurrency solves some problem? It's a public ledger. All a hostile government has to do is find who performed the transactions and imprison them. Is that not considerable interference?

Being a public ledger doesn't mean your real world identity is automatically connected to a crypto address. In practice most people aren't diligent enough to separate the two, but it's possible.

And then you have private ledgers like Monero.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#193

Post by PretzelPirate »

mdoms wrote: post #126
glerk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We now need to come to terms with this failed experiment and call it all off and make them all illegal Who is “we”? Ironically, crypto was invented to protect individuals against the authoritarian tendencies of people such as yourself. Your comment is making the case for decentralization.

"We" would be any nation with legitimate climate targets.

People should remember that blockchain does not require Proof of Work consensus. If you want to ban PoW, be specific about it. If you want to ban blockchain, don’t simply advocate for killing PoW since blockchains will exist without it.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#194

Post by simondotau »

Nextgrid wrote: post #60
simondotau wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto has exactly one non-scam use-case: a way to transfer value And even then, its usefulness in this regard is limited when its valuation is highly volatile. Probably not an issue when the full transaction life cycle can be fully completed (buyer acquires crypto, buyer and seller trade crypto, seller offloads the crypto) in a matter of hours. But this narrows the use case even further.

It's currently volatile because there's lots of hype about it. But when it all dies down the value would more or less stablize to the value it provides for its only true use-case.

Optimistic. Potentially true if the scale on a single blockchain is sufficient—which is multiple orders of magnitude more than it sees today—and thus opens its own set of fairly obvious problems.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#195

Post by nyolfen »

Feriti wrote: post #186
nyolfen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if i want to send money to a family member in bangalore, i don't have to trust anybody by using crypto. this isn't some nebulous promise, it is intrinsic to the design of the system -- i perform a transaction in my bed room, and the money is transferred to a new ownership address, which nobody else has control over. this trivial use case is profound and there is no parallel for it in the conventional financial system. that isn't to say it has perfect security, but it eliminates the need for middlemen while preserving the benefits of digital systems. it's optimized for autonomy and freedom over safety -- giving someone the power the revoke transactions can also be used against you. "grown and have a ton of security features and is still getting finetuned" is also true of crypto

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#196

Post by nyolfen »

anothernewdude wrote: post #181
nyolfen wrote: 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 - 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.

i urge you to think about things a little bit before talking

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#197

Post by low_tech_love »

everfree wrote: post #147
low_tech_love wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m genuinely curious, can you point me to credible information showing that some other stablecoin is actually fully backed?

USDC backing, audited by a large US accounting firm: https://www.centre.io/usdc-transparency GUSD backing, also audited by a large US accounting firm, subject to New York State Department of Financial Services regulations: https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/gusd-stablecoin-gemini-do... USDP backing, also audited by a large US accounting firm and subject to New York State Department of Financial Services regulations:…

Cool, thanks a lot! But why is it then that these currencies are not as attractive or hyped as Tether and UST? Could it be that the fact they are properly backed makes them less interesting for those who want a more adventurous kind of investment?

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#198

Post by paulryanrogers »

nyolfen wrote: post #195
Feriti wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if i want to send money to a family member in bangalore, i don't have to trust anybody by using crypto. this isn't some nebulous promise, it is intrinsic to the design of the system -- i perform a transaction in my bed room, and the money is transferred to a new ownership address, which nobody else has control over. this trivial use case is profound and there is no parallel for it in the conventional financial system…

> ...which nobody else has control over.

Control may be distributed, though it certainly is there. And crypto requires no party have too much control over the hash rate or else the advantage over traditional finance is lost.

> ...but it eliminates the need for middlemen...

Not technically. Even crypto-to-crypto trades still involve miners at least. And if it's L2 then you're trusting that middleman. Then for the family to get useful fiat from crypto they need an exchange.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#199

Post by logifail »

syzygyhack wrote: post #62
johnebgd wrote: post #42

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…

> 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?

> When in the last five years have you had difficulty [snip]

When until 2008 did anyone have problems with their holdings in Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers stocks?

Things are OK right up until they aren't any more. Afterwards this can seem (painfully) obvious. Beforehand, less so.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#200

Post by nyolfen »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #198
nyolfen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if i want to send money to a family member in bangalore, i don't have to trust anybody by using crypto. this isn't some nebulous promise, it is intrinsic to the design of the system -- i perform a transaction in my bed room, and the money is transferred to a new ownership address, which nobody else has control over. this trivial use case is profound and there is no parallel for it in the conventional financial system…

> ...which nobody else has control over. Control may be distributed, though it certainly is there. And crypto requires no party have too much control over the hash rate or else the advantage over traditional finance is lost. > ...but it eliminates the need for middlemen... Not technically. Even crypto-to-crypto trades still involve miners at least. And if it's L2 then you're trusting that middleman. Then for the fami…

> And crypto requires no party have too much control over the hash rate or else the advantage over traditional finance is lost.

what is your threat model here? what practical attack do you think is going to happen?

>Not technically. Even crypto-to-crypto trades still involve miners at least.

miners are not middlemen, they have zero control or ability to interfere with the transfer of funds. wiring money involves handing control of the funds to a middleman like a bank, who you have to trust to do what you ask. there are incentive structures but it is ultimately a human system. this is not the case with eg bitcoin -- any individual miner or validator who didn't want to process your transaction would simply be replaced by one of the thousands of others. if you're savvy you can simply run your own node.

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