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Is this the end of crypto?

economist.com

41–50 of 448 posts

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#42
post #7

Didn't blow up enough to scare people away long term, it will be back soon enough.

Exactly. FTX.com wasn't even legal in the US. The Terra/Luna crash was WAY worse for people, and that didn't do much to scare people away.

BTC has held above $16k, which is really saying something considering the circumstances.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#43
post #10

The mainstream response to this debacle is a bit incomprehensible. FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency; it was a centralised exchange, that was also trying to become a bank, and was AFAICT trying to kill DeFi [0]. The failure/success of FTX has no relation to the soundness of cryptocurrency. I do however hope that this crash means fewer people will speculate on the prices such that it can finally stabilise a bit…

[deleted]

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#44
It will continue to fall under increased scrutiny and market regulation until it's no longer profitable to run any kind of financial system on it.

There will still be believers and people who will throw money at it and try.

But I think they will have a harder time convincing investors going forward.

I suspect it will end up mirroring the MLM market: still there, still profitable for a few, but depends largely on an uninformed base of people getting roped in by their friends and relatives who are already caught up in it.

Like Avon but for tech bros.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#45
post #28
post #10

The mainstream response to this debacle is a bit incomprehensible. FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency; it was a centralised exchange, that was also trying to become a bank, and was AFAICT trying to kill DeFi [0]. The failure/success of FTX has no relation to the soundness of cryptocurrency. I do however hope that this crash means fewer people will speculate on the prices such that it can finally stabilise a bit…

Aren't basically all of crypto transactions facilitated by centralized exchanges? Why is FTX alone the antithesis?

No, you can trade crypto on a decentralized exchange like a token trading contract on ethereum. You do have the risk of bugs in the code or poorly coded contracts with backdoor but the code is public.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#46
post #10

The mainstream response to this debacle is a bit incomprehensible. FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency; it was a centralised exchange, that was also trying to become a bank, and was AFAICT trying to kill DeFi [0]. The failure/success of FTX has no relation to the soundness of cryptocurrency. I do however hope that this crash means fewer people will speculate on the prices such that it can finally stabilise a bit…

It is the ray of light which exposes the ideological con taking place: trust between machines isnt trust in an economic sense. Centralisation of power has nothing to do with computer network decentralisation.

The scam here is, at first, ideological. There's a techbro-libertarian wordplay taking place which must be exposed. The blockchain has nothing to offer "trust", "contracts", "rights", "rewards". Nothing.

And much worse than this, it makes all of the existing problems with these "in western society" worse.

What every single major "crypto" project exposes is the radical disconnect between building functioning social economic institutions and programming "on the chain".

ie., what their collapse shows is that the emporer has no clothes.

When this sinks in, that all we were ever talking about is a stupid append-only log, *then*, hopefully everything else falls away.

As in, the homeopathic vial was only ever water, all along.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#47
post #10

The mainstream response to this debacle is a bit incomprehensible. FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency; it was a centralised exchange, that was also trying to become a bank, and was AFAICT trying to kill DeFi [0]. The failure/success of FTX has no relation to the soundness of cryptocurrency. I do however hope that this crash means fewer people will speculate on the prices such that it can finally stabilise a bit…

The big issue is that soundness of technology is great and all but money at the end of the day depends on social factors and practicality (not smart contracts, immutable transactions, merkle trees, etc.)

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#49
post #10

The mainstream response to this debacle is a bit incomprehensible. FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency; it was a centralised exchange, that was also trying to become a bank, and was AFAICT trying to kill DeFi [0]. The failure/success of FTX has no relation to the soundness of cryptocurrency. I do however hope that this crash means fewer people will speculate on the prices such that it can finally stabilise a bit…

This sounds a bit like the "no true scotsman".

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#50
post #10

The mainstream response to this debacle is a bit incomprehensible. FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency; it was a centralised exchange, that was also trying to become a bank, and was AFAICT trying to kill DeFi [0]. The failure/success of FTX has no relation to the soundness of cryptocurrency. I do however hope that this crash means fewer people will speculate on the prices such that it can finally stabilise a bit…

Cryptocurrency is the antithesis of cryptocurrency.
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