The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding • Hacker News Board

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#171

Post by blihp » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

_vdpp wrote: post #81

sebmellen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are the founders of these apps not in prison? I remember getting hundreds of “replace your savings account” ads that abruptly ended with the Luna collapse.

What laws did they break? Legitimately curious.

In the U.S. at least, anyone dealing in things financial has to be very careful not to violate any number of laws involving money handling, banking, insurance, securities etc. It's not enough to say 'we don't do that' or 'we're not a registered X and therefore not required to do Y'. If a relevant government agency decides you are an unregistered X, or otherwise violating the law, be prepared for an expensive multi-year legal fight and most likely to lose unless you are really doing something completely new that actually isn't like the old thing[1] they are tasked with regulating/enforcing.

I'm actually quite surprised that some of these scams (stablecoins being one example[2]) have been allowed to go on as long as they have.

[1] i.e. buying you at least a temporary reprieve as all you're winning is the argument that that particular law doesn't apply to you, not that they won't pass a new law and come after you using it.

[2] It sure looks to me like they're pretending to be defacto banks issuing their own defacto dollars and not so subtly assuring 'investors' a rate of return. The combination of these factors have historically been all but guaranteed to get damn near every agency of the govt on your ass.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#172

Post by WFHRenaissance » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

patmcc wrote: post #111

sk0g wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’d be an idiot to ignore the realistic and adopted use-cases Ignoring the hostility, what would you list as the realistic and adopted use-cases for crypto?

Buying drugs, laundering money, ransomware, there are literally dozens. Oh, did you want legal ones?

See reply

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#173

Post by fortran77 » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

stblack wrote: post #41

formerkrogemp wrote: post #4

Quoted post unavailable.

Oh we're here. Just watching all this collegial self-agreement among people who don't fully understand the subject, because what they know, they learned from writers who don't understand the subject, like the author of the laughable media piece posted here.

> John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. He has written many articles for the magazine, on topics ranging from Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to the intelligence failures before the Iraqi War and the economics of John Maynard Keynes. He is the author of two books: “How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities” and “Dot.Con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era.” Before joining The New Yorker, he worked for the Sunday Times of London and the Post. He graduated from Oxford University in 1984 and from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1986. He grew up in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

What are your qualifications?

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#174

Post by arcticbull » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

randomhodler84 wrote: post #156

arcticbull wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did, but it's kind of the empty set. I guess, you could say it's a high-beta play on liquidity, plus an army of Herbalife type salespeople.

Funny. The day is yours arctic, and I feel I have no power to argue. Still, I lost a larger percentage in stonks today, so I don’t really know where we should be putting our fiat.

heh, I was overexposed to high-growth tech stocks the whole time, so I probably lost just as much over the same period of time. If somebody won, it sure wasn't me! I've also watched this space long enough to know that crypto is the T-1000 of financial schemes. I've no doubt she'll be back - probably stronger than ever - no matter what I think. This is my third crypto boom/bust cycle.

I'm not dancing on graves here, so I hope it didn't come across that way.

I want us all to win.

These market conditions suck. But they'll be over soon.

[edit] what frustrates me the most is I feel like the crypto folks often really want to make the world better, and I just wish we were all pointed in the same direction.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#175

Post by adam_arthur » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

datadata wrote: post #155

adam_arthur wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, fiat currencies don't have intrinsic value, they have network value as the primary unit of exchange. A good investment does need intrinsic value, which BTC does not have. It's also not a feasible payment system. The fact that cryptos are only referenced in USD terms proves that the only real use people have for them is a vehicle of speculation. Investment without intrinsic value = speculation The second there's…

> A good investment does need intrinsic value, which BTC does not have. Agree, USD is also not a good investment but it is still widespread to have some USD. > It's also not a feasible payment system. Disagree, it is used (not widely) but without issue for payments all the time. It isn't a feasible payment system for every single transaction, but that is a ridiculous goal. There is no payment system that is feasible…

People buy stocks to make money. People buy BTC to make money.

Stocks have intrinsic value, BTC does not.

Important difference

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#176

Post by ptmcc » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

7speter wrote: post #157

dpweb wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is a creation of government, and frankly, the dollar ain’t so bad. If my bank goes under I’m protected by the FDIC. If Coinbase goes under they have the right to use my money to pay their creditors.

You’re protected upto $250k on deposits by the fdic. Still much better than Coinbase but just sayin’

Per account type per bank, importantly.

And SIPC covers brokerage accounts up to $500k.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#177

Post by DeRock » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

patmcc wrote: post #111

sk0g wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’d be an idiot to ignore the realistic and adopted use-cases Ignoring the hostility, what would you list as the realistic and adopted use-cases for crypto?

Buying drugs, laundering money, ransomware, there are literally dozens. Oh, did you want legal ones?

More specifically, it is

> Buying drugs, laundering money, ransomware

over the internet. And I’m only being slightly facetious, these are serious industries. Bringing the coordination and scale of the internet to these activities is big business.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#178

Post by jimmydorry » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #127

4pkjai wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's a little biased because he's heavily involved with Solana

This style argument is the exact opposite of "putting your money where your mouth is". If he really believes BTC has no future, why wouldn't he invest in alternatives?

1. He invested heavily in BTC and literally created an exchange to take profits from future BTC trading.

2. Investing in his vision is laudable, but a third party presenting said efforts as proof of BTC having no future should be called out due to the obvious conflict of interest.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#179

Post by razemio » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

patmcc wrote: post #111

sk0g wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’d be an idiot to ignore the realistic and adopted use-cases Ignoring the hostility, what would you list as the realistic and adopted use-cases for crypto?

Buying drugs, laundering money, ransomware, there are literally dozens. Oh, did you want legal ones?

You would be really stupid to buy anything illegal with Bitcoin or any other non anonymous crypto. Cash / Fiat is king there.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#180

Post by woodruffw » Thu, May 19, 2022, 4:21 AM UTC

WFHRenaissance wrote: post #170

woodruffw wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any serious supply chain or asset provenance efforts that rely on cryptocurrencies or DeFi. Lots of serious work uses Merkle constructions, but it would be a remarkable distortion to spin something like Certificate Transparency as a form of DeFi.

I’m aware of a use case where person/asset location is being determined using a distributively owned set of radio transmitters so that proof-of-location can be established without use of GPS. Plenty of supply chain use cases already exist using private chains/ledgers — this will skew more toward public chains or hybrid solutions as demands for transparency amp up.

> I’m aware of a use case where person/asset location is being determined using a distributively owned set of radio transmitters so that proof-of-location can be established without use of GPS.

...why?