This is good for bitcoin
Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
41–50 of 326 posts
Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
#42I've crossed swords with Molly a couple of times. I was the release coordinator for Ethereum, and I've been active in the space a long long time. Here's what it boils down to: freedom is messy. The early days of the dotcom space were filled with carnage of a type which makes crypto look pretty normal. Amazon stock dropped >90% and a trillion and a half in value vanished from the market overall. https://en.wikipedia.o…
I doubt most of tech would appreciate being lumped in with crypto, which should be the first sign that your take is a little off. IE if you think you are just "tech being tech" but lots and lots of tech is like "uh, no, we aren't like you at all, please don't lump us in with you", that should tell you something. Beyond that, your take seems so divorced from reality i'm not even sure where to begin. I don't agree at a…
I concur with your assessment.
Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
#43And too right the critics like Molly are about crypto. There is no need to kid ourselves here anymore to even entertain crypto. Crypto is a complete scam, with no legitimate or legal use case and nothing else to offer anybody. I only wish crypto died sooner and that nobody uses it. We have other systems that are more robust than crypto that is used in the order of hundreds of millions such as UPI, PIX, Wise, Mpesa, S…
Part of the issue is that rightly or wrongly, all of its strengths have effectively been regulated out of existence. I needed to quickly send some money internationally for a perfectly legal purpose. I have an old Coinbase account I wanted to use for the purpose that I hadn't left any money in (because crypto is not a good investment vehicle). Thanks to changes in KYC laws, I found myself completely unable to do this…
Well yeah of course it would be easier to send money without any KYC laws. That has nothing to do with crypto.
Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
#44I've crossed swords with Molly a couple of times. I was the release coordinator for Ethereum, and I've been active in the space a long long time. Here's what it boils down to: freedom is messy. The early days of the dotcom space were filled with carnage of a type which makes crypto look pretty normal. Amazon stock dropped >90% and a trillion and a half in value vanished from the market overall. https://en.wikipedia.o…
The Web hit the scene in 1991. By 2003 how we shopped, worked, consumed media, communicated with friends and family, and interacted with information was in the process of changing radically. A million "little ambitions" to replace catalogue shopping and how hotel reservations were made were transforming how the world worked. Bitcoin hit the scene in 2011. By 2023 crypto's mostly a failed get-rich-quick scheme with a…
2009, not even 2011.
Agree with your statement.
Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
#45I've crossed swords with Molly a couple of times. I was the release coordinator for Ethereum, and I've been active in the space a long long time. Here's what it boils down to: freedom is messy. The early days of the dotcom space were filled with carnage of a type which makes crypto look pretty normal. Amazon stock dropped >90% and a trillion and a half in value vanished from the market overall. https://en.wikipedia.o…
I think most of crypto is a scam, but I can see the upside in a few things like ENS where a distributed consensus might be better than a centralized authority.
However, the tax implications are insane for me in Canada. I won't touch anything where I have to pay in crypto because it creates a huge burden when it comes to doing my taxes at the end of the year. How does crypto solve that? IMO, they've already been regulated to a place where they can't compete.
I also feel like proof of stake is literally the code-is-law version of "the rich get richer". If the injection point for newly minted ETH is the rich that already own the majority of the existing ETH, how is that any different than the government printing FIAT and the rich that already own the majority of the FIAT being the injection point? For me, it's all the same because I don't see how anything changes for me (besides more complex taxes).
Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the issue is that rightly or wrongly, all of its strengths have effectively been regulated out of existence. I needed to quickly send some money internationally for a perfectly legal purpose. I have an old Coinbase account I wanted to use for the purpose that I hadn't left any money in (because crypto is not a good investment vehicle). Thanks to changes in KYC laws, I found myself completely unable to do this…
Well yeah of course it would be easier to send money without any KYC laws. That has nothing to do with crypto.
The point is that crypto used to be able to do that, trivially. So it very much speaks to the question of whether crypto has any strengths versus other approaches to the same problems. It used to, and doesn't anymore.
Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Web hit the scene in 1991. By 2003 how we shopped, worked, consumed media, communicated with friends and family, and interacted with information was in the process of changing radically. A million "little ambitions" to replace catalogue shopping and how hotel reservations were made were transforming how the world worked. Bitcoin hit the scene in 2011. By 2023 crypto's mostly a failed get-rich-quick scheme with a…
The most "legitimate" use for bitcoin and its friends is transferring funds electronically with people that others don't want you transferring funds with (e.g, avoiding payment processors, laws, etc). However, it remains to be seen if cryptocurrency could survive doing only that (e.g., without speculators) - because if there's no speculation how do you unload the currency? Only to others wishing to do the same. It's…
"avoiding laws" is not a "legitimate" use
Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
#48I've crossed swords with Molly a couple of times. I was the release coordinator for Ethereum, and I've been active in the space a long long time. Here's what it boils down to: freedom is messy. The early days of the dotcom space were filled with carnage of a type which makes crypto look pretty normal. Amazon stock dropped >90% and a trillion and a half in value vanished from the market overall. https://en.wikipedia.o…
I really don't see any reason why someone working in cryptocurrency, but clear eyed about the possibility of down sides would "cross swords with Molly". She is an incredible source, as far as I can tell the *best* at finding and highlighting what's going wrong. That's incredibly valuable. rekt.news is also quite good, but skewed towards less reporting but more in depth. IMO Molly should be getting public good funding…
I do not think "crossing swords" is necessarily something aggressive, it could have been debate. I am quiet the blockchain-believer and follow and read Molly's twitter. Yet I do not think she should be unopposed in her views, on the contrary I want her to be challenged, it just comes with making a name for yourself as being anything-skeptic.
Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
#49And too right the critics like Molly are about crypto. There is no need to kid ourselves here anymore to even entertain crypto. Crypto is a complete scam, with no legitimate or legal use case and nothing else to offer anybody. I only wish crypto died sooner and that nobody uses it. We have other systems that are more robust than crypto that is used in the order of hundreds of millions such as UPI, PIX, Wise, Mpesa, S…
Slightly off-topic rant: it seems (at least in hn circles) all the crypto buzz generation has found a new target in AI. Whereas prior to GPT-3 _every_ problem's solution according to a certain crowd was a hefty dose of web3/crypto, it seems now the consensus among a comparably sized crowd is that AI is actually the answer to all of humanity's pressing issues.
Time to trot out my pet theory that explains this and the last few decades of politics: By some combination of evolution and culture, many young men feel a strong compulsion to seek out high-risk, high-reward endeavors. Our culture encourages this with ideas like "making a name for yourself": is if you don't even exist until you've done something of significant value to the community.
There's a drive to pioneer, seek thrills, find adventure, take risk, and compete. If a culture has healthy outlets for that drive, then it can lead to incredible innovation, discovery, and harnessing new resources. How many new islands, foods, tools, drugs, etc. were found by someone who just said "fuck it" and went for it?
But when that drive has no healthy outlet, what you instead see is risk-taking turned to destructive ends. We've mapped the whole Earth, space is too expensive, most of the dangerous blue collar jobs have (rightly!) been made safer or automated, and the US's past several decades of forever wars have clearly become less and less morally justified.
So what we see is many young men striving to satisfy that desire any way they can. Things like:
* Treating crypto as a new unexplored frontier where they might get rich.
* Likewise now generative AI.
* Escaping into gaming where they can at least experience a simulation of the kind of risk, thrill-seeking, and glory they crave. Then GamerGate happened where some men lashed out at women who they felt were threatening that space where they could virtually experience that side of themselves.
* Young Trump voters who voted for him specifically as destructive wildcard to break down institutions. Because a world that is more chaotic and dangerous is a world better suited to their desires.
* Further, the fascination and trend around doomsday preppers, apocalyptic media, militias, etc. A segment of the population are obsessed with the world falling apart because maybe in the resulting chaos they can (re)build something.
This is a generalization, obviously, but I tend to think of young single men like this as the TNT of society: incredibly powerful and useful when applied well, but destructive otherwise.
Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
#50And too right the critics like Molly are about crypto. There is no need to kid ourselves here anymore to even entertain crypto. Crypto is a complete scam, with no legitimate or legal use case and nothing else to offer anybody. I only wish crypto died sooner and that nobody uses it. We have other systems that are more robust than crypto that is used in the order of hundreds of millions such as UPI, PIX, Wise, Mpesa, S…
Your mistake is in understanding that crypto (Bitcoin) isn't just a transmission network, it is protocol with a defined supply rate. Your payment pipelines become less valuable when nobody wants those Liras, Bolivars, Argentine Pesos, etc. transmitted over them. And if you don't think that the US dollar is at risk of debasing itself, you should qualify why.
The USD lost 98% of its value before bitcoin ever existed. The idea that sophisticated investors have been putting their money into USD and need crypto people to explain inflation to them is ridiculous.
It is equally ridiculous that crypto people think that having a fixed supply of something makes it valuable. Oceanfront property in Miami is also limited, but crypto people are not pumping that because they are not invested in Miami oceanfront property.