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> focus on get rich quick schemes Sorry, but the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly. Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness an

by 21 9y ago

> focus on get rich quick schemes Sorry, but the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly. Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness and lack of regulations, are not fundamentally special in this regard.

cryptonector 9y ago
Sure they are. They are specifically trying to evade national control. Yes, banks create money, but they are regulated, and they are not working to undermine the state (even if they occasionally accidentally cause crises that do undermine the state).
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness and lack of regulations, are not fundamentally special in this regard I disagree. Cryptocurrencies are unusually scammy. (Past tech cycles, both those which realized their fruits and which failed, had lots of vaporware. And there were some scams. But the latter are more prevalent in this domain.) My hypothesis for this is in the original sin of Bitcoin: choosing currency as its use case. This primed the space to think of tokens as securities on which the average Joe could get rich quickly, the underlying business be damned. (It also seeded the culture with black market operators.) > the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly Which makes the author of this article's efforts to exempt their investments from financial regulation [1] questionable. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-...
- tylersmith 9y ago
  > My hypothesis for this is in the original sin of Bitcoin: choosing currency as its use case. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but Bitcoin's entire purpose was to be p2p cash. What other use case would you have suggested if you were advising Satoshi in 2008?
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > Bitcoin's entire purpose was to be p2p cash Put another way, the blockchain's original sin was Bitcoin. It started the conversation in a scummy way.
    - Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
      Bitcoin is the least scammy of all cryptocurrencies. Clear design, clear values, clear future (in terms of money minted), clear rules. Where is the scam??
    - beaner 9y ago
      There's nothing inherently scummy about money itself. It's just a tool for human organization.
      - Retra 9y ago
        There's nothing inherently scummy about a market, either. But black markets can get pretty scummy. What's the difference? The Clientele?
    - tylersmith 9y ago
      Bitcoin seems to me to be the least scummy of all these new distributed ledger ideas. What kind of use cases for a blockchain do you see as better/more useful/less scummy than currencies?
  - snowwrestler 9y ago
    If p2p cash was the purpose of Bitcoin, it was spectacularly poorly designed for that purpose. I don't mean the cryptographic properties which enabled distributed trust--that's cool. I mean the deflationary combination of a fixed total number of bitcoins, and ever-increasing amounts of energy and time to create new bitcoin. This creates tremendous incentive to create or buy bitcoins and then hold, hold, hold, hold. That's the opposite of what you want for a currency! You want people to spend a currency, and hold assets. Bitcoin today works like an asset, not currency. I don't know if this was the actual idea, and early adopters essentially lied about the currency aspects to prime the bubble; or if the early adopters actually did think it would be a great currency and just got hugely lucky.

by 21 9y ago

cryptonector 9y ago

Sure they are. They are specifically trying to evade national control. Yes, banks create money, but they are regulated, and they are not working to undermine the state (even if they occasionally accidentally cause crises that do undermine the state).

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness and lack of regulations, are not fundamentally special in this regard I disagree. Cryptocurrencies are unusually scammy. (Past tech cycles, both those which realized their fruits and which failed, had lots of vaporware. And there were some scams. But the latter are more prevalent in this domain.) My hypothesis for this is in the original sin of Bitcoin: choosing currency as its use case. This primed the space to think of tokens as securities on which the average Joe could get rich quickly, the underlying business be damned. (It also seeded the culture with black market operators.) > the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly Which makes the author of this article's efforts to exempt their investments from financial regulation [1] questionable. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-...

tylersmith 9y ago
> My hypothesis for this is in the original sin of Bitcoin: choosing currency as its use case. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but Bitcoin's entire purpose was to be p2p cash. What other use case would you have suggested if you were advising Satoshi in 2008?
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Bitcoin's entire purpose was to be p2p cash Put another way, the blockchain's original sin was Bitcoin. It started the conversation in a scummy way.
  - Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
    Bitcoin is the least scammy of all cryptocurrencies. Clear design, clear values, clear future (in terms of money minted), clear rules. Where is the scam??
  - beaner 9y ago
    There's nothing inherently scummy about money itself. It's just a tool for human organization.
    - Retra 9y ago
      There's nothing inherently scummy about a market, either. But black markets can get pretty scummy. What's the difference? The Clientele?
  - tylersmith 9y ago
    Bitcoin seems to me to be the least scummy of all these new distributed ledger ideas. What kind of use cases for a blockchain do you see as better/more useful/less scummy than currencies?
- snowwrestler 9y ago
  If p2p cash was the purpose of Bitcoin, it was spectacularly poorly designed for that purpose. I don't mean the cryptographic properties which enabled distributed trust--that's cool. I mean the deflationary combination of a fixed total number of bitcoins, and ever-increasing amounts of energy and time to create new bitcoin. This creates tremendous incentive to create or buy bitcoins and then hold, hold, hold, hold. That's the opposite of what you want for a currency! You want people to spend a currency, and hold assets. Bitcoin today works like an asset, not currency. I don't know if this was the actual idea, and early adopters essentially lied about the currency aspects to prime the bubble; or if the early adopters actually did think it would be a great currency and just got hugely lucky.