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Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

stephendiehl.com

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

#511

Post by nradov »

altruios wrote: post #293
nradov wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiat currency isn't just a matter of belief or stories. If you interact with the US financial system in any significant way then you're likely to end up owing some income taxes, and those can only be paid in US dollars. If you don't pay then eventually law enforcement officers will seize your assets (real estate, cattle, gold, cryptocurrency, whatever) by force and auction them off to settle your tax debt. And if you…

> Fiat currency isn't just a matter of belief or stories ... Then how do we, as a society, determine how much a dollar is worth?! We do use force to enforce the stories we tell about fiat. But 'believe this story about how much a dollar will buy you and how much you owe, or else we will send thugs to your house' isn't disproving the point at all.

Determinations of worth are irrelevant. If the government says you have to pay $1000 in taxes then you have to come up with $1000, regardless of any stories or beliefs.

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

#512

Post by eudamoniac »

HDBaseT wrote: post #501
eudamoniac wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be surprising to hear that someone obtained such a high line of credit that it took 20 years to pay off, while not understanding how credit works, but I guess that is possible

Disclaimer: I've never used a Credit Card and have no intention to do so. I don't really see the complexity/confusion with credit cards and I struggle to see how people get into poor financial positions with them. Credit Cards are effectively mini-loans. You spend $100 here, $200 there, they get bundled on a credit card which had an interest rate applied to whatever you purchase if not paid back by the defined date.…

Apparently some people don't understand some combination of interest existing or that the minimum payment is less than the interest owed or that you have to pay back the loan whatsoever. This is everyone else's fault, they insist.

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

#513

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#514

Post by whiplash451 »

mothballed wrote: post #121
whiplash451 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t there fees to convert fiat from/to crypto on both ends?

You can make the fees rather than pay them if you make the market. There are decentralized exchanges where this can be done ~trivially for even low amounts. The fees are for those who want instant gratification.

That sounds like a lot of complexity for the average user.

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

#515

Post by inigyou »

trollbridge wrote: post #456
inigyou wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about people wanting to buy abortion pills?

Cash, at a pharmacy. Crypto doesn’t make that any better. Neither does online ordering. Online orders have to have a degree of KYC.

It's illegal to sell abortion pills. What now?

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

#516

Post by inigyou »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #500
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like influencing the government to eliminate NIH funding for vaccine research so that that I have to worry about whether my niece will get measles and end up with brain damage.

I don't think I enable that in any meaningful amount by taking money from a person that used to have a tesla. And if they only gave me $60 or so, and I made $10, I find it extremely unlikely the amount of harm tied back to musk is also in the range of $10. Also sorry to be blunt but in the vaccine situation I almost entirely blame the person directly in charge of your niece's vaccinations.

You don't enable it by taking money from a person that used to have a Tesla. The point was that you have to do what musk says, and musk told you you have to sell stuff to people who used to have Teslas (that's what giving money is).

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

#517

Post by inigyou »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #443
inigyou wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all or nothing sounds better. There was a top HN story yesterday about the curse of excessive granularity. Not only does it require excessive attention to maintain the right values - and now you're requiring coin selection as well - but can also lead to outcomes being contradictory to your intention. Circles trust isn't about how much I actually trust you to deliver the product I bought and not harm me - it's…

It was inspired by this mural I saw when I visited Chile. There was this whole saga of exploitation by outsiders, terminating with a brown person shoving another brown person's hand into a blender and accepting a credit card from a white person (it's right outside the street art tour place in Valparaíso). It was pretty striking to be there, a white tourist with a credit card in hand, and to see how the locals felt ab…

Good news, he doesn't have to because money only travels along reverse trust chains. If you don't trust Elon but Alice trusts Elon and you trust Alice, then it's actually Alice who is paying you directly to shove your friend's hand in a blender. Maybe reconsider your friendship with her.

Why wouldn't it lead to a bid war bringing exchange ratios arbitrarily close to 1? You may take a 70% cut of any transaction does with you, but Alice figures out if she charges a 50% cut, she gets to keep 50% and you keep nothing of that same transaction. Then Bob figures he can undercut Alice by charging only 30%...

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

#518

Post by trollbridge »

inigyou wrote: post #515
trollbridge wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash, at a pharmacy. Crypto doesn’t make that any better. Neither does online ordering. Online orders have to have a degree of KYC.

It's illegal to sell abortion pills. What now?

Cash seems to have functioned pretty well for the illegal drug trade for a long time.

What’s your point? Crypto somehow facilitates illegal financial transactions? That is not going to make normal people eager to use it.

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

#519

Post by Nursie »

Nursie wrote: post #504
michaelscott wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

Wise isn’t a neobank though, it’s a transfer service. Personally, given that story, I’d stop using Revolution!

Revolut! Damn you autocorrect!

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

#520

Post by l23k4 »

graemep wrote: post #359
l23k4 wrote: post #337

Earlier 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!).

In my experience what Paradigm2020 describes is very much the norm around the world.

> and briefly worked in a bank in,

I suspect this might be where the confusion stems from, if you're thinking of places where people go to banks you might be thinking a bit too fancy.

I'm thinking of stuff more like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCDQpm6f_pU

>According to that article it has nothing to do with condition, but with the lack of anti-counterfeiting protection on older notes.

I'd say the age of the money has everything to do with condition, and it matters a lot.

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