71–80 of 130 posts
Another issue is the teams who put together these crypto utopias make themselves easy prey by shrewd grifters who are able to execute scams through creative misuse. They need far more controls and foresight to avert disaster.
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So far, crypto has gone through multiple market cycles lasting about four years each. At the peak people get euphoric and think it will solve all the world's problems, then in the trough people think it's all on its way out - that it will slowly fade out of public consciousness until it's forgotten. I believe the reality is somewhere in between. But one thing is for sure: during the trough of every cycle, there's alw…
It's conjectured that this is due to Bitcoin's subsidy halving schedule, which is every 210000 blocks or ~4 years. The reasoning is that the supply shock trends prices upwards and the rest of the market tracks Bitcoin due to many trading pairs between it and other cryptos. But the shock gets weaker over time and hopefully the nonsense will as well.
The next supply shock will also be interesting in its own right, specifically because it will plunge bitcoin's inflation rate to below that of gold, from 1.7% now to 0.84% in 7 months. If nothing else, that will re-highlight bitcoin's digital gold narrative and potentially pull in more wealth flow that otherwise might have flowed into store of value assets like gold.
Bitcoin at current price and inflation rate requires $9 billion per year net inflows to absorb newly mined coins. In 7 months after the halving, it will only require $4.5 billion per year to maintain it's current price of $27,000. So, either it's net inflow will suddenly cut in half and the price will stay the same, or the current net inflow of $9 billion will force the price up until it reaches equilibrium, which usually triggers a market frenzy as outsiders see the gains and pile in.
For some context with gold, there theoretically exists about $200 billion of wealth flowing into it each year just to absorb newly mined gold and keep the price stable.
This just reminded me that cryptocurrencies is a thing, this has not been a prominent topic here for some time, I would say. Is the entire cryptocurrencies stuff eventually on the way out or would that be a misperception? Just checked Google trends, that also indicates a downward trend for terms like Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, NFT or Ethereum for the last year or two.
It’s not going to just vanish because crypto has become the tool of choice for online scams and crime. Here’s just one recent example, a small Kansas bank that collapsed entirely because its CEO got involved in a crypto scam: “The chief executive officer of Heartland Tri-State Bank asked if the client would lend him $12 million so he could get his money out of a cryptocurrency investment. He promised he’d pay him bac…
The unfortunate reality is, any tool or platform offering a high degree of privacy will inevitably draw those with nefarious intentions.
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It’s not going to just vanish because crypto has become the tool of choice for online scams and crime. Here’s just one recent example, a small Kansas bank that collapsed entirely because its CEO got involved in a crypto scam: “The chief executive officer of Heartland Tri-State Bank asked if the client would lend him $12 million so he could get his money out of a cryptocurrency investment. He promised he’d pay him bac…
History of economics disagrees with the last -- hopeful I will assume -- statement. The world was and is full of scammers and fraudsters. Also respectfully I am not sure I get the zero interest rates arguments. There seems to be a subgroup of HN community that believes low interest rates (below some arbitrary threshold?) to be immoral. Maybe there is a Crime, scams and ponzi schemes correlation study over hundreds of…
Ironically, this is a very popular belief in the Bitcoin community and often cited as the reason to adopt Bitcoin. I don't want to start a debate but essentially, the crux of the belief is that low interest rates are essentially a means of "printing money", which in turn dilutes the value of the currency and acts as a hidden tax on its holders. The idea being that Bitcoin having a fixed supply, isn't vulnerable to such debasement.
SBF down, Do Kwon down, Su Zhu down, many many more to go... I've been amazed at how slow the law seems to be in apprehending the most egregious scammers from that era.
This just reminded me that cryptocurrencies is a thing, this has not been a prominent topic here for some time, I would say. Is the entire cryptocurrencies stuff eventually on the way out or would that be a misperception? Just checked Google trends, that also indicates a downward trend for terms like Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, NFT or Ethereum for the last year or two.
I work in this area and to me, the tech is still super interesting. In particular, things like zero knowledge proof and related scaling/privacy solutions are at the forefront of cryptography in my opinion.
We see the issues with it: 1. It moves the trust issue or 2. The trust is only on the Blockchain.
World exists in a physical world which doesn't allow you at all to use a Blockchain there.
And zero trust for your money also means zero recovery
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> I think you'll see people picking those techniques Those techniques were already invented and in-use long beforehand though. I think that needs emphasizing, because sometimes it feels like... Imagine that fans of the Segway claimed it will replace all other forms of transportation, and a worrying number of them are still out there crediting the (failing) product for inventing the wheel .
Merkle trees, yes! That was just an example of a technique that can be well hidden vs in the user's face. Newer techniques like Verkle trees, SNARKs, STARKs, &c are.... well, new.
It's kind of like ride-share services: They didn't invent cars or databases or dispatching systems or phone-apps, and while their investment might have spurred some new tools/libraries/algorithms they use, the broader usefulness of those inventions doesn't flow backward to mean they have a good/sustainable business.
There are even cases like "private blockchain" where the fad-marketing is getting used to mislabel what is actually just a regular old distributed database of yesteryear.
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> I'm ready to spend it all to not go to prison You said you were ready > give a significant percent of my assets just to defend myself So why not? Or get a cheaper lawyer yourself that's more fair to the other side. There's a lot of rich people out there who get away with some really bad crimes just because they have really clever private attorneys.
> So why not? Or get a cheaper lawyer yourself that's more fair to the other side. Because that is money I could and should be able to use to defend myself. And should my defense be successful that's my retirement money and financial security. I don't care about fair for the government, they accused me of something I didn't do. There is a 0% chance that a states attorneys salary will get me a private attorney of the…
But with the blank slaters it's more like, "let's solve brown bananas by making them out of titanium." And somehow you are left to import some unspecified number of classes for them until they finally posit that even bringing in the entire world won't fix the bug in their code.
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So far, crypto has gone through multiple market cycles lasting about four years each. At the peak people get euphoric and think it will solve all the world's problems, then in the trough people think it's all on its way out - that it will slowly fade out of public consciousness until it's forgotten. I believe the reality is somewhere in between. But one thing is for sure: during the trough of every cycle, there's alw…
It would be a shame if this keeps happening, like: (2013) Bitcoin and its clones failed at all their stated purposes, (2017) the ICO craze left nothing of value, (2021) the DeFi/NFT bubble also left nothing but rubble. This stuff is zero sum, shuffling money without creating new things of enduring value.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work in this area and to me, the tech is still super interesting. In particular, things like zero knowledge proof and related scaling/privacy solutions are at the forefront of cryptography in my opinion.
We just need to find some non-speculative and non-scammy uses for that tech.
The problem is that anonymous payments are essentially illegal under current regulations designed to protect the large incumbent businesses.
Cryptocurrencies could render paywalls and signupwalls a thing of the past, allowing you to pay a fraction of a penny for a page view automatically in browser without an account.
Such systems are illegal.