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Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#81

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

graybies wrote: post #54
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…

It also props up a large part of the international drug market in addition to money laundering.

You seem to be referring to the US Dollar $, a time-honoured currency utilized for such endeavours.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#83

Post by naasking »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #70
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".

"crypto as a payment method" 1 BTC currently is 22,987 USD. "The 2023 Honda Civic has a base MSRP of $24,650" [1]. No sane person, i.e. person not having more money than they can count [2], wanting to buy a car would ever spend the 1 BTC today for a Honda Civic, maybe the 'market' will go up and they will be able to afford a 48K Mustang Mach-E, or maybe it will go really up and be able to afford a 250K Lucid Air Sapp…

You could say the same about stocks, but clearly this isn't a failure mode. Sometimes people need to actually buy things.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#84

Post by birracerveza »

earthbee wrote: post #17
simplotek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It must be nice to be able to just state something is thoroughly debunked and not have to give any evidence (...) That's quite the amusing comment, given the fact that crypto-bros reiterate that crypto is somehow money in spite of if repeatedly failing each and every single trait that makes something a currency. Now, when someone points out that fact, here we are with a newfound passion for argumentative formalitie…

I've exchanged crypto for goods and services, it's money for all my purposes.

Yeah, but I didn't use it (because I think it's a scam) therefore it's not money nor currency. I can't understand these people.

I have a bank account with FIAT, and I also have BTC. I use both to pay for things. Although I mostly use FIAT, I also have a credit card that I charge with BTC to pay for things, but if I have the option I also pay with BTC directly. How is that "not a currency"? Because some people use it as a way to run scams and pay off ransomwares? Because people prefer to hold it and sell it at a higher price to get rich? Or simply because you do not understand it?

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#85

Post by zmxz »

capableweb wrote: post #65
zmxz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you want to sell me a Bitcoin with the promise that I'll be able to sell it for more in the future, then that'd be a scam. But if you just sell it to me without any promise of future profits, would it still be a scam in that scam? None the less, it does sound like Bitcoin itself is not a scam in this scenario, but rather there are scammers who use Bitcoin to perform their scams. Not that Bitcoin itself is a scam.…

> But if you just sell it to me without any promise of future profits

And the two of us got into the exchange how? I was silent about Bitcoin and you found out about it through ether? :)

I made no hints whatsoever about it?

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#86

Post by acdha »

LatteLazy wrote: post #4

>Similarly, the “crypto as currency” and “crypto as investment” narratives have been thoroughly debunked because the truth value of these statements is predicated on factual claims that are demonstrably falsifiable. It must be nice to be able to just state something is thoroughly debunked and not have to give any evidence, despite billions of people not knowing, and be magically right...

People also say things like “the US dollar is stable” without citing economics papers because it’s reasonable to assume the audience isn’t a saucer full of aliens who just arrived and have no prior knowledge.

Even bitcoin proponents no longer claim it’s a currency - many of them even pretend never to have claimed otherwise when it interferes with the sales pitch - and the investment claims have been similarly defined by lots of people losing money and learning what an unsecured asset run by less than fully forthcoming people means.

If you disagree with the conventional wisdom on either point, the onus is on promoters to back that claim up with hard data. In particular, data from sources who weren’t making glowing claims about Luna, 3 Arrows, FTX, etc. right up until reality asserted itself.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#87

Post by dr-detroit »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #67

You don't need crypto to run a scam. Financial scams are as old as money is. The fallacy in this argument is that there's something special in crypto that makes this more likely to happen. There isn't. In fact, you could argue that the enormous activity of scammers in this space actually points to some inherent qualities that might be useful beyond just running ponzi schemes and other scams. One of these qualities is…

[dead]

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#88

Post by JumpCrisscross »

capableweb wrote: post #49
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

I’d expand this to anyone using it to make money is perpetuating a scam.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#89

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22
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".

> no alternative with the same level of convinience that crypto provide (KYC-less There is a legitimate argument for creating KYC-light rails for small global transfers. That argument is not advanced by crypto's wanton criminality.

Which wanton criminality of crypto are you referring to? I thought it is the criminals that make the crime, not the tools they use.

Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam

#90

Post by rrdharan »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #67

You don't need crypto to run a scam. Financial scams are as old as money is. The fallacy in this argument is that there's something special in crypto that makes this more likely to happen. There isn't. In fact, you could argue that the enormous activity of scammers in this space actually points to some inherent qualities that might be useful beyond just running ponzi schemes and other scams. One of these qualities is…

> Not a decentralized blockchain but it obviously incorporates some of the technology.

Uh.. like what? A highly available distributed database? So grateful that Cryptocurrency teams invented those, what ever would we have done?

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