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It's interesting how the transfer of wealth to a Goldman Sachs executive via cryptocurrency invokes a feeling of mild jealousy and amusement, whereas the transf

by nly 5y ago

It's interesting how the transfer of wealth to a Goldman Sachs executive via cryptocurrency invokes a feeling of mild jealousy and amusement, whereas the transfer of wealth to 'bankers', just like him, just doing their damn jobs and providing a service, invokes revilement in the eyes of the general public. I do think the psychological (is that the word I'm looking for?) aspects of the frothy financial climate driving the cryptoboom is under-discussed. When the wider financial (not just crypto) bubble pops there's going to be a lot of resentment this time around. I'm jealous of people and their crypto gains, having considered putting a tiny % of my portfolio in to crypto not long before the pandemic and deciding against it, but ultimately none of these cryptocurrencies are any more useful than they were in 2019, and in my gut I feel that these huge unjustified gains should, morally speaking, evaporate if these things prove to be worthless to us a society.

varjag 5y ago
People often relate to gamblers better than to white collar paper pushers.
rawtxapp 5y ago
No need to be jealous, since it's still the very early days for crypto in the grand scheme of things. It's far from having hit any of the real success metrics (much broader usage, significant % of wealth stored, transferred, etc). They may prove to be a lot more useful than you imagine and one thing for sure is they are here to stay at this point. The big difference compared to 2019 is that we had a Bitcoin halving in 2020, prices usually increase significantly after that since it becomes a lot more scarce, people think Bitcoin is too expensive for them, so they flip altcoins, we are in the middle of the altcoin season. And we've also stress tested a lot of the defi protocols that are now fundamental blocks in the crypto world (uniswap, maker, compound, aave, etc).
- SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
  Over 10 years in and it's still "early days" for crypto? When do you think this entire thing is considered mature? I'm very much a crypto skeptic, mostly because I see a lot more harm than good that comes out of the space (ransomware enablement, horrendous waste of energy on PoW coins, egoists that make up the majority of the community, etc)
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    I mean internet has changed very significantly in the last 30 years, or even in the last 5 years. Personally, I will say it's mature enough when Bitcoin is the world reserve currency (crazy, I know!) and defi fulfills majority if not all of my financial transactions/operations, etc. I look at ransomware as a positive, finally a forcing function for companies to take security seriously. Energy, it's pushing us towards greener energy sources and there are less energy intensive alternatives being developed.
    - SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
      >>I look at ransomware as a positive, finally a forcing function for companies to take security seriously. Energy, it's pushing us towards greener energy sources and there are less energy intensive alternatives being developed. I keep hearing this "green energy" being pushed harder by proponents of cryptocurrency and I find this rather disingenuous. We are already pushing towards this goal, crypto or not, but unlike a world blissfully free of this long con, green energy will not be appropriately allocated to areas of greater need, like infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals, etc. Plus, a true capitalist that wants the maximum value will go for the cheapest and easiest source of electricity. Coal fired and gas via fracking will still be easier to pursue for increased bang for buck. I think you assume the cryptocurrency community has the best interests of everyone else and the planet at heart. Let's not forget that cryptocurrency miners and stakeholders are not shy from leeching off other countries that may offer subsidized electricity, sometimes even causing blackouts for those that need the electricity the most. Seems very parasitic. Just my two cents.
    - nly 5y ago
      > I mean internet has changed very significantly in the last 30 years, or even in the last 5 years. Has it? I think the biggest inflection point in the last 15 years has been the prevalence of smart phones and mobile connectivity, otherwise most of what we do on the Internet today was already happening in the 90s, it's just more prevalent now.
    - manigandham 5y ago
      > "it's pushing us towards greener energy" It definitely isn't, unless you count anything that uses power as pushing towards green energy which makes no sense. The only way to incentivize different forms of energy production is by making them more profitable, which has nothing to do with what that power is used for.
- nly 5y ago
  Everyone in crypto and sat on a 5x gain tells you its the "early days" because they can afford to lose 80% and still shrug it off. It's easy to be chipper right now. Go back to between early 2018 and early 2020 though and look at r/bitcoin and you'll see a bunch of people running themselves in to early graves with anxiety, following every twitch in the market and hyping up every news story about crypto to try and justify to themselves why they bought in. Bitcoin could go to $1M/coin, but it might do that over a 3 month period 10 years from now after a decade of going nowhere.
  - SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
    They just want someone down the line to buy in to keep the grift going, honestly.
  - Hendrikto 5y ago
    You have it the wrong way around: People who realized it’s still early days are making those returns.
reader_mode 5y ago
Crypto could easily be the largest pyramid scheme in history, I have zero interest in participating even if returns were guaranteed - that's not how I want to make money, I see no value being created in these "investments". Recent developments on the stock market kind of killed the market idealism for me. I don't know what's a better alternative, but from where I'm standing the financial system is rewarding wasteful and immoral behaviour and it's degenerating really fast.
- SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
  I wager once people have to start going back to work and all the free government money dries up, there will be a run on crypto to realize their gains en-masse, and this will trigger a massive wipe out for many latecomers. Frankly, cryptocurrency being invented and created was a huge mistake for society at large. I hope the comeuppance isn't super destructive outside of cryptocurrency circles.
  - nly 5y ago
    > I hope the comeuppance isn't super destructive outside of cryptocurrency circles. This is one of my concerns too. I sock away a healthy % of my income in to traditional investments, and I aspire to one day own a home I can raise a family in. The current asset bubble, which I personally believe is the wedge driving cryptocurrency apart from reality, is really hurting those of us with these rather mundane aspirations.
    - SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
      I wish you well and all the best, nly. I hope we get out of this relatively unscathed.
    - lottin 5y ago
      It depends... I think cryptocurrencies might be luring clueless people away from the stock market and into the crypto market, which is probably a good thing for the stock market even if it means lower returns in the short term.
Hendrikto 5y ago
> ultimately none of these cryptocurrencies are any more useful than they were in 2019 If you really think this, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Don‘t base your opinion on DOGE. There are plenty of cryptocureencies with actual use cases that provide value. I think it‘s pretty clear why you are convincing yourself of the opposite though: > having considered putting a tiny % of my portfolio in to crypto not long before the pandemic and deciding against it Don’t let that taint your judgement.
- joosters 5y ago
  Don‘t base your opinion on DOGE. There are plenty of cryptocureencies with actual use cases that provide value. It's entertaining to see how crypto pushers all hate dogecoin because it's a 'joke', yet the only real difference between it and countless other coins (say, bitcoin) is in its name. The dirty secret is that they are all bad jokes.
  - Hendrikto 5y ago
    Again, you are making it abundantly clear that you did not actually inform yourself: * smart contracts * decentralized exchanges * decentralized finance (lending, investing, etc) * instant borderless value transfer * actually HARD money All of it trustless, permissionless, uncensorable, resilient, not controlled by a centralized entity, mathematically provable.
    - nly 5y ago
      All of those are interesting properties, but they are all unproven at scale and it's unclear whether they are "better" for humans than the things they claim to replace. - Smart contracts can only effectively secure digital assets and entitlements that can be transferred electronically. Ultimately anything physical requires legal and physical entities to enforce. As an example: it's fine to put property contracts on a blockchain, but proving who owns what property is rarely a real world problem. We have land registries for this, and it's in everyone's interest to keep copies of sales contracts and sign them under witness. You still need bailiffs and lawyers to get squatters or bad tenants out of your property. - I don't think 'centralized' exchanges are really a problem. There are hundreds of stock exchanges throughout the globe, tens of thousands of brokers and huge off-book markets. We live in a highly decentralized system already. There's an argument that Average Joe can't access these markets, but this is changing with traditional solutions already (see: Robinhood etc). - decentralized finance (lending, investing, etc). Again, this doesn't work for lending secured against hard assets like property (i.e. mortgages). You need courts to deal with grievances over ownership, and this is where the costs lie. Solving the paperwork problem is not interesting. - instant borderless value transfer. Well, Transferwise and many more obscure, specialized companies offer this already, and waiting a 24 hours for a big, global transfer in the worst case isn't really a big deal. The bottom line is the needs of most people are already well served by traditional blockchainless services, and where they're not it's not obvious that they can't be.
cblconfederate 5y ago
crypto is transparent, banking is not

by nly 5y ago

varjag 5y ago

People often relate to gamblers better than to white collar paper pushers.

rawtxapp 5y ago

No need to be jealous, since it's still the very early days for crypto in the grand scheme of things. It's far from having hit any of the real success metrics (much broader usage, significant % of wealth stored, transferred, etc). They may prove to be a lot more useful than you imagine and one thing for sure is they are here to stay at this point. The big difference compared to 2019 is that we had a Bitcoin halving in 2020, prices usually increase significantly after that since it becomes a lot more scarce, people think Bitcoin is too expensive for them, so they flip altcoins, we are in the middle of the altcoin season. And we've also stress tested a lot of the defi protocols that are now fundamental blocks in the crypto world (uniswap, maker, compound, aave, etc).

SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
Over 10 years in and it's still "early days" for crypto? When do you think this entire thing is considered mature? I'm very much a crypto skeptic, mostly because I see a lot more harm than good that comes out of the space (ransomware enablement, horrendous waste of energy on PoW coins, egoists that make up the majority of the community, etc)
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  I mean internet has changed very significantly in the last 30 years, or even in the last 5 years. Personally, I will say it's mature enough when Bitcoin is the world reserve currency (crazy, I know!) and defi fulfills majority if not all of my financial transactions/operations, etc. I look at ransomware as a positive, finally a forcing function for companies to take security seriously. Energy, it's pushing us towards greener energy sources and there are less energy intensive alternatives being developed.
  - SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
    >>I look at ransomware as a positive, finally a forcing function for companies to take security seriously. Energy, it's pushing us towards greener energy sources and there are less energy intensive alternatives being developed. I keep hearing this "green energy" being pushed harder by proponents of cryptocurrency and I find this rather disingenuous. We are already pushing towards this goal, crypto or not, but unlike a world blissfully free of this long con, green energy will not be appropriately allocated to areas of greater need, like infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals, etc. Plus, a true capitalist that wants the maximum value will go for the cheapest and easiest source of electricity. Coal fired and gas via fracking will still be easier to pursue for increased bang for buck. I think you assume the cryptocurrency community has the best interests of everyone else and the planet at heart. Let's not forget that cryptocurrency miners and stakeholders are not shy from leeching off other countries that may offer subsidized electricity, sometimes even causing blackouts for those that need the electricity the most. Seems very parasitic. Just my two cents.
  - nly 5y ago
    > I mean internet has changed very significantly in the last 30 years, or even in the last 5 years. Has it? I think the biggest inflection point in the last 15 years has been the prevalence of smart phones and mobile connectivity, otherwise most of what we do on the Internet today was already happening in the 90s, it's just more prevalent now.
  - manigandham 5y ago
    > "it's pushing us towards greener energy" It definitely isn't, unless you count anything that uses power as pushing towards green energy which makes no sense. The only way to incentivize different forms of energy production is by making them more profitable, which has nothing to do with what that power is used for.
nly 5y ago
Everyone in crypto and sat on a 5x gain tells you its the "early days" because they can afford to lose 80% and still shrug it off. It's easy to be chipper right now. Go back to between early 2018 and early 2020 though and look at r/bitcoin and you'll see a bunch of people running themselves in to early graves with anxiety, following every twitch in the market and hyping up every news story about crypto to try and justify to themselves why they bought in. Bitcoin could go to $1M/coin, but it might do that over a 3 month period 10 years from now after a decade of going nowhere.
- SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
  They just want someone down the line to buy in to keep the grift going, honestly.
- Hendrikto 5y ago
  You have it the wrong way around: People who realized it’s still early days are making those returns.

reader_mode 5y ago

Crypto could easily be the largest pyramid scheme in history, I have zero interest in participating even if returns were guaranteed - that's not how I want to make money, I see no value being created in these "investments". Recent developments on the stock market kind of killed the market idealism for me. I don't know what's a better alternative, but from where I'm standing the financial system is rewarding wasteful and immoral behaviour and it's degenerating really fast.

SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
I wager once people have to start going back to work and all the free government money dries up, there will be a run on crypto to realize their gains en-masse, and this will trigger a massive wipe out for many latecomers. Frankly, cryptocurrency being invented and created was a huge mistake for society at large. I hope the comeuppance isn't super destructive outside of cryptocurrency circles.
- nly 5y ago
  > I hope the comeuppance isn't super destructive outside of cryptocurrency circles. This is one of my concerns too. I sock away a healthy % of my income in to traditional investments, and I aspire to one day own a home I can raise a family in. The current asset bubble, which I personally believe is the wedge driving cryptocurrency apart from reality, is really hurting those of us with these rather mundane aspirations.
  - SwimSwimHungry 5y ago
    I wish you well and all the best, nly. I hope we get out of this relatively unscathed.
  - lottin 5y ago
    It depends... I think cryptocurrencies might be luring clueless people away from the stock market and into the crypto market, which is probably a good thing for the stock market even if it means lower returns in the short term.

Hendrikto 5y ago

> ultimately none of these cryptocurrencies are any more useful than they were in 2019 If you really think this, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Don‘t base your opinion on DOGE. There are plenty of cryptocureencies with actual use cases that provide value. I think it‘s pretty clear why you are convincing yourself of the opposite though: > having considered putting a tiny % of my portfolio in to crypto not long before the pandemic and deciding against it Don’t let that taint your judgement.

joosters 5y ago
Don‘t base your opinion on DOGE. There are plenty of cryptocureencies with actual use cases that provide value. It's entertaining to see how crypto pushers all hate dogecoin because it's a 'joke', yet the only real difference between it and countless other coins (say, bitcoin) is in its name. The dirty secret is that they are all bad jokes.
- Hendrikto 5y ago
  Again, you are making it abundantly clear that you did not actually inform yourself: * smart contracts * decentralized exchanges * decentralized finance (lending, investing, etc) * instant borderless value transfer * actually HARD money All of it trustless, permissionless, uncensorable, resilient, not controlled by a centralized entity, mathematically provable.
  - nly 5y ago
    All of those are interesting properties, but they are all unproven at scale and it's unclear whether they are "better" for humans than the things they claim to replace. - Smart contracts can only effectively secure digital assets and entitlements that can be transferred electronically. Ultimately anything physical requires legal and physical entities to enforce. As an example: it's fine to put property contracts on a blockchain, but proving who owns what property is rarely a real world problem. We have land registries for this, and it's in everyone's interest to keep copies of sales contracts and sign them under witness. You still need bailiffs and lawyers to get squatters or bad tenants out of your property. - I don't think 'centralized' exchanges are really a problem. There are hundreds of stock exchanges throughout the globe, tens of thousands of brokers and huge off-book markets. We live in a highly decentralized system already. There's an argument that Average Joe can't access these markets, but this is changing with traditional solutions already (see: Robinhood etc). - decentralized finance (lending, investing, etc). Again, this doesn't work for lending secured against hard assets like property (i.e. mortgages). You need courts to deal with grievances over ownership, and this is where the costs lie. Solving the paperwork problem is not interesting. - instant borderless value transfer. Well, Transferwise and many more obscure, specialized companies offer this already, and waiting a 24 hours for a big, global transfer in the worst case isn't really a big deal. The bottom line is the needs of most people are already well served by traditional blockchainless services, and where they're not it's not obvious that they can't be.

cblconfederate 5y ago

crypto is transparent, banking is not