181–190 of 396 posts
https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/14701269278180679...
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.
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> There is no product being sold The product is clearly the ability to exchange financial value friction-free and with no middle men or central authority. The various crypto coins achieve this property quite well with various tradeoffs on speed, anonymity, etc.
with no middle men or central authority. The exchanges are both --- the middle men *and* the central authority. They set the "financial value" of crypto. They mint their own "stable coins" at will without any verifiable backing and use it to trade against their own "customers" --- because there is nothing to prevent it. And yes, I am aware of the peer-to-peer exchanges --- which provide no real, practical alternative…
Also, there is no central authority telling exchanges how they have to operate, that they have to collect certain kinds of data or regulate certain kinds of transactions (in theory). If you don't like an exchange's rules you can move to another or create your own fairly easily.
By contrast, consider how difficult it would be to start a bank.
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…
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The killer app for crypto is "KYC-less" which usually means "I can evade taxes or sell illicit goods". Otherwise, real money is faster, more scalable, and more resilient to users making mistakes. Nothing I do is illegal; I pay my taxes; sometimes I make mistakes. Why would I ever want to use crypto over real money?
Bitcoin will not freeze your assets for 90-180 days if you suddenly make twice as many sales.
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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 th…
The exact same logic is applied to USD all the time. You know, if you just skip the Starbucks you'll have hundreds of thousands!
You ultimately need a financial authority to promote "stable" prices, and even that statement is highly political. You also need some serious gravitas to protect the currency, and this is where the crypto episode is most curious. Governments that for years prohibited "competition" of this nature for years in the most draconian of ways, suddenly have been missing in action. That created an environment where crypto metastisized into something socially corrupt, and also it fosters doubt in the competency and motivation of governments to protect what has forever been their turf.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no product being sold The product is clearly the ability to exchange financial value friction-free and with no middle men or central authority. The various crypto coins achieve this property quite well with various tradeoffs on speed, anonymity, etc.
with no middle men or central authority. The exchanges are both --- the middle men *and* the central authority. They set the "financial value" of crypto. They mint their own "stable coins" at will without any verifiable backing and use it to trade against their own "customers" --- because there is nothing to prevent it. And yes, I am aware of the peer-to-peer exchanges --- which provide no real, practical alternative…
Why? Centralised exchanges are more convenient, but as you've said you can use a local p2p exchange. It will cost you more, and take more time, but you can. In comparison, you can't make a SEPA transfer without a bank.
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.
In 'normal' life this kind of organization, investment, company creation and management et al are all gated behind legal complications and requirements of minimum capital and many others. Even when a major movement succeeds in setting up a foundation, the running of it is complicated, non-transparent and anti-democratic.
Even with companies it is the same - for the ordinary person creating or participating in a company is difficult and it requires understanding legal implications and responsibilities. Even if you do, there are various legal and economic barriers to investing and participating in such large companies.
With DAOs, everything is in broad daylight - depending on how the DAO is set up of course. But any properly set up DAO gives the power to the people in taking up the culture that we created in Open Source Software movement up a notch - by enabling organized economic movements.
That DAO which tried to buy the US constition failed. There was no way a new, emergent, new way of doing things could gather enough money in enough time to overcome the already aggregated private capital that it competed with.
But it proved something - for the first time in history, such things are possible. Economic organization for the masses.
Those who criticize crypto seem to have scarce awareness, leave aside understanding of what DAOs represent, and what is happening in DAO space. Of course, its hard to blame people - some understanding of at least Early Modern human history, economic systems and organization patterns and the development of democracy would be required to understand how big a change DAOs are. And that requires an ample interest in history itself.
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…