Is this the end of crypto? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#151

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #125

cooljacob204 wrote: post #11

When Crypto was young it was this cool new technology that mostly interesting because of the underlying tech. But even back then it was mostly valuable for buying drugs online and other illegal stuff. Now it's that and a way to scam people of their life savings. I do hope it dies out, it should have been heavily regulated from the get go. Way too many people saw these high production commercials with their favorite c…

Somewhere between "internet nerd project for buying drugs" and "every single Super Bowl ad" regulation should have stepped in. That kind of shit gives the scams a legitimacy they can't buy otherwise.

And by definition, a Ponzi must continue to expand, and expand quickly. Regulators are literally waiting until cyrpto completely runs out of possible new customers to intervene. The government is maximizing the damage that crypto does.

Thank god we haven't gotten to crypto for kids yet, but crypto bonuses on credit cards is getting very close.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#152

Post by mechanical_bear » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #46

Laaas wrote: 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 muc…

I think you should get a basic understanding of the technology if you are going to comment on it.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#153

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #95

cooljacob204 wrote: post #11

When Crypto was young it was this cool new technology that mostly interesting because of the underlying tech. But even back then it was mostly valuable for buying drugs online and other illegal stuff. Now it's that and a way to scam people of their life savings. I do hope it dies out, it should have been heavily regulated from the get go. Way too many people saw these high production commercials with their favorite c…

So bad people did bad things to stupid people using made up numbers, so people with guns should take other made up numbers and give them to people with guns, and tell the people with guns to make sure the bad people don’t do bad things to the stupid people, because they know what’s best for them because they’re too stupid and incapable of becoming strong enough for the big scary world?

[deleted]

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#154

Post by danans » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

throwup wrote: post #119

danans wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US dollar is used for shady stuff all over the world, but we’re not trying to ban it. That is because it is overwhelmingly used for standard non-shady stuff, like trading legal goods and services. Crypto can't make a similar claim.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume.

You excluded the first part of that paragraph:

> We show that the vast majority of Bitcoin transactions between real entities are for trading and speculative purposes. Starting from 2015, 75% of the real bitcoin volume has been linked to exchanges or exchange-like entities such as on-line wallets, OTC desks, and large institutional traders.

So 75% of the transactions are just speculative trading, not transactions for goods or services, which is what is being discussed. Taking the paper's numbers at face value, as a percentage of non-speculative transactions, illicit transactions are 12%, which is quite high.

There are also papers which quantify the amount of illegal activity as high as 46% [1] in 2018.

Illicit activity is still probably the most durable use non-investment use-case for Bitcoin, and realistically will be the most enduring use case going forward.

1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3102645

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#155

Post by azangru » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #106

cooljacob204 wrote: post #11

When Crypto was young it was this cool new technology that mostly interesting because of the underlying tech. But even back then it was mostly valuable for buying drugs online and other illegal stuff. Now it's that and a way to scam people of their life savings. I do hope it dies out, it should have been heavily regulated from the get go. Way too many people saw these high production commercials with their favorite c…

When bitcoin first came onto the scene I personally knew a guy who was running a website to act as an exchange. It was small because bitcoin itself at that time was very small. Then bitcoin had its very first dip and it became unprofitable to mine bitcoins. When that happened he shuttered the website and kept everyone's bitcoins. I knew of bitcoin early on due to this guy, but even then I had no interest and consider…

> When that happened he shuttered the website and kept everyone's bitcoins.

> I knew of bitcoin early on due to this guy, but even then I had no interest and considered it bullshit. Then when I saw what this guy did it just solidified my opinion that it can't be trusted.

But isn't it instead an early lesson in "not your keys not your coin" maxim that Bitcoin advocates preach?

> If the value of gold crashes it still has an inherent value because it's a useful physical good (looking pretty is not the only application of gold). a bitcoin has ZERO inherent value.

Yes, but: 1) it's very difficult to self-custody gold (it's bulky, needs a safe place for storage — and if you put it in a bank, you need to be able to trust that you can get it out again); 2) it's very difficult to transfer, especially cross borders, especially in large amounts; 3) it's very difficult to use as an actual money, whereas bitcoin could conceivably be used as such (especially with Lightning).

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#156

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

algoatecorn wrote: post #139

1970-01-01 wrote: post #88

Here's how I see it: Crypto as an investment - Not your keys, not your coin. Crypto as a currency - I can't directly buy food, water, shelter, transportation, energy, or anything fundamental with it. I know acceptance is growing, but 10+ years later, crypto still has extremely limited acceptance for daily goods and services. It is almost exclusively held as an investment.

>I know acceptance is growing, but 10+ years later, crypto still has extremely limited acceptance for daily goods and services. It is almost exclusively held as an investment. Which makes sense considering its volatility. Why would I make transactions with a unit of currency that sees hundreds of percentage change over just a few years? And as others say, there is no real value to it other than speculation. This gets…

> Why would I make transactions with a unit of currency that sees hundreds of percentage change over just a few years?

Why wouldn't I? If I'm going to hold bitcoin for five minutes, what do I care how its price changes over years?

The problem with bitcoin is that the technology is shit, and sucks for transactions, unless the world is prepared to only do like 50 transactions a minute.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#157

Post by hellotomyrars » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #135

throwup wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume.

What constitutes a "scam" in the that paper? That paper treats all USDT (Tether) transactions as "not scam". I think that remains to be proven and I don't think it's anywhere near certain.

Tether is arguably itself a scam based on their incredibly creative account and likely outright lies about the backing of Tether.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#158

Post by amanaplanacanal » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #113

lupire wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC, A deflationary currency that lost 75% in value in a year, despite all the problems coming from projects that aren't even BTC.

> A deflationary currency that lost 75% in value in a year I don't know, my BTC is still worth one BTC.

Well sure. And one Papiermark is still worth one Papiermark.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#159

Post by lupire » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

whatwherewhy wrote: post #89

certifiedloud wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: How do you use it? Do you mean you use it to make purchases, or do you mean you hold it as a store of value, and that's the use? Something else?

I don't hold Bitcoin. I use it for cross-continent transactions. I buy it from people in my city using a local FB group or (way in the past) Localbitcoins.com and then send it to the recipient. They usually use Localbitcoins to convert it to their own currency AFAIK. The fees (transfer and exchange) are much lower this way - usually less than 0.5% all things considered. Compared to $100+ fee to just transfer the mone…

To get that rate, how much do you have to send in one batch?

Just obtaining Bitcoin is expensive unless you have a high trust off-chain method to prevent double-spending.

Re: Is this the end of crypto?

#160

Post by mjburgess » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #145

mjburgess wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole innovation behind Bitcoin is to eliminate the need for trust in a centralized entity Err, nope. That's the scam. A blockchain is a kind of database which requires no single machine to be nominated as the single-source-of-truth. that's it . This has nothing to do with centralisation, power, trust, or anything of that kind. The sense of "centralisation" in blockchain means computer network centralisation, a…

If "eliminating the need for trust in centralised entities" is an absurd claim and a lie, then it follows that there exists a centralized entity you need to trust to use Bitcoin. What is that centralized entity? PS: When people say that Bitcoin is decentralized, they also mean it in the colloquial sense, not only in the CS academic jargon. Entities like PayPal or the Federal Reserve Bank are centralized and require t…

No, that doesnt follow.

But in any case, what is "using" bitcoin?

Is it purchasing bitcoin? ...how do I do that? I'd need to rely on the two mining companies, right? And the exchanges? Or not?

And can I use bitcoin as currency in any shop? No? If I could, I'd be relying on the state to provide the same rights behind all economic transactions to enable, that right?

And what happens if the handful of "wales" decide to off-load their coins in the middle of my negotiation when I'm buying my tesla... suddenly, all my deflationary currency has been magically radically inflated by a cabal of SV billionaires.

Money isnt the kind of thing that "centralisation" even applies to in any coherent sense. If BTC is suppose to be money, then it's supposed to be a system for book-keeping aggregate promises across the global collective of human beings.

The value of money, it's "use" in any sense, is subject to provision of economic systems by central authorities, and subject to wild forces of decentralisation and centralisation.

The networking sense of "centralisation" which applies to blockchain is a pun. It's irrelevant. It has nothing to do with any of this. It could be called, "wide-broadcast machine signalling"