It’s sad, I remember when bitcoin was new and the people interested were actually interested in breaking the state control of money. Now >99% of crypto people are just grifters and people trying to get rich quick.
Most people were grifters back then too. I had a friend who was a libertarian porcfest free-stater and he was against bitcoin because he was afraid everyone would lose all their money and not be able to complete the free state project.
bitcoin skyrocketed and suckered in a lot of people to the gold rush. they didn’t want decentralized currency or anything. They just saw that it was ~16,000 dollars a bitcoin and wanted in.
My hope is the fintech people will be gone by the time someone thinks of an eco-friendly consensus protocol that isn’t Proof of Stake (ie “the people with the most money have the most power”).
The biggest problem is people trying to peddle it as currency.
It isn’t currency, never will be. Much more alike to bonds.
It’s an investment object with a speculative value, and no tangible value. The only value it has is what the next guy is willing to pay for it.
While currency is deflationary by nature, crypto is entirely based on demand and supply, and sure, as long as people think it will be worth more tomorrow - sky’s the limit.
Like any pyramid scheme it pays out to get in early, and get out before it collapses.
Relying on crypto is high stakes gambling, and people being people is the only reason I can find for it not having collapsed totally already.
The thing about bonds is that presumably the entity that issues them makes computers or tractors or potato chips or insurance. Bitcoin is like the bad guys in Captain Planet: they build a factory that eats the rain forest and spits out pollution.
The problem with using it as either a gamble or an investment is that the person/people holding control over the currency are doing so with the intent to make money. More often than not your money is gone the instant you pay in if they decide to make it hard/impossible to cash out. This is what Logan Paul’s scam crypto ended up doing. Say what you will about the US dollar, their main incentive is to stay in power which backs up the legitimacy of the currency. They’re not just going to rugpull the dollar because it would run counter to that goal.
It’s fundamentally impossible for crypto to fulfil that role because everyone involved is just there to make a quick buck.
Thats true, but you can still use it as a currency if you want to buy illegal drugs, or donations to organizations that accept it (with monero so its untraceable) and buying mullvad vpn. It’s not stable, but its an accepted way of transferring money that can be as private as cash.
Like any pyramid scheme it pays out to get in early, and get out before it collapses.
That’s not how pyramid schemes work, the ones at the top never collapse, only the ones at the bottom end up holding the bags. GIF NFTs are pyramid schemes.
Ponzi schemes on the other hand, are the quintessential representation of fractional reserve: creditors get paid with new investors, until there is a bank run; you want to get out before that happens. USD is a Ponzi scheme, just like all currencies, including cryptos.
It’s an investment object with a speculative value, and no tangible value. The only value it has is what the next guy is willing to pay for it.
That’s a currency.
Relying on crypto is high stakes gambling
Let me introduce you to FOREX Futures and intraday HFT. There is also Crypto futures, but who’s counting.
It’s fiat, I won’t argue it was ever going to be a good currency with built-in deflation, but that’s what it was originally meant to be. It’s long since become too volatile to be anything but a speculative asset, though. It does seem curious to me what that says about the actual distinction between legitimate currencies, stock options, and pyramid scheme buy-ins.
work January, get paid 1000, pay 600 in bills and lay 400 aside for potential emergencies
work February, medical emergency comes up but medical bills now cost 10000 so you can’t afford them with the 400 you set aside and you also can’t work because of the emergency so you take 20000 debth to repay the medical cost and other bills
work March to repay your debth, but you only get 50 while still having a debth of 20000
What you just said was a thing that you can only do in an idealised world where you never get sick and all your bills are always payed in the month you get them.
Nice of you to completely ignore the rest of the answer that kind of points to why in the real world you have to set aside money and why in the real world a volatile currency is useless
I’m sick all the time, that’s why in my “idealized world”…
I just came from the pharmacy with a bag of meds, paid with… we have these plastic cards stamped with “Social Security” and our ID on them, worked just fine… right after going to get an echocardiogram… where I made the mistake of asking the receptionist where to go, he just told me to scan the barcode at this machine at the entrance, which directed me where to go and spit out a turn slip (turn 1, oh well, they didn’t seem to have many echocardiograms scheduled today)… and then had to take the bus, there is this other plastic ID card I have to touch to the scanner on entry, good thing it’s a city bus so disabled people get to ride for free.
By the way, also got my disability check today, which went straight to bills, and a bit onto a prepaid card in case I must pay something unexpected without having to ask a social worker for help. Setting some aside would be fun, I have some ways to invest it in case some month there’s too much left.
Guess I forgot to mention I live in the 1st world… but honestly, if I lived anywhere else, I’d trust currency even less.
(PS, the metamizole seems to be kicking in, so time to go take out the trash before I’m stuck back in bed)
Okay I’ll change your mind slightly. It’s not always a scam. Sometimes they are just a silly mistake. Some artist caught up with a new way their digital art can make money. Thus it’s hard to call that a scam but instead just a poor attempt on a misunderstood fad.
many are yes, but not all. Bitcoin and Ethereum (among others) are legit, and there are a few NFT projects out there that actually try to do the right thing even if they’re not worth much at all. Many other NFTs are nothing but pictures that have no meaningful value except what you assign it to, but they never pretended to be anything else so that’s still not a scam in my book
If the price of rare stamps craters you can always just use the stamp to mail a letter to your friend. They are onysical items with actual scarcity and legit demand from collectors. Loads of people have collected stamps, coins, and baseball cards for decades and even centuries
Rare stamps collections include stamps from countries that no longer exist, are no longer valid, or are only commemorative and were never valid in the first place. Same thing for coins and banknotes, some you can only use to look at them.
They’re items with scarcity… that is no always all that scarce, and there are a lot of scams going around. Some are fake, some are so good of a fake that are unique and valuable again… 🤷
(but… “use the stamp to mail a letter”? What century is this? 😉)
I send a check to my trash service because they want to charge a fee for me to pay online. That requires a stamp, and my mom sends me card a every few months despite us texting regularly.
Not that far off there; I’m not a fan of any “-ism”. All the [word]-isms seem to quickly veer from “let’s defend the right to [word]” off into “[word] is the only thing that matters”.
Crypto and NFTs are complete scams, change my mind.
It’s sad, I remember when bitcoin was new and the people interested were actually interested in breaking the state control of money. Now >99% of crypto people are just grifters and people trying to get rich quick.
Most people were grifters back then too. I had a friend who was a libertarian porcfest free-stater and he was against bitcoin because he was afraid everyone would lose all their money and not be able to complete the free state project.
bitcoin skyrocketed and suckered in a lot of people to the gold rush. they didn’t want decentralized currency or anything. They just saw that it was ~16,000 dollars a bitcoin and wanted in.
My hope is the fintech people will be gone by the time someone thinks of an eco-friendly consensus protocol that isn’t Proof of Stake (ie “the people with the most money have the most power”).
Sadly time has proven that bitcoin never had good intents, it was all just marketing hype.
Cryptocurrency has its uses as unregulated currency, though that makes it easy to scam people with it.
The biggest problem is people trying to peddle it as currency.
It isn’t currency, never will be. Much more alike to bonds.
It’s an investment object with a speculative value, and no tangible value. The only value it has is what the next guy is willing to pay for it.
While currency is deflationary by nature, crypto is entirely based on demand and supply, and sure, as long as people think it will be worth more tomorrow - sky’s the limit.
Like any pyramid scheme it pays out to get in early, and get out before it collapses.
Relying on crypto is high stakes gambling, and people being people is the only reason I can find for it not having collapsed totally already.
The thing about bonds is that presumably the entity that issues them makes computers or tractors or potato chips or insurance. Bitcoin is like the bad guys in Captain Planet: they build a factory that eats the rain forest and spits out pollution.
Yup. Never meant to say bonds didn’t represent tangible value, but definitely see how it could read that way.
That said, I’m sure you can get bonds in companies doing crypto too.
The problem with using it as either a gamble or an investment is that the person/people holding control over the currency are doing so with the intent to make money. More often than not your money is gone the instant you pay in if they decide to make it hard/impossible to cash out. This is what Logan Paul’s scam crypto ended up doing. Say what you will about the US dollar, their main incentive is to stay in power which backs up the legitimacy of the currency. They’re not just going to rugpull the dollar because it would run counter to that goal.
It’s fundamentally impossible for crypto to fulfil that role because everyone involved is just there to make a quick buck.
Thats true, but you can still use it as a currency if you want to buy illegal drugs, or donations to organizations that accept it (with monero so its untraceable) and buying mullvad vpn. It’s not stable, but its an accepted way of transferring money that can be as private as cash.
Just 🤦
Where to start…
That’s not how pyramid schemes work, the ones at the top never collapse, only the ones at the bottom end up holding the bags. GIF NFTs are pyramid schemes.
Ponzi schemes on the other hand, are the quintessential representation of fractional reserve: creditors get paid with new investors, until there is a bank run; you want to get out before that happens. USD is a Ponzi scheme, just like all currencies, including cryptos.
That’s a currency.
Let me introduce you to FOREX Futures and intraday HFT. There is also Crypto futures, but who’s counting.
It’s fiat, I won’t argue it was ever going to be a good currency with built-in deflation, but that’s what it was originally meant to be. It’s long since become too volatile to be anything but a speculative asset, though. It does seem curious to me what that says about the actual distinction between legitimate currencies, stock options, and pyramid scheme buy-ins.
High volatility is not a problem for a currency:
Volatility is irrelevant to a currency, unless you want to treat it as an investment.
Meaning, you treated currency as an investment. What did I just say?
What you just said was a thing that you can only do in an idealised world where you never get sick and all your bills are always payed in the month you get them. Nice of you to completely ignore the rest of the answer that kind of points to why in the real world you have to set aside money and why in the real world a volatile currency is useless
I’m sick all the time, that’s why in my “idealized world”…
I just came from the pharmacy with a bag of meds, paid with… we have these plastic cards stamped with “Social Security” and our ID on them, worked just fine… right after going to get an echocardiogram… where I made the mistake of asking the receptionist where to go, he just told me to scan the barcode at this machine at the entrance, which directed me where to go and spit out a turn slip (turn 1, oh well, they didn’t seem to have many echocardiograms scheduled today)… and then had to take the bus, there is this other plastic ID card I have to touch to the scanner on entry, good thing it’s a city bus so disabled people get to ride for free.
By the way, also got my disability check today, which went straight to bills, and a bit onto a prepaid card in case I must pay something unexpected without having to ask a social worker for help. Setting some aside would be fun, I have some ways to invest it in case some month there’s too much left.
Guess I forgot to mention I live in the 1st world… but honestly, if I lived anywhere else, I’d trust currency even less.
(PS, the metamizole seems to be kicking in, so time to go take out the trash before I’m stuck back in bed)
Okay I’ll change your mind slightly. It’s not always a scam. Sometimes they are just a silly mistake. Some artist caught up with a new way their digital art can make money. Thus it’s hard to call that a scam but instead just a poor attempt on a misunderstood fad.
many are yes, but not all. Bitcoin and Ethereum (among others) are legit, and there are a few NFT projects out there that actually try to do the right thing even if they’re not worth much at all. Many other NFTs are nothing but pictures that have no meaningful value except what you assign it to, but they never pretended to be anything else so that’s still not a scam in my book
NFTs aren’t always a scam… sometimes they are just tax fraud.
Shitcoins and GIF NFTs are complete scams, nothing to argue there.
Also Papal Indulgences, stamp collections, carbon offsets, the USD… we can go on 🤷
If the price of rare stamps craters you can always just use the stamp to mail a letter to your friend. They are onysical items with actual scarcity and legit demand from collectors. Loads of people have collected stamps, coins, and baseball cards for decades and even centuries
Rare stamps collections include stamps from countries that no longer exist, are no longer valid, or are only commemorative and were never valid in the first place. Same thing for coins and banknotes, some you can only use to look at them.
They’re items with scarcity… that is no always all that scarce, and there are a lot of scams going around. Some are fake, some are so good of a fake that are unique and valuable again… 🤷
(but… “use the stamp to mail a letter”? What century is this? 😉)
I send a check to my trash service because they want to charge a fee for me to pay online. That requires a stamp, and my mom sends me card a every few months despite us texting regularly.
Hey, I’ve had to use at least two stamps since I bought them around 3 years ago!
I take it you aren’t a fan of capitalism. I’m being facetious. Obviously I see what you’re pulling here.
Not that far off there; I’m not a fan of any “-ism”. All the [word]-isms seem to quickly veer from “let’s defend the right to [word]” off into “[word] is the only thing that matters”.