Is this the end of crypto?

Perhaps it could, and I was careful not to do that.

> hold its value reliably

It can and that's what it exactly does by keeping its value outside the reach of external influences such as military forces and economic decisions by a handful of people but only governed by its own mathematical law.

It's just that people don't understand the nature of crypto but only see it as a new risk asset class which is disappointing after its 13 years of existence and it's the only reason it's going up and down massively by people not having the fundamental belief of what it's actually about.

That's fine if you want to champion the cause of the normie. Just don't do it in a paternalistic way. If people were satisfied with the high transaction costs and regulatory overhead of traditional finance, they wouldn't be in crypto.

There are a few more reasonable options here.

1) Create or advocate for a cryptocurrency with reversible transactions and all of the regulatory features you desire. Let the market decide how large that niche is.

2) Loosen or advocate for loosening the existing regulations on traditional financial products so that they are competitive with some of the features of cryptocurrency. See also, Zelle. Another product HN seemed to hate.

Yesterday someone was arguing that Peter Thiel is a super villain. Another full page of comments was decrying one of PayPal's policies necessitated by regulations. People are generally unhappy with PayPal's fee structure, but they continue to use it. The fees and draconian policies are largely required to comply with regulations. Want more personable human support? That also costs money.

The argument for regulating cryptocurrency is basically an argument for creating a captured and gatekept ecosystem. Of course, I get it. "Think of the children", "Think of the helpless normies", same story. What we will get instead will be more PayPals.

As for scams and outright Ponizis, it is worth noting that those go on under the watchful eye of the regulatory state you love so well. Bernie Madoff was similarly connected and even served on regulatory boards. SBF, the disgraced FTX head had direct connections to the SEC and chairman Gary Gensler. SBF even testified, asking for more regulation.

I'm doubtful, but still hopeful for the possibility of a good faith discussion. Regulation is not a pancea against fraud. Instead it creates an atmosphere were connected insiders can create greater frauds. The FTX debacle is illustrative of this. Yet here we are hearing the same appeals for more regulation from would be saviors of normies. Posters who themselves do not use cryptocurrency and insist that it has no legitimate use.

For myself I just wanted to run a few online games with payouts for players in cryptocurrency. Now players also want NFT character saves. I've never used a centralized exchange. I don't make big money in this niche. I do have fun. The community is happy. Nobody is crying about valuations. Actual users of cryptocurrency aren't saying, "There outta be a law!". None of my users are claiming, "If only there were a statist savior protecting us from this video game!" or, "This game would be so much better with barriers to entry for developers"

From that perspective, yes I do feel comfortable asking you and the rest of HN's passionate cryptocurrency haters to butt out. You could also go out and build a better alternative in the marketplace of ideas.

That's a very good thing.

As long as there are people claiming blockchain has some value the next crypto scam is just around the corner. All Crypto is a scam and blockchain has no real application that couldn't be solved much easily by some other means.