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The money behind big tech has mastered manipulating demand and that is exactly what you are seeing in the Ethereum/NFT ecosystem. It is one giant fraud bankrol

The money behind big tech has mastered manipulating demand and that is exactly what you are seeing in the Ethereum/NFT ecosystem. It is one giant fraud bankrolled by unlimited capital that can artificially increase prices at which point there becomes demand from people in fear of missing out, once the early capital has the suckers locked in the prices plateau at first as the capital stops buying and driving the price up, and then begins a steep crash as they cash out and lock in the gains, this only causes fear and panic among the late entries that made investments at the peak which they couldn't afford to lose...rinse and repeat. The NFTs may be even more blatant and egregious than the ERC20 coins in terms of fake sales driving up interest, media and demand for shit no regular investor will ever flip. A lot of it is just transparent fraud and money laundering, with the people involved not even shying away from it but openly justifying it on the basis they feel the stock market and art collectors have always engaged in the same misconduct. Take Elon Musk, openly pumping Doge...I'm not judging, I get the humor in it, but a lot of people have been crushed over the years in the crypto bubbles, yesterday was a prime example where Elon was likely the sole cause of Doge exploding in value (maybe 5x in a few days and 100x over a month) and as the big money way slowly cashing out these massive media campaigns were behind a marketing scam of "DogeDay" essentially making their killing on the backs of the poor uneducated late investors. One would hope his Tweets shined a bright light on the dystopia of it all, but it seems everyone is either so greedy or in such bad positions financially they would rather take part. My guess is now that they have reaped their profits at the expense of the little guy, they will buy back in with the profits and we should see another pump following the -25% DogeDay scam.

inter_netuser 5y ago
There are people who have been bankrupted by rugpulls and sharp selloffs. All of this is just going to invite more regulation and completely strangle the industry. As usual, the greediest have to ruin it all for the rest of us.
nmfisher 5y ago
I struggle to have any sympathy for "the little guy". Noone's lying to them, noone's defrauding them, noone's stealing anything or embezzling from them. It's just greed, plain and simple. If you pile into a get-rich-quick scheme but end up holding the bag in, then more fool you. I still think it should probably be regulated to prevent idiots from losing their life savings. But I won't pretend the losers are ethically any different from the winners. No matter whether you're early or late to the party, you're all just hucksters looking for a quick buck from a pump-and-dump.
- throwaway_isms 5y ago
  >It's just greed, plain and simple. I get that position, but it is a lot more than greed...or maybe a lot less. It is uneducated investors that see something they don't understand that is unregulated, easily accessible and being marketed to them in ways they should be considered lying and defrauding. Again the fact that you have a CEO of a publicly traded company constantly Tweeting Doge to the Moon...its easy to say well you bought in thats just greed, fine, but its dystopian as hell.
- jl2718 5y ago
  This is such a simplistic view of “the little guy”. The dollar system is set up such that they have to ‘invest’ or else they will never be able to afford a house. Savings will bankrupt them. Stocks are meaningless, just handing your money to rich people that will never give it back in hopes that you can sell it for more later. But the whole system looks like it’s in free fall, so that doesn’t seem likely. Crypto would have zero value if normal people weren’t scared and distrustful. I can’t recall a market mania that didn’t start with massive rises in home prices.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > Crypto would have zero value if normal people weren’t scared and distrustful. That implies cryptocurrencies provide no value by themselves and is simply false. Ethereum is essentially a distributed virtual machine that anyone can pay to use. Monero offers complete financial privacy.
    - rideontime 5y ago
      What sort of operations are people running on the Ethereum VM?
      - matheusmoreira 5y ago
        Currently the smart contract software projects are focused on decentralized finance since the only input necessary for that is ETH currency. New tokens, decentralized exchanges and so on. People created Chainlink to bring real world data inputs to Ethereum software. Data such as "package has arrived to its destination". It hasn't delivered on its promise yet unfortunately. If it ever does, all bets will be off.
spinny 5y ago
100% agree. ERC20 have matured to the point where some valuable projects actually exists. There is probably some shady business around NTFs today and the non-shady business portion of the market is very small. imho, NFTs have lots of potential to facilitate purchase and sell of real world items (buy a car with a USDC transaction to a smart contract). This is the NFT "killer app" to me
- throwaway_isms 5y ago
  Not sure why you were downvoted on this comment. The city of Miami is putting together a investigating committee/task force to see how public services can incorporate blockchain. I think it will be implemented, not at the City but the County level, for recording property Deeds. Though 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, its anyone's guess. The NFT killer app, the writing is on the wall and it will be stocks/stock exchange.

inter_netuser 5y ago

There are people who have been bankrupted by rugpulls and sharp selloffs. All of this is just going to invite more regulation and completely strangle the industry. As usual, the greediest have to ruin it all for the rest of us.

nmfisher 5y ago

I struggle to have any sympathy for "the little guy". Noone's lying to them, noone's defrauding them, noone's stealing anything or embezzling from them. It's just greed, plain and simple. If you pile into a get-rich-quick scheme but end up holding the bag in, then more fool you. I still think it should probably be regulated to prevent idiots from losing their life savings. But I won't pretend the losers are ethically any different from the winners. No matter whether you're early or late to the party, you're all just hucksters looking for a quick buck from a pump-and-dump.

throwaway_isms 5y ago
>It's just greed, plain and simple. I get that position, but it is a lot more than greed...or maybe a lot less. It is uneducated investors that see something they don't understand that is unregulated, easily accessible and being marketed to them in ways they should be considered lying and defrauding. Again the fact that you have a CEO of a publicly traded company constantly Tweeting Doge to the Moon...its easy to say well you bought in thats just greed, fine, but its dystopian as hell.
jl2718 5y ago
This is such a simplistic view of “the little guy”. The dollar system is set up such that they have to ‘invest’ or else they will never be able to afford a house. Savings will bankrupt them. Stocks are meaningless, just handing your money to rich people that will never give it back in hopes that you can sell it for more later. But the whole system looks like it’s in free fall, so that doesn’t seem likely. Crypto would have zero value if normal people weren’t scared and distrustful. I can’t recall a market mania that didn’t start with massive rises in home prices.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Crypto would have zero value if normal people weren’t scared and distrustful. That implies cryptocurrencies provide no value by themselves and is simply false. Ethereum is essentially a distributed virtual machine that anyone can pay to use. Monero offers complete financial privacy.
  - rideontime 5y ago
    What sort of operations are people running on the Ethereum VM?
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      Currently the smart contract software projects are focused on decentralized finance since the only input necessary for that is ETH currency. New tokens, decentralized exchanges and so on. People created Chainlink to bring real world data inputs to Ethereum software. Data such as "package has arrived to its destination". It hasn't delivered on its promise yet unfortunately. If it ever does, all bets will be off.

spinny 5y ago

100% agree. ERC20 have matured to the point where some valuable projects actually exists. There is probably some shady business around NTFs today and the non-shady business portion of the market is very small. imho, NFTs have lots of potential to facilitate purchase and sell of real world items (buy a car with a USDC transaction to a smart contract). This is the NFT "killer app" to me

throwaway_isms 5y ago
Not sure why you were downvoted on this comment. The city of Miami is putting together a investigating committee/task force to see how public services can incorporate blockchain. I think it will be implemented, not at the City but the County level, for recording property Deeds. Though 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, its anyone's guess. The NFT killer app, the writing is on the wall and it will be stocks/stock exchange.