Luke Smith had a good video that pretty much summarized what happens with projects such as Bitcoin that have noble goals to begin with; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-lS8Y79L7g
I wasted years of my life in crypto
521–530 of 1001 posts
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the main legal use-case afaik. If you like travelling to a country that has no banking connection to your country, it might be more convenient to open a bank account or make friends in the target country and move money there via Bitcoin marketplaces. I've seen that plenty of times.
How does that work? You transfer the money in BTC, you exchange that into real money, you open a new bank account, you deposit that money, the bank's anti-money-laundering detection sees a large deposit to a newly open account and triggers an alert, the bank locks you out of the account and asks you for a proof of income/tax payment, you have no explanation of where that money came from legally, they freeze your acco…
Oh yeah, this isn't about large sums, this is about "I need money to live there for a month".
However, with a lot of BTC trading sites, you get money from real people's accounts, so its not that crazy as long as the amounts are low.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#523https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/01/31/end.html#section... Vitalik touched upon this briefly in an other-wise long and wide-reaching essay. I think its a good treatment of the topic that the author is talking about. He categorizes the ecosystem broadly into 4 cohorts- [token holders] (which includes investors, speculators, etc.), [pragmatic users] (actual end-users who spend crypto to buy stuff), [intellectuals]…
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.
> Someone from the operational team just learned that business relies only on the first group to be successful.
Is there any possibility the presence of the people who are there just for fun still encourages/increases the size of the first group?
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. That problem already has solutions. The problems cryptocurrency is supposed to solve are, I want to buy subversive literature fro…
The blockchain and every transaction being public effectively disproves your entire supposed usecase.
Depends on the blockchain. There are plenty of ways to have private transactions.
Bitcoin came about to solve the trustless component and provides weak anonymity.
Then Monero, ZCash, etc built on that to add privacy and anonymity.
If you use bitcoin nowadays and expect anonymity or privacy you are clearly mistaken but there are plenty of platforms built for privacy and anonymity on extensions of that same underlying technology.
Like basically every vendor that accepts cryptocurrency and values privacy/anonymity is going to offer monero as an option.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#525What do people think of hiring people with crypto backgrounds? It is kind of a red flag to me - unless it's a really mainstream thing like coinbase
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a lot of places in the world where crypto payments are now prevalent, not because users are the "dumbest people in the world" but because they have no better alternative for electronic finance. Either conventional banking is nonexistent/abysmal for this purpose or their national currencies are in such bad condition that it's better for them to hold and use cryptocurrencies.
Name one, and provide evidence to support that assertion.
Nigeria, Argentina, Venezuela, all prime examples because they faced especially severe problems with hyperinflation and traditional banking. You can also find widespread use in developing economies like Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, but of course to a lesser degree since the problems with traditional finance are not as severe there. I will gladly provide more in-depth information, if someone provides some evidence to support that crypto users are the dumbest people on Earth. If not, feel free to use your own time instead of mine for your education.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#527Earlier 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.
I worked in blockchain ("builder") for 5 years. I started 'eh, there are speculators, whatever, I build good tech' but finished 'holy crap speculators completely dominate and distort everything, nobody cares about good tech'
Yep. As much as I can see utility in some crypto, and there are some personalities in respect (e.g. Vitalik) by and large the sector in such a dumpster fire I'm not going anywhere near it. I've got some bitcoin in a Coinbase account, that's as close as I'm getting.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#528My question is, which real-world problem is actually solved by crypto? All I know is transferring money over the border gets much easier than pre-bitcoin era.
The only real world problem is probably solved by low chain fees where I can hold usdc or gold coins and then pay or recieve payments without too much hassle But that again, is such a low niche and something that includes exchanges fees too Recently I wanted to get a domain name on black friday so I went to namecheap and paid them 10 $ in crypto, I had to pay 80 cents to an exchange to convert my usdc polygon to btc…
> "buying this domain pseudo-anonymously (yes I know I can do things with monero too so thus anonymously too) is the only real use case"
The domain registrar is required to have valid contact information for you. Sure, you could lie to them, but then you risk having your account terminated.
So I'm not sure this is a real use case for crypto.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much. People say it's meant to replace laws and regulations, but if it's successful then it won't. The US has a large bitcoin strategic reserve. Banks offer bitcoin accounts (in some countries). You can get a loan backed by your bitcoin. We're not yet at the point where you can get a credit card and 60 year home loan denominated in bitcoin, with the fed writing bonds or even issuing fiat to stabilise rates, bu…
What purpose does a bitcoin strategic reserve serve?
Trump did it, so frankly it's probably just a brain fart.
However, the US having a strategic reserve of a currency makes it a lot like other currencies. The next logical step is that banks can use it (already in the works - also Trump). If you can get a bank account it bitcoin, the next logical step is towards a fractional reserve system (loans, banks effectively "printing money"). The strategic reserve can cover a run on banks - think interbank lending, bailouts. Then the fed can offer bonds and IOUs (fiat).
All the things q lot of bitcoin advocates say bitcoin should stop, but you can't stop the government writing an IOU and demanding everyone treat it as currency.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#530Another article by a civilization wrecker who apologizes for working tirelessly for years to wreck civilization. Had he made off with a billion USD equivalents this wouldn't have even been written yet the outcome would be the same. Moralizing grifters can gtfoh