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You Can Forget About Crypto Now

theatlantic.com

111–120 of 238 posts

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#111
post #92
post #3

> despite the ricketiness of the whole system, despite the constant feeling that everything might fall apart at any moment, there will come a time when crypto really arrives. For me crypto was always Ponzi scheme and nothing more, but it is because I don't laundry money or sell drugs, so I am not the target for crypto.

The narrative that crypto is usefull jusy for buying drugs or laundering money is ridiculous. A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes. Remember when OnlyFans was in trouble because of the payments processors wanting to pull the rug? You probably don't and you probably are not aware how many people would have been impacted. Do…

> A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes.

Ignoring the week-long wire detail (which deserves an explanation because that doesn't resonate with my experience), depending on when you sent that transaction, your wire could've lost a decent amount of value due to the price instability of bitcoin. Losing 5% in a matter of minutes because everyone is panicking is not a good deal.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#112
post #62

If it is a medium of exchange, all the attention never made a lot of sense. The use cases are niche; that's the thing. Venezuelans who avoid inflation and ordering illegal drugs are not a trillion-dollar business. All the legal/regulated areas mean competing with existing financial infrastructure, which is low margin and incredibly competitive. So if you see the space as a whole, it never had the potential market to…

>It was, in retrospect, simply a bubble

It was clearly this since 2016, imho

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#113
post #25

I can't imagine this ageing well. It doesn't feel different. The evangelists will hurt and the whole crypto industry is set back, the cynics gloat and revel in the schadenfreude and claim for the 748th time that crypto is dead... Until 12 months later when we do it all over again. It's not the biggest, it's not the first, it won't be the last, it's nowhere near the most catastrophic. At least let the dust settle befo…

Let's add this one to the list. https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/bitcoin-is-dead/

Wow this is amazing, really goes to show how comical it all is.

I could PROBABLY tolerate all these, if the headlines were something like "Bitcoin reaches all time low and new level of people are discouraged. Retail investors should be extra diligent." but...

"You can now"

Feels like its written for someone with the intelligence of a child who doesn't think on their own and needs to be spoon fed what to do. I have no idea how people can stand journalism like this.

This goes along with "Why is actually good." Makes me cringe to the depths of my soul that even a single solitary person would click something like that.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#115
post #92
post #3

> despite the ricketiness of the whole system, despite the constant feeling that everything might fall apart at any moment, there will come a time when crypto really arrives. For me crypto was always Ponzi scheme and nothing more, but it is because I don't laundry money or sell drugs, so I am not the target for crypto.

The narrative that crypto is usefull jusy for buying drugs or laundering money is ridiculous. A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes. Remember when OnlyFans was in trouble because of the payments processors wanting to pull the rug? You probably don't and you probably are not aware how many people would have been impacted. Do…

The ship is sinking so fast I swear I heard the words bubbling by the last paragraph.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#116
post #67

When they say "crypto", what do they mean. No, I understand that it's something to do with cryptocurrencies; but, confusingly, they must mean something more specific than that; because isn't bitcoin the OG of cryptocurrencies? And doesn't it still hold the promise of a parallel peer-to-peer non-inflationary currency, suitable for self-custody, which is totally orthogonal to the meltdown of a cryptoexchange? Does The…

> And doesn't it still hold the promise of a parallel peer-to-peer non-inflationary currency, suitable for self-custody, which is totally orthogonal to the meltdown of a cryptoexchange?

The meltdown of FTX is not orthogonal to bitcoin, it's an outright vulnerability of the system. You can't have a crypto exchange crash without underlying crypto tokens, period. If you're going to argue the merits of the design of crypto protocols, you must also acknowledge the failure to address this system of recklessness that drove the price of Bitcoin to astronomical heights only to crash.

The trustless nature of cryptocurrencies makes them susceptible to manipulation and there's nothing anyone can really do to mitigate that once it happens.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#117
post #77
post #42

> “We’re so early,” goes one popular crypto mantra I'm tired of this mantra. To me, crypto is starting to look less like the early internet, and more like the file-sharing mania of the late 90s early 00s, ie Napster, Kazaa, Limewire etc. A very likely outcome is that crypto will continue to be around, like some of the file sharing services, but using them will be more and more irrelevant and frowned upon by most peop…

Weren't those three all sued out of existence due to copyright infringement? That's very much a different reason for failure than what's going on in crypto.

Regulation is likely to have a similar impact in crypto.

Re: You Can Forget About Crypto Now

#118
post #67

When they say "crypto", what do they mean. No, I understand that it's something to do with cryptocurrencies; but, confusingly, they must mean something more specific than that; because isn't bitcoin the OG of cryptocurrencies? And doesn't it still hold the promise of a parallel peer-to-peer non-inflationary currency, suitable for self-custody, which is totally orthogonal to the meltdown of a cryptoexchange? Does The…

> doesn't it still hold the promise of a parallel peer-to-peer non-inflationary currency, suitable for self-custody, which is totally orthogonal to the meltdown of a cryptoexchange? In my experience whenever some poses a convoluted leading question like this, it's because they have already decided the answer. But let me try a simpler version: > doesn't it still hold the promise of a... currency Did it ever? Has any c…

> In my experience whenever some poses a convoluted leading question like this, it's because they have already decided the answer.

No; I am genuinely undecided. On the one hand, I hear the arguments of bitcoin advocates from 5-10 years ago (Andreas Antonopoulos; authors of college-level courses on cryptocurrencies and bitcoin; as well as random podcasters); and they still make sense to me — which I tried to inject into the question, and which, you say, made it convoluted. On the other hand, I don't yet have a dog in the fight; I am just observing the space with some curiosity.

> Has any crypto ever actually been successfully used as a currency for something other than the black/grey market?

Genuine question: why is the use on a black or a grey market a put-down for a currency? Isn't it, on the contrary, a true testament to the value of a currency, if it is sought after, as a means of exchange, on a black market?

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