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We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

arstechnica.com

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Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#61

Post by Kbelicius »

roenxi wrote: post #13
flmontpetit wrote: post #5

Baffles me how this industry is basically speedrunning through the troubled history of regular finance, and every piece of legislation and every institution has to be rebuilt from scratch even though the mechanisms and the problems are almost exactly the same.

I've always liked this analogy because it accidentally implies something I believe to be true - the crypto industry will eventually overtake transitional finance while moving at great speed. It says a lot about how bad the traditional finance industry is that this is the easiest path forward that the market found.

> I've always liked this analogy because it accidentally implies something I believe to be true - the crypto industry will eventually overtake transitional finance while moving at great speed.

It isn't implying that. It is implying that it will end up at the same place as the traditional finance.

> It says a lot about how bad the traditional finance

What is so bad about traditional finance that crypto fixes?

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#62

Post by anal_reactor »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #20
akimbostrawman wrote: post #18

Turns out having a publicly visible bank balance is a bad idea. If only there existed a better coin without that issue...

In at least two of these stories, the “bank balance” was public because the person posted it on social media (Belgian guy and Turkish influencer). Im not sure if the risk is any lower when you post “my savings account is up to $1.6million!” ?

Crypto has generated quite a few people who are rich but still have poverty mindset and don't understand that flashing your wealth attracts more issues than solves your problems. While I'm not rich, I'm definitely above average, and that's a big reason why I wear a jacket I bought in a second-hand shop ten years ago.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#63

Post by Kbelicius »

geoffmunn wrote: post #59
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One key component being alluded to here is that banks are legally required to know who you are (KYC). And there are consequences if they don’t. That alone makes a huge difference in everything having to do with the traditional banking system.

That's only a post-9/11 requirement, so it's not really part of the 'traditional' banking system.

Following your logic there never will be and there never was a traditional banking system because rules and regulation around banking keep getting changed.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#64

Post by bufferoverflow »

beloch wrote: post #40

Banks are fortified and guarded for a reason. If you have money in bitcoin, it's only as secure as your person and whatever you use to access your crypto assets. If you had a million in gold, would you leave it on your desk? Walk around with it on the street? Your odds of getting to where you're going with the gold are pretty good in most places, but it's still a big risk. Brag about or show that gold off to somebody…

You can store your private keys encrypted in a safety deposit box. You can store 3 copies in 3 different banks. It only costs $15-30 per year per box.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#65

Post by logicallee »

drdeca wrote: post #42
logicallee wrote: post #31

This happened to me, with the difference that nobody was abducted. Defense contractors associated with the U.S. military said they would sever fingers to make me "care more" here is a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/eYP7Xsj or https://ibb.co/DD6XTppy This was sent over a Department of Defense channel.

What is this screenshot supposed to be demonstrating? What’s with all the asterisks in the image?

The screenshot is an example of someone making a reference to "removing fingers" (direct quote from the image) to make someone "care more" (direct quote from the image).

Regarding all the asterisks, your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps it is to make the text look scarier and more menacing, or more serious, or to make it seem like it was written by a madman who will actually do what is described. It's hard to know why they did that.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#66

Post by tromp »

dgrr19 wrote: post #51
noosphr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surest way to get flamed out of any crypto mailing list was to ask what the effective clearance rate for the coin was, then following it up with how it could be sped up. Today the bitcoin network is still stuck at ~7 transactions a second. This is not what the white paper promised.

Thus, other blockchains emerged

requiring much higher resources to run a node and making them much less decentralized.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#67

Post by tromp »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #47
onion2k wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society. Hindsight is 20/20. In the early days of crypto the promise of decentralized finance outside of the scrutiny of governments and financial institutions was seen as far from pointless. It only went awry when speculators turned up trying to make a profit from an ostensibly useful idea, and they took it so far that the or…

Bitcoin was invented with a number go up mechanic, and the idea that a single Bitcoin would be immensely valuable were the currency to gain traction was a point of discussion from the start Fact is it became popular with speculators faster than it did with anybody else, but the hodlers weren't doing anything to stop people from using it to buy pizza.

The capped emission certainly encourages FOMO and speculation. A fixed block reward would still provide scarcity in the long term while strongly discouraging speculation [1].

[1] https://tromp.github.io/blog/2020/12/20/soft-supply

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#68

Post by soco »

tm-guimaraes wrote: post #57
danaos wrote: post #15

I went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets. During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these…

Stablecoins are actually the future of remittances, the problem is which stablecoin is safe and has enough adoption. (When a big or central bank decides to have a stablecoin, things will change a lot) I work in “traditional” (as in, non crypto) payment systems, and i can tell you that plenty of companies are looking into using cryto rails for complex remmitance routes. The problem is swift network/correspondent/inter…

And there it is: the first valid use case for a coin I have ever heard! (nb: I'm not much into crypto, there may be more I have missed)

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#69

Post by elevaet »

dgrr19 wrote: post #54
elevaet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience, and also have zero regrets about missing out on gains. The baked-in energy wastage and the scams and memes were a complete turnoff. That's not the way I want to get rich. Similarly I wouldn't invest in an arms manufacturer or a plastic bag company. Money that doesn't align with your values is just bad mojo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet

Money doesn't stink, but your hands might.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#70

Post by buran77 »

dgrr19 wrote: post #53
danaos wrote: post #15

I went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets. During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these…

> Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society Decentralization doesn't benefit society? umh...

"Decentralization" is a generic principle and a very selective choice in this case. What was the specific practical implementation that was so beneficial to society to this day?

Centralization is what enabled today's societies to thrive. So when talking about decentralization you have to get into the specifics to show the value.

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