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Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

economist.com

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Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#81

Post by surgical_fire »

keiferski wrote: post #38

The history of crypto is pretty much a story of technical people creating something interesting with a cyberpunk/ open ethos - then the financial industry realizing it can be exploited to make money in ethically dubious ways, while simultaneously destroying the philosophy behind it. The bitcoin paper is still one of the most elegant technical documents I’ve ever read, a decade+ since it was published. I’m not sure wh…

> The history of crypto is pretty much a story of technical people creating something interesting with a cyberpunk/ open ethos - then the financial industry realizing it can be exploited to make money in ethically dubious ways, while simultaneously destroying the philosophy behind it

This is not 1995 anymore, when there was an air of naive optimism about technology, and everyone thought that would only be a force for progress and good.

When crypto was on the rise, many people warned against it. There were many who were skeptical.

Those who were building it were in on the grift. Gesturing to some shadowy cabal of people that subverted crypto into something it was not meant to be is just giving a pat on the head to people that were willingly building something very destructive for their own damn benefit.

"I was just summoning demons because they look cool, I didn't expect those evil cultists to sacrifice a child in a pentagram" is not a valid line of defense.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#82

Post by ecocentrik »

rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

- repatriating and distributing cartel drug money

- paying/receiving bribes

- bypassing international sanctions to finance wars

There's a lot of uses for cryptocurrency and only a very small fraction are good for individuals.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#84

Post by sigwinch »

hengheng wrote: post #41

What I'm always missing with these takes is the "what if" component. Nobody really dares to paint the whole picture in articles like this. Authors seem to go as far as to find the moral infraction, and then stop. But that doesn't do what is happening justice. No, crypto does not need regulation. Law-based order needs crypto regulation. That's a big difference already. But we can go further than that. What if we don't…

The inevitable bailouts will be breathtaking. We’re in a quadratic adoption phase to legitimize a currency faster than the public discovers its downsides. The first bailout will be in this administration and won’t look like an inflection point. It’ll look like printing fiat into a dark, lucrative, inaccessible hole.

Among average Americans, the biggest advantage for promoters is the widespread susceptibility to scams. FartCoin, $TRUMP, and BitCoin are equally buoyant unless you know just a little about the technology and culture. Demographics might change this before education does. That’s the second inflection point.

The third inflection point is how the politically-connected holders will manipulate hard forks, say due to a quantum breakthrough in Grover. Once we start seeing forged signatures, will we roll Ethereum back to last June? Or back to Tuesday?

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#85

Post by ddimitrov »

resource_waste wrote: post #17
rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

If you can be objective enough to consider that not everyone likes keeping fiat currency, it was an interesting alternative. Bitcoin generally appreciated, where fiat had inflation. While the transaction costs/speed have eliminated this, there was a few years of my life that I both sent money to friends and used a Bitcoin debit card.

If you don't like fiat there is always gold. If you really care about value, independent from the monetary system (post-apocalyptic safety), buy tools, grain, generators and oil, though many of these things are perishable and storage comes at a cost.

One must ask whether the Bitcoin valuation has raised 1000% because the fiat has inflated as much, or is it mostly driven by speculation. For reference point, the buying power of fiat currency has not changed dramatically during the same period.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#86

Post by trustsafe »

keiferski wrote: post #38

The history of crypto is pretty much a story of technical people creating something interesting with a cyberpunk/ open ethos - then the financial industry realizing it can be exploited to make money in ethically dubious ways, while simultaneously destroying the philosophy behind it. The bitcoin paper is still one of the most elegant technical documents I’ve ever read, a decade+ since it was published. I’m not sure wh…

I'm not so sure that cyberpunk is dead, it's just that Billy Idol has better things to do with his time than try to co-opt something his manager read about in WIRED. The broken-circuit-boards-and-leather NiN aesthetic lasted for so long that it can't really be revived, which is 100% fine. I think now that a ten year old laptop that can run Linux, tor, and i2p is worth $20 means that now is more cyberpunk than ever.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#87

Post by safety1st »

repler wrote: post #54
keiferski wrote: post #38

The history of crypto is pretty much a story of technical people creating something interesting with a cyberpunk/ open ethos - then the financial industry realizing it can be exploited to make money in ethically dubious ways, while simultaneously destroying the philosophy behind it. The bitcoin paper is still one of the most elegant technical documents I’ve ever read, a decade+ since it was published. I’m not sure wh…

> the media is largely dominated by institutional players and also tech journalism as a whole is pretty abysmal to begin with

Speaking as someone who had a passion for journalism and wanted to become a journalist when I was in high school at the end of the '90s, these days I am comfortable with that industry being completely eradicated.

How did we get here? The Telecom Act of 1996 legalized cross-media ownership and an unprecedented degree of consolidation across all forms of media, news and otherwise. Those rules existed to promote local journalism and independent voices. We now have no local journalism and no independent voices that are staffed and budgeted for doing real, investigative journalism.

Now journalists say what their corporate parent tells them to say; the ones who refused were fired years ago. The ones who stuck around work really hard to obscure this fact because they're clinging to their jobs in a declining industry. We went from a press that was the envy of the world to a cartel of decaying shills. Either reform the industry and break up the monopolies or just terminate it and fire everyone.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#88

Post by charcircuit »

rimbo789 wrote: post #68
charcircuit wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It prevents centralized entities being the gatekeepers to the modern financial world. The US maintaining their own digital version of cash would also work, but the government is slow, and does not want to compete against these centralized entities due to being advantaged as the government controls the currency itself. Payment processors essentially get to dictate what is and is not allowed to be financially viable wh…

What’s wrong with centralized entities? There should be financial gatekeepers. They are much better than whatever crime syndicates benefit from crypto Crypto is just speed running the 19th century and making us re learn all the reasons why we made the pre crypto regulations.

>What’s wrong with centralized entities?

Because the CEO of one could read a false news article about your site and prohibit you from transacting with them anymore. Your existence is at the whims of a few people.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#89

Post by rollcat »

survirtual wrote: post #59
rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

Let's regulate mathematics. No, it isn't enough...let's regulate physics itself. If we could just control when molecules are allowed to form, we could make it so mean molecules don't exist unless they're allowed to exist by our Council of Very Good People Who Have The Most Money. Since they have the most money, they know better than everyone else. /s Did you know in some countries, a good loan for someone with perfec…

> Only fools would speak about crypto so confidently without doing a minimal investigation into its utility.

Only fools would speak about a technological solution without understating the reality, that technology still leans on society, power structures, and ability to enforce laws.

Civil disobedience works as a means to shift the rules, the balance of power; you can't maintain it perpetually. P2P eventually shifted the attention of the recording industry to online distribution. People jumped to Netflix and iTunes, because they became more convenient, while providing good value for the money.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#90

Post by croes »

swalsh wrote: post #61
croes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah lets combine two technologies that need lots of energy. Climate change is still a problem

A tired old debate devoid of facts. The chains I advocated for are proof of stake, and AI is a useful system worth the energy it uses. Should we not consume energy at all?

I highly doubt that the majority things AI is used for is useful.

I see lots of spam videos, pictures and texts that flood insta, Youtube etc. to monetize on ad revenue or simply scam people.

I think cryptocurrency aren’t any better if you compare legit uses vs criminal ones.

> Should we not consume energy at all?

No need for a strawman. Prevention of wasteful use doesn’t mean no use at all.

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