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Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

economist.com

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Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#51

Post by helsinkiandrew »

cherryteastain wrote: post #7
rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

Sending money without government interference to relatives living in countries with strict foreign exchange controls (Argentina, Lebanon, Turkey...) is one quite legit use case.

Unfortunately to governments and law enforcements that looks identical to organised crime and terrorists sending money.

All three of those countries have restrictions/regulations on converting crypto currencies into local currencies - doesn't crypto just move the the problem to converting it to local currency?

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#53

Post by dzikimarian »

rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

One of ours biggest customers is mainly used by Ukrainian refugees as easy way to pay abroad. USDC/USDT is simply cheaper and more available to them than regular USD.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#54

Post by repler »

keiferski wrote: post #38

The history of crypto is pretty much a story of technical people creating something interesting with a cyberpunk/ open ethos - then the financial industry realizing it can be exploited to make money in ethically dubious ways, while simultaneously destroying the philosophy behind it. The bitcoin paper is still one of the most elegant technical documents I’ve ever read, a decade+ since it was published. I’m not sure wh…

> the media is largely dominated by institutional players

and also tech journalism as a whole is pretty abysmal to begin with

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#55

Post by sigwinch »

pawelduda wrote: post #13
simonw wrote: post #5

That's the thing where if you have significant assets your family members get kidnapped until you irreversibly transfer those assets to criminals, right? I'm not sure how crypto continues to gain mainstream adoption in the face of that , no matter how much excitement there is for it in the current US administration. My previous argument was that a technology where losing your password means you lose your net worth wa…

Kidnapping and ransom existed before crypto

That’s not his argument. You must ensure the anonymity of criminals in order to also protect the anonymity of your innocent relatives.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#56

Post by charcircuit »

rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

It prevents centralized entities being the gatekeepers to the modern financial world. The US maintaining their own digital version of cash would also work, but the government is slow, and does not want to compete against these centralized entities due to being advantaged as the government controls the currency itself.

Payment processors essentially get to dictate what is and is not allowed to be financially viable which is a very powerful form of control over culture.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#57

Post by Hilift »

rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

Today's society cannot protect people that are easily influenced. Social media has brought remote fraudsters right into your aunt/uncles inbox. Some people are going to get fleeced unless their money is put into something that only dispenses PEZ amounts at a time. This increases if dementia occurs.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#58

Post by MrDisposable »

rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

> I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes

Russian here. My forgotten Bitcoin stash saved my ass multiple times by providing a way to transfer money to a friend abroad who then paid for my western expenses (hosting, VPNs etc.) using his Visa / MC cards.

Also, a lot of programmers who emigrated from Russia to countries such as Georgia in 2022 were using USDT as a way to receive their salaries.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#59

Post by survirtual »

rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

Let's regulate mathematics. No, it isn't enough...let's regulate physics itself. If we could just control when molecules are allowed to form, we could make it so mean molecules don't exist unless they're allowed to exist by our Council of Very Good People Who Have The Most Money. Since they have the most money, they know better than everyone else. /s

Did you know in some countries, a good loan for someone with perfect credit is 20% apr? Do you know in some countries police can confiscate all the money you have and never give it back? Have you ever heard of civil asset forfeiture? Did you know in some countries, just protesting can have your accounts frozen? Did you know in some countries, sending money can take over 3 days with no knowledge of what is happening to your money during that time? Did you know that Debit and Wire transfer often cost well over $20 to perform?

This list could go on for days. Only fools would speak about crypto so confidently without doing a minimal investigation into its utility.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#60

Post by h2782 »

phyalow wrote: post #45
rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

Speculation is a legitimate use case. There is substantially more to it than that but I will let you chew that over just to point out how blatantly incorrect your prior is.

Speculation is as much valuable use case as my nails are to be chewed. Sure, it works, doesn't mean it's a good thing.
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