Good thing the industry has moved on to another promising niche technology which is being hyped and ruined by greed.
I wasted years of my life in crypto
551–560 of 1001 posts
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You've mentioned some places in the world that have economic problems. You've provided zero evidence to support the idea that "crypto payments are now prevalent" in any of those places.
As a counterexample, El Salvador adopted bitcoin as an official currency, provided state-subsidized infrastructure for citizens to adopt it, and still achieved only minimal usage:
> The October 2022 “Encuesta Dinámica Empresarial” from FUSADES registered that 97¾ percent of business have not made even one sale in Bitcoin. NBER and Chamber of Commerce and Industry surveys show similar results.
https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2025/068/arti...
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No, the argument is crypto is primarily used for crimes. Which is true. The argument is right here: > Outside of buying sex and drugs the only uses for cryptocoins are, and always has been, ransoms, scams and gambling. It doesn't contain the word "primarily" which indeed makes it false, and the rebuttal to your different claim is this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46190260 > Also, if you want privacy, d…
Sorry, which web shops demand governmental ID? I have never had to provide them mine in any of the countries I’ve lived in. If your concern is the webshop finding out your address, well I’m unsure how you solve this when you buy with crypto, but again ship to your home. If you have an alternative place to get it delivered for privacy, might as well do that with fiat transactions the same way.
The store usually* doesn't demand it, but your ID is tied to your cards via your bank's KYC obligations anyway
* It's becoming more common for sites to ask for ID, I've gotten prompted for it buying a cellphone online, to access an old Facebook account and even Hetzner (Before ever using it) because I got flagged as high risk
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#554The low-agency masses will always choose the incorrect way to use something (especially money). Nothing about what happened re: speculation in crypto should be a surprise. The technology is neutral, but basic human traits like greed will always prevail over the popular mind. That our previous cohort of financial demons has now slid into frame should be even less of a surprise.
You didn't waste time, you just spent eight years removing your rose colored glasses.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#555In recent months I changed views and shifted from the desilluioned "this is a casino" mindset that is described in this article to a "we need this now" one. An example in this article [1], the US can now unilateraly decide to prevent an individual anywhere in the world from having a functioning financial life and this because of the quasi (western) duopoly that is Visa and Mastercard. Nothing against the US in genera…
That's just the money cycle. Ray Dalio explains it in his new book, "How Countries Go Broke, Principles for Navigating the Big Debt Cycle, Where We Are Headed, and What We Should Do" (https://www.principles.com/)
The short explanation is that every major currency goes through a cycle; and what you're seeing is the late stage in a currency.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's called an oracle on the blockchain.
So blockchain requires trust in third parties. What is the point of it then?
I outlined it over in another comment[1] so I'm not gonna copy it all over but the point isn't to eliminate all trust. The point of trustless architectures (of which blockchain and smart contracts are one) is that you are eliminating implicit trust.
You are taking all the implicit trust, lowering it into explicit trust assumptions, and formalising who is allowed to make what decisions when, what happens when they do, and how the other parties are permitted to respond.
You are moving all of those implicit assumptions about how a contract, interaction, or relationship work and formalising them into something explicit and upfront so that all participants can evaluate their risk tolerance and trust levels prior to agreeing to a given contract or interaction.
And of course you are also sprinkling in a heavy dose of automation to smooth out the complexities of these explicit, mechanised contracts such that the happy paths are buttery smooth and the unhappy paths are at the least bearable and correspond to the contract you signed on to at the beginning of your interaction.
TLDR: It's low trust automation + formalising implicit assumptions into explicit ones.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#557"In theory it's a great idea, in practice not so much."
I feel that's the lesson anyone who toyed with libertarians ideals ultimately come to. It just takes a bit longer for some than others. It's also harder to realize if you're making mad bank on it, rather than be part of the idiots who blew their hard-earned money on some technical misunderstanding, scam, or retro-active regulation.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
Foreign property ownership is not like buying an Armani bag when you visit Italy. The financial regulations are complementary to the legal ones. Besides, even if you just sent 2 bitcoins, what about all the remaining documentation? It's not gonna fill out itself
And this is [part of] why Dubai has the highest per capita influx of high net worth individuals. You can call them a dystopic theocracy, which is a bit true, but you can literally just fly over and buy a condo in a neighborhood with basically zero violent crime, with 2 bitcoins with essentially no questions asked.
Dubai is the Bitcoin of cities, so I guess the example fits.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
To become a medium of exchange, it needs to become a unit of account. That will happen as it's value stabilises, and that will only happen once it's proved itself as a store of value. What if Henry Ford evisaged his Model T being used as a temporary alternative for when your horse is unwell? Or a fairground ride? Bitcoin is what it is. > And what is the incentive to loan money in your system? Interest - the age-old s…
Value can only stabilise if there's either someone in charge adjusting the rate of printing to maintain a stable value. It cannot be done algorithmically as there's no way to determine the value from inside the system. Non-deflationary currencies encourage hoarding which leads to wild swings in value. Deflationary currencies do much better. Look at the price chart of BTC vs XMR.
It depends how you measure value. By stabilise I mean stops growing in value by 50%/yr with big short term swings of 80%.
As it matures and gets close to it's ultimate value, volatility will naturally reduce.
Once it is used as the unit of account, everything else will fluctuate in value relative to bitcoin, which has more stable fundamentals than anything else on earth (fixed/zero issuance, liquidity etc), but this will be decades in the future when it's dollar value will be 8 or 9 figures in today's money
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#560Earlier quoted context omitted.
> its nothing more than a high risk stock Nothing more? Proof-Of-Work wasn't innovative? With fiat you have high risk of losing 50% of USD's purchasing value within 2 years, which already happened, and which is not far from being robbed, as have happened to millions of people too.
Sure, but if i have investments they cant be stolen, and if they are im pretty much compensated (given im not straight up giving my account away, hell even then there is usually a 24h window with a limit on withdrawls). Bottom line is no one takes responsibility in the world of bitcoin.
You can buy an ETF that wraps spot crypto and get all those guarantees you name in exchange for a small fee.