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>stagnates mainstream adoption Bitcoin/cryptocurrency is stuff for rich and tech-savvy people. - Folks with stressful and demanding jobs probably won't bother

>stagnates mainstream adoption Bitcoin/cryptocurrency is stuff for rich and tech-savvy people. - Folks with stressful and demanding jobs probably won't bother with full-time security measures to protect their wallets. - The same group won't have time to watch every piece of crypto news about which service or product is possibly bad/hacked (see electrum wallets). - Extremely high volatility means you need to be prepared to essentially lose the dollar value of your bitcoins. Rich people can hire someone to do these things. They can also likely afford to lose whatever balance they tie up in bitcoin without affecting their standard of living. Rich people can also manipulate the price, and mainstream and retail investors are never going to know about that (see: people who bought in at $19k during that hype cycle). Rich people can afford astroturfing services to spread memes and good morale to pump the price. Rich people likely have significant control over hype cycles and may even be pumping other cryptocurrencies to start diversifying. Tech-savvy people may have less-stressful jobs or jobs where they can browse the internet to keep up with cryptocurrency news. But at least they can manage the security considerations likely from previous knowledge. Ultimately, crypto will never really be a product for poor/middle-class people. It's just a terrible idea. You're relying on a system that has virtually no accountability other than businesses dying (and how hard is it really to spin up a new crypto service if you're a rich person?)

Robotbeat 9y ago
> Rich people can afford astroturfing services to spread memes and good morale to pump the price. Rich people likely have significant control over hype cycles and may even be pumping other cryptocurrencies to start diversifying. That's super interesting. We assumed that the decentralization of content brought on by the Internet and social media would put a stop to stuff like that, but instead, due to anonymity, simply painted a veneer of populism over the same old trick. It worked for the election, so why not apply it to manipulate speculative investments? ICO is a way to get around the reporting requirements of an IPO and the minimum-net-worth requirements for private investments by regular folk (ostensibly to protect them from exactly this kind of asymmetric information, speculative manipulation that occurred in the roaring 20s...).
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  It's really easy to get into tinfoil haberdashery territory, but IMHO, the two main areas of manipulation that are worth it (these days at least) are finance and politics. Bitcoin has the advantage that it lacks any significant regulatory oversight or penalties while being useful across borders, which regulatory agencies are usually constrained by.
  - api 9y ago
    In today's world I think having no foil in your hat is naive. We are living in a cyberpunk novel collaboration between William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Tom Clancy. Doesn't mean you should uncritically buy into conspiracy theories without evidence, just that considering the possibility of manipulation and shenanigans is entirely reasonable.
kurtmueller42 9y ago
It also doesn't add value in the first place. If you're a citizen in the USA for example, you probably have a credit card that you can use to instantly make payments either in person or online. If someone hacks your CC info, they don't get to immediately drain your bank account, and in fact usually you lose nothing after contesting it. The fees are generally avoidable, depending on the card. The only significant benefit that cryptos offer is a scheme that allows you to make payments without handing over your credit card number in case you're not sure some sketchy site is legit. So really, the big appeal of crypto was being the new Paypal. Personally, I would like an open source or federated replacement for Paypal that makes it easy to pay everywhere online without entering a CC, but I would rather not try and create and buy into a new currency in the process of doing so. Maybe something like GNU Taler can fix the credit card problem, but I'm not holding my breath on bitcoin.

Robotbeat 9y ago

> Rich people can afford astroturfing services to spread memes and good morale to pump the price. Rich people likely have significant control over hype cycles and may even be pumping other cryptocurrencies to start diversifying. That's super interesting. We assumed that the decentralization of content brought on by the Internet and social media would put a stop to stuff like that, but instead, due to anonymity, simply painted a veneer of populism over the same old trick. It worked for the election, so why not apply it to manipulate speculative investments? ICO is a way to get around the reporting requirements of an IPO and the minimum-net-worth requirements for private investments by regular folk (ostensibly to protect them from exactly this kind of asymmetric information, speculative manipulation that occurred in the roaring 20s...).

FLUX-YOU 9y ago
It's really easy to get into tinfoil haberdashery territory, but IMHO, the two main areas of manipulation that are worth it (these days at least) are finance and politics. Bitcoin has the advantage that it lacks any significant regulatory oversight or penalties while being useful across borders, which regulatory agencies are usually constrained by.
- api 9y ago
  In today's world I think having no foil in your hat is naive. We are living in a cyberpunk novel collaboration between William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Tom Clancy. Doesn't mean you should uncritically buy into conspiracy theories without evidence, just that considering the possibility of manipulation and shenanigans is entirely reasonable.

kurtmueller42 9y ago

It also doesn't add value in the first place. If you're a citizen in the USA for example, you probably have a credit card that you can use to instantly make payments either in person or online. If someone hacks your CC info, they don't get to immediately drain your bank account, and in fact usually you lose nothing after contesting it. The fees are generally avoidable, depending on the card. The only significant benefit that cryptos offer is a scheme that allows you to make payments without handing over your credit card number in case you're not sure some sketchy site is legit. So really, the big appeal of crypto was being the new Paypal. Personally, I would like an open source or federated replacement for Paypal that makes it easy to pay everywhere online without entering a CC, but I would rather not try and create and buy into a new currency in the process of doing so. Maybe something like GNU Taler can fix the credit card problem, but I'm not holding my breath on bitcoin.