7 ms·

The main premise of the article is that cryptocurrencies are "speculation for speculation’s sake," i.e. gambling, and that's bad. Also, the article claims that

by slibhb 6y ago

The main premise of the article is that cryptocurrencies are "speculation for speculation’s sake," i.e. gambling, and that's bad. Also, the article claims that they contribute to inequality. The green stuff is basically a side note. I don't think it's a terribly strong case but I suppose it depends on whether you agree that crypto is gambling and if you think gambling should banned. Anyway, I think lots of people stupidly speculate on things. I cast my vote by not speculating on those things. Should I be able to stop others from speculating?

christiansakai 6y ago
In conclusion, none of the points addressed in this article hold strong ground.
- maigret 6y ago
  Until the environmental problem is clearly solved, it still holds strong.
  - arcanon 6y ago
    What environmental problem? You mean creating additional incentives for new green energy investment? (Which is now the cheapest form of new energy...) “Environmentalists” need to be less myopic, you are holding us back.
api 6y ago
Most cryptocurrency activity is speculation, but so is a huge proportion of what happens on Wall St. Are we going to ban hedge funds? What about casinos or even worse state-backed lotteries? It's the same sort of hypocrisy as deplatforming Parler. While I did not weep for Parler, YouTube and Facebook are the largest platforms for alt-right/fascist propaganda. YouTube's "rabbit hole algorithm" is by far the most powerful engine of indoctrination, and while the most egregious stuff has mostly been kicked off the platform it's still full of "soft pill" fascist/racist material. I am not sure things like Qanon or the alt-right in general would even exist (to such a degree) were it not for YouTube. A ban or tax on proof of work mining is tempting but it would just offshore that activity. I suppose you could ban PoW cryptocurrencies but there are many alternatives. This is generally a shitty article.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  I think whataboutism is actually the real shitty thing here. Yes, I think there is a lot wrong within ‘Wall Street’. But those wrongs don’t justify the existence of cryptocurrencies in any way. And most of all: it doesn’t absolve cryptocurrencies in any way of their terrible impact on our world. Just the facilating of cryprolocker attacks alone are enough to justify a ban in my view.
  - api 6y ago
    It's not whataboutism. It's hypocrisy. It's deeply hypocritical to attack cryptocurrency when we have a massive parasitic financial industry that does far more damage than anything cryptocurrency has ever done. For just one example, look at how hedge fund and foreign capital speculation in housing is making a home unaffordable for millions upon millions of people and contributing to middle class decline and homelessness. It's a bit like making pot illegal when hard liquor and cigarettes are legal. What it really amounts to is the existing parasitic financial industry using the state to remove a competitor to its own gambling and destructive speculation operation.
    - thro7654 6y ago
      Whataboutism is about hypocrisy. Argument: X is bad because Y. Counter: But Z is also bad because Y and I don't hear you saying anything about that! Conclusion: So X isn't bad. E.g. the typical Soviet whataboutism: Argument: The USSR doesn't respect human rights and that's bad. Counter: A u vas negrov linchuyut (but at your place, you lynch negroes). I.e. the US doesn't respect human rights either. Conclusion: So the USSR isn't bad. The mere presence of Z does not invalidate the argument that X is bad because of Y. It's irrelevant, which is why tu quoque is just that, a fallacy of relevance.
      - api 6y ago
        In this case it's about consistency. If marijuana is illegal then alcohol should be illegal too. If cryptocurrency is illegal than socially harmful property speculation, shorting stocks and then trashing companies in the press, casinos, state lotteries, and so on should also be illegal. Inconsistency in these kinds of areas just makes a mockery of the legal system and encourages corruption. There are tons and tons of other problems with this proposal I didn't get into, such as how cryptocurrency is defined. Are we going to start making data structures like linked lists of cryptographic hashes illegal? In-game virtual currencies? Amusement park tokens tracked in a database? Any law would be either overly broad or trivially circumventable.
luxuryballs 6y ago
I wonder how many people who got into crypto and found something they clicked with and were able to make something of compared with a dead end job would feel about this whole “contributes to inequality” nonsense. Not everything is for everyone, and that’s OK, but there’s something out there for everyone.
- einpoklum 6y ago
  > I wonder how many people who got into crypto and found something they clicked with and were able to make something of compared with a dead end job For every one of these people who bought cryptocurrency and "made something", there is someone - for the sake of discussion, another poor sap with a dead end job - who just bought cryptocurrency and hasn't made anything. And lots more from the second group who have made a tiny minority of crypto owners rich.
  - luxuryballs 6y ago
    Sure but that doesn’t take away from the other guy, not everything is for everyone, that’s ok.
    - einpoklum 6y ago
      It literally takes away from the other guy. Poor sap #1 earned money so far, poor sap #2 lost money so far. At any given point there are more poor saps of type #2 than of type #1.
      - luxuryballs 6y ago
        That’s not how that works, “sap #2” was a willing and active participant, nothing was taken away.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  That doesn’t seem to justify the environmental impact to me.
iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
Gambling, e.g. casino or sports betting is different because for some it's a fun pastime and participants are (more or less) aware of what it's about. "Crypto" - not the underlying tech which is potentially interesting and may have merit in some incarnation - but buying or trading "assets" grounded in the tech, is essentially a quasi-legal pump and dump scheme right now. There is a rich history of securities law that is designed to thwart predatory investment schemes, and all of that has been circumvented by allowing people to trade in these assets. I generally agree that adults should be able to do what they want, but I don't think we have found a way to balance that with what right now is effectively one big fraud.
- lowbloodsugar 6y ago
  Its odd that I can drop a hundred grand at the Venetian, but not in a mates start-up.
  - tome 6y ago
    You can't? In what jurisdiction? I dropped ten grand in a mate's (UK) startup a couple of years ago and all we needed was an accountant to formalise the transaction and issue me a share certificate.
    - Sargos 6y ago
      In the US you need to be very rich to do this as you need to be an "accredited investor" which means either millions in the bank or work with a Wall Street bank to get a license to invest. Normal people are prevented from investing until most of the alpha is gone.
- tolmasky 6y ago
  It would be difficult to qualify Bitcoin as pump and dump without inadvertently also including many other assets at this point (which is perhaps a reasonable position to take!). That is to say, the more time passes, the fewer properties it exclusively shares with things we traditionally consider pump-and-dump. Bitcoin has for example now outlasted many startups (12 years and counting). Again, many people do think startups and/or the VC-ecosystem are a convoluted pump-and-dump, fair enough. Some would say that Uber is a massive pump and dump scheme that gives out rides below market value as a side-effect. I suppose you could argue that Bitcoin is similarly a pump-and-dump scheme that allows some people to for example donate to the internet archive as a side-effect. But if Bitcoin is still around 12 years from now, would we feel safe saying it's probably something "else"?
throwawayfire 6y ago
Gambling-adjacent reasons are: it's difficult to tax in a fair way (what proportion the capital gains due on crypto have been paid?), and has potential to be used as a front for organised money laundering.
hervature 6y ago
The problem with governments creating welfare states is that other citizens (and the government) become responsible for the financial implosion of individuals which incentivizes stupid behavior. I don't believe gambling should be banned but should taxpayers be liable for the healthcare of someone who used their health insurance money to speculate on cryptocurrency? This is actually the main division between conservatives and liberals (I mean small government vs. big government) that conservatives are so bad at articulating. Once the government is responsible for the well-being of its citizens, it has weird effects like banning cryptocurrency because they don't want to be left holding the bag.
- simion314 6y ago
  But you put a tax on gambling then you might have even more money if the guy would have spent his money on vacations around the world. So put a tax on crypto generating/transactions.
- SavantIdiot 6y ago
  > healthcare of someone who used their health insurance money to speculate on cryptocurrency? You've got it backwards. You are making health insurance profit-driven, when it should be a government service. So then there would be no "individual's health insurance money" to quibble about. > Once the government is responsible for the well-being of its citizens, it has weird effects like banning cryptocurrency Wow, that's one helluva strawperson argument. Governments have always been responsible for the well-being of its citizens. This idea of blaming hypothetical "stupid people" is trotted out by libertarians who want to punish the poor for dumb behavior, but give the rich a pass for equally-or-more dumb behavior that has a 1,000x more negative impact on society, simply because rich=smart=superior in their minds.
  - smeej 6y ago
    You're setting up your own strawperson at the end there. The kind of libertarian who's excited about Bitcoin is the kind that, with Satoshi in Bitcoin's genesis block, criticizes the bailout of banks and thinks they should have been allowed to fail, because that's what would keep them in check and prevent their walking all over regular people.
CerealFounder 6y ago
You guys are all dissecting his points like academics. I think the real thing is that the environmental piece is a strong enough weakness to make an emotional argument to build support within the non-hardcore communities with the cloaked motivation (as always) being one of control or financial power. The no-cryptos are betting on a growing swell of anti-anti-environmental ideas in general with this one. Currency/whatever crypto is, is just a system of trust. Logic is likely to have little to do with the downfall if it comes. Scrolling through the comments the Crypto-religious right is out in full effect and tbh, I understand it. For many people they have moved up many brackets of the wealth ladder and they probably should reject anyone coming for their system with vigor. I think the downside of the crypto religious complex is going to be, that if any of these emotional arguments (coming to kill crypto) become mainstream and compelling, the tenor of arguments is going to push the crypto and no-crypto sides apart cartoonishly (think modern dems and republicans) and the choices of resolution will have to be loud and final. Make no mistake, crypto is much closer to a political religious sect than it is a science.
- prohobo 6y ago
  True, it's an emotional plea that has little value in terms of rational decision making. As for the "Crypto-religious right", I think the term you're looking for is "Crypto Evangelism". The environmental cost of this - globally decentralized - system is to put it bluntly... negligible. That doesn't matter though, as long as people can be convinced into thinking it's a major issue. What also doesn't matter is: anyone's opinion. Hegemonic systems will do whatever they need to do to maintain power, and that includes the possibility of banning crypto - even if everyone absolutely loves it. The only thing Crypto Evangelists should be doing is building the tech and making it ban-proof. Let the nay-sayers bemoan the loss of their crumbling infrastructure, they'll still need a way to function in the modern world. "BuH GloBaL WaRmInG" - as if any of these people actually give a shit about the environmental impact of industry as they write their AWS Lambdas, get the newest iPhone, order plastic wrapped take out, and buy a new car to make their commutes to the office "nicer". Even if Bitcoin was considered greener than fiat (and it should be, since it's essentially an improvement in EFFICIENCY and therefore LESS WORK to operate), they'd still hate it for one reason or another. But again, the poorly thought out narratives don't matter. What matters is the conflict between alternative tech and hegemonic tech.
UnpossibleJim 6y ago
There is speculative trading in stocks and bonds, but not as frequently. It is a choice that a trader can make, though and hasn't been regulated away. I have no problem with government regulation on Cryptocurrency for speculation if the same laws effect the trading of stacks and bonds. The "green" issue of Crypto mining is a harder regulatory issue for our government to get involved in, though. While on the one hand, I applaud their pro action, on the other hand, the hypocrisy is on a scale almost never seen. A government which has simultaneously rolled back environmental regulation, wildlife areas and expanded oil pipelines, shale extractions, fracking and offshore drilling while continuing a war on "terrorism", which is an ideal, not an enemy. A forever war, if you will. This is a polluter much bigger than crypto miners, so you'll excuse me if I have to take the concern about the environmental impact concern from the Senate all that seriously...... sorry. Went off the track. Either way, there are larger polluters to tackle than Crypto that take less control away from people.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Stocks are usually shares of a company with assets. Assets that can be sold off to pay back shareholders when things go sideways.
  - tanseydavid 6y ago
    Usually, "when things go sideways" there is nothing left to be sold off.
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      I mean when the company's stock becomes worthless. Obviously if all stocks or the whole world crashes at the same time that's something else. Now if a blockchain's exchange value goes to zero then all that's left is a very expensive data chain.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
If you buy the case, which I do in part, then the solution isn't to prohibit it. It's to tax it.
cryptonector 6y ago
All economic activity that depends on others is speculation, at the end of the day. Every currency is a ponzi scheme of sorts.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  This seems reductive. Government issued fiat is backed by militaries and the country's own resources--however indirectly. They can be used to pay taxes if nothing else. Crypto currency is backed only by collective euphoria. Not unlike 17th century tulips.
tarsinge 6y ago
The way people “invest” in the stock market nowadays is no different. Long gone are the days of buying a share for dividends and voting power. People now are just betting on what they will be able to dump the bags at the time of their retirement in a giant casino. Crypto is just the end game.
wavepruner 6y ago
Just want to quickly say that I'm disabled and I work in the Bitcoin/crypto industry, largely because every other industry has gate-keepers that would never hire someone like me. None of the people I interact with and work with are gambling. We avoid that crowd because it's not sustainable nor does it create long-term value.
RhodoGSA 6y ago
What about filecoin, which stores your data across multiple keys so not one person/ centralized entity has access to your files? Cheaper, more redundancy and more secure than AWS? What about Chainlink, which is a decentralized oracle network for a variety of different information? What about all the DeFi, DeID, banking the unbanked, cross-border transfers not hampered by some evil authority? Polkadot is nothing short of a technological breakthrough in computation exchange and an economic revolution in the way it's finance and parachain leases work that can be applied to many different fields. Why do people look at bitcoin and claim all crypto are equal, throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

by slibhb 6y ago

christiansakai 6y ago

In conclusion, none of the points addressed in this article hold strong ground.

maigret 6y ago
Until the environmental problem is clearly solved, it still holds strong.
- arcanon 6y ago
  What environmental problem? You mean creating additional incentives for new green energy investment? (Which is now the cheapest form of new energy...) “Environmentalists” need to be less myopic, you are holding us back.

api 6y ago

Most cryptocurrency activity is speculation, but so is a huge proportion of what happens on Wall St. Are we going to ban hedge funds? What about casinos or even worse state-backed lotteries? It's the same sort of hypocrisy as deplatforming Parler. While I did not weep for Parler, YouTube and Facebook are the largest platforms for alt-right/fascist propaganda. YouTube's "rabbit hole algorithm" is by far the most powerful engine of indoctrination, and while the most egregious stuff has mostly been kicked off the platform it's still full of "soft pill" fascist/racist material. I am not sure things like Qanon or the alt-right in general would even exist (to such a degree) were it not for YouTube. A ban or tax on proof of work mining is tempting but it would just offshore that activity. I suppose you could ban PoW cryptocurrencies but there are many alternatives. This is generally a shitty article.

louwrentius 6y ago
I think whataboutism is actually the real shitty thing here. Yes, I think there is a lot wrong within ‘Wall Street’. But those wrongs don’t justify the existence of cryptocurrencies in any way. And most of all: it doesn’t absolve cryptocurrencies in any way of their terrible impact on our world. Just the facilating of cryprolocker attacks alone are enough to justify a ban in my view.
- api 6y ago
  It's not whataboutism. It's hypocrisy. It's deeply hypocritical to attack cryptocurrency when we have a massive parasitic financial industry that does far more damage than anything cryptocurrency has ever done. For just one example, look at how hedge fund and foreign capital speculation in housing is making a home unaffordable for millions upon millions of people and contributing to middle class decline and homelessness. It's a bit like making pot illegal when hard liquor and cigarettes are legal. What it really amounts to is the existing parasitic financial industry using the state to remove a competitor to its own gambling and destructive speculation operation.
  - thro7654 6y ago
    Whataboutism is about hypocrisy. Argument: X is bad because Y. Counter: But Z is also bad because Y and I don't hear you saying anything about that! Conclusion: So X isn't bad. E.g. the typical Soviet whataboutism: Argument: The USSR doesn't respect human rights and that's bad. Counter: A u vas negrov linchuyut (but at your place, you lynch negroes). I.e. the US doesn't respect human rights either. Conclusion: So the USSR isn't bad. The mere presence of Z does not invalidate the argument that X is bad because of Y. It's irrelevant, which is why tu quoque is just that, a fallacy of relevance.
    - api 6y ago
      In this case it's about consistency. If marijuana is illegal then alcohol should be illegal too. If cryptocurrency is illegal than socially harmful property speculation, shorting stocks and then trashing companies in the press, casinos, state lotteries, and so on should also be illegal. Inconsistency in these kinds of areas just makes a mockery of the legal system and encourages corruption. There are tons and tons of other problems with this proposal I didn't get into, such as how cryptocurrency is defined. Are we going to start making data structures like linked lists of cryptographic hashes illegal? In-game virtual currencies? Amusement park tokens tracked in a database? Any law would be either overly broad or trivially circumventable.

luxuryballs 6y ago

I wonder how many people who got into crypto and found something they clicked with and were able to make something of compared with a dead end job would feel about this whole “contributes to inequality” nonsense. Not everything is for everyone, and that’s OK, but there’s something out there for everyone.

einpoklum 6y ago
> I wonder how many people who got into crypto and found something they clicked with and were able to make something of compared with a dead end job For every one of these people who bought cryptocurrency and "made something", there is someone - for the sake of discussion, another poor sap with a dead end job - who just bought cryptocurrency and hasn't made anything. And lots more from the second group who have made a tiny minority of crypto owners rich.
- luxuryballs 6y ago
  Sure but that doesn’t take away from the other guy, not everything is for everyone, that’s ok.
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    It literally takes away from the other guy. Poor sap #1 earned money so far, poor sap #2 lost money so far. At any given point there are more poor saps of type #2 than of type #1.
    - luxuryballs 6y ago
      That’s not how that works, “sap #2” was a willing and active participant, nothing was taken away.
louwrentius 6y ago
That doesn’t seem to justify the environmental impact to me.

iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago

Gambling, e.g. casino or sports betting is different because for some it's a fun pastime and participants are (more or less) aware of what it's about. "Crypto" - not the underlying tech which is potentially interesting and may have merit in some incarnation - but buying or trading "assets" grounded in the tech, is essentially a quasi-legal pump and dump scheme right now. There is a rich history of securities law that is designed to thwart predatory investment schemes, and all of that has been circumvented by allowing people to trade in these assets. I generally agree that adults should be able to do what they want, but I don't think we have found a way to balance that with what right now is effectively one big fraud.

lowbloodsugar 6y ago
Its odd that I can drop a hundred grand at the Venetian, but not in a mates start-up.
- tome 6y ago
  You can't? In what jurisdiction? I dropped ten grand in a mate's (UK) startup a couple of years ago and all we needed was an accountant to formalise the transaction and issue me a share certificate.
  - Sargos 6y ago
    In the US you need to be very rich to do this as you need to be an "accredited investor" which means either millions in the bank or work with a Wall Street bank to get a license to invest. Normal people are prevented from investing until most of the alpha is gone.
tolmasky 6y ago
It would be difficult to qualify Bitcoin as pump and dump without inadvertently also including many other assets at this point (which is perhaps a reasonable position to take!). That is to say, the more time passes, the fewer properties it exclusively shares with things we traditionally consider pump-and-dump. Bitcoin has for example now outlasted many startups (12 years and counting). Again, many people do think startups and/or the VC-ecosystem are a convoluted pump-and-dump, fair enough. Some would say that Uber is a massive pump and dump scheme that gives out rides below market value as a side-effect. I suppose you could argue that Bitcoin is similarly a pump-and-dump scheme that allows some people to for example donate to the internet archive as a side-effect. But if Bitcoin is still around 12 years from now, would we feel safe saying it's probably something "else"?

throwawayfire 6y ago

Gambling-adjacent reasons are: it's difficult to tax in a fair way (what proportion the capital gains due on crypto have been paid?), and has potential to be used as a front for organised money laundering.

hervature 6y ago

The problem with governments creating welfare states is that other citizens (and the government) become responsible for the financial implosion of individuals which incentivizes stupid behavior. I don't believe gambling should be banned but should taxpayers be liable for the healthcare of someone who used their health insurance money to speculate on cryptocurrency? This is actually the main division between conservatives and liberals (I mean small government vs. big government) that conservatives are so bad at articulating. Once the government is responsible for the well-being of its citizens, it has weird effects like banning cryptocurrency because they don't want to be left holding the bag.

simion314 6y ago
But you put a tax on gambling then you might have even more money if the guy would have spent his money on vacations around the world. So put a tax on crypto generating/transactions.
SavantIdiot 6y ago
> healthcare of someone who used their health insurance money to speculate on cryptocurrency? You've got it backwards. You are making health insurance profit-driven, when it should be a government service. So then there would be no "individual's health insurance money" to quibble about. > Once the government is responsible for the well-being of its citizens, it has weird effects like banning cryptocurrency Wow, that's one helluva strawperson argument. Governments have always been responsible for the well-being of its citizens. This idea of blaming hypothetical "stupid people" is trotted out by libertarians who want to punish the poor for dumb behavior, but give the rich a pass for equally-or-more dumb behavior that has a 1,000x more negative impact on society, simply because rich=smart=superior in their minds.
- smeej 6y ago
  You're setting up your own strawperson at the end there. The kind of libertarian who's excited about Bitcoin is the kind that, with Satoshi in Bitcoin's genesis block, criticizes the bailout of banks and thinks they should have been allowed to fail, because that's what would keep them in check and prevent their walking all over regular people.

CerealFounder 6y ago

You guys are all dissecting his points like academics. I think the real thing is that the environmental piece is a strong enough weakness to make an emotional argument to build support within the non-hardcore communities with the cloaked motivation (as always) being one of control or financial power. The no-cryptos are betting on a growing swell of anti-anti-environmental ideas in general with this one. Currency/whatever crypto is, is just a system of trust. Logic is likely to have little to do with the downfall if it comes. Scrolling through the comments the Crypto-religious right is out in full effect and tbh, I understand it. For many people they have moved up many brackets of the wealth ladder and they probably should reject anyone coming for their system with vigor. I think the downside of the crypto religious complex is going to be, that if any of these emotional arguments (coming to kill crypto) become mainstream and compelling, the tenor of arguments is going to push the crypto and no-crypto sides apart cartoonishly (think modern dems and republicans) and the choices of resolution will have to be loud and final. Make no mistake, crypto is much closer to a political religious sect than it is a science.

prohobo 6y ago
True, it's an emotional plea that has little value in terms of rational decision making. As for the "Crypto-religious right", I think the term you're looking for is "Crypto Evangelism". The environmental cost of this - globally decentralized - system is to put it bluntly... negligible. That doesn't matter though, as long as people can be convinced into thinking it's a major issue. What also doesn't matter is: anyone's opinion. Hegemonic systems will do whatever they need to do to maintain power, and that includes the possibility of banning crypto - even if everyone absolutely loves it. The only thing Crypto Evangelists should be doing is building the tech and making it ban-proof. Let the nay-sayers bemoan the loss of their crumbling infrastructure, they'll still need a way to function in the modern world. "BuH GloBaL WaRmInG" - as if any of these people actually give a shit about the environmental impact of industry as they write their AWS Lambdas, get the newest iPhone, order plastic wrapped take out, and buy a new car to make their commutes to the office "nicer". Even if Bitcoin was considered greener than fiat (and it should be, since it's essentially an improvement in EFFICIENCY and therefore LESS WORK to operate), they'd still hate it for one reason or another. But again, the poorly thought out narratives don't matter. What matters is the conflict between alternative tech and hegemonic tech.

UnpossibleJim 6y ago

There is speculative trading in stocks and bonds, but not as frequently. It is a choice that a trader can make, though and hasn't been regulated away. I have no problem with government regulation on Cryptocurrency for speculation if the same laws effect the trading of stacks and bonds. The "green" issue of Crypto mining is a harder regulatory issue for our government to get involved in, though. While on the one hand, I applaud their pro action, on the other hand, the hypocrisy is on a scale almost never seen. A government which has simultaneously rolled back environmental regulation, wildlife areas and expanded oil pipelines, shale extractions, fracking and offshore drilling while continuing a war on "terrorism", which is an ideal, not an enemy. A forever war, if you will. This is a polluter much bigger than crypto miners, so you'll excuse me if I have to take the concern about the environmental impact concern from the Senate all that seriously...... sorry. Went off the track. Either way, there are larger polluters to tackle than Crypto that take less control away from people.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
Stocks are usually shares of a company with assets. Assets that can be sold off to pay back shareholders when things go sideways.
- tanseydavid 6y ago
  Usually, "when things go sideways" there is nothing left to be sold off.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    I mean when the company's stock becomes worthless. Obviously if all stocks or the whole world crashes at the same time that's something else. Now if a blockchain's exchange value goes to zero then all that's left is a very expensive data chain.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

If you buy the case, which I do in part, then the solution isn't to prohibit it. It's to tax it.

cryptonector 6y ago

All economic activity that depends on others is speculation, at the end of the day. Every currency is a ponzi scheme of sorts.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
This seems reductive. Government issued fiat is backed by militaries and the country's own resources--however indirectly. They can be used to pay taxes if nothing else. Crypto currency is backed only by collective euphoria. Not unlike 17th century tulips.

tarsinge 6y ago

The way people “invest” in the stock market nowadays is no different. Long gone are the days of buying a share for dividends and voting power. People now are just betting on what they will be able to dump the bags at the time of their retirement in a giant casino. Crypto is just the end game.

wavepruner 6y ago

Just want to quickly say that I'm disabled and I work in the Bitcoin/crypto industry, largely because every other industry has gate-keepers that would never hire someone like me. None of the people I interact with and work with are gambling. We avoid that crowd because it's not sustainable nor does it create long-term value.

RhodoGSA 6y ago

What about filecoin, which stores your data across multiple keys so not one person/ centralized entity has access to your files? Cheaper, more redundancy and more secure than AWS? What about Chainlink, which is a decentralized oracle network for a variety of different information? What about all the DeFi, DeID, banking the unbanked, cross-border transfers not hampered by some evil authority? Polkadot is nothing short of a technological breakthrough in computation exchange and an economic revolution in the way it's finance and parachain leases work that can be applied to many different fields. Why do people look at bitcoin and claim all crypto are equal, throwing the baby out with the bathwater?