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We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

arstechnica.com

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Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#11

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

TheDong wrote: post #6
eru wrote: post #2

Stealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'.

Even with a public ledger, it's harder to trace than, for example, forcing someone to wire the cash via the traditional banking system. With banking systems, each bank account has a unique address (private, but they'll cooperate with the government and police easily, and are experienced doing so), and that address is associated with a real person... and it operates slowly, which means the police can easily catch up t…

One key component being alluded to here is that banks are legally required to know who you are (KYC). And there are consequences if they don’t. That alone makes a huge difference in everything having to do with the traditional banking system.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#12

Post by cakealert »

tetha wrote: post #10
flmontpetit wrote: post #5

Baffles me how this industry is basically speedrunning through the troubled history of regular finance, and every piece of legislation and every institution has to be rebuilt from scratch even though the mechanisms and the problems are almost exactly the same.

I always found the idea of a free, unregulated financial market being a positive thing amusing. Many of these regulations were made because more or less complex loopholes got exploited and many less wealthy people lost their money. And quite a few of these people with practical experience in these various exploits are still around.

You can always opt into security by being the customer of a bank.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#13

Post by roenxi »

flmontpetit wrote: post #5

Baffles me how this industry is basically speedrunning through the troubled history of regular finance, and every piece of legislation and every institution has to be rebuilt from scratch even though the mechanisms and the problems are almost exactly the same.

I've always liked this analogy because it accidentally implies something I believe to be true - the crypto industry will eventually overtake transitional finance while moving at great speed. It says a lot about how bad the traditional finance industry is that this is the easiest path forward that the market found.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#15

Post by danaos »

I went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets. During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these abductions. Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#16

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

roenxi wrote: post #13
flmontpetit wrote: post #5

Baffles me how this industry is basically speedrunning through the troubled history of regular finance, and every piece of legislation and every institution has to be rebuilt from scratch even though the mechanisms and the problems are almost exactly the same.

I've always liked this analogy because it accidentally implies something I believe to be true - the crypto industry will eventually overtake transitional finance while moving at great speed. It says a lot about how bad the traditional finance industry is that this is the easiest path forward that the market found.

You assume it won’t just hit the same problems and stall or that traditional finance won’t learn and comes up with its own solutions.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#17

Post by danaos »

eru wrote: post #2

Stealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'.

They use bitcoin "mixers" and harder to trace coins like Monero/zcash etc.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#19

Post by labster »

roenxi wrote: post #13
flmontpetit wrote: post #5

Baffles me how this industry is basically speedrunning through the troubled history of regular finance, and every piece of legislation and every institution has to be rebuilt from scratch even though the mechanisms and the problems are almost exactly the same.

I've always liked this analogy because it accidentally implies something I believe to be true - the crypto industry will eventually overtake transitional finance while moving at great speed. It says a lot about how bad the traditional finance industry is that this is the easiest path forward that the market found.

Bad money drives out good money, which explains why crypto is moving so fast.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#20

Post by lazyasciiart »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #18

Turns out having a publicly visible bank balance is a bad idea. If only there existed a better coin without that issue...

In at least two of these stories, the “bank balance” was public because the person posted it on social media (Belgian guy and Turkish influencer). Im not sure if the risk is any lower when you post “my savings account is up to $1.6million!” ?
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