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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

#71

Post by AshamedCaptain »

jstanley wrote: post #18
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…

That you don't understand something doesn't mean everyone else is wrong.

The Emperor was very pleased that everyone was admiring his new clothes, even if he couldn’t see them himself!

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#72

Post by cindyllm »

embedding-shape wrote: post #68
lapcat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone should have chance at redeeming themselves even if they did harm. You're changing the subject. Nobody is arguing that the author is irredeemable. On the contrary, the author seems to have recognized his own mistake and changed his course, at least to an extent. The question is whether the author's years in crypto were a waste, and I would say that it's indeed a waste to spend 8 years on something just to "…

It's not about "learning to not do that single thing" but learning from everything you picked up during that period, good or bad. And even if what you did had the net-effect of being negative to society, you can learn from the things you experienced during that time, meaning it wouldn't be a waste, at least in my mind. > I don't think I've ever spent a lot of time and effort on an activity that broadly harms society…

[dead]

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#73

Post by tim333 »

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…

>How anyone, especially many "intelligent" people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top...

However a currency was grafted on, is used by millions and has a $1.7tn market cap. Seems real.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#74

Post by kachapopopow »

embedding-shape wrote: post #69
kachapopopow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it becomes significantly easy to store money and launder it whenever, it's what all indian scammers do: get it out of the banking system into crypto

> and launder it whenever Again, there is no "LaunderBTCAndTurnIntoUSD" function in the Bitcoin protocol... > get it out of the banking system into crypto And please describe how you do so without involved A) banks who look the other way and B) registered companies who handle the on/off-ramping from/to BTC. When people argue that it makes it so much easier to launder money, please spend at least a minute to actually…

Ok you seem to be pretty outdated I won't blame you for that so I'll catch you up to speed and when I refer to bitcoin I generally refer to any tier 1 crypto currency:

There is actually a BitcoinToUSDPipeline. The real problem is that the exchange crypto transactions are NON REFUNDABLE as you know, that means once it leaves the banking system (via making victim register a coinbase or kraken account, or register it for them using their credential information and compromised webcam for liveliness checks) you have an unlimited amount of time to do whatever. There are also various real life ways of bitcoin atm, using card to buy Okay you have your money in bitcoin, now what? Well, welcome to dex - decentralized exchanges. Using smart contracts you can wrap your btc into eth-btc, using etc-btc you can now trade it to any other crypto currency no strings attached and the most popular currently is tron.

Tron has tons of merchants which will simply swap from a to b from two different liquidity pools and those transactions are done off-chain and exist only on their database, since there are usually dozens of transactions mixed it becomes increasingly difficult to continue your investigation without having to use the slow legal route which is especially difficult if the merchant is offshore often ending up in a dead-end, at that point only INTERPOL really has the power and resources to trace it. Liquidity pools are used for perfectly legal reasons and it is not like tornado cash.

Now you have two choices: just spend the money directly (in Georgia (the country) everyone accepts crypto), buy giftcards or if you don't really care and aren't doing anything interpol would be interested in just deposit to binance and withdraw to your bank account, depending on your local government they might not even care.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#75

Post by tim333 »

panzi wrote: post #20
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…

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.

Gambling.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#76

Post by shuntress »

panzi wrote: post #20
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…

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.

Git

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#77

Post by embedding-shape »

kachapopopow wrote: post #74
embedding-shape wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and launder it whenever Again, there is no "LaunderBTCAndTurnIntoUSD" function in the Bitcoin protocol... > get it out of the banking system into crypto And please describe how you do so without involved A) banks who look the other way and B) registered companies who handle the on/off-ramping from/to BTC. When people argue that it makes it so much easier to launder money, please spend at least a minute to actually…

Ok you seem to be pretty outdated I won't blame you for that so I'll catch you up to speed and when I refer to bitcoin I generally refer to any tier 1 crypto currency: There is actually a BitcoinToUSDPipeline. The real problem is that the exchange crypto transactions are NON REFUNDABLE as you know, that means once it leaves the banking system (via making victim register a coinbase or kraken account, or register it fo…

> so I'll catch you up to speed

Great, finally someone in this submission who know what they're talking about, exciting!

> in Georgia (the country) everyone accepts crypto

Oh no, another larper. You cannot walk around Georgia expecting to pay everywhere in BTC/USDT like you would with cash or a standard card, and I'm not sure what you're basing the information on because it's surely not based on personal experience.

Guess we'll continue waiting for people with actual knowledge to drop by.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#78

Post by lapcat »

embedding-shape wrote: post #68
lapcat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone should have chance at redeeming themselves even if they did harm. You're changing the subject. Nobody is arguing that the author is irredeemable. On the contrary, the author seems to have recognized his own mistake and changed his course, at least to an extent. The question is whether the author's years in crypto were a waste, and I would say that it's indeed a waste to spend 8 years on something just to "…

It's not about "learning to not do that single thing" but learning from everything you picked up during that period, good or bad. And even if what you did had the net-effect of being negative to society, you can learn from the things you experienced during that time, meaning it wouldn't be a waste, at least in my mind. > I don't think I've ever spent a lot of time and effort on an activity that broadly harms society…

> you can learn from the things you experienced during that time

Of course you can learn from your experience, and the author did learn from his experience, which is the entire point of the tweet, so the author doesn't need to be told that he can learn from his experience. He already knows!

Nonetheless, the author considers his time to have been a waste.

> meaning it wouldn't be a waste

This does not follow.

> I worked in the cryptocurrency industry, sold drugs, interacted with gangs, and a bunch of other stuff but none of them broadly harmed society

Ok...

> One could surely argue that making "paid browser extensions" somehow have a net negative impact on the world, and if that was proven, would that mean all the time you spent on those sort of projects were suddenly wasteful and you should have realized this up front?

If that was proven? Well, prove it. Go ahead, make my day. Otherwise, this is just a silly piece of sophistry with no applicability.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#79

Post by CaptainZapp »

serial_dev wrote: post #43
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…

Blockchain is a very inconvenient database, for sure, but there is a good reason Bitcoin uses it. It had to solve to double spend problem and create a trustless p2p digital cash, while being censorship resistant and having no central authority. Some people around a decade ago started using blockchain for everything where a SQLite db would have been better, because blockchain was the buzzword around that time, and the…

> and they were charlatans who wanted funding and hype, or signal how cutting edge they are

Interesting that those same hucksters and shysters who spread the gospel of the blockchain immediately jumped on th AI bandwaggon when this was the shiny new thing.

Or, maybe, 40 years working in IT turned me slightly cynical.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#80

Post by heresie-dabord »

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…

> Now the uninformed gambling on futuristic sounding hokum? THAT is easy to understand.

Yes... During a hype rush, sell memes.

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

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