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The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

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Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#201

Post by NoGravitas »

pjc50 wrote: post #132
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - when you buy a house - you also are "buying a title". That's not why people buy houses or cars. They buy them to use & own them. Maybe Ultra High Net Worth Individuals who collect cars and $10M lakefront mansions across the world don't buy cars and houses to "use" them. But >99% of cars and houses are bought for use - not for a piece of paper to prove ownership. Sure - the people buying $1M NFTs are probably Ult…

People definitely buy real estate for the resale value.

Right, but the use value (both for primary homeowners and for, Allah forgive me for using this word, landlords) stands as a backstop to the resale value of real estate.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#202

Post by _xnmw »

For those who believe "crypto is too big to fail", or the genie is out of the bottle, or that crypto concepts have become so engrained and popular that it's not possible to stop, I'd like to point out that Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scam lasted for 30+ years. People built entire lives on his very professional-seeming "business". Scams can go on for a very long time, and very large numbers of people can build their whole lives on a lie (even successfully).

Crypto is probably the most brilliant scam in the history of mankind, because it combines plausible deniability with techno-obfuscation and meme-driven popularity to a degree that makes it nearly impossible for democratic governments to regulate (good on China for banning it!), and this state of affairs may continue for quite a while. But even if it doesn't all come crashing down in my lifetime, I still won't touch it with a ten-foot pole as a matter of principle, no matter the potential gains. There are some things I won't get involved with as a matter of principle, such as certain illegal drugs, even if they were legal.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#203

Post by facorreia »

Aeolun wrote: post #164
gonehome wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep agreed, and other underlying applications (NFTs as evidence of group membership or ownership that can be easily owned and transferred, an auditable historical record) have a lot of value. The ability to hold decentralized state is a resilient way is pretty cool and a lot of the finance applications are better than legacy stuff - try sending large amounts of money around in the legacy system, expect to wait severa…

> try sending large amounts of money around in the legacy system, expect to wait several days for every action The legacy system (e.g. banks) aren’t sitting still either. In many parts of the world (Europe) a transaction is pretty much instant.

Same in Brazil.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#204

Post by selestify »

moron4hire wrote: post #174
selestify wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of what you mentioned was never meant to be the value-add of NFTs, which is namely that there's a trustless, verifiable record of transfer from the original creator (which yes, you have to verify is actually the person you think it is) to the current holder. When tied to physical possessions, it's one additional piece of evidence that the thing before you is likely genuine. When tied to digital entities, it's an…

So what I hear you saying is that NFT concept only works if everything becomes an NFT, immediately upon creation. Any hold-outs or delays gives room for fraudulent minting, which means you don't have a trustless system. You can't say that NFTs are a trustless system when the origin of the NFT requires trust. You might as well assume the "+ C" term in all integrals equals zero. It's just factually incorrect.

> So what I hear you saying is that NFT concept only works if everything becomes an NFT, immediately upon creation. Any hold-outs or delays gives room for fraudulent minting, which means you don't have a trustless system.

No, as long as it's known that the address that created the NFT is owned by whichever public figure created the artwork, you're good to go.

> You can't say that NFTs are a trustless system when the origin of the NFT requires trust.

That's like saying PGP is not a trustless encryption scheme because you still have to trust that the person you're exchanging encrypted information with is who they say they are. Nobody (who is informed anyway) has made any sort of claim about PGP fixing that problem. It is entirely irrelevant to the value-add.

Now, whether you believe the value-add actually matters given the caveats is another topic of discussion, of course.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#205

Post by vmception »

Offering fixed interest while achieving variable interest in underlying assets carries inherent risks whether Celsius has a shortfall or not.

Crypto Lending services are just like banks in the sense that they pocket a spread. This article is incorrect in the sense that Celsius doesnt have much higher DeFi yield earning opportunities.

I can go fetch a highly volatile 60% right now (the rate is highly volatile but the principle is not necessarily highly volatile), actively managed, and offer users a super competitive 8-12%.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#206

Post by micromacrofoot »

usehackernews wrote: post #75
obayesshelton wrote: post #15

Crypto and NFT is one big ponzi scheme. Who on earth is spending $000,000s on a virtual ship? I sense it is a case of somebody close to the NFT or virtual world buying the asset and making out it is a great thing and then selling it on quickly. Many a scam involves somebody from the group buying something so the unwilling feel like it safe. As always, don't be left holding the baby.

Why do people on HN assume that if they don’t find something valuable, others shouldn’t either. I think of NFTs like car titles. Having the car title in your name is the only way to prove you own a car. Someone can burrow your car, and have it in their possession but that doesn’t make them the owner - the title does. When you buy a car, what you’re really buying is a little paper that says you’re the owner - without…

When you buy the car you own the car. When you buy the NFT you typically own the title but not the car.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#207

Post by nextaccountic »

hackingforfun wrote: post #73
daniel-thompson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it will remain very useful as a medium of exchange The only current usecase I'm aware of for crypto as a medium of exchange is for criminals, i.e. ransomware / extortion / etc.

I see this point rehashed on HN over and over. I'd love if there was a more productive discussion of cryptocurrencies. I don't think they are going away anytime soon. Too many technologists and others are thinking about them now. I personally think store of value is a strong use case, at least for those of us who consider them to have value. Just wondering, what would it take for you (and others who share similar vie…

Crypto is a very volatile asset, it doesn't seem good for actually storing value.

It would be great if the demand was organic and driven by consumption. This could stabilize the price. Right now it's mostly speculative.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#208

Post by BoorishBears »

gonehome wrote: post #76
WFHRenaissance wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a huge fan of the the current cryptocurrency scene, but I think it will remain very useful as a medium of exchange and store of value in unstable parts of the globe for years to come.

Yep agreed, and other underlying applications (NFTs as evidence of group membership or ownership that can be easily owned and transferred, an auditable historical record) have a lot of value. The ability to hold decentralized state is a resilient way is pretty cool and a lot of the finance applications are better than legacy stuff - try sending large amounts of money around in the legacy system, expect to wait severa…

> There are always people dismissing any new thing - the value of that signal is near zero

Crypto is too old to play this card.

Could you have gotten rich off investing in Enron? Sure, it made some people fantastically rich. That doesn't mean Enron was a sound company.

Nothing with the word "currency" can experience 5 digit deflation and call itself anything but a failure in that regard. Nothing cynical about that take, and it's a useful signal for those who expect to treat it as a currency.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#209

Post by arcticbull »

pjc50 wrote: post #191
arcticbull wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stablecoins will turn into CBDCs and CBDCs will serve that purpose. Bitcoin is down from 68K to 48K in the last what 3 weeks? Stores of value don't flail wildly and incoherently at the whims of a few whales, and given it supports 2-3 tx/sec using the energy of an entire country, it's a crap medium of exchange too. The future of crypto for anyone other than an anacap libertarian is CBDCs.

CBDCs aren't really cryptocurrency though, for good and ill, they're just a database with extra steps.

Blockchains are just databases with extra steps. Very slow, inefficient steps most people don't care about.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#210

Post by asdfsd234234444 »

gentleman11 wrote: post #10

We keep expecting crypto to die but then again, we still have antivirus software that is spyware (avast), a scammy vpn industry, and a thriving anti vax movement. No matter how absurd it is, it might stick around for a long time now

tell me you don't understand crypto without telling me you don't understand crypto
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