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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

#541

Post by spopejoy »

eudamoniac wrote: post #485
ElijahLynn wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a socially acceptable, predatory, regulated vice: credit cards with 30%. These ruin many lives. I'm finally almost out and I'm 45. Nobody taught me in school not to use them as they are harmful. Nobody taught me how much money they will actually charge me and how much money I will lose because of them. Whereas if I had just saved my money and bought the thing out right I wouldn't have to pay any extra money.…

At what point should a person be responsible for their own life? I wasn't taught a lot of things; I learned them with some basic googling. You can figure out how a credit card works with a few minutes of critical thinking followed by "I should look this up". Something I would expect a 30-40yo to be able to do, no?

While you're looking things up, check out "predatory lending", and maybe the history of casinos. It's been recognized for centuries that lending money to someone with no ability to pay it back is morally wrong and, rightfully/normally, illegal.

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

#542

Post by spopejoy »

jdw64 wrote: post #23

Actually, this industry routinely runs what you'd call "hero marketing," and what makes it especially dangerous for young people is that they're being sold success stories by actors playing people who don't exist, fictional characters who supposedly got rich through crypto. 1.A tiny handful of success stories are pushed to the front. 2.The vast majority who lost money are made invisible. 3.It manufactures the expecta…

Kalshi was just exposed doing this "hero" stuff, running social media spots with paid actors using a fake mockup of their site to simulate real wins on camera.

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

#543

Post by spopejoy »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #83

I do agree that there's a huge amount of fraud and scams, and obviously that's only got worse since the President of the US started being part of that ecosystem. But at the same time there is also finally real finance happening on-chain too. Backpack launched a SpaceX token at IPO that can be moved between on-chain and your brokerage. I think Coinbase announced their on-chain equity offering will have the same capabi…

Not sure "real finance" is a meaningful value-add? Finance itself is shockingly antisocial in its own right.

When you see fintech companies talking up the virtue of "looping" stablecoins, or pushing wobbly derivatives like the spaceX synthetics, it's hard to see anything good coming from the integration of "crypto rails".

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

#544

Post by fragmede »

neutronicus wrote: post #346
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the perspective that our current systems are based on. And back when the majority of the problems that people were up against had to do with there being not enough of something to go around--when it took half of us working in the fields just to feed the rest of us--then the system worked relatively well. 9 times out of 10, when somebody got a loan (which is the event that injects dollars into the system) it ha…

I don't really agree with your framing. Something like Amazon is a partnership between the capital class and, to zeroth-order, everybody else, to screw over a small slice of the proletariat (their own employees and retail / warehouse workers) and the bourgeoisie (brick-and-mortar store owners). It sucks when the capitalist Eye of Sauron focuses on however you make your living as a thing-to-make-more-efficient but whe…

I mean, the Amish make very high quality furniture but I'll just go pick up something from Ikea. It's not my job to feed their kids. It's my job to feed mine. Which is a very "fuck you, I've got mine" way to live, but I don't know how to change the system other than to treat others as best I can within the system.

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

#545

Post by pickleRick243 »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #58

I wish I could just read the prompt rather then the very long article full of tiny mistakes that was generated from it.

Yep, clearly LLM assisted writing. It was likely prompted in stages, not one shot with a single prompt. I'm surprised you are basically the only one to notice. It seems most people need to literally see "not X, but Y" or "You're absolutely right!" to recognize it. Interestingly, I think it's gotten to the point that those who don't use LLM's or engage with LLM output often are unable to detect it.

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

#546

Post by SonOfLilit »

pickleRick243 wrote: post #545
SonOfLilit wrote: post #58

I wish I could just read the prompt rather then the very long article full of tiny mistakes that was generated from it.

Yep, clearly LLM assisted writing. It was likely prompted in stages, not one shot with a single prompt. I'm surprised you are basically the only one to notice. It seems most people need to literally see "not X, but Y" or "You're absolutely right!" to recognize it. Interestingly, I think it's gotten to the point that those who don't use LLM's or engage with LLM output often are unable to detect it.

But it is full of "not x, but y", just not above the fold...

Probably many noticed and nobody wanted to spam with the complaint, I decided the spam is worth it for the author to get some feedback.

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

#547

Post by pickleRick243 »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #546
pickleRick243 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, clearly LLM assisted writing. It was likely prompted in stages, not one shot with a single prompt. I'm surprised you are basically the only one to notice. It seems most people need to literally see "not X, but Y" or "You're absolutely right!" to recognize it. Interestingly, I think it's gotten to the point that those who don't use LLM's or engage with LLM output often are unable to detect it.

But it is full of "not x, but y", just not above the fold... Probably many noticed and nobody wanted to spam with the complaint, I decided the spam is worth it for the author to get some feedback.

Ah yeah, it probably is. I noticed I guess the more subtle LLMisms earlier on. I stopped reading fairly early on when I noticed I was wasting my time reading a long AI slop article. I do admittedly read a fair amount of "AI slop", but I prefer to read the ones coming from my own prompt.

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

#548

Post by fragmede »

deanishe wrote: post #458
bigfishrunning wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> not contributing to musk's empire You are if you've got a 401(k), just not voluntarily. The SpaceX IPO is basically a scam designed to force pension funds to buy in before the stock price falls to where it should be.

Not meaningfully, not yet, and pension funds are entirely capable, like the SP500, of choosing not to invest in SPCX if they don't want to.

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

#549

Post by ses1984 »

lxgr wrote: post #538
ses1984 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s just my lack of imagination, but I don’t see a use case for giving agents money when they can barely be trusted to not break out of a sandbox and cause hallucinatory chaos. Let’s say for a minute this is a failure of my imagination. Does each sub agent really need to be able to independently transact?

I could see a future in which ad-funded web sites charge agents some tiny amount per request instead of outright blocking non-human visitors. Besides, you're already effectively giving agents money (tokens aren't free, and agents decide when to stop consuming new ones), this is just more explicit :)

Why not have sub agents talk to a payment service? Sub agents should ultimately be associated with a human or business entity, the human or business entity could provide a single payment service for agents.

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

#550

Post by BlueTemplar »

pphysch wrote: post #491
BlueTemplar wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2011 is when it had its first big public boom - and bust, accompanied by even generalist press reporting on it. And the nerds at Valve would have been *in particular* aware of it. So causality is more likely to be reversed in that example.

You claiming that Valve hired an economist to study digital scarcity, not because of Valve's booming ingame economies, but because Bitcoin was at $10. Sure.

No, I want to insist on Bitcoin's intellectual legacy. Before ~2011, only a handful of niche nerds at the intersection of cryptography and (goldbug) economics had heard of related ideas. After ~2011, everybody had, and started building their own (like Etherium).
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