… the founding ideas are promising, and something I dream of.
Before I start, just a little bit of background on me so you can understand how biased I am (😅): I’m a 16 years old programmer and I won a few crypto hackathon/funding rounds and I made a lot of friends in the field. It allowed me to get quite a bit of ETH/XMR along the way!
I see cryptocurrencies getting a lot of hate, rightly so for the number of scams, shitcoins, NFTs bullshit, “governance”, DAOs and all those often useless & snob terms.
However the founding ideas of decentralisation and freedom with your money are very appealing to me. Smart contracts are really interesting for creating your own banking operation and tokens can represent anything! It’s a world of possibilities to play with, and you get to build something useful for people!
I’d just like to add a bit of nuance tho: I see a lot of apps being built and what’s really making me laugh is the lack of open-source, decentralisation and auditing on privacy. Granted, there is a lot of fake promises, but it’s like everything, you have to find the talented people to follow.
I find it fascinating to build unstoppable, decentralised, user-first apps. I just hope that web3 stays true to its founding principles.
Hope it was interesting, tell me what you think!
EDIT: title+typos+the game is not comfortably played in Act 2
Hard disagree. The founding idea of cryptocurrency is to trick people out of their real currency. It’s an elaborate fake-money scheme. Good riddance.
What always got me was that in these bitcoin bros were always like: yeah, no more big banks, i want to use my bitcoins like money.
While at the same time go: haha some idiot bought a pizza with bitcoin which would now be worth 40k dollars now, what a dork.
And everyone goes, you need to hold, i’m gonna hold are you all gonna hold? We’re all holding right? Btw look at this cool billionaire selling his bitcoin at the right time, i wish i was him.
How did they never seen that they are all just people waiting to fuck over some other people. Bot a pyramid scheme tho
Have to correct you there:
Monopoly™ money/crypto are a Ponzi scheme: their value depends on the next people who get sucked into the scheme, it can both decrease (inflation) or increase (deflation, increasing interest rates). It’s important to know when to exit a Ponzi scheme before it collapses.
NFT Apes, Avatars, and other collectibles, are a pyramid scheme: the initial creator gets a cut from every successive transaction. Creators never need to exit the scheme, they’ll always get more and more, even if the item’s value tanks.
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Dollar bills have the inherent value that some very grumpy men with guns will kick down my door and take me away if I try to make them myself.
Cryptocurrency is only worth something until a technical weakness is discovered and exploited, or until governments make it illegal, or until the creators of the currency reveal the back door they left in the system (such as that supposedly-lost Bitcoin wallet with a few billion coins in it) and cash it out, and then it’s all over and your digital tulips aren’t worth the flash cells they’re stored in.
Only to criminals.
Get around laws against money laundering, smuggling, extortion, and theft, I think you mean. Banks aren’t in the business of censorship, and even if yours is, there are plenty of others to choose from who’ll be more than happy to take your money and not ask too many questions about your politics.
Yeah, that’s what all the scammers say.
That’s not what “inherent” means, and it didn’t prevent North Korea from printing their own for decades anyway.
As for the other points:
Recently one of the mods on Beehaw was asking for an anonymous way to receive donations, which banks don’t allow. I don’t think they intended it for any of those.
Except for porn.
Take your money, yes. Give it back… not so much.
Still, there are plenty of scams in crypto… unfortunately, the same scams keep being run on all kinds of assets. Avoiding crypto won’t shield you from them, only learning about them may give you a fighting chance.
All cryptocurrencies other than Monero are completely useless to criminals. Most cryptocurrencies are designed to be traced. The only thing more traceless than Monero is paying in cash.
In other words, you’re wrong, crypto is even more useless than that
Ransom is almost always collected in Bitcoin. Buying drugs online was one of the first things you could do with Bitcoin.
Ransom is collected in Bitcoin only because it’s popular… but it’s fully traceable, so needs to get money laundered. When possible, it’s collected in XMR, which has a fully anonymous transfer mode.
Still…
Earlier this year, a guy I knew, came asking me for help, because he’d been “investing” in crypto, but suddenly one of the exchanges locked his funds for “suspicion of fraud”. Turns out, the “investing” he was doing, came as a “trade secret” from a “cute lady” he met on Facebook, who taught him how to put in EUR into one web, exchange it for BTC, transfer those to another web, exchange them for USDT, then transfer those to an exchange and convert them back into EUR, all at a favourable rate, getting him something like 5% per day (that’s a 5 billion % APR!). But, here’s the catch: he was only allowed to do it only a day! So he patiently kept doing it for like a month, with small amounts like 500-1000 EUR each time… until suddenly, his last transfer got frozen. He contacted the (second) website, and they asked him for 1000 EUR to unfreeze the 1000 EUR in BTC he had there, pending to convert to USDT.
That’s when he called me… and I told him “man, you’ve been had, you’ve been laundering money for who knows whom!”
A few days later, he managed to contact some more people in a similar situation, some guy with up 500K “locked up” like that, a car dealership owner, who sent the initial 1K unlocking fee… and a 10K legal fee… and a 25K certification fee… and was asking around whether he should send another 50K representation fee… all of that after having laundered who knows how many millions 🤦
Notice how they went from the BTC laundering, to a basic Nigerian scam with direct transfers, so full bank tracing that they’ll have to launder later. I also knew another guy whose father fell for that scam… in the early 1990s! The simplest stuff has been doing the rounds for decades, even centuries, and it keeps working.
It just isn’t though. The major currency, bitcoin, was made avalible in 2008, there weren’t any scams going on back then. It was meant to be as simple as a decentralised currency that the people had full control over. I think that’s a great thing. It wasn’t until scammers and grifters saw a new market that could be exploited because it required a good understanding of how it works to be used properly. Scammers dumbed it down and huge centralised exchanges came in opening the door to scams. However it’s definitely not a currency yet, I’ll agree, it’s more of an asset. It’s such a shame that a technology that could’ve helped put people in full control of their money has been diluted into such a shit show. Whenever I hear about a new project touting “crypto based” or Blockchain i wince like I’m sure you do, because NOW it’s become a scam, it wasn’t originally.
It took all of 6 years for banks and scams to be reinvented – mt gox was in 2014
And that’s why 10 years later, for 2024, the EU is requiring every crypto exchange to register as a bank, follow KYC and AML procedures, along with reporting everyone’s balances to the country’s Treasury.
Too late:
During the Roman Empire, people used real currency: gold. Sometimes in coins, sometimes not. A given weight in gold was worth… well, its weight in gold; real currency. Some coins were made of silver, copper, or bronze; worth… their weight in silver, copper, or bronze. There used to be a fixed exchange ratio between the metals.
The Kingdom of Venice, had a problem: its merchants kept getting robbed of their gold coins, so they increasingly started storing them in safe vaults with guards outside. Some people agreed to store other’s gold coins, and gave them redeemable slips of paper or IOUs. Merchants rejoiced, as they could now write who the coins were to be paid to, without having to carry heavy coffers full of gold by themselves.
The Kingdom of Venice had another problem: they needed more and more money to trade with, but there was only so much gold around. Since they already kept most of the gold in vaults, and people used IOUs for it, they started stamping coins with a face value higher than the metal value. They gave you metal worth only 90%, 80%, 70%, 50%, 20%, 5%… for the same amount of gold; welcome to depreciation and inflation!
» This is when we lost “real money” «
They did the same with IOUs, printing more and more of them for the same amount of gold in the vaults (fractional reserve), hoping that most people wouldn’t request their gold all at once.
The United States of America abandons the gold standard, you can no longer redeem your “real money IOUs” for actual real gold, only for other “real money IOUs”. The IOUs for “real money IOUs” get stamped on cheap ass metal, printed on cheap paper, with some features to avoid forgery but that’s it.
» This is when what was left of “real money”, became “Monopoly™ money” «
Banks no longer need to keep gold, or even “gold coin IOUs”… or even “real money IOU IOUs”. They just write down in a ledger how much do they owe you, or you owe them, and that’s it. If the ledger burns up, or the dog eats it…“oops, sowwy 🥺”.
Since now banks only need to keep a number, and computers are great at keeping numbers, they start keeping the ledgers on computers. If the computer gets corrupted without a copy, or an EMP strikes it, or a hacker changes some numbers… “oops, sowwy 🥺”.
» It’s an elaborate fake-money scheme «
Take a good look at what you call “real currency” and “real money”. How much is it worth just by itself? Banknotes are plastic now, they entitle you to… more banknotes, or better yet, a bank balance (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). Coins have nowhere the face value… and when they have, “it’s a federal crime” to melt them down to get the metal’s worth. Most people alive today, have never seen “real currency” or “non-Monopoly™ money”, not outside of a museum.
Now, you decide which Monopoly™ money you like more (and beware of scammers!).
Call me when I can pay my rent with your monopoly money. Until then it’s all monopoly and no money
☎️ Right now: take some banknotes stamped by the US Federal Reserve, and your landlord will… be maybe reluctant (was it “guilty cash” from drug trafficking? can’t risk it)… and instead ask you to call your bank so they change the numbers they got stored on yours and your landlord’s computer ledgers.
If you both would rather trust the computer ledgers of Bitcoin, DOGE, aETH tokens on the AAVE DAO, or whatever crypto PayPal has concocted recently, that’s your choice. You could pay it in Robux, or give them your PS5, or some NFT pointing to a gif of a poorly drawn ape, for all it matters.
Still better have them sign a recept in either case, though.
Right now, the only thing you need Monopoly™ USD in the US, is paying US taxes. You can pay them in Monopoly™ EUR in most of the UE, or Monopoly™ RUB in Russia… but some landlords, and even grocery stores, may still ask you for Monopoly™ USD or Monopoly™ EUR because they don’t trust whatever Monopoly™ money their government is asking for 🤷
So in other words, no. Nowhere.
People in 1st world countries are tapping smartphones because they trust the NFC to talk to a wallet they trust to connect to a server they trust to change numbers on a digital ledger they trust.
Whether the screen shows you the equivalent value in USD, BTC, or barrels of oil, you already trust digital Monopoly™ money to get from one place to another.
None of the other things you mentioned have 5% price swings every single day. It’s a mere facade of a currency fit for insane people
Not sure which things you think have, and which ones don’t, “5% price swings every single day”, or price in what, but if you check the markets, you might get surprised by how stable some things are, and how unstable others.
The value of USD has decreased by about 10% over 2 years. Over the same time period, BTC has been half and more than double its current value – a factor of 5 spread. Oil varied by a factor of 2, copper a factor of 1.5. Eggs a factor of less than 3.
Things which vary that much can make useful commodities but are terrible currencies. You have accidentally given BTC a sick burn, since anyone who tried to pay their rent in crude oil would likewise be laughed at.
The only mistake I could find is that US Dollars aren’t printed on paper but on cotton.
75% cotton and 25% linen… thin sheets of unwoven fibers, or “paper” 🤷
Canada Dollars are printed on plastic film, but plastic fibers can also be made into “paper”, something particularly useful for recycling. Some day, banknotes might be printed on actual trash 😆
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Your raw emotional response has swayed me from my nuanced understanding of this topic, I would appreciate you coloring more of the grey areas of my life either black or white.
No, absolutely not. Some crypto is absolutely like that, but the bigger ones like Ethereum and bitcoin aren’t.