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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

#391

Post by pjc50 »

bloppe wrote: post #328
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…

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…

> there is no central bank that can print more Bitcoin

It turns out this doesn't matter: you can't hear the inflation argument over the volatility. The amount of goods you can buy per Bitcoin changes dramatically on a month by month basis. It's just that everyone loved it while it was going up, but that's not actually guaranteed!

Also, you can't print more Bitcoin, but that doesn't matter: you can fork it (people have, BCH), or you can just endlessly spawn new token chains, or you can have things which both sides regard as abominations but are somehow immensely popular: stablecoins. These give you the legal stability of crypto tied to the price stability of the dollar. It turns out that what people actually wanted was several hundred billion dollars of virtual poker chips.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#392

Post by 7bit »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #388
phplovesong wrote: post #363

The original promise of crypto was lost a LONG time ago. Instead of being a true rival to FIAT, it became a thing with a toxic-as-hell commumity, fraud, and basically its nothing more than a high risk stock. The risk is NOT only "will this go up or down" but you have a high risk of being robbed, as have happened to millions of people. Maybe there will be a better alternative in the future, but right now bitcoin is no…

> The risk is NOT only "will this go up or down" but you have a high risk of being robbed, as have happened to millions of people. Using a cryptocurrency (originally) meant basically opting out of the governmental violence-as-a-service for cryptocurrency/-token purposes and taking care of this aspect by yourself. Depending on your resourcefulness and lifestyle, this may mean - hiring personal security - being very ca…

You you do the last, you deserve to get found out and punished accordingly. Pay your taxes people, like everybody else.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#393

Post by AnthonyMouse »

habinero wrote: post #383
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, tell me how I buy something over the internet without tying the purchase to my government ID. Your argument seems like "only criminals want privacy" which is a no.

No, the argument is crypto is primarily used for crimes. Which is true. Also, if you want privacy, don't use crypto.

> No, the argument is crypto is primarily used for crimes. Which is true.

The argument is right here:

> Outside of buying sex and drugs the only uses for cryptocoins are, and always has been, ransoms, scams and gambling.

It doesn't contain the word "primarily" which indeed makes it false, and the rebuttal to your different claim is this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46190260

> Also, if you want privacy, don't use crypto.

Can you tell me another way of buying something over the internet without tying the purchase to a government ID?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#394

Post by Dilettante_ »

amelius wrote: post #384
phplovesong wrote: post #363

The original promise of crypto was lost a LONG time ago. Instead of being a true rival to FIAT, it became a thing with a toxic-as-hell commumity, fraud, and basically its nothing more than a high risk stock. The risk is NOT only "will this go up or down" but you have a high risk of being robbed, as have happened to millions of people. Maybe there will be a better alternative in the future, but right now bitcoin is no…

To add to that, crypto is also a gift from heaven for criminals who need to receive ransoms.

"Freedom enables crime" is an entirely true argument, and a gift from heaven for The Powers That Be who need to justify the taking-away of Freedom.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#395

Post by pjc50 »

Dilettante_ wrote: post #387

Cynically reduced, tfa reads as: "I don't like what the population is choosing to use their brand-new Freedom for", but claims to say: "The promised freedom did not materialize." If crypto allows people to do something that was previously not possible(order drugs in the mail with the convenience of amazon, invest at consistently insanely chaotic conditions, run multimillion hustles with total impunity) versus doing s…

> "I don't like what the population is choosing to use their brand-new Freedom for"

I think this is a totally valid conclusion, especially for someone growing out of Randianism. It's yet another Chesterton's Fence, or someone discovering that the safety rails were there for good reasons.

I'm not sure how we got from the massive international overreach of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg to "sports gambling is now endemic and everyone has trading-themed gambling apps in their pocket". It seems like gambling is too cancerous: you can't just have a little gambling in a corner somewhere, it will take over everything if allowed to exist.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#396

Post by munksbeer »

mirekrusin wrote: post #376
phplovesong wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply put: Bitcoin was to be an alternative to FIAT, but it ended up being nothing more then a meme-stock that consumes more energy than Poland or Argentina. Its sad really. But the greed in people turned it into shit.

I never understood why bitcoin is winning popularity/pricing over ie. ethereum - which doesn't burn energy anymore and you can actually do programming on it, not just moving money from a to b.

Because it's based on narratives. Bitcoin has the strong narrative and the "network effect". Because bitoin keeps surviving, the narrative reinforces itself. At this point surely most people know, even if they're unwilling to admit or fooling themselves, the utility value is basically dead.

The utility value is now a pure gamble that a person tomorrow will pay me more than I paid for it today, thinking that a person in the future will pay them more than they paid. And that can be a powerful enough narrative to keep it going.

But if bitcoin disappeared today, 99.99999% of the world wouldn't even notice, that is how little of a problem it solves.

Anyway, the point is, imagine the scenario if ethereum overtook bitcoin in value. What will this actually do to the ecosystem? In my view, it would be catastrophic to the value of all coins, because it suddenly destroys the narrative of a "store of value" (the last lingering narrative). Any other coin could just overtake ethereum, and out of all the thousands of coins, which one? At that point, I think the whole thing comes down.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#397

Post by symbogra »

hamburgererror wrote: post #294

I heard some people were talking about using crypto to build a full State on it, this is doomed to fail. Let's say you loose your wallet. What do you do next? You call your bank to block your credit card and to take an appointment with the administration to make a new ID, driving license etc. The cash in your wallet is gone but everything else isn't. The process is annoying but at the end of the day you'll be fine. N…

Account Abstraction fixes this

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#398

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

mozarella wrote: post #206

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/01/31/end.html#section... Vitalik touched upon this briefly in an other-wise long and wide-reaching essay. I think its a good treatment of the topic that the author is talking about. He categorizes the ecosystem broadly into 4 cohorts- [token holders] (which includes investors, speculators, etc.), [pragmatic users] (actual end-users who spend crypto to buy stuff), [intellectuals]…

The only buyers are criminals, sanction evaders, and probably the dumbest people in the world given that the entire crypto ecosystem is focused on one thing and one thing only. Creating the most deflationary monetary system in history.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#399

Post by Dilettante_ »

wisty wrote: post #277
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.

The issue isn't that it solves the wrong problem. The issue is that crypto boosters (including a few already here) claim it solves a whole host of other problems without thinking things through, kind of like some communists. Then if you argue enough they'll point out that things can be fixed ... but bitcoin is now indistinguishable from any other currency, other than its payment system that will no longer be widely u…

Your argument here appears to be "crypto is no better than fiat, because you can build the same systems on top of them."

What you put on top is not the core value proposition of cryptocurrencies? It's what's underneath that's different, that was always the point. Fiat currency is built on a foundation of gov't control, whether it's the physical currency or the money in your bank account. Cryptocurrencies, fundamentally, are under no such control. If you're stupid enough to go get a 5mil loan in bitcoin from a bank who is only holding 1.7mil, and the delivery of said bitcoin is a slip of paper saying "iou btc lol" that's not the currency failing you, it's you acting stupidly.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#400

Post by redhale »

> It would be a lie for me to say that I joined crypto without any financial motivation. As a reader, it may sound hypocritical to you that I decided to swear off the crypto industry, now that I have made enough money. Yes, maybe I am hypocritical. But maybe I also just feel sick about contributing to the cesspool of financialization and gamblification of the economy.

If they truly feel sick about it, they should donate the money they made (or the vast majority of it). Otherwise, hypocritical is right.

> Look at what they do, not what they say

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