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The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

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Re: The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

#191

Post by rvz »

jeremyjh wrote: post #85
monero-xmr wrote: post #18

Cryptocurrency in its purest is money not issued or controlled by a government. Instead the supply inflation is controlled by transparent rules that are plain to see. “Protocol-based finance” vs. the existing government-based finance. Now there are all manner of divergences from the above paragraph. Coins that are totally controlled and issued by a small group or company. Black box rules rather than transparent. Ther…

It isn't money. Money can be easily exchanged for goods and services. It is a digital "asset" whose only meaningful application is speculative trading...of itself. If something only has value because you think you can sell it to the next sucker for more, it is a ponzi scheme.

> It isn't money.

And it is somehow 'money' only when it suits projects and places like HN. [0] I'm sure any of you would immediately rush to sell 299 Ethereum right now, even if it ran through a Tornado.cash mixer, otherwise you would leave it alone if you believe that it isn't money or worth anything.

> If something only has value because you think you can sell it to the next sucker for more, it is a ponzi scheme.

That is not what a ponzi scheme is.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32923693

Re: The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

#192

Post by moistly »

kybernetikos wrote: post #185
cuteboy19 wrote: post #8

Crypto recreates everything Bitcoin was supposed to prevent. 1. Tether: infinite money printer central bank 2. Exchanges: banks 3. Binance: too big to fail 4. BSC shitcoins: fully centralized currency

I'm not sure what else you'd expect. Those things are caused by humans taking advantage of whatever system of value transfer exists, of course people will do the best they can to reinvent these things on top of new value systems. On the other hand, unlike the actual infinite money printer central bank, nobody forces you to use obvious scams like tether. You don't need to use a centralised exchange because smart contr…

> Those things are caused by humans taking advantage of whatever system of value transfer exists, of course people will do the best they can to reinvent these things on top of new value systems.

It would be nice if at least one person would leapfrog all this 1850s US Frontier West banking history, which was dominated by frauds and theft, and offer us a system working under modern reforms: Glass–Steagall Act, Sarbanes–Oxley, similar rules-that-make-it-work from Europe. Best practices.

Re: The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

#193

Post by AstralStorm »

luckylion wrote: post #181
jeremyjh wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's why they accept it at Amazon and Alibaba right?

Amazon doesn't accept cash. Is cash not money? They don't accept $foreignCurrency either, is that no longer money when you cross the border? Or do you mean "money is what you can use to pay your taxes"? That works to exclude crypto, at least for most of the world.

Funny, Amazon does accept cash on delivery, so you are factually wrong.

Doubly wrong since Amazon also accepts gift cards which can be bought with cash.

Re: The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

#194

Post by everfree »

Trasmatta wrote: post #187
everfree wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The milk section of the supermarket is a good place to buy milk. Not the supermarket in general.

That analogy only works if milk is the only useful thing in the entire supermarket

No, that has nothing to do with the analogy.

Re: The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

#196

Post by costco »

jeremyjh wrote: post #116
monero-xmr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your definition of money = using something for goods and services, the crypto has certainly exceeded that definition.

Yes that's why they accept it at Amazon and Alibaba right?

If you've ever used Alibaba you'd know that many sellers do accept it there.

Re: The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

#197

Post by acdha »

everfree wrote: post #148
cornholio wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of proof is on the crypto promoters to demonstrate ability to create wealth. This was not the case up to now, the only thing crypto produced were speculative assets that have very little legitimate uses. For example, major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin aim to replace state issued fiat currencies with privately issued currencies that have limited/fixed supply and no connection to the real economy. That's in…

> The burden of proof is on the crypto promoters to demonstrate ability to create wealth. For crypto to be financially successful, strictly speaking it doesn't need to create wealth, it only needs to attract it. Plenty of profitable businesses are arguably a net negative to society - tobacco, gambling, private prisons, ad agencies, data brokers - but that doesn't make them ponzi schemes.

You could define it as value from something other than recruiting/resale – for example, tobacco has real negatives but it wouldn’t be such a common killer if its buyers didn’t feel it made their lives better, at least at some point. Cryptocurrency as a mechanism for exchange could have that as an alternative to, say, PayPal or Western Union but nobody gets aa excited as we’ve seen over saving a couple points on infrequent transactions.

Re: The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

#198

Post by throwaway_hsj »

luckylion wrote: post #182
ifeeltriedboss wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume XMR takes over the world and is the only currency in use. Who pays taxes?

Who pays taxes on cash income?

That is partially a false equivalence.

By many accounts moving around and dealing with large values in cash is inconvenient and cumbersome compared with the relative ease of moving crytpo between holders.

To the point where cartels end up with literal huge piles of money in warehouses and resort to complicated operations to try and move it across borders.

Re: The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

#199

Post by bawolff »

in_a_society wrote: post #159
bawolff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbf, we dont have that many examples of people trying. Communism sucked in russia, but its not like they are that much better under capitalism.

Every time they try, a lot of people seem to die. Maybe pattern recognition over time isn’t a strength people have. Same story in crypto. There will be shock and awe when Binance falls and plenty of people saying “real crypto has never been tried”.

How many times is "every"? I count maybe a dozen countries, they were either puppet states of the soviet union and didn't have much local control or they were authortarian dystopians both before and after communism.

Maybe the pattern is toltalitarian countries are going to be toltarian regardless of what they call themselves.

As far as crypto goes, there are like a billion different variations on the idea, most are scams, and i dont think i have ever heard anyone say "real crypto hasn't been tried" before this.

Re: The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

#200

Post by sshine »

danaris wrote: post #180
TrianguloY wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If something only has value because you think you can sell it to the next sucker for more, it is a ponzi scheme. Careful with that sentence. It is applicable to paintings, stamps, and collecting in general. True that on those other cases you have a physical object, so it has a value (as opposed to nft) but usually it's far less. A Pokemon card costs almost nothing, but some people are willing to pay millions for it…

Paintings are nice to look at. Stamps and other collections are fun to collect and to have, regardless of their monetary value. (After all, people collect otherwise-worthless things like bottle caps, too.) Cryptocurrencies have no substance to them, they are not interesting to look at, and while I suppose one could get a thrill out of simply knowing one has them, I very much doubt that there's more than a tiny handfu…

> I very much doubt that there's more than a tiny handful of people for whom that would remain true if they were worth $0

By now they’re a part of our history. I keep a professionally made, empty paper wallet as a souvenir from the 2010s. It’s a lot more tangible than some scrap of paper with 24 random words on it.

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