Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place • Hacker News Board

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#61

Post by epolanski » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:15 AM UTC

We definitely live in depressing times where all decency has long been lost.

Just yesterday the US president has Tweeted the he "loves bombing the shit out of Iran".

The language is disgusting, what's happening is disgusting, from prediction markets and their disgusting shills/cultists trying to sell you that price discovery has positive social impact, politicians and administrations blatantly involved in scams and corruption, the US threatening its allies, civil liberties and privacy more and more dying around the world, the US kidnapping foreign leaders and half the world clapping and pretending it's not happening.

Every day there's more animosity, nationalism, protectionism, people blaming globalism ignoring the huge benefits and prosperity it brought, computer algorithms (AI) quickly eroding the only positive and creative edge humans really had.

It's just sad to see the state of the affairs and the increasingly selfish direction the world is taking.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#62

Post by blenklo » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:17 AM UTC

kriro wrote: post #38

The fun ahead will probably be capable LLMs + smart contracts. There are probably a lot of issues that can be discovered.

I don't think so as smart contracts have huge issues unsolved.

It also doesn't solve a problem we haven already solved; If i buy something, companies are quite aware how this default contract works and what are up and downside of doing business with someone.

In smart contracts you remove the trust these people build and now come up with another mechanism. The latest i'm aware of is blocking capital from both sides until transaction is done. This binds a lot more capital on both sides which might be a huge problem for a small company vs. a big one, it could alos kill one party if the other party never accepts any resolution.

A current LLM with a credit card an already just buy something and everything in the background works as it has for a long time.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#63

Post by aurareturn » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:18 AM UTC

Having worked in crypto analytics briefly, normal people have no clue how much fraud and scams are happening in crypto at the exchange level.

FTX collapsed and was caught but more conservative crypto exchanges continue to use customer funds, trade against their own customers, use insider information, etc.

Even a supposedly "legitimate" exchange like Coinbase is allowing unregistered securities to trade on its platform.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#64

Post by blenklo » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:20 AM UTC

rvz wrote: post #36

I think we have a clear idea on what sort of crypto is useful (stablecoins) and which ones are not (memecoins, Bitcoin). As we have seen with Stripe [0], Shopify [1], PayPal [2] and many others have all figured out its utility is in stablecoins like USDC, which you can send them worldwide, same day, 24/7 in seconds close to $0 with no room for speculation and pay for things and soon agents will do the same. [3] We ge…

Only virtual fiat is useful everything is garbage.

The stable coins in question are absolut idiotic. You can't just have billions and trillions of dollars/euros/fiat in some bank and not do anything with it while everyone else is using your stable coins.

It motivates these companes to invest the fiat they have to hold, which adds risk which wasn't there before.

Just make it a real digital fiat from central banks.

But than what did you win? Instead of having your banking ssystem in place with certifications, bank licenses etc. you have nothing to replace it with just bare digital fiat.

Smart contracts don't work.

Now what? a new whole parallel ecosystem? For what?

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#65

Post by blenklo » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:22 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #44

The weird thing about it to me is that it lumbers on. There was that time I’d dread going to parties because that crypto guy was there. That time Bloomberg got its best writer to write a whole issue of Businessweek about it a week before the SBF fraud broke. Then there was that weird time between when crypro brown jumped on the AI bandwagon before Ezra Klein did. And now the crypto bros are still talking… to each oth…

And they repeat the same wrong garbage.

At least the pressure on the financial market, GPU shortage through AI, AI we have a realistic chance that crashes more and more.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#66

Post by koolba » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:22 AM UTC

RobotToaster wrote: post #47

deweller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume he is referring to the uptick in stablecoin adoption. USD Stable coins are US dollar-backed cryptocurrency tokens that are intended to always hold a value of $1 USD. Stablecoins are not backed by a central bank. Instead their source of value comes from a private company that holds actual US dollars or USD-equivalent reserves (like treasury bills, etc).

I've always wondered, how do the companies that run stablecoins make a profit? Are they buying treasury bonds?

Each $1 of stable coin is supposed to be backed by $1 of dollar or short term equivalent. So the issuer is making money by collecting interest on it.

3-4% of billions (USDC alone is $80 billion) would itself be billions of dollars of annual interest. Easily covering the operating cost of these companies.

However, they don’t keep it all. Nobody is going to let you hold their cash in size without getting a slice of the interest. All the big players (like an exchange holding USDC of its patrons) cut deals with the stable coin issuers for a revenue split of that interest.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#67

Post by fn-mote » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:23 AM UTC

himata4113 wrote: post #45

Cryptocurrency is very much a double edged sword, on one hand it enables people to transact monetary value bypassing for-profit operators such as western union and paypal as well as hinders corrupt government institutions from confiscating or otherwise devaluing what you own. Of course this also allows people with harmful intentions to do the same, bypass centralized systems that keep fraud in check, mitigate theft a…

I’m ignorant of this but it seems wrong.

30% lost in fees??

Can they not manage to open a dollar-backed account somewhere?

Also:

> being stored in a currency that might lose a majority of its value overnight

I for sure put crypto in this same category. “Stablecoin” or not.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#68

Post by insanitybit » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:25 AM UTC

righthand wrote: post #53

insanitybit wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this "anything" coming from? Do you think this is the only article about this topic? This isn't even new.

Oh okay, there are multiple articles on the same thing, don’t read or inform yourself of anything because they might spoil an old TV show! The article isn’t a light refresher on corruption, it literally has suggestions of how to change cryptocurrency investment for the better. It is frankly very indepth and lengthy and very good. But one wouldn’t know that if they skipped over it because of few lines might hurt their…

Don't put spoilers in your article then idk what to tell you.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#69

Post by Sharlin » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:25 AM UTC

alehrs wrote: post #50

I've been deep into crypto for years and I was a big stablecoin supporter. I was fascinated by the tech and I still am. But everything outside the tech itself is just trash, scams, and gambling. I've come to believe that "pure" decentralization is neither practical nor particularly convenient. The only real use case that makes sense to me is giving people in developing countries access to a stable currency they can a…

Technological solutions to social problems only tend to work when the problems are of the type "I wish it were easier to rid people of their money".

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#70

Post by andy81 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC

nytesky wrote: post #54

deweller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume he is referring to the uptick in stablecoin adoption. USD Stable coins are US dollar-backed cryptocurrency tokens that are intended to always hold a value of $1 USD. Stablecoins are not backed by a central bank. Instead their source of value comes from a private company that holds actual US dollars or USD-equivalent reserves (like treasury bills, etc).

Is it similar to WildCat banking?

More than similar. Another word for the same thing.