> I wasted my 20s making boatloads of money in tech. My libertarian dream was not realized.
I wasted years of my life in crypto
801–810 of 1001 posts
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#802I worked in blockchain 5 years trying to build good tech, and speculators ruin everything and don't care about good tech, but the real punch line is that
good tech is like 2% of a real answer
Here's a rant about a bunch of other layers of 'so you want to move money'
https://voidfox.com/blog/payment_processor_fun_2025_making_y...
and different parts of the blockchain ecosystem are working on some parts of that, and all together they're still a long ways off
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#803Earlier 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.
You're correct if you own some BTC. FTA:
> I have zero doubt that BTC will hit $1m one day.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#804It'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…
The only thing I could think to build on blockchain is electric utility metering / settlements data, but I fear I'd be laughed out of the room at this point
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#805Tangential: a friend of mine growing up refused to read Ayn Rand, because he said that everyone he knew that had read her books turned into assholes, and he didn't want to become an asshole too.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#806I really love this thread more and more, so I just want to appreciate this moment right now because these discussions are genuinely fascinating to read and I wish to comment a lot and actually feel a little overwhelmed because of it haha
Personally I am really interested in stablecoins, I know there is nothing interesting about them fundamentally and I think people should have their money in banks but still there are coins like fusd if need be which are private
I hate crypto aside from stablecoins which feel "tolerable" to me, not too good not too bad either but what is the general consensus and is there some innovation happening in stablecoins as I see a lot of stablecoins exploding recently.
I have another interesting idea about stablecoins which I see literally noone or quite few people pick up but why is there literally no coin stable-pegged to a etf like vanguards world or similar, I know from a regulatory standpoint it can be hard to create from what I've heard but I've always wondered about it and I would love to know more.
Also just because I think stablecoins are a good-enough idea doesnt mean whole of crypto is and basically I actually want centralized finance to do what stablecoins do without the need of a chain and just be better in my opinion and If I ever work in crypto, it would be very related to stablecoin in my opinion (or I hope so) but I also dont see too much point in working on stablecoins when there are just so many and mostly its a regulatory issue but still stablecoins are definitely interesting to me honestly.
The use case I had for this is that I am a teenager and I had some crypto and currently its in gold but I wanted to invest it in stocks and I have seen that there are chains which are cheap too
Besides this, some privacy gains and some other small use cases personally I am not that big of a believer in crypto (I am one of the haters), I think the technology is cool but the whole industry tries to do unrealistic things which raises alarms as me as I am a index fund kind of guy.
Honestly in my opinion 90% of people dont ever need crypto, what we need are more services like privacy.com basically which can create virtual cards with limits so that shitty companies cant leak my data and lose it. Or if the world can implement something like UPI or even PIX, those seem to be the better option and I only consider something like stablecoin as a slow way to move towards something like UPI or PIX preferably at the world scale.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it wouldn't have. I bought 10 bitcoin for about $1000 in late 2013. It's currently worth about 900K and was a peak of about 1.2M. $1000 in NVDA shares in late 2013 was about 35 cents per share, so about 2850 shares. That's currently worth 521K with a peak of 590K. And why? Because in 2013 I thought there was a greater potential for bitcoin blowing up substantially due to the new concept of blockchain and what it c…
I mean it was a lucky guess but still just a guess.
Nobody is saying it's not luck... But people are comparing it to buying a lottery ticket. I am pretty sure the odds of this gamble are way better than the odds of winning this big in a lottery. Probably by more than an order of magnitude.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It pretty easy. I personally think it’s much easier than in traditional banking. The hard part is that for day to day things you still need an on ramp and off ramp, but that is changing as merchants accept crypto directly.
Messing with crypto is in no way easier than traditional banking. And traditional banking has guarantees that crypto does not.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#809Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The rest of the higher profile coins are, at the very least, tools to make money. Make money from what?
Make money from the next greater fool who walks in the door. That's the essence of crypto, magic beans and greater fools.
I'm not into cryptocurrencies and I hold exactly 0 of them but... Isn't basically how people make money out of gold?
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#810Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The rest of the higher profile coins are, at the very least, tools to make money. Make money from what?
Make money from the next greater fool who walks in the door. That's the essence of crypto, magic beans and greater fools.
That's also the essence of the stock market because you are getting paid in money, not in products/services produced by the company that you hold stock of