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Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

wired.co.uk

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Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#71

Post by eli »

bscphil wrote: post #46
eli wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They used to do it...by simply ignoring the laws. That's a measure of the chutzpah of the people running some of these early exchanges, not anything inherent about a distributed blockchain.

In fact e-gold did all that 20 years ago with a simple centralized ledger.

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#72

Post by ljf »

bombcar wrote: post #37
chasing wrote: post #26

Earlier 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…

All the while remembering that all transactions in bitcoin have a permanent ledger - so many friends seemed to think that bitcoin is somehow secret and anonymous - there are ways to make it more so, but by default it is much less anonymous than cold hard cash.

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#73

Post by ianburrell »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #6
colesantiago wrote: post #5

And 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…

Just googled FedNow and there's FAQ where one of the questions is "Will FedNow replace services like Venmo, Cashap, zelle..." and the answer there is no... which doesn't make sense if it's suppose to be a way to instantly transfer money. Wouldn't FedNow replace all of those?

FedNow is the replacement for ETF. It is a service not an app. Venmo, Cashapp, and Zelle apps are built on top of ETF service. Those apps will presumably switch to FedNow. It is will likely be integrated into bank apps sort of like Zelle is now. I really hope that different apps will be able to send money to each other.

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#74

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #61
vvpan wrote: post #56

I send money across borders to friends an organizations via blockchain. And millions of other people do, especially in countries with volatile financial systems. I much prefer crypto to anything else in this case. Hearing "no legitimate use case" arguments is awfully annoying when you get objective use from the thing being criticized.

> Hearing "no legitimate use case" arguments is awfully annoying when you get objective use from the thing being criticized Better phrasing would be niche legitimate use cases not worth supporting, at least not domestically, if you’re America, the EU, China, India or Japan.

[deleted]

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#75

Post by EGreg »

rideontime wrote: post #38
EGreg wrote: post #29

I reached out to Molly White to have her on our show, but she declined. Hi Molly. I was listening to Majority Report today and they had their old producer, Matt Binder on. He mentioned interviewing you about Web3 recently. I had been meaning to reach out. Like many people, I've occasionally popped onto web3isgoinggreat.com to see the latest cringefest in crypto and adjacent to it. Unlike many people, though, I run a…

> treating the tokens as securities It's rare that someone openly admits to this.

We are a rare web3 company

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#76

Post by ceejayoz »

wustangdan wrote: post #59
ceejayoz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US can issue debt in USD and even print 1 trillion USD coins. But what happens to the value of the currency when they repeatedly do that? Thus far, not all that much of consequence. > Crypto (and other assets obviously) can act as a hedge against such bad government behavior. Objection, Your Honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm From Jan 2019 to now we've had 17.4% inflation. Your purchasing power of the money in your bank account has been reduced. How have other assets faired in that time? > Objection, Your Honor. Assumes facts not in evidence. Okay longer timeline, if you held dollars in your savings account from Jan 2009 to now (during ZIRP) you've lost 30.5% of your purchasing power. How…

> if you held dollars in your savings account from Jan 2009 to now...

... I would be a doofus. That's where my emergency fund goes, but that's it.

> From Jan 2019 to now we've had 17.4% inflation. Your purchasing power of the money in your bank account has been reduced. How have other assets faired in that time?

My home value has tripled, and the S&P500 has gone dramatically up. Series I savings bonds are also a useful option if I'm really all that worried about the stuff in savings, as their interest rate is pegged to inflation numbers.

If we're going to carefully pick dates to make our arguments ("Jan 2019 to now" having had some... outlier stuff going on, after all) I'm gonna ask how hedging with crypto starting in April or October of 2021 would've gone. Remind me the purchasing power of a $64k Bitcoin today?

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#77

Post by api »

leashless wrote: post #9

I'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…

But where's the value?

I see lots of gambling, lots of scams, and very little actual use outside the "classical" use cases that existed at the very beginning. These are wire transfer and black/grey market commerce.

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#78

Post by codeflo »

drewbeck wrote: post #35
EGreg wrote: post #29

I reached out to Molly White to have her on our show, but she declined. Hi Molly. I was listening to Majority Report today and they had their old producer, Matt Binder on. He mentioned interviewing you about Web3 recently. I had been meaning to reach out. Like many people, I've occasionally popped onto web3isgoinggreat.com to see the latest cringefest in crypto and adjacent to it. Unlike many people, though, I run a…

I'm curious what you're trying to get at here, and your intent for posting this. Can you elaborate?

Advertising for their crypto scam. "I'm one of the good ones" said every crypto scammer ever.

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#79

Post by themagician »

leashless wrote: post #9

I'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 only "goal" of crypto is to make money. Anything else is just worn as a mask for promotion because, "Lie, cheat, steal" isn't a great set of principles for a new economic universal ledger.

What crypto has become has showed just how wrong Satoshi was about people. Crypto COULD have been everything he hoped for. It could have been a system where everyone participated, with millions of nodes. Instead it became something no one understood, operated by a few mega pools, all who are trying to fleece people who don't understand or care but just want to make money. Crypto is now an economic matchmaking system that matches the desperate and greedy with those who would take advantage of them. It's a free market system that matches predator with prey. It's doing what almost all banking regulation tries to mitigate.

Capitalism consumed crypto in a second. I'd go as far as to say that the two are actually incompatible at a fundamental level.

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#80

Post by napierzaza »

leashless wrote: post #9

I'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…

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