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I wasted years of my life in crypto

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Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#421

Post by komali2 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #388
phplovesong wrote: post #363

The original promise of crypto was lost a LONG time ago. Instead of being a true rival to FIAT, it became a thing with a toxic-as-hell commumity, fraud, and basically its nothing more than a high risk stock. The risk is NOT only "will this go up or down" but you have a high risk of being robbed, as have happened to millions of people. Maybe there will be a better alternative in the future, but right now bitcoin is no…

> The risk is NOT only "will this go up or down" but you have a high risk of being robbed, as have happened to millions of people. Using a cryptocurrency (originally) meant basically opting out of the governmental violence-as-a-service for cryptocurrency/-token purposes and taking care of this aspect by yourself. Depending on your resourcefulness and lifestyle, this may mean - hiring personal security - being very ca…

> Using a cryptocurrency (originally) meant basically opting out of the governmental violence-as-a-service for cryptocurrency/-token purposes and taking care of this aspect by yourself.

Cryptocurrency was a hidden blade. People were drawn in on the promise of avoiding the things they don't like about capitalism, but then cut by a more unregulated version of the same.

If you're going to dismantle all of the institutions of liberal democracy and capitalism so you can send a billion dollars to somebody, why not just go ahead and get rid of money while you're at it?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#422

Post by api »

phplovesong wrote: post #363

The original promise of crypto was lost a LONG time ago. Instead of being a true rival to FIAT, it became a thing with a toxic-as-hell commumity, fraud, and basically its nothing more than a high risk stock. The risk is NOT only "will this go up or down" but you have a high risk of being robbed, as have happened to millions of people. Maybe there will be a better alternative in the future, but right now bitcoin is no…

It was started as an alternative to fiat casino capitalism. It became an absurdist parody of fiat casino capitalism.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#423

Post by l___l »

mirekrusin wrote: post #376
phplovesong wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply put: Bitcoin was to be an alternative to FIAT, but it ended up being nothing more then a meme-stock that consumes more energy than Poland or Argentina. Its sad really. But the greed in people turned it into shit.

I never understood why bitcoin is winning popularity/pricing over ie. ethereum - which doesn't burn energy anymore and you can actually do programming on it, not just moving money from a to b.

One theory backed with proprietary data is that it's because bitcoin was created by the US government and money printed by the Fed goes in bitcoin so the government will one day pay its projected $113T of debt by dumping on everyone.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#424

Post by wslh »

From a developer perspective, a big part of crypto’s problem is that complexity becomes a way to hide centralization.

Everyone talks about "decentralized bridges" but them end up as centralized swaps wrapped in jargon.

The hard problems aren't being solved, they’re being obscured.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#425

Post by dotancohen »

voodooEntity wrote: post #329
fsh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

Reading your comment made me think of an ad i saw several years ago. It was an ad that started off like a typical quality coffee ad, nice pictures of beans, people harvesting, some roasting etc. But than it switched to the topic if making sure that "fair trade" was really applied - switching to IBM Blockchain and claiming that through the use of Blockchain there is safety that everything went fair trade..... And i ju…

I have not seen this scenario, but I assume that a blockchain could more reliably and believably be made public, recording all the way down to the farmer, then could other technologies.

Blockchain enables transparency from the farmer to the consumer. It does not ensure that the farmer was not coerced.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#426

Post by rjdj377dhabsn »

Nextgrid wrote: post #94
ikt wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that's what I thought nano had done: https://nano.org/en instant, fee's a fraction of a cent, I thought this was it, international payments that don't rely on visa/mastercard! and then it just went no where :\

Because in practice services like TransferWise solved this problem using fiat currencies with fees low enough not to make it worth bothering with crypto.

Every time I try to use TramsferWise, I end up jumping through KYC hoops for hours - days. Sending crypto is much simpler and faster.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#427

Post by Dilettante_ »

user34283 wrote: post #409
Dilettante_ wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument here appears to be "crypto is no better than fiat, because you can build the same systems on top of them." What you put on top is not the core value proposition of cryptocurrencies? It's what's underneath that's different, that was always the point. Fiat currency is built on a foundation of gov't control, whether it's the physical currency or the money in your bank account. Cryptocurrencies, fundamental…

The financial system being under government control is the only proposition consistent with reality. We, the people, make the rules. Replacing our democratic processes with finance controlled by the one with the most computing power, control of the software, or having horded the most of the tokens, is in no way desirable or realistic. Even if the proposition wasn't borderline idiotic in the first place, there is no c…

I'm gonna first of all disagree with the notion that our entire democracy rests on control of the financial system, secondly point out that you seem to make some wild leaps about how decentralized currencies work, and thirdly ask how the hell you're getting the idea that early adopters would need to be "cashed out at a profit many times exceeding inflation"(Participation in the new system is the point of adopting it, how is this unclear).

Finally:

  We, the people, make the rules.
If you truly believe that, you are (and I realize this is not the level of discourse I should strive for on HN) beyond redemption.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#428

Post by l___l »

phplovesong wrote: post #366
spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

Simply put: Bitcoin was to be an alternative to FIAT, but it ended up being nothing more then a meme-stock that consumes more energy than Poland or Argentina. Its sad really. But the greed in people turned it into shit.

A different metric of comparison isn't Bitcoin's energy consumption compared to other countries but compared to the existing banking system it's trying to replace, which burns more energy than Bitcoin and allegedly burns more energy funding wars with fiat. Mining gold instead of Bitcoin burns more energy than Bitcoin too.

Compared to that for energy consumption, Bitcoin is superior really.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#429

Post by ur-whale »

panzi wrote: post #20
spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

Yeah and even more crazy: all other applications of blockchains are even more stupid. Haven't seen another application that wouldn't have been better, faster, cheaper implemented in a "classical" way.

> Haven't seen another application ...

You need to get out more.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#430

Post by ethbr1 »

brohee wrote: post #373
cryptonym wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a casino you have - The gamblers spending a lot on the casino - The people coming in for the fun and spending little money - The owners/C-levels - The operational team Someone from the operational team just learned that business relies only on the first group to be successful.

You forgot the money launderers, in both ecosystems. Casinos are the original tumbler.

'I'm shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.' https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/quotes/?item=qt0429972
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