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Google bans cryptocurrency ads

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Re: Google bans cryptocurrency ads

#271
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was only a handful of engineers who "created the space" to begin with, so even though there isn't much overlap, it's pretty much always been a community made up of shady folks, it's only that the fraudsters have become less technically sophisticated and more brazen as activity has increased and the blockchain community has grown and continued to radiate cosmic rays of hype.

> always been a community made up of shady folks That's not fair. Shady folks are just getting more publicity. Noone talks about people who created stuff that works and doesn't scam people. And there's a lot of such stuff. This space is growing because of such people, despite the shady folks.

>Noone talks about people who created stuff that works and doesn't scam people. And there's a lot of such stuff.

No, there isn't. It's always been nebulous talk of "potential" without any concrete uses beyond scams and criminal activity. There have just been iterations of tools for those areas. Then you have the near-religious libertarian True Believers who promote as a matter of faith, regardless of what the reality is.

This article remains ever-so-relevant:

>Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...

Re: Google bans cryptocurrency ads

#272
post #267

We've created a generation of people who will do anything they are told to do. Now these big corps and governments feel like they have to baby-proof the world because we've created a bunch of lemmings who will give all their money to an ICO because a banner told them to.

> we've created a bunch of lemmings who will give all their money to an ICO because a banner told them to. It is a problem of basic finance education which should be part of the school curriculum. People also buy a lot of stuff they don't need or include false claims because a banner told them to.

And then the legal system is structured to essentially allow this behaviour because it's not worth the time or effort in most cases, and the system is designed for settlement, not for justice - settlement which most often requires agreeing to silence - which then prevents society from getting educated/learning of these problems.

Re: Google bans cryptocurrency ads

#273

Google also shut down my google cloud Compute Engine server without notice, as I tried to run a mining pool. "Mining" is against their TOS (wasn't mining). Wonderful future. Moving to Amazon works fine for now...

You were running a mining pool, but somehow not mining? The dissonance astounds.

There is a lot of snark in these comments. No, mining pools do not mine. They host HTTP website where users sign up, and a "stratum" server, where miners connect, and submit their "work". No mining (as in no CPU usage for hashing).

Re: Google bans cryptocurrency ads

#274
post #99

I was listening to terrestrial radio the other day and was surprised to hear a radio advertisement beckoning retirees to cash in their 401ks to join the cryptocurrency future of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The bubble is too big for Google to slow it down and it has grown beyond the realm of tech savvy geeks into something fueled by hype and hubris.

The frustrating bit is that these scams paint a really sour picture of the space as a whole. There's a lot of value to cryptocurrencies, and as a technology it's poised to change the world in some very serious ways. People latch onto it because it's a powerful idea and because the underlying technology has a lot of legitimacy to it. People hear ads about how you need to move over your 401k and discount the whole spac…

>The frustrating bit is that these scams paint a really sour picture of the space as a whole. There's a lot of value to cryptocurrencies, and as a technology it's poised to change the world in some very serious ways.

This gets repeated ad nauseam. Maybe it might be time to consider that this tidal wave of scams IS the way the technology is changing the world?

Re: Google bans cryptocurrency ads

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't want to slow it down. They just don't want to be associated with companies that are related to fraud. And, I think that this is a valid and correct choice for Google because they have their own brand to protect.

> They just don't want to be associated with companies that are related to fraud. More specifically, Google doesn't want the SEC to hold them liable when they go after some of these fraudsters.

They also don't want:

* sites abandoning adsense because they don't want to be associated with cryptocurrency

* users installing adblockers because they don't want to be running monero miners

Re: Google bans cryptocurrency ads

#277
post #151

I'm really interested in cryptocurrencies and excited about their future, but I'm disgusted by their use as a platform for scams. I'm afraid that I support this, and I really wish people in the cryptocurrency community would do more to educate people about scams. Of course I suppose it's futile. Once this kind of mania takes off it takes on a life of its own.

I think scammers are drawn to irreversibility of transactions (at least for the cryptocurrencies that I know). Can't call your credit card company and cancel the transaction.

Re: Google bans cryptocurrency ads

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because at the end of the day an share of AMZ means you own a small percentage of that company. That includes a small percentage of all their physical assets, servers, real estate, cash on hand etc. So yeah there is some intrinsic value.

Exactly. Cryptocurrency valuations at the moment are 99% speculation about future utility. Actually it may be 99.9%.

Pet peeve: made up numbers. Why not just use an adverb?

Yes, I spend a lot of time annoyed.

Re: Google bans cryptocurrency ads

#279
post #180
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought the "guaranteed to go up in value" claim was silly. If it's guaranteed to go up in value, why would they want to sell it to me?

Money today is worth more than money tomorrow. If you have idle capital and I have something valuable, I can cash in sooner and you can get a valuable resource. So there is a legitimate reason for me to sell you something that is guaranteed to go up in value assuming that I want money now more than you do. That's not an endorsement of any asset in the crypto space, and I would never remotely suggest that any token to…

>Money today is worth more than money tomorrow.

This is not true for deflationary currency...like Bitcoin.

Re: Google bans cryptocurrency ads

#280
post #151

I'm really interested in cryptocurrencies and excited about their future, but I'm disgusted by their use as a platform for scams. I'm afraid that I support this, and I really wish people in the cryptocurrency community would do more to educate people about scams. Of course I suppose it's futile. Once this kind of mania takes off it takes on a life of its own.

Are you interested in crypto-assets if they're not structured like a Pyramid-Ponzi scheme, where wealth is redistributed weighted towards the earlier adopters - or are you excited about the potential of blockchains?

We already have currencies that worldwide could be transferred to a blockchain crypto-asset structure via governments destroying money ('take out' of traditional circulation) to put onto an immutable digital blockchain ledger, as opposed to someone receiving currency of choice in exchange (E.g. I give you this digital thing you call a 'coin', and you give me $1 USD).

If the main value is truly in the decentralized and immutable ledger aspects, then its use can eventually be State/government-mandated, instead of gaining collaboration through unreasonably incentivizing its adoption, no?

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