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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

#261

Post by charcircuit »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #177
charcircuit wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most states still haven't created digital versions of these hard-to-copy tokens meaning that there needs to be an alternate provided by a 3rd party which is where cryptocurrency comes in.

The Fed has had a wire service (Fedwire) for banks, allowing them to transfer their balances on the Fed’s balance sheet to another bank during settlement, since before the dollar moved off the gold standard. It was initially done with literal telegraphs - not sure at what point it became digital. It obviously has no pseudo anonymity, is literally the least democratized banking system in existence, and is subject to t…

So why don't any businesses let me Fedwire them money? It turns out unlike the physical version of cash, this "digital version" has hefty transaction fees and a poor UI meaning no business will take it, unlike how almost all physical businesses will take cash.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#262

Post by npoc »

rfw300 wrote: post #239
npoc wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLDR: to understand bitcoin you have to see the problem it's solving - most people are blind to it even though it affects their lives terribly. https://x.com/saylor/status/1878154748353818932 > "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."…

Your comment assumes that the purpose of an economic system is to preserve a financial status quo. It isn't, and shouldn't be. Inflation incentivizes people to put their money to productive uses in the economy (capital formation) rather than hoarding resources.

The purposes of money are:

- store of value

- unit of account (a measuring stick for value)

- medium of exchange

Allowing the financial system to inflate the money supply destroys two of those fundamental qualities. The fact it can additionally charge interest on the money funnels the stolen value into its hands.

Interest on money loaned out is the only incentive required for putting money to "productive uses". Nothing about hard money affects that. In fact inflation only causes the people at the top of the pyramid to hoard all of the economic value instead. They are buying up and hoarding the entire world with the wealth they are taking from the people.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#263

Post by walthamstow »

jimmaswell wrote: post #175
fsh wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, most societies ended up inventing a mandatory trusted third party escrow called a "legal system" as part of a "state". They usually issue hard-to-copy tokens, solving the double spending problem.

Putting absolute trust and surrendering too much agency to the state has been proven a mistake many times throughout history. Citizens need fallbacks when the state fails them. Concrete example where crypto achieves this: many trans people in places with an inadequate medical system or hostile government turn to buying gray-market DIY hormones online, facilitated by crypto.

I also use crypto to bypass government prohibition on unprescribed self-medication. Is it still noble if I'm buying cocaine?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#264

Post by charcircuit »

bawolff wrote: post #166
charcircuit wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most states still haven't created digital versions of these hard-to-copy tokens meaning that there needs to be an alternate provided by a 3rd party which is where cryptocurrency comes in.

Most states have in fact invented bank transfers for that purpose.

The decentralized nature of banks makes it hard to offer a good payment experience to consumers and businesses.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#265

Post by solumunus »

derriz wrote: post #234
solumunus wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can send a billion dollars to someone in Uganda with no intermediary or oversight. This was not only impossible before but most likely would never have been a possibility. Being able to hold massive amounts of value in the ether and control it from anywhere, you don’t find that impressive? Sure, this is mostly used for nefarious activities, but let’s not pretend it’s solving no problems. It’s incredibly difficult t…

How exactly can you send a billion dollars to someone in Uganda using Bitcoin? Purchase and sale of bitcoin is highly regulated and obviously tracked - and the blockchain itself provides little privacy - I’m guessing state-level actors have already attached identities to most of the wallet addresses out there. So if I hand you access to $1 billion dollars - cash or in a bank account - how could I practically get $1 b…

There are people that hold billions in Bitcoin and they could send it to someone in Uganda without friction, do you dispute this? You’re being pedantic, stick to the hypothetical. Change the example to $1,000 and yes it’s trivial to do and will be cheaper and quicker than using traditional systems.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#266

Post by walthamstow »

charcircuit wrote: post #264
bawolff wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most states have in fact invented bank transfers for that purpose.

The decentralized nature of banks makes it hard to offer a good payment experience to consumers and businesses.

Inside the same country, really? We have the aptly-named Faster Payments in the UK and it's instant. The company I work for is virtually built upon it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payment_System_%28Unite...

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#267

Post by lawn »

kaluga wrote: post #213

The most interesting insight here isn’t “crypto bad,” but how years in a speculation-first ecosystem warp your intuition for what real value looks like. When incentives reward casinos over products, even talented builders end up optimizing for the wrong game. That lesson applies far beyond crypto.

I was thinking of how this mirrors the actions of people currently pushing AI. Or the dotcom bubble. Or "big data". The examples just keeps going...

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#268

Post by lawn »

hvb2 wrote: post #190

> your bank account would just hold USDC or Bitcoin, and you could send a billion dollars to anyone in the world in a few seconds. That belief is powerful and I still ascribe to it. These statements still surprise me to this day. If you're a good person engineer, why does sending money in seconds need blockchain? There's parts of the world where this is commonplace and free as well. I don't believe cross border was t…

> If you're a good person engineer, why does sending money in seconds need blockchain? There's parts of the world where this is commonplace and free as well.

The promise was to make this available for everyone, to send money everywhere.

For example for me in Sweden it's really, really hard to send money directly to people in Ukraine since the Swedish banks simply refuse to send money there.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#270

Post by KaiserPro »

HaZeust wrote: post #117
fsh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

I always thought it was actually an ingenious solution to elections. There's absolutely no reason that a driver's license can't derive a hash that can only be proven and not reversed (for identity); and provides a one-time contribution to a blockchain that contains your vote - which you then receive your block's information when you finish voting. ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes, ide…

Who validates the driver's license?

How do you stop inauthentic licenses?

Perhaps some sort of central authority?

This is the main problem with most of the blockchain/crypto issues is that its all fine until a dispute, and then we all fall back to the state to sort it out (ie the legal system)

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