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Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#41

Post by darkerside »

zmxz wrote: post #36
valdiorn wrote: post #27

Crypto absolutely has value, and the price of Bitcoin will never go to zero. NFTs are useful. That's because the value these things provide is money-laundering, bypassing of international financial regulations and tax fraud. Yeah that's a superb value proposition right there, and definitely something we want to keep free and available /s The current system is flawed in many, many ways, but none of it happened arbitra…

Crypto allowed regular mortals to conduct the state-level scam that was exclusive only to governments. I can understand the appeal, but I do find it amusing how we (humans) instantly abuse anything if modicum of abuse is possible :)

Well, there's a lot of us. Someone's bound to. Call it the Malice of Crowds.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#42

Post by Spooky23 »

ShowalkKama wrote: post #16

I'd like to remind the readers that some people use crypto as a payment method and do not speculate. As far as I know there is no alternative with the same level of convinience that crypto provide (KYC-less and fast payments to anyone in the world with just one secret). Remember that next time you suggest something among the lines of "crypto should be made illegal".

Agree with you but would say that it’s more like virtual silver. A legit commodity of sorts but whose accessibility and supply makes it a good vehicle for bad actors to act.

The big difference is the infrastructure required. If crypto goes out of fashion, your random numbers get riskier to test as virtual silver because transactions will get slower and riskier.

The other big thing is that crypto fills a void between dealing with bank settlement costs and cash. Once the US government or Eurozone come up with a digital currency model, crypto is pretty much dead as a means of transacting.

These risks are what make it so attractive to scammers.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#43

Post by lezojeda »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #38
ShowalkKama wrote: post #16

I'd like to remind the readers that some people use crypto as a payment method and do not speculate. As far as I know there is no alternative with the same level of convinience that crypto provide (KYC-less and fast payments to anyone in the world with just one secret). Remember that next time you suggest something among the lines of "crypto should be made illegal".

Nobody used cryptocurrencies for payment before speculation happened. You had people paying 10k BTC for a pizza and;.. that was it, because they were funny internet coins. The only reason people take cryptocurrencies as payment now is because they have value. Why do they have value ? Because people can speculate on it. Saying that cryptocurrency should be made illegal is a stupid idea, of course. However, cryptocurre…

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Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#45

Post by zmxz »

capableweb wrote: post #34
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin? Was it dishonest? Bitcoin per se , no. Bitcoin as practiced, yes. Broadly brushed, there are legitimate academic questions in crypto/blockchains/web3. The moment the work is remunerated for something other than its intellectual value, however, it's fair to revoke the benefit of doubt.

> Bitcoin per se, no. Bitcoin as practiced, yes. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean with "Bitcoin as practiced". "Bitcoin as practiced" made Bitcoin into a scam while it wasn't one before "it was practiced"?

Bitcoin as practised is a Ponzi scheme (I say it's valued $5 and if you want to join my cool buddies you need to pay $5 and we paid $0, the next person needs to pay $10 and so on and the value disappears if we don't get new people to our cool clique).

The way it works (place data in a file, distribute file to everyone, use cryptography to verify that data in file placed by $someone is valid) is great.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#46

Post by nivenkos »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #15
nivenkos wrote: post #7

The worst thing is the terrible incentives it's created by making it so easy for people to exploit free CPU capacity, and transfer money with no monitoring for fraud or ability to reverse it. So no-one can offer free/demo tier CPU access anymore e.g. on low-end box VMs, ISP shell servers, etc. Likewise any sort of interaction with strangers get absolutely bombarded with fake accounts pushing crypto scams - second-han…

Isn’t the public ledger extreme monitoring, when a bit of correlating of addresses is layered on? I mean aren’t there even services used by law enforcement for such?

But many exchanges dodge KYC so you can't tie an address to a person necessarily.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#47

Post by achow »

ShowalkKama wrote: post #16

I'd like to remind the readers that some people use crypto as a payment method and do not speculate. As far as I know there is no alternative with the same level of convinience that crypto provide (KYC-less and fast payments to anyone in the world with just one secret). Remember that next time you suggest something among the lines of "crypto should be made illegal".

Speaking of convenience, secret, fast, out of govt' oversight..

Hawala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala is in practice for long long time, and it is almost exclusively used to avoid tax and for underground operations (ex. illegal betting).

Huge volume is moved, so should it made legal? No.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#48

Post by linuxftw »

Every now and then I read a press release from some organization about how they're using crypto or going to use crypto (aka blockchain) to solve some industry problem. For the life of me, I can't figure out how any of these ideas will ever bare any fruit.

Does anyone know if companies are actually using blockchain for production, revenue generating business (real companies, not crypto companies)?

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#49

Post by capableweb »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40
capableweb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin per se, no. Bitcoin as practiced, yes. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean with "Bitcoin as practiced". "Bitcoin as practiced" made Bitcoin into a scam while it wasn't one before "it was practiced"?

> don't understand what you mean with "Bitcoin as practiced" The paper and concept are fine. People marketing Bitcoin as an investment, et cetera , or more broadly selling anything related to it, are enabling a scam.

Ok, so Bitcoin itself is not a scam, but people can use it to do scams?

That makes sense and I'd agree with that. Author of the submission don't seem to think that's a useful distinction though, which seems slightly extreme.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#50

Post by _cenw »

ShowalkKama wrote: post #16

I'd like to remind the readers that some people use crypto as a payment method and do not speculate. As far as I know there is no alternative with the same level of convinience that crypto provide (KYC-less and fast payments to anyone in the world with just one secret). Remember that next time you suggest something among the lines of "crypto should be made illegal".

I bought a new video game in 2011 with BTC and whenever I tell the story the crypto bro in the room laughs at me for not holding on to what amounts to something like half a million dollars now. Sort of like people keep bringing up the guy who bought pizza 2 years prior.

How dare I use a self-proclaimed currency as a currency. I lost all interest once I realized very few people actually want it to be a currency and the main excitement stems from the potential to make money, not the tech or a very idealistic view of banking independent from banks.

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