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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

#531

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

cowboy_henk wrote: post #479
blitzar wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blockchain and every transaction being public effectively disproves your entire supposed usecase.

But wallets aren't associated with a real person by default, unless it's created through some service that does KYC. If you can get anonymous tokens in an anonymous wallet, who cares if the transactions are public?

That is unfortunately a fairly weak form of anonymity. With a fully public network you can trace even the most meticulously tumbled and laundered tokens. And while they may not exclusively trace back to you, they'll trace into a mixer and out of a mixer with a large majority of the inputs and outputs being tainted.

Most exchanges, etc won't really touch accounts or UTxO that are messing with mixers.

Because of that it's generally just better to use "properly" private and anonymous blockchains instead. If they are fully opaque then tracing becomes effectively impossible.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#532

Post by dcre »

spankibalt wrote: post #256

> "I was a politically motivated person when I was a teenager. Of all the books that radicalized me, it was the Aynd Rand books (Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) that did." A heartfelt "Thank you!" to Ken on account of having at least the courtesy of saving cool people's time by putting the Origin Story into the first sentences.

At least you can tell they wrote it themselves — an LLM couldn’t write a sentence that bad.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#533

Post by dns_snek »

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…

> We, the people, make the rules.

Since when? We merely vote for politicians who promise to enact laws and regulations that are beneficial for us but they almost universally fail to do that, succumbing to self-interests and corruption.

If a government implements authoritarian measures that curb our freedom in an unpopular manner, "we the people" can't do anything about it. In a few years we may or may not vote them out, and the people who replace them may (or may not) do what we, the people, want.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#534

Post by wizzwizz4 »

hypeatei wrote: post #514
cowboy_henk wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wallets aren't associated with a real person by default, unless it's created through some service that does KYC. If you can get anonymous tokens in an anonymous wallet, who cares if the transactions are public?

It takes one OPSEC slip up for someone to link a wallet address to you. So yes, your transactions being public doesn't matter as long as you are cognizant of that 24/7 365 days a year.

You can resolve this issue by repeatedly tumbling your money, using the same tumbling scheme as everyone else. This will reduce the value of your wallet slightly, to pay the mining fees, but it's… hm. That sounds equivalent to inflation or tax, except that the lost money doesn't go towards anything useful: it just goes towards buying ASICs and burning electricity.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#535

Post by summa_tech »

tormeh wrote: post #253
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…

I think block chains are inherently fine. The issue with bitcoin is that it isn't inflationary. Yes, yes, the supply increases over time, but that's also true for gold, and I've yet to hear anyone call gold inflationary. If a declining unit value is not guaranteed over time then it cannot be used as a currency and just becomes a savings vehicle / speculative asset. This is why all central banks aim for inflation. Try…

> sound money

Perhaps they're the new incarnation of audiophiles.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#536

Post by mothballed »

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.

That falls under pragmatists

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#538

Post by phplovesong »

l___l wrote: post #428
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.

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.

I have no numbers but i would assume the global "FIAT market" is orders of magnitude larger than bitcoin, so ofc it consumes more. I would want to se a chart of how much 1USD/EUR "consumes" compared to 1BTC.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#540

Post by ErigmolCt »

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…

You're right that the risk profile isn't just volatility. In a system where "you are your own bank," losing a seed phrase, signing the wrong transaction, or getting phished is equivalent to someone draining your checking account with no recourse
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