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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

#21

Post by elevaet »

danaos wrote: post #15

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…

I had a similar experience, and also have zero regrets about missing out on gains. The baked-in energy wastage and the scams and memes were a complete turnoff. That's not the way I want to get rich. Similarly I wouldn't invest in an arms manufacturer or a plastic bag company. Money that doesn't align with your values is just bad mojo.

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

#22

Post by elevaet »

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'.

If they don't cash out directly to an off-ramp there might not be a way to connect a crypto address to a person. If they use the crypto to buy illegal shit and sell that on the black market for cash - or sell the crypto directly on the black market for cash, they could evade detection.

I wonder how much crypto is changing hands off-market in shadier corners.

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

#23

Post by NoOn3 »

danaos wrote: post #15

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…

If you think about it deeply, it's still not entirely clear who consumes more energy: the traditional banking sector and servicing of visa, mastercard, etc. cards, or cryptocurrency technologies. At least it seems to me that the difference is not that big.

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

#24

Post by rokkamokka »

danaos wrote: post #15

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…

I'm glad you've made peace with your financial loss. It is an important thing not to dwell on the past in order to be able to move forward, a lesson it took me long to internalize myself.

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

#25

Post by mijamo »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #20
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!” ?

Of course it is lower! You have plenty of rich people living in known places without any special security and no one comes to kidnap them because they cannot just send over their whole wealth in an irreversible transaction in a second. The problem is not to know who has money, it is a system in which it is trivial to transfer it without any supervision and without any way to go back.

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

#26

Post by aredox »

NoOn3 wrote: post #23
danaos wrote: post #15

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…

If you think about it deeply, it's still not entirely clear who consumes more energy: the traditional banking sector and servicing of visa, mastercard, etc. cards, or cryptocurrency technologies. At least it seems to me that the difference is not that big.

Except that the traditional banking sector does much more than cryptocurrencies do. Bitcoin still runs only around 5-7 transactions per seconds - several orders of magnitude less than Visa alone.

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/transactions-per-... https://crypto.com/en/university/blockchain-scalability

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

#27

Post by aorloff »

elevaet wrote: post #22
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'.

If they don't cash out directly to an off-ramp there might not be a way to connect a crypto address to a person. If they use the crypto to buy illegal shit and sell that on the black market for cash - or sell the crypto directly on the black market for cash, they could evade detection. I wonder how much crypto is changing hands off-market in shadier corners.

There’s orders of magnitude more wash trading than off market wallet swaps

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

#28

Post by dandanua »

mijamo wrote: post #25
lazyasciiart wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!” ?

Of course it is lower! You have plenty of rich people living in known places without any special security and no one comes to kidnap them because they cannot just send over their whole wealth in an irreversible transaction in a second. The problem is not to know who has money, it is a system in which it is trivial to transfer it without any supervision and without any way to go back.

> it is a system in which it is trivial to transfer it without any supervision and without any way to go back

And somehow they praise it as a solution to all world's problems.

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

#29

Post by dgrr19 »

danaos wrote: post #15

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…

memecoins have nothing to do with BTC. Talk about the price was always a thing because BTC is a currency, thus price is key. The tech is good, or it was at the time. I don't see the case for money laundering in BTC, only one could be XMR and mixers in ETH. Apart from that, in general cryptocurrency is not good for laundering since the blockchain can be tracked.

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

#30

Post by akimbostrawman »

dandanua wrote: post #28
mijamo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is lower! You have plenty of rich people living in known places without any special security and no one comes to kidnap them because they cannot just send over their whole wealth in an irreversible transaction in a second. The problem is not to know who has money, it is a system in which it is trivial to transfer it without any supervision and without any way to go back.

> it is a system in which it is trivial to transfer it without any supervision and without any way to go back And somehow they praise it as a solution to all world's problems.

Who is this they? cryptocurrencies and there users are a highly fragmented ecosystem. Ofc if you only listen to the most obnoxious superficial corners you will find conmen like in any community involving finances.

cryptocurrencies solve real world problems but like any technology also have drawbacks.

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