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I wasted years of my life in crypto

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Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#61

Post by TrackerFF »

spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

At least for me, the big selling point was being able to send money fast and relatively cheap. Back then you either had PayPal, or wire transfer. PP could easily freeze and hold your money over whatever issues, while bank transfer was slow.

And, mind you, I only purchased/sold legal stuff.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#62

Post by GuestFAUniverse »

I always wondered what "clever" people expected from crypto, apart from getting rich quick schemes. Boring.

We had such know-it-alls still with their pimples from Frauenhofer and Max Planck giving presentations. Even back then, 99% percent of the audience were skeptical, but sadly too many decision makers are just emperors with no clothing. There were so many immature, useless loud speakers given a junior professorship because old morons have FOMO too. That must have sucked for the valid academics with proven achievements. I'm glad I'm not one of the ones waiting in queue. There no single project having any sign of impact, naturally. While that can be said of a lot of academic work, crypto: more buzzwords, even less delivered.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#63

Post by lapcat »

embedding-shape wrote: post #48
lapcat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed, working hard towards a goal is never a waste, it can often be a learning experience regardless of the end result. What if the end result is harmful to society?

Then you learn, adjust and try to avoid that in the future, ideally helping others from making the same mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, the scope/extent is slightly different for all of us, but everyone should have chance at redeeming themselves even if they did harm. Otherwise we'll run out of compassion very quickly.

> everyone should have chance at redeeming themselves even if they did harm.

You're changing the subject. Nobody is arguing that the author is irredeemable. On the contrary, the author seems to have recognized his own mistake and changed his course, at least to an extent. The question is whether the author's years in crypto were a waste, and I would say that it's indeed a waste to spend 8 years on something just to "learn" that one shouldn't have done that thing.

> Everyone makes mistakes

This is also changing the subject. Everyone does not spend 8 years in crypto.

I've made some big mistakes, and I think I've also wasted a lot of time. The wasted time was not "valuable" by learning that I wasted my time. It was simply regrettable.

On the other hand, I don't think I've ever spent a lot of time and effort on an activity that broadly harms society. I don't need to do that in order to learn that I shouldn't do that. Some things are just blatantly obvious in advance, or should be. You shouldn't need to dedicate your life to crypto to realize it's all a big casino.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#64

Post by AaronAPU »

troad wrote: post #47

This is a sob story from someone who got wealthy from building an engine to finance crime. There are paths towards redemption - the author could begin by donating every ill-gotten cent to a worthy charity. What's that? Crickets? Thought so.

Theres this pattern where you make your wealth off dubious means, then one day become born again and start a new life where you gain more popularity and influence by speaking out against the reason you have a megaphone at all. These people interestingly never give away that naughty wealth they now regret so much.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#65

Post by kachapopopow »

embedding-shape wrote: post #45
kachapopopow wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well actually, you could build a network on top of that (expensive) database... hmm... it's kind of starting to sound like SWIFT. but you have: no rollbacks, no refunds, no governance to stop bad actors you do gain: immunity from government decisions, theft by state and independence as unpopular as it might sound like, bitcoin is great for criminals, yes you could say "who decides what is a criminal", well let's make…

> bitcoin is great for criminals Never understood this soundbite, and I used to be a criminal. Bitcoin is horrible because literally everything is tracked, with minor benefits compared to just dealing with cash or still the best, using the banks you know who look to the side when you need to clean your cash. The tricky part remains to wash the money, and bitcoin doesn't make that easier, it makes that part harder. Bu…

it becomes significantly easy to store money and launder it whenever, it's what all indian scammers do: get it out of the banking system into crypto

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#66

Post by kachapopopow »

soulofmischief wrote: post #55
kachapopopow wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well actually, you could build a network on top of that (expensive) database... hmm... it's kind of starting to sound like SWIFT. but you have: no rollbacks, no refunds, no governance to stop bad actors you do gain: immunity from government decisions, theft by state and independence as unpopular as it might sound like, bitcoin is great for criminals, yes you could say "who decides what is a criminal", well let's make…

> let's make this simple: people who murder and steal. So many Western governments and their elected officials? The US? Israel? What about the people in international waters Trump keeps bombing and calling drug criminals? I'm so confused about how you're able to make the delineation of those who "murder and steal" to mean criminals, given that such a distinction puts the government square in the spotlight, and many o…

you could call them criminals, many do, activists are also criminals from the view of politicans I generally just used "who murder and steal" as a basic notion of "it's good for people who are in trouble with the law"

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#67

Post by ikt »

TrackerFF wrote: post #61
spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

At least for me, the big selling point was being able to send money fast and relatively cheap. Back then you either had PayPal, or wire transfer. PP could easily freeze and hold your money over whatever issues, while bank transfer was slow. And, mind you, I only purchased/sold legal stuff.

Yep, that's what I thought nano had done:

https://nano.org/en

instant, fee's a fraction of a cent, I thought this was it, international payments that don't rely on visa/mastercard!

and then it just went no where :\

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#68

Post by embedding-shape »

lapcat wrote: post #63
embedding-shape wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you learn, adjust and try to avoid that in the future, ideally helping others from making the same mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, the scope/extent is slightly different for all of us, but everyone should have chance at redeeming themselves even if they did harm. Otherwise we'll run out of compassion very quickly.

> everyone should have chance at redeeming themselves even if they did harm. You're changing the subject. Nobody is arguing that the author is irredeemable. On the contrary, the author seems to have recognized his own mistake and changed his course, at least to an extent. The question is whether the author's years in crypto were a waste, and I would say that it's indeed a waste to spend 8 years on something just to "…

It's not about "learning to not do that single thing" but learning from everything you picked up during that period, good or bad. And even if what you did had the net-effect of being negative to society, you can learn from the things you experienced during that time, meaning it wouldn't be a waste, at least in my mind.

> I don't think I've ever spent a lot of time and effort on an activity that broadly harms society

Me neither. I worked in the cryptocurrency industry, sold drugs, interacted with gangs, and a bunch of other stuff but none of them broadly harmed society, so seems we're more or less the same on that point.

But everyone's frame of reference and reality is difference, there is no absolute truth here, trying to paint it as such is actively doing a disservice to any sort of discourse we could have about the subject.

One could surely argue that making "paid browser extensions" somehow have a net negative impact on the world, and if that was proven, would that mean all the time you spent on those sort of projects were suddenly wasteful and you should have realized this up front? Seems inhumane if so.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#69

Post by embedding-shape »

kachapopopow wrote: post #65
embedding-shape wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bitcoin is great for criminals Never understood this soundbite, and I used to be a criminal. Bitcoin is horrible because literally everything is tracked, with minor benefits compared to just dealing with cash or still the best, using the banks you know who look to the side when you need to clean your cash. The tricky part remains to wash the money, and bitcoin doesn't make that easier, it makes that part harder. Bu…

it becomes significantly easy to store money and launder it whenever, it's what all indian scammers do: get it out of the banking system into crypto

> and launder it whenever

Again, there is no "LaunderBTCAndTurnIntoUSD" function in the Bitcoin protocol...

> get it out of the banking system into crypto

And please describe how you do so without involved A) banks who look the other way and B) registered companies who handle the on/off-ramping from/to BTC.

When people argue that it makes it so much easier to launder money, please spend at least a minute to actually figure out how that will work in practice, and you'll understand that Bitcoin makes the laundering HARDER than what it is with cash, not easier...

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#70

Post by jongjong »

Ekaros wrote: post #44
jongjong wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee you that blockchain tech can solve a real, extremely important problem, though it's only a problem for some people. If you're connected to the money printers, then it's useless to you. Just like if you worked for a company like Enron which was cooking the books, 'honest accounting' would not be a solution for you; 'honest accounting' would be a problem for a company like Enron and everyone who works for E…

I never got the whole larger "crypto" economy. The number of meaningless alt coins. That come and go most of the time, build on zero any type but speculative value. Worse than any fiat. And then stable coins. Fancy IOUs of fiat. Which might or might not have actual assets backing them. Which you might or might not be able to redeem. Say if Russian government had a billion in whatever stable coin. Could they redeem th…

I think the second line is touching on something. The implication is that there may be a kind of legal cross-nation counterfeiting happening. Stablecoins likely play a part. When I worked in crypto back in 2017, all the successful people would tell me that they thought there was something really wrong with Tether and they all believed it was propping up Bitcoin. They expected it to collapse any day... But here we are 8 years later.

Ideally, countries should only be allowed to issue their own currency. It's not hard to see why a country being able to print another country's currency would pose a problem... With all money being digital and stored on thousands of distinct bank ledgers which basically don't have consensus, it would be very difficult to track with manual audits and with the current incentives in place. It would be trivial to hide these transactions under legitimate names as various forms of international payments.

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