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Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

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21–30 of 175 posts

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#21

Crypto and NFTs are the ultimate scam. It's wooden nickels, the Brooklyn Bridge and Bernie Madoff all taken to their ultimate logical conclusion --- something with no intrinsic value whatsoever (electrons) is being exchanged for real functioning currency. But what really sets the crypto scam apart is the fact that no is really lying about the fundamental nature of the transaction. No one is hiding the fact that by bu…

Ngl having a shared global decentralized database that’s you can develop on sounds pretty nice to me. Definitely wouldn’t call that a scam. Maybe it’s overvalued though… As someone who’s dabbled in the art world, I think people underestimate how important provenance is to an art piece. Having a decentralized system that can automatically keep a paper trail and is seamlessly connected to an automated market/auction service is mind blowing for the art world. It’s basically automating two entire sub industries: the auction houses, and the appraisers. The NFTs don’t even need to stay digitally to be useful. The art world is experimenting a lot with printing these days, and the NFTs are just a method of being able to buy a print from the artist.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#22

Crypto does have utility, but there's only room for one: bitcoin. Everything else is just a me-too derivative that can add nothing except the possibility of central control (like the "digital dollar"). The ability to instantly transmit the hardest asset known to man (harder than gold, in the sense of inflation resistance) does have utility, regardless of what critics say. It has downsides too: the ability to be lost…

The main problem with bitcoin is it's fundamentally a terrible currency. With a transaction time of between 30 minutes and 16 hours, throughput of 7 transactions per second, and an energy consumption comparable to a medium sized country, it's an obviously awful currency for anything other than selling large quantities of drugs, ransom payments, or gambling.

That is an improvement over gold though, which has an insane cost to move from the us to china.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#23

Crypto and NFTs are the ultimate scam. It's wooden nickels, the Brooklyn Bridge and Bernie Madoff all taken to their ultimate logical conclusion --- something with no intrinsic value whatsoever (electrons) is being exchanged for real functioning currency. But what really sets the crypto scam apart is the fact that no is really lying about the fundamental nature of the transaction. No one is hiding the fact that by bu…

How is it a scam if the people buying it know exactly what they're buying, and the code is all open source? The word "scam" implies someone is being misled.

How is cryptocurrency any more of a scam than fiat currency, ie. digits in the computer of some private bank or central bank?

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#24

Crypto and NFTs are the ultimate scam. It's wooden nickels, the Brooklyn Bridge and Bernie Madoff all taken to their ultimate logical conclusion --- something with no intrinsic value whatsoever (electrons) is being exchanged for real functioning currency. But what really sets the crypto scam apart is the fact that no is really lying about the fundamental nature of the transaction. No one is hiding the fact that by bu…

What's also incredible is the lack of government action on crypto. I mean, if something like crypto happened in the 60s, you can bet countries like the US would've banned "owning it" just like they did with gold.

Much much easier to ban a physical item like gold than crypto. Trying to ban crypto is like trying to ban p2p file sharing, except with much more serious implications as it would also kill a country's presence and innovation in the industry.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#25
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, Bitcoin was just the low hanging fruit. Proof of Work is probably the way to go, but please make it useful work.

Revise SETI@home. A bitcoin for every earth-sized exoplanet your GPU can discover in a given day. Ten bitcoin if it finds intelligent life. Or a darker proof of work concept: Forget the big data centers, the NSA could hand out bitcoins to GPUs who help them brute force enemy encryption.

> NSA could hand out bitcoins to GPUs who help them brute force enemy encryption.

Plot twist - that was your own encryption you helped the NSA (presumably legally) break!

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#26

Crypto does have utility, but there's only room for one: bitcoin. Everything else is just a me-too derivative that can add nothing except the possibility of central control (like the "digital dollar"). The ability to instantly transmit the hardest asset known to man (harder than gold, in the sense of inflation resistance) does have utility, regardless of what critics say. It has downsides too: the ability to be lost…

Bitcoin uses about 100x more energy than ethereum, has 5x less throughput, and doesn't natively support smart contracts. There's definitely also room for ethereum.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#27

Crypto does have utility, but there's only room for one: bitcoin. Everything else is just a me-too derivative that can add nothing except the possibility of central control (like the "digital dollar"). The ability to instantly transmit the hardest asset known to man (harder than gold, in the sense of inflation resistance) does have utility, regardless of what critics say. It has downsides too: the ability to be lost…

> Crypto does have utility, but there's only room for one: bitcoin.

Except that Bitcoin is very expensive to actually use and isn't private by default.

That Bitcoin is the only one with value is only wishful thinking from the Bitcoin maximalists.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#28

Crypto and NFTs are the ultimate scam. It's wooden nickels, the Brooklyn Bridge and Bernie Madoff all taken to their ultimate logical conclusion --- something with no intrinsic value whatsoever (electrons) is being exchanged for real functioning currency. But what really sets the crypto scam apart is the fact that no is really lying about the fundamental nature of the transaction. No one is hiding the fact that by bu…

Ngl having a shared global decentralized database that’s you can develop on sounds pretty nice to me. Definitely wouldn’t call that a scam. Maybe it’s overvalued though… As someone who’s dabbled in the art world, I think people underestimate how important provenance is to an art piece. Having a decentralized system that can automatically keep a paper trail and is seamlessly connected to an automated market/auction se…

At the end of the day, it’s a database still wholly dependent on the correctness of the data being inputted. The blockchain Rube Goldberg machine cannot solve for that physical to digital interface. A MS Access database with a checksum would be every bit as valid a solution to the problem you’ve outlined at a fraction of the complexity.

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#29

Crypto and NFTs are the ultimate scam. It's wooden nickels, the Brooklyn Bridge and Bernie Madoff all taken to their ultimate logical conclusion --- something with no intrinsic value whatsoever (electrons) is being exchanged for real functioning currency. But what really sets the crypto scam apart is the fact that no is really lying about the fundamental nature of the transaction. No one is hiding the fact that by bu…

Ngl having a shared global decentralized database that’s you can develop on sounds pretty nice to me. Definitely wouldn’t call that a scam. Maybe it’s overvalued though… As someone who’s dabbled in the art world, I think people underestimate how important provenance is to an art piece. Having a decentralized system that can automatically keep a paper trail and is seamlessly connected to an automated market/auction se…

[deleted]

Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again

#30
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with bitcoin is it's fundamentally a terrible currency. With a transaction time of between 30 minutes and 16 hours, throughput of 7 transactions per second, and an energy consumption comparable to a medium sized country, it's an obviously awful currency for anything other than selling large quantities of drugs, ransom payments, or gambling.

That is an improvement over gold though, which has an insane cost to move from the us to china.

Crypto had the ability to improve on both gold and cash though.
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