Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

stephendiehl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 561 posts

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

#181

Post by [deleted] »

altmanaltman wrote: post #98
thrownawaysz wrote: post #2

>Meet Mike. Mike is a college freshman who is exposed to crypto through social media. He downloads Coinbase, buys ten dollars of CumRocket because his friend group is in on it, watches the price move, and feels for the first time the dopamine rush of gambling on non-economic random walks. By his sophomore year he is onto harder drugs: 0DTE options on triple-leveraged single-stock ETFs he does not understand, traded o…

Yeah like why is Mike thinking he is investing if he is betting on a literal sportsbook? That is delusion and has nothing to do with crypto. I am not pro crypto but the logic here doesn't make a lot of sense. You can say buying crypto is like gambling sure but it literally is not. It's investing in an extremely risky asset that can go to 0. But it is very different than placing a bit on Kalshi or a sportsbook. I actu…

[deleted]

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

#182

Post by michaelscott »

Nursie wrote: post #130
zmgsabst wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use crypto for exchange between friends (US + EU) and myself (SE Asia). Our options are IBAN (slow!), WesternUnion (fees, denials, hassles) or crypto (10min, cheap). We chose crypto - because it’s the practical path from their bank to mine. CashApp and Coinbase interface with my actual bank accounts, on my end. If you don’t do international banking, then much of the utility is diminished — so I’m not surprised by y…

Or a service like Wise which is cheap and takes a few minutes most of the time. Never had much of a need for other services when transferring across the globe.

They're not available everywhere, and the neo-banks in general are tightening their processes to a point where they're becoming difficult to use. I've had multiple situations now where Revolut denied things like a tap payment at a restaurant in NYC because it was an "unknown recipient". Of course they don't notify you of it, leading to an awkward 5 mins with the waiter while I rummage through the app to figure out why I can't use my own money this time. Fast and convenient it ain't

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

#183

Post by mistrial9 »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #109
pjc50 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a "vice" thing. Vices are things which match this pattern like alcohol or drugs: - many people don't indulge at all - many people indulge occasionally to no real harm - some people indulge in a way that makes a short term recoverable mess - a few people get addicted and are unable to stop. May or may not also be harmed at this point, but this tends to lead to cumulative harm - a few people really mess up trag…

I think this description is deceptive because it assumes bucket sizes ("many," "some," "a few"). Those bucket sizes work for alcohol and some recreational drugs. But they're tragically wrong for others--very very few people partake of heroin "occasionally with no real harm." You're almost certainly heading towards the last two buckets.

yeah - this is a flawed example, post-Purdue opioid epidemic. Brief tidbits include: real pharm science showed that pain killing effects of opioids are not as effective as some existing, non-opioid medications; sales agents were paid in commissions and bonuses for sales objectives; laws were changed at a Federal level just before the epidemic; the top of the sales pyramid financially benefited in the billions of dollars.

Those pills are actually similar to heroin, yet all of that happened legally in real life, with profits flowing through legitimate financial institutions on a very large scale.

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

#185

Post by mtndew4brkfst »

randusername wrote: post #144
SonOfLilit wrote: post #58

I wish I could just read the prompt rather then the very long article full of tiny mistakes that was generated from it.

What was the "tell" for you that makes you think this was AI-generated?

A lot of what else Stephen Diehl has published lately is more overtly slop, so it's a pretty safe bet.

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

#187

Post by sunshine-o »

titanomachy wrote: post #3

> A shadow dollar system, newly blessed by federal statute, is quietly migrating the savings of the global poor onto the balance sheets of a handful of opaque private companies. I'm out of the loop on this one. Is he talking about some crypto thing?

In recent years, since a lot of central banks have been putting gold and other assets instead of US dollars on their balance sheet, the dollar need new outlets and this is what those stablecoins through Circle and Tether are: easy access to dollars for anybody with a computer and internet connection, skipping banks and other financial institutions.

Trump is a pro crypto president in the sense that he is making it official and a lot of actors in finance are fighting it because it is killing their own lucrative scam.

The whole Trump memecoin and World Liberty Financial is shady but really a side story.

The bottom line is if you hold USD a lot of "legacy" actors are making money on your back. With stablecoins Tether, Circle & co join the party.

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

#188

Post by jameshart »

zeafoamrun wrote: post #91

> "A platform that the federal regulatory apparatus has agreed to treat as adjacent to a derivatives market listed, ran, settled, and paid out a binary contract on the eschatological return of the Christian messiah." How is this not the coolest shit ever?

You might be surprised what legitimate insurance companies have issued policies against in the past - it has always been the case that insurance and gambling are more closely adjacent than you might think.

For example: https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/ca/news/breaking-news/d...

“One British insurance company came to the rescue of three Scottish sisters … concerned about the cost of raising the Son of God should one of them be selected to give birth to the Messiah.”

Of course the big difference is insuring yourself against the personal risk of loss in the event of a specific outcome is not seen as quite the same as merely speculating on its occurrence. Insurance is just betting against what you want to happen happening.

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

#189

Post by [deleted] »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #179
john_strinlai wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you do not consider public health a social issue, what do you consider to be one?

You're putting words in my mouth. "Public health" deals with social problems regarding health, but it's a subset of "health" which also includes problems that are not social in nature. There are absolutely social issues around vaccines — how do we fund their development? how do we distribute them? how do we convince people to use them? — but as a technology I would say they solve a problem that is mostly independent…

[deleted]

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

#190

Post by Sharlin »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #114
Sharlin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Agriculture. Plumbing. The printing press. Electricity. Vaccines. Fiat money itself, which is a technology that is better than the technology of barter, which is better than each person having to grow or make every material thing they need.

All problems are social problems in that sense, but that's not what I meant. And if fiat money (as in, a type of social contract) is a technology, then anything is a technology.
Post reply on HN