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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

#581

Post by Wololooo »

ethbr1 wrote: post #439
amelius wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom is never absolute. What gives one person freedom may limit another person's freedoms. Therefore you will have to weigh the pros and the cons of a technology that promises freedom.

I'd extend that a bit, in the same vein as TFA: you should always be aware of who you're taking freedom away from and who you're giving it to, in practical actual terms, when designing or deploying revolutionary technology. If you deploy a non-government fiat monetary system... most of your users are going to be people who want to avoid government currency controls. Consequently, without a counterbalance, they're goi…

Which funnily is the dumbest thing ever. Because in order to use the currency you need to exchange it which means that you need input and outputs, you slightly obfuscate that but in the crypto chain everything is saved, so everything is traceable forever. Slip up once when extracting or get your wallet involved in unsavoury interactions and you're done. It's not a matter of if but a matter of when...

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#582

Post by giraffe_lady »

paxys wrote: post #498

The only smart involvement in crypto was to spend a few minutes buying Bitcoin early on and holding on to it. Everything else — all the altcoins, stablecoins, NFTs, large ecosystem of startups, VC funds, DeFi, web3, payment networks, smart contracts, blockchains – has been an immense waste of time and resources.

For a few years there it was really fertile ground for simple fraud, a great trade if you can get away with it. Most of them did.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#583

Post by cryptonym »

SirMaster wrote: post #576
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only buyers are criminals, sanction evaders, and probably the dumbest people in the world given that the entire crypto ecosystem is focused on one thing and one thing only. Creating the most deflationary monetary system in history.

So it was dumb of me to buy my bitcoins back when they were less than $100 a coin just in the slim chance that it completely blew up? I don't see what was dumb about a decision to put less than $1000 into 10 coins just in case. Worked out really well for me in the end and a less than $1000 gamble doesn't seem like that crazy of a gamble, at least to me.

You basically just confirmed that, from beginning, it's just gambling.

Being lucky on your bet doesn't make it a wise investment. I wouldn't call you dumb. I don't know how gamblers feel about their moves.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#584

Post by lm28469 »

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've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.

Because it's a cult, like the "AGI is coming in 2027" cult thinks we're on the brink of skynet level world destruction, it'll come and go and 99% of the people who fell for it will tell you they never really truly actually believed

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#585

Post by Ray20 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #274
HaZeust wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Others have shown why most of your other points are wrong or don't need blockchain" Answered them. Introducing 0 knowledge proofs was a good point but blockchain can still be a medium to utilize these possibilities. I don't believe a conventional database or transparency log can meaningfully substitute the decentralized nature of blockchain for such an operation, though; and I said as much in my replies. >"This is…

> cryptography to the electoral system can be rooted in the pragmatic AND be abstracted to a layman what you're arguing for is a system that you understand and can verify, but not other people. You're also missing the bigger issue which is that voting systems vary by state, which means to do what you need to do would require federal/constitutional change. Plus how do you verify and guarantee the terminals are not tam…

> what you're arguing for is a system that you understand and can verify, but not other people.

I don't think people really need it. We're used to using and trusting systems we don't understand. So, I think if the system is open, people will readily accept it. They'll be content with knowing that all the experts say the system is reliable, and they themselves, theoretically, can, if they want, understand its structure and confirm its reliability.

And the real reason for its non-use is somewhat different: The elites believe that the introduction of such a system would almost immediately lead to demands for real direct democracy, and the stupid masses, using this democracy, would make decisions that would destroy society and civilization.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#586

Post by the_gastropod »

l___l wrote: post #436
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…

> 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.

Proof of work was innovative when it was created in 1997 as an anti-spam email solution.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#587

Post by jcalvinowens »

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…

Amen. Bitcoin barely manages to continue to function, while currently handling 0.0000001% of the worlds money transfers. The idea that we could base any substantial part of our financial system on a globally serialized transaction ledger is a laughable joke.

As a technical experiment, I love bitcoin, and I have thoroughly enjoyed wasting some of my own time on it. But it's not mainstream, and it never will be.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#588

Post by user34283 »

dns_snek wrote: post #563
user34283 wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bleak view on the state of democracy. Whatever your feelings on the topic may be, we will not be giving up government control of the financial system in favor of a blockchain and profits for crypto-bros.

Bleak but realistic, unfortunately. There needs to be a viable alternative as long as our elected representatives have the power to abuse the financial system as a means of authoritarian control, like freezing the bank accounts of protestors. A truly democratic leadership with stringent limitations on how they can meddle with financial transactions would be preferable, but that's just a dream at this point.

A viable alternative to the financial system is also just a dream.

If we take from the government the ability to freeze bank accounts of protestors, we can't just also remove the ability to freeze the accounts of criminals, enemies, or even terrorists.

It seems like a clear non-starter, yet many proponents of crypto seem to think it would be an obvious improvement.

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