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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

#641

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#642

Post by FabHK »

fsh wrote: post #59
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…

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

> Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust"

Indeed. Good paper driving the point home:

Irrationality, Extortion, or Trusted Third-parties: Why it is Impossible to Buy and Sell Physical Goods Securely on the Blockchain

http://arxiv.org/abs/2110.09857

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#643

Post by Dilettante_ »

amelius wrote: post #469
Dilettante_ wrote: post #434

Earlier 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')

My freedom to put cameras in your home is your non-freedom to have privacy. Sounds like not such a great idea now?

You would have the freedom to try to put cameras in my home, I would have the freedom to try and stop you or take them down again. Shock horror, personal agency instead of surrogate power via government!

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#644

Post by flush »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #571
yakkomajuri wrote: post #497

Similar thing happened to me, albeit like 6 or so years ago. I was very young and had been "in the space" for a couple years. The concept of "decentralization" in general appealed to me as someone frustrated with the abuses of centralized power. I liked the idea of a transparent ledger and wanted to apply it to non-profit initiatives. I even spoke about this at the European Central Bank as a 20 year old (got there vi…

> a transparent ledger The only useful application of crypto/blockchain tech I've ever seen simply takes advantage of the transparent ledger as a way of tracking receipts. One of the perfect applications is in shipping and logistics where receipt validation, transparency, and certification, is an essential part of the business.

Is there somewhere that explains this concept? When I "receive" something, there still must be trust that I correctly mark it so. By that point, doesn't it require trust, and therefore you may as well just use a trusted third party data store?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#645

Post by jpadkins »

malfist wrote: post #82
m00dy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone called J.Powell decides the price of US dollar. Bitcoin fixes this by inserting an algorithmic monetary policy, never seen in human history before.

How does Jerome Powell decide the price of a dollar? How does an algorithm fix that? What is being fixed?

Jerome Powell sets the future price of the dollar by setting a goal that is achieved by the Fed creating dollars and buying bonds (or selling bonds).

> What is being fixed?

A small group of people decide how much currency is circulated and can be used as debt, which creates inflation or deflation. Also there is no democratic process that can be used to control this small group of people, other than a repeal of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

> How does an algorithm fix that?

As an example, Bitcoin's algorithm has a fixed schedule in which new BTC is created. People can voluntarily use or not use BTC as a currency based on this currency creation schedule (vs. arbitrary creation that comes with fiat currency). This algorithm can only change by actors that take hashing majority on the Bitcoin network.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#646

Post by FabHK »

gloosx wrote: post #374
bhickey wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to buy subversive literature from someone I already trust not to rip me off Subversive literature printed on blotter paper. Outside of buying sex and drugs the only uses for cryptocoins are, and always has been, ransoms, scams and gambling.

>Outside of buying sex and drugs the only uses for cryptocoins are, and always has been, ransoms, scams and gambling That is a very shallow take. There are real non-criminal uses for crypto that people in stable, wealthy countries often overlook. Millions rely on it simply to move money between family members across borders when traditional banking is slow, blocked, or outright inaccessible due to politics. In severa…

> the people who depend on it for everyday survival

Oh, my, all those poor people that died prior to 2009.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#647

Post by paddleon »

hirsin wrote: post #145
bdangubic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a dual citizen. I wanted to buy a condo near my parents where I spend my summers with my family. I have never in my entire life felt like a criminal more than trying to buy something, with the money I made with my wife, going through regular financial system. after weeks of feeling like a criminal over coffee with my cousin who owns the company that was selling me the condo I was like “can I just fucking give yo…

What made you feel like a criminal? Buying a home is fairly straightforward and has almost no state verification of any piece of it, at least in the US. Was it something the state enforced, or something being done by the agents of the transaction (ie the mortgage company)?

> Buying a home is fairly straightforward and has almost no state verification of any piece of it, at least in the US.

you mean the purchase deed isn't registered anyplace?

or you mean that the mortgage company didn't do a credit/background check on the buyer before granting the mortgage? Which includes some level of providing a state-backed identity card?

Or do you mean it's easy to buy a house for cash without hassle in the US? Just a suitcase of $100 bills? I'm assuming you've tried this recently?? (and the house cost more than 150K?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#649

Post by rzwitserloot »

2 friends of mine did an entire presentation on their deep dive into crypto. They started a long time ago, and very smartly: Instead of trading it themselves, they wrote bots to play the arbitrage game: Find price differences between 2 markets for the same product.

They made money with it. More and more, spending significant amounts on hosters to run their bots more often and on more markets.

It was an interesting presentation even if only for the technical details on how they implemented it all.

It took one whole hour. Somewhere near the end, about 5 seconds was spent on 'anyway I lost it all due to the fall of FTX', and then another 5 minutes on how they want to get back into it and what they're looking at, because an individual can no longer play the arbitrage game today.

I had to ask some fairly blunt questions to disillusion the audience. At the end of all that, and with all that effort, *they lost quite a bit of money in the endeavour*. And they wanted to get back into it.

What. the. heck.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#650

Post by FabHK »

voodooEntity wrote: post #329
fsh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

Reading your comment made me think of an ad i saw several years ago. It was an ad that started off like a typical quality coffee ad, nice pictures of beans, people harvesting, some roasting etc. But than it switched to the topic if making sure that "fair trade" was really applied - switching to IBM Blockchain and claiming that through the use of Blockchain there is safety that everything went fair trade..... And i ju…

Yes. The oracle problem. Because of it, the only blockchain use case is basically crypto (and other purely on-chain stuff, such as NFTs (well, they typically link to off-chain sources by URL, haha) and crypto kittens).
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