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The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

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251–260 of 332 posts

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#251
post #68

Crypto cannot create wealth, only move it around. If too many people become crypto-rich and try to spend it on real-world assets, the assets will just inflate in price. What can happen is that crypto could replace other forms of money. Governments will likely fight this tooth and nail however, because crypto is currently an anti-government technology.

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.

> "frankly, the dollar ain’t so bad."

It might be not bad. For you.

Perhaps you are an American. Whenever your government prints more dollars, because the rest of the world holds dollar reserves, the value of those reserves go down. So everyone else in the world basically finances the US money printing.

So, if you are an American, the dollar is not bad. Its actually very, very good.

But for the rest of the world (96% of the world population), its pretty bad. It is used as means to transfer their wealth to US.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#252
post #234

There is absolutely zero legal usecase for cryptocurrencies. None. "oh but it might be useful for doing-" you are wrong. Full stop. "but what about censorship" Circumventing government censorship is, by definition, illegal. "but what about trustless" We do not live in a world where there is nobody that can be trusted. And if we did, why the hell would you want a currency where nothing can ever be reversed? "but what…

paving the road to hell with your good intentions. half your arguments could be applied to the other crypto.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe those things, you should be asking for crypto to be outlawed, not disingenuously regulated for the underhanded purpos of outlawing it.

You do understand that banning something is a form of regulation, correct? I don't know how much more explicit I can be with a phrase like "regulate into the dirt."

> I don't know how much more explicit I can be with a phrase like "regulate into the dirt."

"regulate it into the dirt" is commonly understood to mean the very real practice of placing so many restrictions/conditions on something that it becomes impractical to operate within the industry of whatever "it" is while explicitly not actually banning it outright.

I tend to agree that there's no reason it should exist, but I'm open to the idea that maybe there's a worthy purpose out there that I'm missing.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m actually a well-known author and this is a pseudonym. This really isn’t that crazy of an idea though. Read “The Sovereign Individual” by Davidson & Mogg. Written in 1999/2000.

Thanks for the recommendation. Having skimmed the book, yes, it would be fantastic to give the material the same treatment Paul Verhoeven gave to Starship Troopers specifically in its reappraised interpretation.

I think that a Sovereign Individual movie made today would likely be a documentary… we are so close to the reality portrayed in that book

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#255
post #62

Crypto crashes every couple years and of course it has grown immensely since the last crash so the scale and scope of these kinds of “analyses” grow with it. I’d imagine in 5 years in the next big crash it will be the top news around the global for many weeks.

Interesting economic theory… “What happened yesterday will happen tomorrow” … hang on, I have a lot of money to move around before markets open tomorrow!

This is like the 5th or 6th cycle, at a certain point you realize high volatility is the nature of crypto, and it’s not crazy to presume there will continue to be cycles.

The latest crash is overhyped anyway, BTC is 30k and BAYC NFTs still have a ~200k floor. This isn’t some kind of capitulation to a new fundamental thesis, at least not yet. It feels far less wintery than some prior crashes that felt like BTC or ETH was on death’s door.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#256
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to dig into this a bit more. In general, I'm skeptical about those use cases. * If it's a governance token system where more money == more power...well, I just don't think it's a good idea in general. * If it's a system that tries to replicate the idea of one person/one vote, you have to have KYC (and re-KYC upon membership transfer) or it devolves into the first case. Then the entity doing KYC has centra…

To address the latter case first: what you gain is standardization and interoperability, where the crypto toolbox acts as a protocol . Even if you're doing KYC in a centralized way, you can plug your token/DAO into any tool that supports it and use their interfaces. At least in theory. Good interfaces don't quite exist yet (it's being worked on). I'm sure there's already web2 tools out there, but the ideal web3 case…

“some external aim of coordination that discourages people from just speculating”, i think the word you’re looking for might be “trust”

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#257
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don’t forget about the risk of your brain naturally forgetting a password that isn’t in active use. Especially considering your cold storage solution probably doesn’t share a password you use anywhere else.

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#258
post #234

There is absolutely zero legal usecase for cryptocurrencies. None. "oh but it might be useful for doing-" you are wrong. Full stop. "but what about censorship" Circumventing government censorship is, by definition, illegal. "but what about trustless" We do not live in a world where there is nobody that can be trusted. And if we did, why the hell would you want a currency where nothing can ever be reversed? "but what…

paving the road to hell with your good intentions. half your arguments could be applied to the other crypto.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm

This is a good polemic line I’m stealing

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#259
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is BTC not fundamentally sound. You can literally take 1 Billion dollars worth of BTC and cross the border without anyone questioning you. How does that not change how you see things ?

Fundamentally sound as what ? - As a currency, it's garbage. Currencies are inflationary to incentivize spending. A deflationary currency incentives hoarding, and harms the economy by dropping velocity. All the worst periods in history have been deflationary, not inflationary. Currencies benefit from being able to respond to changes in population, to shocks, to changing demographics. And they shouldn't cost a fully-r…

> A deflationary currency incentives hoarding

Really…

Do people hoard value shares which have predictable returns that beat inflation?

Is most gold or property hoarded, or is it traded? (Either is expected to rise in “value” over time, expected that is by the average person).

I suspect most people try to get the best returns. Hoarding might occur in a depression, but otherwise the concept is questionable?

Re: The Great Crypto Grift May Be Unwinding

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of cool stuff that isn't a scam? I'm genuinely curious.

One of the cool parts of crypto is that it enables new forms of social coordination that take place entirely within an online context. We haven't even scratched the surface of what could be possible with DAOs; the UIs and educational materials don't exist yet. But given how online people are in general (and they're only likely to become more online in the future), it's natural they'll want digitally-native ways to or…

Interesting. Do you have some resources or recommended reading you can suggest for crypto in the context of social coordination or these other shifts in concept you mentioned? I don't doubt there's interesting applications for some of this tech that have nothing do with the usual hype. I would be curious to read up on some of these developments.
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