i would have expected more adequate comments on HN, unfortunately it's mostly boomer-minded condescending gibberish from people who don't understand bitcoin, hfsp
I wasted years of my life in crypto
471–480 of 1001 posts
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#472Earlier 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.
Yes, and "buying subversive literature" is a crime too. That was the original point.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#473Earlier 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…
The blockchain and every transaction being public effectively disproves your entire supposed usecase.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#474My question is, which real-world problem is actually solved by crypto? All I know is transferring money over the border gets much easier than pre-bitcoin era.
That's the main legal use-case afaik. If you like travelling to a country that has no banking connection to your country, it might be more convenient to open a bank account or make friends in the target country and move money there via Bitcoin marketplaces. I've seen that plenty of times.
How does that work? You transfer the money in BTC, you exchange that into real money, you open a new bank account, you deposit that money, the bank's anti-money-laundering detection sees a large deposit to a newly open account and triggers an alert, the bank locks you out of the account and asks you for a proof of income/tax payment, you have no explanation of where that money came from legally, they freeze your account and report you to their local revenue services, you're SOL.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#475The 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 existence of fraud, toxicity and misinformation around bitcoin doesn't necessarily mean that bitcoin itself is broken. It's a very poorly understood technology, centering around money that once spent cannot be reversed. It's natural that MANY people would come along and attempt to exploit that gap. Over time though the bag of tricks will start to wear a bit thin, and people will learn what to look for.
Many people in the bitcoin community have been and are still calling out wallets that rely on 3rd party trust, decentralized exchanges that are build on a house of cards, alternative coins that are created purely for the purpose of pump and dump etc.
Meanwhile the core technology progresses and deals with functioning at larger scales, with lower entry and exit friction, improved safety guarantees.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#476The 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.
Not true by any means. Fiat is the tried and true way to commit crime. Having transcations on a ledger forever, works against your criminal take. You are just repeating.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#477The 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.
Anonymous crypto, yes.
But if you're suggesting blockchain is anonymous and payments are untraceable, that's not the case for bitcoin at least. It's a gift to law enforcement, if they cared enough to trace btc transactions.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#478Earlier 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.
A different metric of comparison isn't Bitcoin's energy consumption compared to other countries but compared to the existing banking system it's trying to replace, which burns more energy than Bitcoin and allegedly burns more energy funding wars with fiat. Mining gold instead of Bitcoin burns more energy than Bitcoin too. Compared to that for energy consumption, Bitcoin is superior really.
> compared to the existing banking system it's trying to replace
I don't think it's appropriate to compare it to the existing banking system (whose featureset goes far beyond payments and managing account balances).
It's appropriate to compare it to existing payment and account systems. And on that front, compared to e.g. Mastercard, there's no way Bitcoin is more efficient. TXs/watt, $/watt, however you want to measure it.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
The blockchain and every transaction being public effectively disproves your entire supposed usecase.
But wallets aren't associated with a real person by default, unless it's created through some service that does KYC. If you can get anonymous tokens in an anonymous wallet, who cares if the transactions are public?
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add to that, crypto is also a gift from heaven for criminals who need to receive ransoms.
Not true by any means. Fiat is the tried and true way to commit crime. Having transcations on a ledger forever, works against your criminal take. You are just repeating.
> Having transcations on a ledger forever
Do you think cash transactions don't have even more detailed ledgers? The "tried and true fiat" has been used to catch criminals for centuries because banks keep very detailed records of withdraws and deposits.
> You are just repeating
You are just repeating. Obviously both are being used for crime