31–40 of 205 posts
I'd be curious to see the source on those numbers and how they're broken down. For example, Terra/Luna was a spectacular crypto failure. FTX, on the other hand, was just plain old fraud, not really related to crypto itself.
That's it? I was expecting hundreds of billions; quite far significantly smaller than expected out of the $13+ trillions in transaction volume in crypto [0]. Nothing but a microscopic amount, when compared to the tens of trillions of illicit funds being processed by banks in dollars and left unchecked. [1] [2] Looks like this newsletter is another plain old side grift by Molly with the rest of the high profile extrem…
"A huge trove of secret government documents reveals for the first time how the giants of Western banking move trillions of dollars in suspicious transactions, enriching themselves and their shareholders while facilitating the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins." Wow. This is the first I've heard of that, but I've heard of crypto shenanigans endlessly. It's a distraction in comparison.
I would feel bad for people who lost money in crypto if every time I tried to warn them during the bubble they wouldn't have said 'have fun staying poor' and called me ignorant. It is tough to remain motivated to try and convince people that they are making bad decision when they actively berate you. It feels like telling someone about to jump into the shallow end of a swimming pool from a balcony that they are going…
I think we need to look at this from the perspective of a society and ask ourselves what else we could have done. Obviously there are a whole lot of people in society completely lacking in common sense and critical thinking skills, while at the same time mass rudeness seems normalized too. Is this a failure of education, or parenting? Or has it always been this way, and the only difference is the way we communicate w…
I don't think we're living in a particularly unique time this way. The book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds was written in 1841 and was already then packed full of stories not dissimilar to the current crypto bubble.
I don't mean to sound defeatist, though. We could do more to financially educate people in general, which would provide a better defense against such manias.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or we could spend less money on an ad campaign to explain what crypto actually is, and what it's good use cases are, and what it's not good for. Rather than, you know, binding it up in vague and obnoxious legalese.
The "not good for" list is "practically everything." The "good use cases" effectively don't exist. Every crypto solution falls into one or more of these buckets... - Has substantial centralized elements, could be done vastly more efficiently with a DB - "Decentralized" but still requires some central authority to provide critical features (particularly any form of conflict resolution) - Depends on one or more smart c…
It's hardly usable in countries with stable economies, but in countries like Turkey and Argentina I can see crypto being a better alternative than the official currency. It just comes with the caveat that the unregulated nature of the money means it can stop existing or become worthless without warning and that a power or internet cutoff will make your funds useless.
Smuggling foreign currency can be illegal or even dangerous but crypto can often be bought from the comfort of one's own home.
Balancing that risk against the terrible mismanagement of one's nation's official currency can be a worthwhile effort for a very select group of people.
I would feel bad for people who lost money in crypto if every time I tried to warn them during the bubble they wouldn't have said 'have fun staying poor' and called me ignorant. It is tough to remain motivated to try and convince people that they are making bad decision when they actively berate you. It feels like telling someone about to jump into the shallow end of a swimming pool from a balcony that they are going…
I would feel bad for people who lost money in crypto if every time I tried to warn them during the bubble they wouldn't have said 'have fun staying poor' and called me ignorant. It is tough to remain motivated to try and convince people that they are making bad decision when they actively berate you. It feels like telling someone about to jump into the shallow end of a swimming pool from a balcony that they are going…
Not everyone that lost money did this to you though, seems unfair to judge most people who are just trying to get by because of a few assholes on the internet
I'd be curious to see the source on those numbers and how they're broken down. For example, Terra/Luna was a spectacular crypto failure. FTX, on the other hand, was just plain old fraud, not really related to crypto itself.
The fact that it's not related should tell you something. Cryptocurrency is designed to solve exactly the problems FTX had. It is designed to enable trustless finance. Why didn't cryptocurrency prevent that problem?
Because FTX wasn't using cryptocurrency, because cryptocurrency is unworkable.
I would feel bad for people who lost money in crypto if every time I tried to warn them during the bubble they wouldn't have said 'have fun staying poor' and called me ignorant. It is tough to remain motivated to try and convince people that they are making bad decision when they actively berate you. It feels like telling someone about to jump into the shallow end of a swimming pool from a balcony that they are going…
I think we need to look at this from the perspective of a society and ask ourselves what else we could have done. Obviously there are a whole lot of people in society completely lacking in common sense and critical thinking skills, while at the same time mass rudeness seems normalized too. Is this a failure of education, or parenting? Or has it always been this way, and the only difference is the way we communicate w…
The best non-regulatory fix I can think of would be socially enforcing that people stop profitting from convincing others into doing bad decision making.
It's not very easy though, since fraudsters only need to convince people once to make off with their profits, unlike a tradesman or manufacturer who needs to stay in business long-term.