I worked at a crypto exchange and after I came to the conclusion that 99% of crypto was scams and rugpulls, I sold all my crypto and vowed to have nothing to do with it. It's more of a religion than a financial instrument and absolutely nothing has shown to me that crypto is anything more than a speculative gamble, basically tulips with the religious promise of a better world. The number of employees that lost money on rugpulls while I was there, but "still believed in crypto" was staggering.
I wasted years of my life in crypto
601–610 of 1001 posts
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#602I'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…
Yeah and even more crazy: all other applications of blockchains are even more stupid. Haven't seen another application that wouldn't have been better, faster, cheaper implemented in a "classical" way.
This was already evident 9 years ago: https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-years-in-nobody-has-c...
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#603For me I find stablecoins very useful today, I can send money to my family in seconds with cents of fee.
even if in my country there is not a lot of international financial institutions.
Also people in my country Venezuela, use usdt as a way for paying for things and saving money as the currency it's inestable.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#604I worked at a crypto exchange and after I came to the conclusion that 99% of crypto was scams and rugpulls, I sold all my crypto and vowed to have nothing to do with it. It's more of a religion than a financial instrument and absolutely nothing has shown to me that crypto is anything more than a speculative gamble, basically tulips with the religious promise of a better world. The number of employees that lost money…
My advice is always: Just hodl some bitcoin, but not in amounts that make you cry when you loose it.
It's been better for me so far than normal savings accounts.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#605Earlier 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.
I shoved £500 down in Sept 2017 knowing full well it was a gamble, and still have a roughtly £500 balance now -- having skimmed enough off the top over the years to buy a couple of iPhones and whatever else. I 100% consider this profit to be literal dumb luck.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#606I'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…
> The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database.
It's the cost of it being out of control of any single party. Efficiency and convenience are worth nothing if you have a system someone can just wipe out or manipulate.
Have you experienced hyperinflation in your lifetime? Have the generational assets of your family been seized by totalitarian government? I think you'd understand better if you lived through events where your wealth very painfully was just an "entry" in the efficient system someone else controls (badly).
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a difference between "Freedom to do something " and "Freedom to not have something happen to you ". If we keep curtailing the former to serve the latter, we will end up perfectly safe from interruptions, doing nothing at all(aside from what the government dictates as 'serving the common good')
There's no difference. You can't formulate that distinction coherently. What's the difference between having the freedom to walk the street and having the freedom to not be hindered from walking the street?
You have articulated the same freedom twice here.
I live in a city where I can be fairly certain that I will not be the victim of a robbery. I don't need to carry a weapon or otherwise appear defensible. This type of crime simply does not exist here (or only to a very limited extent). That is “freedom from.” If I had the right to carry a firearm to defend myself in the event of a robbery, that would be “freedom to.” These two forms of freedom can be distinguished in a very clear-cut way. One allows you to do certain things. The other ensures that negative events do not occur. In North America, the cultural focus seems to be primarily on “freedom to.” But I would consider it a massive restriction of my freedom if I could not walk through my neighborhood at night without worry, even if I had the right to carry a firearm for protection.
Your semantic sleight of hand cannot reflect the difference between someone who feels safe because they believe they can and are allowed to defend themselves against danger (freedom to defend oneself) and someone who feels safe because they believe there is no danger (freedom from danger). However, there is a clearly discernible qualitative difference between these two freedoms. Otherwise, there would be no difference in terms of freedom between walking through Caracas, Tijuana, Port-au-Prince, or Pietermaritzburg with a firearm in your pocket and walking completely unarmed through Abu Dhabi, The Hague, or Trondheim.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#608Earlier 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.
I worked in blockchain ("builder") for 5 years. I started 'eh, there are speculators, whatever, I build good tech' but finished 'holy crap speculators completely dominate and distort everything, nobody cares about good tech'
> nobody cares about good tech
Indeed. For example: Chia is arguably decent tech (better than Bitcoin), built by Bram Cohen (of BitTorrent fame), innovative PoSpace+Time. But nobody cares, it's at #450 in market cap, way down below Doge (#10), $TRUMP (#72), Fartcoin (#144), Melania (#375).
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#609I'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…
> The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database.
That's the entire point when the goal is to achieve a public, immutable, decentralized ledger that prevents double-payments without needing to trust a third-party to adjudicate properly. It being inconvenient makes it exceptionally difficult to edit history.
Whether that's a useful goal is less clear when nearly all of modern society relies on trusting parties at some point along the way (will the thing you bought be delivered to you? Will the service you purchased actually be rendered? etc).
> Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology
A financial process being unwieldy hasn't really been an issue historically. Why are most publicly issued stocks in the US owned by Cede and Company for example? No one that has stocks really thinks about the underlying system (the fact that they have contractual rights to stocks rather than actually owning stocks), as long as it ultimately works.
Where things have broken down in my opinion is how centralized the systems have become with massive exchanges being the only realistic way to interact with them. In the same way that a bicycle wasn't designed to be a moving van, these systems weren't designed to be centralized. With that being the reality though, the entire blockchain backbone is mostly useless, and at that point it really is an inconvenient database.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the argument is crypto is primarily used for crimes. Which is true. Also, if you want privacy, don't use crypto.
> 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…
> Outside of buying sex and drugs the only uses for cryptocoins are ...
Apparently Black Rock and such buy billions of dollars worth of sex and drugs. I wonder where they keep it.