Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that governments might not be able to stop people from using stablecoins affects the laws, though.
The governments cannot stop people holding physical notes either, and they still have the laws.
[deleted]
Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
381–390 of 561 posts
Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entertainment industry tried for decades to achieve artificial scarcity for profit. All scammers?
What are you talking about - the entertainment industry is the most famous scam industry ever, giving the most famous artists just enough money to keep them dependent and pocketing 90% of it themselves.
Ah yes, independent computer game producers adding copy protection were scammers.
Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simple debt isn't cutting it anymore. The "Debt to whom, and what outcomes does that person value?" question is important. Ignoring it and continuing to buy and sell simple debt traps people in situations where their economic way forward involves contributing to outcomes that makes their material situation worse. It's time bomb, each generation has diminishing incentives to participate. > alternative is to forgo the…
> The "Debt to whom, and what outcomes does that person value?" question is important. It may be, but it is one you, the employer, can easily ask during the interview. If a prospective employee doesn't align with your values, you don't have to hire them, and thus won't have to make them any promises to deliver anything that you don't feel comfortable with. This isn't only theoretical. "Cultural fit" is considered by…
If the debts were spread around evenly, I'd agree with you. But the vast majority of debt is not peer to peer, but instead goes through a bank. If you're going to restrict a bank from using your mortgage to enable loans for endeavors that will hurt you (or selling the debt to somebody who will do this), I think you do need a new kind of accounting.
Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
> scarcity based economics is failing us and crypto give us a way to explore alternatives The entire field of crypto was an attempt to create scarcity where none existed, by turning scarce electricity into special numbers.
It was about creating a rules based monetary system. It made engineering sense to start with a mimic of a system that was already known to be consistent (gold), but the feeling I got was that it was much more about letting the people choose which rules they wanted to follow, and less about favoring any particular ruleset (i.e. ones that create scarcity).
By that logic, Musk breaths air which probably eventually mixes with the air you breath, thus there is no escaping him.
Come on dude
Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
#385I'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…
From a stablecoin perspective holding USDC or USDT is almost like having a bank account with a bank who, for the most part, allows you to maintain your privacy as an individual. They don't need a name, address, phone number, etc. They also run on infrastructure that exists beyond any single jurisdiction and spans countries and continents. This means that bank account can be used anywhere that has internet and people willing to transact. No government can keep you within their confines by holding your funds hostage nor can political leaders (or others with positions of power) use those controls to silence public outcry or civil disobedience.
> It's actually riskier in every meaningful way
That statement is only true to you, not everyone.
Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or you could just give your agents a debit card number loaded with only as much money as you specify.
I believe with x402 and USDC you can pay as low as $0.000001 per HTTP request with no fees. The existing "credit card" infrastructure is not designed to compete with that. Now some actors like Paypal could have come up with an HTTP 402 standard and implementation 25 years ago but they never did. I am not sure why.
> I believe with x402 and USDC you can pay as low as $0.000001 per HTTP request with no fees.
On-chain transactions are still not free. x402 isn't settled in batches or rolled up anywhere AFAIK, so large volumes of tiny payments are still not cost-effective. Facilitators such as Coinbase only subsidize transactions up to a point: https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/core-concepts/facilitator
There are ways around this, but with tradeoffs.
Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was about creating a rules based monetary system. It made engineering sense to start with a mimic of a system that was already known to be consistent (gold), but the feeling I got was that it was much more about letting the people choose which rules they wanted to follow, and less about favoring any particular ruleset (i.e. ones that create scarcity).
By that logic, Musk breaths air which probably eventually mixes with the air you breath, thus there is no escaping him. Come on dude
I don't know what you're talking about. We build society either out of rules or out of threats and favors. Preferring innovation on the rules side has nothing to do with who breathes whose air, unless you want to make a rule about that and enforce it with software--which you probably shouldn't, because it's dumb.
Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Cryptocurrency is useful as as a backup system against failing/weak institutions. Just that. Like insurance, it was not there to make anyone's lives better but simply to become a safeguard to avoid complete collapse.
If it was just a backup against failing/weak institutions it would be relavively benign, but the problem is that it incentivises machiavellian types to undermine society and nation states for their own personal profit - see e.g. The Sovereign Individual[0]. Combined with effective accelerationism[1] you can see why we could be heading towards somewhere a whole lot worse than The Bad Place. [0] https://en.wikipedia.or…
Proponents of weak and failing institutions would make this exact claim about any sort of backup or alternative.
Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
#389Cryptocurrency 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…
Crypto has utterly failed as a currency. In that regard it's been dead for over a decade. If btc or eth were currency they'd be considered dead by deflationary spiral which is more or less what every economist predicted from the start. Some people got rich by investing but getting rich off of currency speculation is generally awful for people who rely on that currency to live. Crypto has been a success the same way T…
And at least The Room didn't enable ransomware.
Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're going to Paris? Sure, as long as the amounts are relatively small. Try paying with pre 2009 100USD bills in Africa lol. Even banks struggle with this https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/05/30/old-money-new-proble... Goes to show how viable cash is as a store of value for most of the world.
According to that article it has nothing to do with condition, but with the lack of anti-counterfeiting protection on older notes. I have lived in, and briefly worked in a bank in, in a country where people do use USD, GBP etc. notes as a store of value, sometimes in large amounts (you hear about that when they get burgled!).
Cambodia official currency is USD (1000 riel = meant to be 0.25c, goes up to 50000 riel) prices are advertised in $ in general with sometimes 1$ = 4200/4300/4500...
Anyway key point is your USD better be mint and at least 2018 or they will refuse it... Same at currency exchanges in most of south east Asia that have their own currency.