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The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

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Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#181

Post by cube00 »

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’

> The standard insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category. [1]

Spread it around in multiple banks and it's more money then I'm ever likely to accumulate in my savings. Although if you have that much money in the bank arguably you're missing out on much better returns in the market if you're young and have time on your side.

[1]: https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-insurance/

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#182

Post by WFHRenaissance »

alexb_ wrote: post #159
WFHRenaissance wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart contracts, DAOs, payments, self-sovereign identity, tokenization of real world assets, a few security use-cases, operating markets for prediction and asset-trade outside the control of external authorities (libertarian wet dream stuff), insurance and legal arbitration outside of the control of external authorities (more wet dreaming, but it’s happening), supply chain / provenance of assets… All of these could p…

>Crypto will succeed because the rich...corrupt...liberarians want it to Just because you want something to happen doesn't mean it will. Especially when you have to assume that we live in some fantasy world where nobody can be trusted and everything has to be done outside the influence of government (i.e. illegally) so we have to use a decentralized append-only database where nothing can be reversed because while you…

All of my stated use-cases are already in use.

Society will evolve towards being trustless as the moneyed-class pursue sovereign citizenship and shop for preferential territory on a global scale. They will need a secure way to trustlessly store and exchange funds. Cryptocurrency literally exists nearly entirely for this reason.

Ignore the stupid coins.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#183

Post by jackvalentine »

boznz wrote: post #160
arcticbull wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody keeps bricks of gold at home. Just why would they. Way too much risk.

no risk if nobody knows they are there, ditto if you are a crypto billionaire and dont tell anyone

Your house burns down. Your house floods. You put your hardware wallet on the kitchen bench after adding/withdrawing crypto and the dog grabs it and chews it up.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#184

Post by notch656a »

arcticbull wrote: post #84
notch656a wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping crypto on an exchange is like keeping gold at the gold dealer. Just why.

Nobody keeps bricks of gold at home. Just why would they. Way too much risk.

I'm not rich enough to own 'bricks' of gold, but if I was I would be a bit more creative than keeping them all naively stored under a bed or something at home. In any case having been subjected to various government fuckery in my life, I'm keenly aware of the need for wealth diversification. Self custody of (some fraction of) wealth is a means of diversification against risks of thugs in various official capacities.

And to say nobody keeps bricks of gold at home, well just peruse reddit [0].

[0] https://i.redd.it/gbtjawvob1g61.jpg

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#185

Post by mwcremer »

_vdpp wrote: post #88
notch656a wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping crypto on an exchange is like keeping gold at the gold dealer. Just why.

Same reason you don’t keep all your savings under the mattress. There have been a number of stories about people losing or corrupting their crypto wallets. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Which raises an interesting question: what fraction of Bitcoin, for example, is effectively lost forever? I assume minuscule, but like entropy it never decreases?

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#186

Post by blihp »

_vdpp wrote: post #150
vishnugupta wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL. When an entity takes customer deposits it gets hyper regulated, a notch or two below commercial bank. These apps circumvent those regulations by accepting deposits in crypto. Regulators are are also in bit of a spot because it's an entirely new beast. For most of the current use case crypto acts like unregistered security but in in some minor way it's also a currency. So regulators are biding their time becaus…

It almost sounds like a carnival or arcade where you can buy tokens and gamble them to try and win tickets. I wonder if that’s a potential defense.

Nope. Just watch... this has all happened before and it will all happen again.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#187

Post by WFHRenaissance »

woodruffw wrote: post #180
WFHRenaissance wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

GPS is spoofable… you’re a security guy, you should know this :p

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#188

Post by anon9001 »

> As an inevitable crash occurs, many of the swindles and alleged swindles are coming to light.

Yeah, bubbles make overvalued prices. Crashes occur. Losers fail. Winners gain bigger marketshare and mindshare.

Spectacular failures are actually a sign of a functioning market. The worst possible thing that could have happened last week would be the federal reserve offering Do Kwon a very cheap bridge loan to stabilize his section of the crypto economy, lest we risk broader market contagion.

Crypto failures are fast and painful as opposed to long and corrupt. This is a feature, not a bug.

Also, ironically, this author has spilled a fair amount of ink over all the market crises of the years. He wrote a whole book on the dot-com bust. The Luna saga was over in about 3 days.

> The list includes some traditional tactics for illicitly relieving rubes of their money, such as pump-and-dump schemes and phishing for passwords. It also describes new, more novel schemes, including the “pig butchering” crypto scam, which often involves an attractive person approaching you online and offering you spectacularly lucrative crypto investments.

Sure, I get these DMs on discord too. Don't fall for scammers. They were doing the same nonsense with "Double your Square Cash!" scams shortly before the crypto boom. Or offering great deals on "GPUs" during the shortage. This is not a crypto problem in the slightest and crypto probably makes these lower end scammers easy to prosecute.

> The over-all aim was to make crypto investing seem mainstream and draw in gullible investors who feared they were being left on the sidelines.

Does anyone seriously believe that etrade or robinhood advertising options trading to me is somehow different? There are constant commercials for precious metals and ETFs and all kinds of things.

I know a fair amount of bitcoin millionaires, all of whom were called "gullible investors" at the time.

What really bothers me is the incredible amount of ignorance I see in the comments section about crypto, blockchain technologies, poor understandings of economics, etc.

Wtf HN. Do better. I feel like I'm watching my peers get old and resistant to change and dismissive of new technologies and exciting possibilities.

Also, if you appreciate my contrarian (for HN?) view and are looking to take on more risk, now is the time to build for web3. The people chasing easy money will give up and the people moving the tech forward will build while no one is watching.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#189

Post by tluyben2 »

I think cryptocurrencies/nfts are crap and have no value, but to play devil’s advocate here; for all the people saying this is all doomed, the top cryptocurrency assets seem to more or less look like the tech market and BTC is doing better than, say Netflix. Netflix actually makes things and is 76% down from ath, while btc only 66%. So why is it so resilient? When will it die if it indeed has no value? Are we just grumpy tech people who are kicking ‘evil’ things that will never change or go away?

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#190

Post by notch656a »

_vdpp wrote: post #88
notch656a wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping crypto on an exchange is like keeping gold at the gold dealer. Just why.

Same reason you don’t keep all your savings under the mattress. There have been a number of stories about people losing or corrupting their crypto wallets. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Would you keep all your cash in the bank? Frankly I feel terrified if I don't have enough cash on hand to last at least a month. For instance the IRS has been known to freeze bank accounts of completely innocent business owners on wild goose chase accusations that small deposits are structured, for instance.

It's also worth noting there are certain unique risks to exchanges that aren't really applicable to most bank accounts.

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