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Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
191–200 of 396 posts
Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
It's a deflationary currency. I hear the country got into trouble with those 90 years ago, but if the only alternative is a hyperinflationary currency, the dynamics of a deflationary currency might be a danger worth approaching.
It's not so much a deflationary currency as an unstable one; its value has gone from $100 (or even less, the charts don't go back that far) to over $60.000 and back to the $20.000 range. That's incredibly unstable and not something I'd willingly would choose as a currency.
Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
#193Be grateful you live in the EU or the US and don’t need crypto. It has been a major lifeline for my family and friends in Lebanon and Venezuela, both of which lack fully functioning financial services. I can send Bitcoin just fine though!
That is not really a vindication of crypto, it’s just an extra condemnation of what is happening in Lebanon and Venezuela. And although it may help individuals it is not a sustainable solution to the issues in those countries.
99.99% of crypto is unsustainable speculation on a game of musical chairs or outright scams / ransomware.
If you look at the entire picture, crypto has such a negative impact on this world. It makes me sad.
Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The current system is flawed in many, many ways, but none of it happened arbitrarily; the restrictions we have are the because malicious actors abused the system This seems like a good example of the just-world fallacy. The current system absolutely has many arbitrary restrictions. The problems those restrictions allegedly solve don't have only one possible solution, but that's what we got stuck with.
Is it really accurate to call things “arbitrary”? Usually if you look at any safeguard you’ll find a real historical problem it was designed to reduce. Sometimes that’s something best solved otherwise – the drug war provides many examples of that - but I’d usually describe those as ineffective rather than arbitrary. The distinction matters because it raises the question of that process repeating again. Since it’s not…
I think an outcome that could have gone another way but for some random historical circumstance counts as arbitrary.
For instance, do you think our regulatory framework would look the same today had Prohibition not happened? That's a case where the State created a problem (black market funding large scale organized crime) and then added yet more rules to try and fix that problem.
Edit: so one could argue that we "need" those regulations because of crime, but another could say if we eliminate the prohibitions funding those crime syndicates, then the problem is equally solved. Doesn't that make those regulations kind of arbitrary?
Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could say the same about stocks, but clearly this isn't a failure mode. Sometimes people need to actually buy things.
The difference is stocks have a reliable basis for going up based on an underlying asset that generates wealth. Most crypto is backed by nothing, some is backed by other crypto which is also in the end nothing.
> The difference is stocks have a reliable basis for going up based on an underlying asset that generates wealth.
In theory, in practice it's a supply / demand game that can be manipulated by news, sentiment, and rich people.
Tesla does not have the underlying asset that made its stock worth as much as it did. It is/was a small player in the car manufacturing world in terms of sales and profits etc, yet its stocks and the company was somehow worth more than all the other car manufacturers combined.
Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Have you ever paid for anything substantial with real money? It's a huge pain in the ass. I have to go into a bank, even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I have to pay outrageous fees to transfer money & participate in something called a "wire". Where my money will simply be magically transferred to another party somehow. There are a zillion steps, none of which are disclosed to me. It should work fine, bu…
Good point, I've had one hell of a time making down payments on cars or first/last month's rent with cashier's checks when my bank doesn't have physical branches in my area.
If I could have paid with, say, a dollar-backed stablecoin from a reputable institution, I could have made the payment digitally and closed the sale/rental without waiting days for a bank to mail me a check. In the apartment rental case, I might not have gotten passed up because someone else arrived check-in-hand ready to close the deal.
Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Exchanges are not necessary for crypto. Not sure why you're conflating them. 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.
Exchanges are not necessary for crypto.
Yes they absolutely are. Without them, there would be no crypto *market* --- centralized or otherwise. Everyone turns to the exchanges to value their crypto --- even those doing peer-to-peer (DEX).
Also, there is no central authority telling exchanges how they have to operate
Exactly! In the absence thereof, they become the defacto "central authority" --- by the sheer weight of their trading volume and the fact that they mint stable coins which can be used to influence any trading.
Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
If an economist wrong an article that's title was "the usd is stable", he would either need to show that, or it would be a rather pointless article wouldn't it? Similarly, an article whose title and whole content is just "Crypto Is All a Scam" should probably actually contain something more than "because we all agree, don't ask questions"... And if such an economist were challenged on whether the USD is stable, he wo…
An economist wouldn’t publish an article saying the USD is stable because that’s the accepted baseline. The same is true of saying cryptocurrency has failed to deliver value after 15 years and billions of dollars in real money have been consumed with almost no real world impact other than renaming a stadium.
And yet that is the article you are commenting under and defending?!
Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
#199> However, crypto represents a divergence entirely from a Keynesian worldview in that it has created this bizarre simulacrum of markets with all the trappings and veneer of finance but which has no pretense of being tethered to the economic problem at all. No goods, services or resources are being exchanged. Crypto is a Keynesian beauty contest for zero-sum get-rich-quick schemes. I call it the nothingness game, a bi…
The US dollar is pretty much the de facto currency of places where the official currency is unstable/distrusted. Places like El Salvador made a big deal of adopting Bitcoin, but it was mostly smoke and mirrors.
Fair enough, but I didn't mention El Salvador.
Moving dollars in and out of authoritarian or war-torn countries isn't trivial. That's why I mentioned Venezuela and Ukraine.[0] Russia itself also has a significant crypto economy. None of this is to say there isn't demand for dollars in those places, just that supply of dollars is not exactly abundant. Thus, they go to crypto.
That's the argument.
[0] https://www.elliptic.co/blog/live-updates-millions-in-crypto...
Re: Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Didn't think I'd see a "I've got nothing to hide" argument on HN. Are you also against E2E messaging apps for the same reason? Being able to anonymously transfer value should be a fundamental right, as part of our fundamental right to privacy. In the past, cash could be used for that, but with society going increasingly cashless and some governments trying to make large cash transfers illegal, crypto is now the only…
I feel like you're conflating my argument a bit. I'm not saying "People with nothing to hide... etc". I'm saying that as a user, I'm going to pick the option that is best for me.
Crypto is never going to be the option that is best for me. Nor most of 8 billion other people on the planet.