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Every person I've spoken to who's told me they're interested in crypto literally only care about it to make money, and have no interest in learning how it works
by luckyandroid 5y ago
Every person I've spoken to who's told me they're interested in crypto literally only care about it to make money, and have no interest in learning how it works. They all treat every last crypto-based use as investment like stocks, and not as a normal economic choice (e.g. "I want $3000 worth of bitcoin to buy a car" is not something people are doing, instead it's all "I want $3000 worth of bitcoin because the internet told me it'll be 3 million in a year").
NFTs also annoy me because it's literally the worst part of art industry - "buying" the "rights" to a piece of art so you can turn it for more cash later on, and not as an appreciation of the work. Bored Apes might be one of the few exceptions where people are doing it for "bragging rights", which is infinitely better because you're buying it to say you own it, much closer to normal art purchases.
- cuteboy19 5y agoThis is largely because there is almost nothing you can do with crypto apart from speculate and gamble. The more I learn about stuff like defi the more I understand just how fractally useless crypto is.
- Rarebox 5y agoYou can buy drugs and other illegal things off the internet (tor), that's very useful for some people. Basically crypto allows for transactions that could otherwise be blocked or easily tracked by central parties (1). It can also be used to bypass gambling laws. For legal purchases and activities crypto is useless, regular money is much more practical. [1] depending on which crypto and how it's used tracking is possible, so care is required (especially) when converting dollars to crypto.
- pessimizer 5y ago> You can buy drugs and other illegal things off the internet (tor) Can you? After that huge bust a few years back, I figured that particular usage was marginal at this point. Seems like the only use for crypto is ransomware, dodging taxes or smuggling embezzled money out of your country.
- Clepsydra 5y agoIPTV. It's the only reason i own bitcoins. :)
- Matticus_Rex 5y agoYeah, there are still plenty of drugs on the darkweb. Busting a few dealers doesn't eliminate demand, and in-person dealers don't have a "reviews" page for their products and behavior.
- frockington1 5y agoThe idea is it's not beholden to a government (though still somewhat centralized somewhere). Crypto is helping people in Turkey store value. With current inflation and economic conditions in the US and Europe more may need it in the near future.
- yostrovs 5y agoHow can crypto be a store of value when the market price fluctuates so wildly? Bitcoin, etc fell much more in one day recently than the Turkish lira fell over many months. And one is supposedly using Bitcoin to avoid inflation in the lira?
- curtisblaine 5y agoYou can bypass the de facto ban that VISA and Mastercard put on the existence of some websites, for example Gab or the other similar one which now I can't remember. If I recall correctly, you can currently donate money to those sites only using cryptocurrency. This is kinda important, in my opinion, because "only offensive speech is free speech" (this doesn't mean I like those sites, but I don't want the credit card companies to decide what can exist on the Internet)
- danlugo92 5y agoYou find a great employee, he's in Venezuela, how do you pay them? They have no access to Swift. Western Union (didn't exist until a few years back) has like 20% fees. Paypal effective total fees 20% as well. Bitcoin? $0.30 to pay him/her, 0.30 to get the btc to his/her exchange and then cash out.
- ninkendo 5y agoYou can use it to pay off the ransomware criminals who pwned your computer I guess...
- captaincaveman 5y agoYour not buying the rights, that's the most annoying thing about NFTs, that people don't get.
- _fat_santa 5y agoI heard it varies. Bored Apes for example give you the rights to the underlying photograph, I think that's why you see them pop up in ad campaigns now and again.
- nsomaru 5y agoI looked this up the other day and I might be wrong but it seems like in most jurisdictions even if you buy a meatspace piece of art you do not own the actual copyright on the work. While I’m not a fan of NFTs this does somewhat weaken the proposition that any “rights” cannot be sold with NFTs because IIRC this is the status quo in meatspace art purchases too.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pessimizer 5y agoThe people who bought the pitchbook for the Dune movie that was never made should have looked it up, too.
- fnord123 5y agoThere are no rights to Bored Ape works. They are algorithmically generated so they are public domain.
- abyrne10 5y agoI'm not sure it's true that something being algorithmically generated means it's public domain. Plenty of assets for things like video games are procedurally generated, but that doesn't mean they're public domain by default.
- bigodbiel 5y agoWhat I find even more frustrating is that even your average retail broker is more knowledgeable, relatively speaking, than their crypto counterpart (not that crypto’s inherent dark forest helps).
- rglullis 5y agoIf everyone you've spoken to is only interested in the money, maybe you should speak with different people? Or if this is just hyperbole, perhaps accept that Sturgeon's Law is valid even for human behavior in relation to finance and economics? People were making unbelievably stupid decisions and came up with the most ridiculous rationalizations for "investing" in the dot-com bubble. Same thing with real estate a decade later. It is not just because a market is overheated that we should dismiss the industry entirely. (I am not saying that those with better judgement should just go and exploit the irrationality of the masses. What I am saying is that there is no way to argue anyone into making rational decisions.)
- Salgat 5y agoNFT's greatest value is how much more trivial they've made money laundering through art.
- thinkingemote 5y agoWeb3 as well is just about buying and selling. There is no soul. I've only seen one example of nfts having some kind of soul and that to do with ensuring collaborators on musical projects get a kind of transparent split of the proceeds. where the token is the music. Make a remix, then it also tracks what part of which source you used etc. Open royalties when the tracks are sold.
- verdverm 5y agoI wonder if the VCs have fallen prey to the siren's song or if they have joined the choir? I have a hard time believing they don't ask the questions that get to the heart of the long term viability of the projects they invest in. Yet as a tech creator, I don't see much use for the game theoretic additions for the extra complexity and waste from adding blockchain.
- rwmj 5y agoCan't speak about VCs, but for celebrities and promoters there seem to be questionable cross-promotions: https://maxread.substack.com/p/mapping-the-celebrity-nft-complex https://maxread.substack.com/p/mapping-the-celebrity-nft-com...
- gitfan86 5y agoVCs need to stay connected and they need access to a continuous stream of new young entrepreneurs. They are looking for the kids that think they can takedown PayPal and visa. Give them 500k each and hope one figures it out.
- NoboruWataya 5y agoIt's the purest manifestation of the greater fool theory.
- ourlordcaffeine 5y agoThe reason NFTs annoy me is because the majority of them seem to be stolen work, yet the people who buy them seem to believe that they now have rights to the work. See the case of https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nft-fraud-qinni-art https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nft-fraud-qinni-art. And now I see comments in this thread hoping that tech companies enforce NFTs. No thank you
- winternett 5y agoThe 80's stock market was a pimer for this kind of culture. The era of excess led people to normalize bad behavior, enthusiastic marketing of assets, and a culture of greed at any cost. Within markets where products are essential, it creates chaos, and to the lay person, it creates a false impression that success is tangible, and that because it's backed by celebrities and corporations that it is all credible. We're hurling towards an era of false economy, the results are likely to be harsh if we allow it to continue without being reigned in. The celebrities that back scams, as well as corps need to be held accountable because the main problem that it's growing in popularity is all of the glossy polish on the lies of phony payouts.