The End of My Childhood
vitalik.eth.limo
The End of My Childhood
1–10 of 83 posts
Re: The End of My Childhood
#2Wholesome ending
Re: The End of My Childhood
#3The author sums up everything that is wrong with crypto in two sentences:
> I was getting excited about every new cryptography protocol, and economics too seemed to me to be part of that broader worldview: it's the mathematical tool for understanding and figuring out how to improve the social world.
No, it isn't. This kind of hubris is what hides what Crypto is, which is a game of greater fools and nothing more.
Re: The End of My Childhood
#4The author sums up everything that is wrong with crypto in two sentences: > I was getting excited about every new cryptography protocol, and economics too seemed to me to be part of that broader worldview: it's the mathematical tool for understanding and figuring out how to improve the social world. No, it isn't. This kind of hubris is what hides what Crypto is, which is a game of greater fools and nothing more.
Inherently so, it is not.
But nice try to lower your buy in price.. ;)
Re: The End of My Childhood
#5The cool thing about Vitalik’s blog is that it is decentralized.
The blog uses decentralized storage (IPFS) and uses a decentralized ENS domain (vitalik.eth).
If you use a web3 browser like brave browser vitalik.eth resolves natively in the browser without the need to use the ENS+IPFS (eth.limo) gateway.
Re: The End of My Childhood
#6The author sums up everything that is wrong with crypto in two sentences: > I was getting excited about every new cryptography protocol, and economics too seemed to me to be part of that broader worldview: it's the mathematical tool for understanding and figuring out how to improve the social world. No, it isn't. This kind of hubris is what hides what Crypto is, which is a game of greater fools and nothing more.
Inherently so, it is not. But nice try to lower your buy in price.. ;)
I’m not against crypto as a technology, but as a financial tool, how is it not a greater fools game?
Broadly speaking, you can’t live on crypto alone. Most people aren’t able to buy food and shelter with it.
So the goal, in those majority of cases, is to buy in low for the exact purpose of waiting for a “greater fool” to purchase it from you for more.
Re: The End of My Childhood
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inherently so, it is not. But nice try to lower your buy in price.. ;)
I’m not against crypto as a technology, but as a financial tool, how is it not a greater fools game? Broadly speaking, you can’t live on crypto alone. Most people aren’t able to buy food and shelter with it. So the goal, in those majority of cases, is to buy in low for the exact purpose of waiting for a “greater fool” to purchase it from you for more.
there's plenty of offramps and onramps from crypto to trad finance.
You can earn your money on crypto, get a debit card, and pay for your food and rent with it.
I've done it.
Re: The End of My Childhood
#8The cool thing about Vitalik’s blog is that it is decentralized. The blog uses decentralized storage (IPFS) and uses a decentralized ENS domain (vitalik.eth). If you use a web3 browser like brave browser vitalik.eth resolves natively in the browser without the need to use the ENS+IPFS (eth.limo) gateway.
ty for the tidbit never really found an excuse to install brave before
Re: The End of My Childhood
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not against crypto as a technology, but as a financial tool, how is it not a greater fools game? Broadly speaking, you can’t live on crypto alone. Most people aren’t able to buy food and shelter with it. So the goal, in those majority of cases, is to buy in low for the exact purpose of waiting for a “greater fool” to purchase it from you for more.
there's plenty of offramps and onramps from crypto to trad finance. You can earn your money on crypto, get a debit card, and pay for your food and rent with it. I've done it.
Sure, but that’s my point exactly.
You need an offramp.
The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your crypto.
They would be the “greater fool” in this case.
Even if you earn crypto, that crypto came from a “lesser fool.”
You’re just the intermediary.
Re: The End of My Childhood
#10The author sums up everything that is wrong with crypto in two sentences: > I was getting excited about every new cryptography protocol, and economics too seemed to me to be part of that broader worldview: it's the mathematical tool for understanding and figuring out how to improve the social world. No, it isn't. This kind of hubris is what hides what Crypto is, which is a game of greater fools and nothing more.
No, that quote is correct. Let me restate it in a way that may appeal more to pessimists:
Money is a form of mind control. You use money to get people, groups, institutions, to do what they normally wouldn't. Economics is the study of manipulating that power.
Cryptocurrencies would then be, or was supposed to be, about radically resetting economic priorities, in part by washing away the old incentives (by cutting the institutions that perpetuated them out of the money->behavior loop). It actually did manage this, to a limited and chagrin-inducing extent: 2-3 years ago, you could have convinced someone to pony up 2 year's worth of the average American's income for a picture of a cartoon monkey. Even today, people are paying "money" for digital art that they never would have a decade ago. The potential to have people value things differently because the means underlying that valuation had changed was there.
The issue, to my eye, is that the traditional financial "megaliths" (as he put it) sunk their claws in, with people on the inside ready to sell out the space to become filthy rich (only to be betrayed, both by their own hubris and the incumbent power structures). This is where your "game of greater fools" comes into play, as well as the oft-noted notion that Capitalism subsumes and commodifies everything it can.