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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

#671

Post by smokel »

alphazard wrote: post #661

It's good to know everyone here is weary of crypto scams, but I don't see anyone accurately describing the significance of these technologies. Bitcoin failed as a currency, and as that became realized, institutional investors pivoted to the "digital gold" scam, to keep people long, while they divest or hedge. The two reasons why it failed as a currency are transaction latency, and lack of fungibility. Transaction pri…

What's the incentive for keeping these "robust" databases online, if not for making a lot of money by running scams?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#672

Post by ecocentrik »

saalweachter wrote: post #619
teekert wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My advice is always: invest in the assets I hold, and never sell. It really makes the value of my holdings rise.

My advice: There's always at least one crypto scammer telling you to hold through the dip.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#673

Post by orbital-decay »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #398
mozarella wrote: post #206

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/01/31/end.html#section... Vitalik touched upon this briefly in an other-wise long and wide-reaching essay. I think its a good treatment of the topic that the author is talking about. He categorizes the ecosystem broadly into 4 cohorts- [token holders] (which includes investors, speculators, etc.), [pragmatic users] (actual end-users who spend crypto to buy stuff), [intellectuals]…

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.

>criminals, sanction evaders

The definition of both may vary depending on where you are. Being not controlled by governments is the original purpose of cryptocurrencies.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#674

Post by tim333 »

mervz wrote: post #624
reenorap wrote: post #601

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…

100%. It's similar to AI... the only people trying to tell you "it's the future" are those with financial stakes.

There have been people going back to Turing thinking AI is the future and I don't think he was trying to pump his AI stocks.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#675

Post by capyba »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #655

Like most kids, I had my Randian phase. But I grew out of it before moving to Sili Valley. I've always been a bit of a fan of Adam Curtis' documentary style, and "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" (named after the Brautigan poem) is worth watching. I'm not sure how much of his narrative of Rand is accurate, but it's well presented: https://youtu.be/I6EBpLfLHCA?si=SE93Dp9nsl11vnU3

Hearing someone proudly describe themselves as a libertarian always reminds me of the ol’ twitter quote that goes something like “libertarians are like house cats - fiercely self-assured of their own independence, yet completely reliant on a system they don’t appreciate or understand.”

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#676

Post by alternatex »

earnesti wrote: post #633
reenorap wrote: post #601

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…

I've never understood crypto, however I'm long term Bitcoin fan and user, and don't consider it "crypto". I think Bitcoin is pretty much opposite what the typical crypto project is.

How is it opposite. In my mind they all fall under the same libertarian fantasy umbrella.

The post mentioned the idea of casually sending a billion dollars. Was that ever possible with Bitcoin? AFAIK it's less ergonomic to send money using Bitcoin than it is using traditional banking.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#677

Post by neillyons »

Bitcoin doesn't take into account that humans are forgetful.

If you forget your bank card pin code they would post you a new card and pin, if you phone them up. I've done this a couple times in the past pre-smartphone banks.

If you forget your bitcoin password you are never getting access back.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#678

Post by SirMaster »

FabHK wrote: post #612
SirMaster wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Suggest you put $1000 each into all the other 28m of cryptos tracked by coinmarketcap, "in the slim chance that it completely blew up".

I don't see how you jump form this to that.

I made a singular choice once to put less than 1% of my yearly income into 1 thing that seemed to have some potential.

Back then it was the only crypto. I put in knowing full well it could go to 0, but the potential of where it could possibly go seemed well worth the tiny risk to an essentially insignificant sum of money to me.

There are other cryptos but they aren't the original or anywhere near the biggest, so they are not the same in my eyes. So those are actual legitimate reasons why I would not choose to perform that same risk again with a different crypto.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#679

Post by Capricorn2481 »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #358
originalvichy wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. Even if you told me that you felt like working at the UN was a waste of time, I’d still tell you that at least you contributed to a historically unique global institution which at least strives to bring people across the world together. Bitcoin was just a waste of talent and resources.

Half the people here work for random SaaS and socially corrosive companies like Meta that have literally helped install dictators into power You could do worse than building crappy blockchains

Not a lot of people here work for Meta, which is why you had to lump in "Random SaaS" like that's remotely comparable. I doubt most people here are working on anything harmful, let alone a fraction of what Meta does.

Unless you think Todo list apps cause Ethnic Cleansing.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#680

Post by FabHK »

aeternum wrote: post #215
sroerick wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was interesting that BSV seemed to scale just fine, and you could also store entire files on it, including JSON, HTML or even music or videos. This seemed like an amazing innovation to me, made even more amazing by the fact that it was, by all accounts, the original protocol. You could do some pretty amazing stuff with it, for example store a SPA on chain and then store individual posts on chain, and hav…

>BSV seemed to scale just fine, and you could also store entire files on it, including JSON, HTML or even music or videos This doesn't pass the sniff test. Everyone must store the full blockchain in order to verify it. So to run a full node you would have to store everyone's JSON, HTML, music, videos. Full mirroring for every node in a distributed system is about as close as you can get to the definition of doesn't s…

Indeed. Bitcoin's blockchain grows with a laughable 3kB/s, yet is an unwieldy 700 GB.

A blockchain that allowed you store one song per second would be hundreds of TB before long. There are other architectures for that sort of thing for a reason.

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