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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

#351

Post by spaceman_2020 »

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…

You say this right when your central banks went on a massive money printing spree, shot up inflation beyond their own baseline for years, and have created a frankenstenian K-shaped economy where everyone who is not in the top 10-20% is getting actively poorer

It doesn't take a lot to figure out that hard currencies with some supply cap tend to hold value better. BTC might not be it - it might be gold or silver - but you really can't ignore the inflation issues inherent in fiat currencies anymore.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#352

Post by dist-epoch »

yes_man wrote: post #202
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…

The cross border not about technical capacity but legal control. For example if you are a refugee you might not be able to pull your bank savings and liquid stock with you from your home country to another without it being seized or taxed, but your crypto is always yours as long as you are the only holder of the keys. This scenario is one of the rare real world utilities I see with crypto.

Your crypto still needs to be declared, even if you hold the keys. Not doing that breaks all kinds of laws and makes you jail-able.

Sure, you can hope the state won't find out about your crypto, but then how do you enjoy it?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#353

Post by immibis »

panzi wrote: post #114
tim333 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling.

You can do gambling easier without blockchains. (Not that you should do any gambling at all, on neither side, if you ask me.)

Not really, because the government freezes your bank account and takes your money.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#354

Post by spaceman_2020 »

wmf wrote: post #158
CamelCaseName wrote: post #7

Okay, so if your time felt wasted, that must mean there were better uses of your 20s. But, how else would you have driven towards your goal of building a new financial system?

They could have worked for Stripe/Ramp/Brex/Mercury for example. They'd still be rich but with non-speculative impact.

And Stripe ironically is making a blockchain itself to facilitate stablecoin settlements globally

So you're back to square one

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#355

Post by tsimionescu »

bluecalm wrote: post #343
tsimionescu wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others have shown why most of your other points are wrong or don't need blockchain, but this is also important: > ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes This is completely false. In fact, at the scale of a country, almost no one can actually do this. 95+% of the population doesn't have the knowledge required to do something like this and understand why it works. And while in principle they…

In the current election system also almost no one can do anything to verify the results. The percentage is way higher than 95%. There are many arguments against electronic voting but the current system is terrible and insecure. >>And this is a deal breaker, as having the population believe and easily able to convince themselves that their elections are free is an extremely important part of democracy, especially when…

It is extremely easy to convince yourself that the current system works. Numerous people volunteer to work in election monitoring every year, and any person who is not sure can take a day or two off work to do so at their next election.

Plus, the system overall is dead simple, first grade math skills are enough to understand it: we just count the votes in every precinct, and sum up the votes later up. No hashes, no smart group theory schemes, nothing complex.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#356

Post by immibis »

ikt wrote: post #67
TrackerFF wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :\

Almost every cryptocurrency starts out with low fees and then fees increase when it gets popular and runs into processing limits.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#357

Post by FabHK »

pas wrote: post #334
bloppe wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand the initial arguments, look no further than the Genesis block, which includes this text: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks In many rich countries, all signs point to nasty inflation for the foreseeable future. Bitcoin is inflation-proof because there is no central bank that can print more Bitcoin. Having a secure system with that property means accepting some tradeoff…

but there's no compounding interest. no dividend based on future cashflows. holding stocks of a diverse index seems better on the long run, no?

Indeed. The crypto crowd seems to assume that the options for your savings are cash or bank deposits, or crypto. That's nonsense. A balanced portfolio of stocks (with some bonds maybe to reduce vol and improve your Sharpe Ratio) handily beats inflation. Heck, even bonds alone have mostly had positive real yields.

This also supports and funds the productive economy, unlike crypto.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#358

Post by spaceman_2020 »

originalvichy wrote: post #169
fy20 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, OP writes up crypto as being this terrible disease with no meaning. But outside of crypto there aren't many jobs that have real meaning either. I worked for the UN at one point, and that was actually one of the worse. At the end of the day you are always just working to make someone else rich or to give them the promotion they want. If you get rich yourself along the way, take that as a win.

I respectfully disagree. Even if you told me that you felt like working at the UN was a waste of time, I’d still tell you that at least you contributed to a historically unique global institution which at least strives to bring people across the world together. Bitcoin was just a waste of talent and resources.

Half the people here work for random SaaS and socially corrosive companies like Meta that have literally helped install dictators into power

You could do worse than building crappy blockchains

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#359

Post by dotancohen »

dist-epoch wrote: post #345
bloppe wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand the initial arguments, look no further than the Genesis block, which includes this text: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks In many rich countries, all signs point to nasty inflation for the foreseeable future. Bitcoin is inflation-proof because there is no central bank that can print more Bitcoin. Having a secure system with that property means accepting some tradeoff…

If you only care about inflation, real-estate in desirable locations is also inflation-proof. You can't print more land in San Francisco, London or Hong Kong.

Clearly crypto is more accessible to more people than is San Francisco, London, or Hong Kong real estate.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#360

Post by 4ndrewl »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #257
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.

> 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. That problem already has solutions. The problems cryptocurrency is supposed to solve are, I want to buy subversive literature fro…

Fairly niche things for which the market size nowhere near bears the investment in the technology?
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