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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

#371

Post by toomuchtodo »

swat535 wrote: post #366
toomuchtodo wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Wise often to move money between USD, EUR, and AUD, and it plugs right into my US credit union and brokerage accounts. International transfers settle in under a minute to Australian and European bank accounts in my experience.

Wise, like any other fintech is fun until it randomly closes your account and bans you. No one can ban you / freeze your assets with Crypto, that's a good selling point imo.

Only if you stay in cryptoland. As soon as you hit someplace with fiat rails, in a jurisdiction that requires adherence to regulatory requirements, your account is just as regulated.

Crypto has its own failure modes: https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/

(day job is in US financial services, have consulted on implementing aml/kyc/sanctions support for where crypto rails meet traditional finance infra)

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

#372

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #352
inigyou wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to be, but now it's agree to paint Musk's fence in exchange for nothing, or else you aren't even allowed to exist, because the system has been thoroughly gamed. Usually when a metric becomes too gamed it's imperative that we stop using it as a metric (Goodhart's law) or else very bad things happen.

I live a perfectly fine, productive life not contributing to musk's empire. Are y'all really buying Teslas and blue twitter checks? The fact that he has a bunch of money really has no bearing on me.

Somebody sells a tesla and then buys something from you with that money... and now you're contributing to musk's empire. Our money is set up so that you're not in a position to consent to it or even be aware of it.

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

#373

Post by scotty79 »

toenail wrote: post #254
bunderbunder wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though, there’s a part of me thinking that the basic idea of creating artificial scarcity for profit is hard to separate from scamminess. It’s giving De Beers.

The entertainment industry tried for decades to achieve artificial scarcity for profit. All scammers?

Yes. Far worse than crypto, because they manufacture scarcity of access to human culture.

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

#374

Post by win311fwg »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #369
win311fwg wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I accept some abstraction from my employer in exchange for my labor That abstraction is simple debt. Your employer is, in exchange for what you've given them, promising to return to you something of value (food, shelter, entertainment, etc.) in the future. Money is the account of the promise made. The alternative is to forgo the debt and trade something of equal value at the time of the transaction. However, a…

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 a large swath of employers to be one of the most important aspects of hiring.

I know the typical HN account loves to over-engineer solutions to mundane things, but you really don't have to invent some new type of accounting for this. All you have to do is talk to the people in your life.

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

#375

Post by baby »

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…

Remittances is the other interesting one and why libra/diem was even on the table.

I was trying to send some money to my parents the other day and it’s still slow and expensive.

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

#377

Post by aeve890 »

epochbtc wrote: post #177

Two things can be true at the same time: - Bitcoin was and is a massive, historic accomplishment in creating digital scarcity for the first time and the long term effects are still playing out. - Virtually all of the "crypto" or Bitcoin 2.0 schemes in the 15 years since have been scams. Essentially a way for a tech founder to mint tokens out of thin air, and then try to convince others to treat them as money so he ca…

>massive, historic accomplishment in creating digital scarcity

accomplishment? like, something big and good?

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

#378

Post by jmyeet »

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…

The fascinating thing for me to watch in real time is Crypto Bros discovering in real time exactly why the financial system works the way it does. It didn't happen by accident. It's 5000+ years of incremental changes. Reversible transactions? Feature, not a bug. Expandable money supply? Feature, not a bug. Fractional reserve lending that essentially creates money? Feature, not a bug.

I remember saying this about Google Wave: it was a solution in search of a problem. Cyrpto specifically and blockchain in general is absolutely a solution desperately in search of a problem. And I honestly think not enough people were honest about their motivations. They saw Bitcoin go through the roof and were eager to be on the next rocketship, which never happened (well, there's Ethereum but it kinda happened at the same time although it started later).

It's been a sea of shitcoins and rug pulls ever since. Anyone rmemeber NFTs? Just another scam on top of a scam to sell more crypto.

Sometimes there's an advantage to an outsider's perspective on a problem space. It's the essence of disruption. But way more often than not, it's just snake oil salesman looking for a quick buck. And trying to disrupt the financial system without understanding it has shown itself to be a dismal failure, kinda like the graveyard of "Google killer" search engines in the 2000s and early 2010s.

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

#379

Post by greyface- »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #216
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…

> neither practical nor particularly convenient My only take away with crypto is, think of that one movie "In Time" but instead of the whole time = currency concept and the arm clock, what if crypto could be applied to a physical piece of e-paper like thing, where it says what its worth, and its worth what it says, you can transfer it on a whim from the paper to your phone (to a wallet) and back and forth. If anyone…

There have been a number of Bitcoin physical bearer instruments. Take a look at Opendime/Satscard, for example.

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

#380

Post by dhosek »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #166
mrhottakes wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explicitly built cryptocurrency as a way to hoard more wealth. It was the "engineers" not just the money people.

I worked at blockchain companies for 4 years and this is not true. The ratio of degenerate engineers is maybe 30% but business people is 80%. People I have worked with were much better compared to other companies I worked in like aviation or consulting

I don’t think I’ve ever worked with anyone in engineering who I would consider degenerate aside from the occasional crypto supporter. Even 30% seems like a scary high percentage of degenerate engineers.
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