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I don't understand this at all. Shouldn't "cryptocurrency" - I.E. currency based on an understanding of computational complexity and a view into abstract mathem

I don't understand this at all. Shouldn't "cryptocurrency" - I.E. currency based on an understanding of computational complexity and a view into abstract mathematics - appeal to those that have a vague idea of what their money is most-physically represented by? If so, then why are these logically refutable scams ("Give me 1btc and I'll send you 3btc back!!!": Just think that the person would, if they can generate 4btc of value out their ass like that, simply likely keep it, whether they valued the fiat value of it or not) so common? I understand the idea that the emotional gain from giving something to someone who has never had anything of that value may be overwhelmingly tempting or fulfilling on the "giver's" part but similarly, aren't there people more deserving of this than you, the "scam" victim? At that point, I don't even know if I would call it a scam. If someone posed as a verified conveyancer and built a fake profile, payed legitimate businesses and entities off for positive testimonials etc. And encouraged me to hire them to re-mortgage my property for me then I would call that a scam - but someone asking for money with the vague promise that "they need it more than you" not so, similarly not with a "I will give you double the money you give me" scheme. It just feels more like something so stupid that you are entirely at fault if you fall for it.

__s 5y ago
We're well pass bitcoin being a mathematical curiosity. There's plenty invested because line on graph goes up & smart sounding person sounded smart talking about it
- explaingarlic 5y ago
  Indeed. I'm way too young but I would have loved to be one of the people who, back in the day, thought "there's no way that $1mil of fiat value would exist in the blockchain because SHA256 must be fuckable in some way, if that kind of money was in it".
Victerius 5y ago
Sadly, too many smart people are too greedy for their own good. Stop chasing the easy money. In fact, stop thinking about money all the time. Stash a little money from your paychecks into a 401k and a Roth IRA and invest in passive, broad market ETFs. Hold no matter how the market is feeling this week. Don't trade on margin, don't stock pick, don't daytrade, and stay away from options. The buy and forget way to wealth is a much surer path than the risky one.
- explaingarlic 5y ago
  Are these "intelligent" investments? Or just complex adaptive systems which are theoretically digestible by you but you don't even bother? Honestly, I wouldn't bother putting my money into a 401k - I would stash it away, let a little rot away with inflation and use it to start a business that provides real people with a real product and pray. That seems like a more sure-fire way to get across the line. Ostensibly, that can be thought of as a more extreme version of your "pick an index and stick in it" approach. The reality of it is that we don't know which one of these choices is the right one - it may be so that cryptocurrency will make you trillions! Or that the Roth IRA will have 70% of the people who stick their money in it as actual millionaires despite them only making $70k a year for 30 years.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    Factually most businesses don’t make it past the 5 years point for different reasons which are not always even solvable by the the starting team. An example would be the market moving at a time where you don’t have enough available capital to adapt. The alternative is doing something relatively predictable and safe like a corner store or a bakery. There is good money to be made there but probably not much more than by doing a well paid engineering job for most. Don’t get me wrong. Starting a business is a bet in yourself which is always good. I think people who are interested in the life style should definitely do it, just not by using all their retirement savings.
lm28469 5y ago
> appeal to those that have a vague idea of what their money is most-physically represented by? It attracts people who want to make money easily. A crazy amount of people who have no idea about the tech aspect of crypto are "investing" and active in crypto social groups. Just go on the major subreddits and read a few threads, it won't take long to see that a very large portion of them are kids/teenagers who invested a few hundreds or less in the hope of a 1000x pump, these are the people who get scammed. Everyone says they're here for "the project", "the future of currencies", &c. most of them are here to make a quick buck
beebmam 5y ago
"Give me 1btc and I'll send you 3btc back" is not logically refutable in the strictest sense of "logic". It's obvious, socially/culturally, that this is a scam; why would anyone give people money after they get money? But logically, no. This is not a "logically refutable scam". Unless you misunderstand what logic is.
- explaingarlic 5y ago
  I don't know if I understand what "logic" is, but I clearly used the context of sociology and the game of life. Furthermore, if you want to fight on the ground that this isn't logic - who's to say that a higher number is better? That consent is required for BTC to be sent? That the number of BTC sent is not based on an outside variable? If you add the context of "More money is better", "Value is gained after gaining money" and "Money has value", it seems to perfectly fit into logic. Prove me wrong if I am, I would appreciate it - I am not a Haskell programmer, so I think I could learn from it.
- robot_no_419 5y ago
  I don't think the strictest sense of "logic" has much use outside of pure math. Using commonplace definition of "logical=rational", it's logically refutable. Any rational person should be able to reason out that it's a scam.
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Certainly that's incorrect, actual logic is used throughout virtually all sciences to deduce conclusions using methods of proof. The reason we're able to deduce many core truths of reality is by relying on both observation and logic to guide us to truth. But, to engage with your implied argument in good faith: Do irrational people deserve to have all their money taken from them?
    - robot_no_419 5y ago
      Actual, deductive logic can't be used in any scientific field because we don't have scientific objective truths. Science is based on inductive reasoning and constant hypothesis checking. Plenty of scientific facts we once thought were "true" ended up being false such as Newton's laws of gravity. The only place where true deductive logic really has a use is philosophy and pure mathematics, which are completely abstracted from reality. The laws of physics as we understand can always be overturned at some point; the laws of mathematics cannot. My argument was that any rational person should be able to conclude it's a scam. That's really the extent of my willingness to engage further.
masegod 5y ago
Some people made a bunch of money on dogecoin and it got enough attention to spark a wave of scamcoins
ajross 5y ago
Numerically, most of the scams are rug pulls. "Get in on the ground floor of our hot new web3 token issue that will be the next BAYC or whatever". There are enough such things out there that do make money (a lot of it) that people are willing to bet on them anyway. Then the owners take the $2M they got in early financing or seed money or reservations or whatever it's called and disappear with it.
usrusr 5y ago
Stuff like "Give me 1btc and I'll send you 3btc back!!!" works better with bitcoin (even if only marginally) because the occasional mark who might actually fall for it has heard so many confusing stories about something called bitcoin making some people rich for reasons that certainly did not make any sense at all to them. Now they hear another of those stories that don't make any sense at all. But this time with a peculiar tweak, they might perhaps be the protagonist themselves! Two wrongs don't make one right, so far so good. But what about two utterly confusing?

__s 5y ago

We're well pass bitcoin being a mathematical curiosity. There's plenty invested because line on graph goes up & smart sounding person sounded smart talking about it

explaingarlic 5y ago
Indeed. I'm way too young but I would have loved to be one of the people who, back in the day, thought "there's no way that $1mil of fiat value would exist in the blockchain because SHA256 must be fuckable in some way, if that kind of money was in it".

Victerius 5y ago

Sadly, too many smart people are too greedy for their own good. Stop chasing the easy money. In fact, stop thinking about money all the time. Stash a little money from your paychecks into a 401k and a Roth IRA and invest in passive, broad market ETFs. Hold no matter how the market is feeling this week. Don't trade on margin, don't stock pick, don't daytrade, and stay away from options. The buy and forget way to wealth is a much surer path than the risky one.

explaingarlic 5y ago
Are these "intelligent" investments? Or just complex adaptive systems which are theoretically digestible by you but you don't even bother? Honestly, I wouldn't bother putting my money into a 401k - I would stash it away, let a little rot away with inflation and use it to start a business that provides real people with a real product and pray. That seems like a more sure-fire way to get across the line. Ostensibly, that can be thought of as a more extreme version of your "pick an index and stick in it" approach. The reality of it is that we don't know which one of these choices is the right one - it may be so that cryptocurrency will make you trillions! Or that the Roth IRA will have 70% of the people who stick their money in it as actual millionaires despite them only making $70k a year for 30 years.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  Factually most businesses don’t make it past the 5 years point for different reasons which are not always even solvable by the the starting team. An example would be the market moving at a time where you don’t have enough available capital to adapt. The alternative is doing something relatively predictable and safe like a corner store or a bakery. There is good money to be made there but probably not much more than by doing a well paid engineering job for most. Don’t get me wrong. Starting a business is a bet in yourself which is always good. I think people who are interested in the life style should definitely do it, just not by using all their retirement savings.

lm28469 5y ago

> appeal to those that have a vague idea of what their money is most-physically represented by? It attracts people who want to make money easily. A crazy amount of people who have no idea about the tech aspect of crypto are "investing" and active in crypto social groups. Just go on the major subreddits and read a few threads, it won't take long to see that a very large portion of them are kids/teenagers who invested a few hundreds or less in the hope of a 1000x pump, these are the people who get scammed. Everyone says they're here for "the project", "the future of currencies", &c. most of them are here to make a quick buck

beebmam 5y ago

"Give me 1btc and I'll send you 3btc back" is not logically refutable in the strictest sense of "logic". It's obvious, socially/culturally, that this is a scam; why would anyone give people money after they get money? But logically, no. This is not a "logically refutable scam". Unless you misunderstand what logic is.

explaingarlic 5y ago
I don't know if I understand what "logic" is, but I clearly used the context of sociology and the game of life. Furthermore, if you want to fight on the ground that this isn't logic - who's to say that a higher number is better? That consent is required for BTC to be sent? That the number of BTC sent is not based on an outside variable? If you add the context of "More money is better", "Value is gained after gaining money" and "Money has value", it seems to perfectly fit into logic. Prove me wrong if I am, I would appreciate it - I am not a Haskell programmer, so I think I could learn from it.
robot_no_419 5y ago
I don't think the strictest sense of "logic" has much use outside of pure math. Using commonplace definition of "logical=rational", it's logically refutable. Any rational person should be able to reason out that it's a scam.
- beebmam 5y ago
  Certainly that's incorrect, actual logic is used throughout virtually all sciences to deduce conclusions using methods of proof. The reason we're able to deduce many core truths of reality is by relying on both observation and logic to guide us to truth. But, to engage with your implied argument in good faith: Do irrational people deserve to have all their money taken from them?
  - robot_no_419 5y ago
    Actual, deductive logic can't be used in any scientific field because we don't have scientific objective truths. Science is based on inductive reasoning and constant hypothesis checking. Plenty of scientific facts we once thought were "true" ended up being false such as Newton's laws of gravity. The only place where true deductive logic really has a use is philosophy and pure mathematics, which are completely abstracted from reality. The laws of physics as we understand can always be overturned at some point; the laws of mathematics cannot. My argument was that any rational person should be able to conclude it's a scam. That's really the extent of my willingness to engage further.

masegod 5y ago

Some people made a bunch of money on dogecoin and it got enough attention to spark a wave of scamcoins

ajross 5y ago

Numerically, most of the scams are rug pulls. "Get in on the ground floor of our hot new web3 token issue that will be the next BAYC or whatever". There are enough such things out there that do make money (a lot of it) that people are willing to bet on them anyway. Then the owners take the $2M they got in early financing or seed money or reservations or whatever it's called and disappear with it.

usrusr 5y ago

Stuff like "Give me 1btc and I'll send you 3btc back!!!" works better with bitcoin (even if only marginally) because the occasional mark who might actually fall for it has heard so many confusing stories about something called bitcoin making some people rich for reasons that certainly did not make any sense at all to them. Now they hear another of those stories that don't make any sense at all. But this time with a peculiar tweak, they might perhaps be the protagonist themselves! Two wrongs don't make one right, so far so good. But what about two utterly confusing?