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This is exactly why crypto is such a disaster. Every week there is yet another scam where people losing their money. The feedback from crypto enthusiasts is wel

This is exactly why crypto is such a disaster. Every week there is yet another scam where people losing their money. The feedback from crypto enthusiasts is well look at those idiots for putting their money into some scheme <insert unintelligible jargon filled insanity statement here> or you are not smart enough use this thing. Look "nobody" understands what you are talking about. These financial systems are inscrutable and the problem is getting worse. You are building systems that are ruining peoples lives and making things worse for everyone. Please think about what you are doing and create system of value and meaning which improves humankind.

cinntaile 5y ago
> You are building systems that are ruining peoples lives and making things worse for everyone. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose, it's the basis of any investment strategy. If someone puts enough money into highly risky, speculative assets such as these that it would ruin their life, then they only have themselves to blame if you ask me... People have to take responsibility for their own choices. Edit: -4 that's a new record for me, thanks guys!
- warent 5y ago
  Hideous victim blaming mentality here.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    I'm not blaming someone for getting scammed, that's on the scammer. But I am blaming someone for ruining their own life if they put more money into a speculative, highly risky asset than they can lose. This isn't confined to crypto, it can also be regular stocks or other investments. I mean this in a general sense. I don't mean people taking advantage of people that aren't in the right state of mind (for whatever reason) to be clear, of course I don't put the blame on those people.
    - mrmuagi 5y ago
      Not sure why you got such a negative reaction. This is basic 101 holding a investment portfolio (I hope I have it right [1]), the more all in the upper right (higher std dev) of this graph, the higher risk, the more bananas you'll lose in your basket if things go, proverbially, tits up. Diversifying is a tool/shield against this by minimizing risk against reward. [1] https://youtu.be/8TJQhQ2GZ0Y?t=1640 https://youtu.be/8TJQhQ2GZ0Y?t=1640
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        Crypto is a touchy subject here, so if I am a bit harsh on the people that ruined their lives by putting all their eggs in one crypto basket... I was prepared for it not to go well. Although I think some misunderstood my comment as blaming the victim, which was not what I meant. But that's ok, I'll try to phrase it better next time.
    - Uehreka 5y ago
      When we raise concerns about crypto’s riskyness, people like you show up and say “investment involves risk” and frame crypto as a speculative investment. Then when you’re gone someone else will show up hyping Bitcoin/Ethereum as a currency that will change the world, which implies that it is or will be stable enough to use to pay for goods and services (as opposed to being a vehicle for speculation). Our frustration stems from our inability to get both of you in the same room to duke it out once and for all.
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        > Our frustration stems from our inability to get both of you in the same room to duke it out once and for all. If only the world were such a simple place where there is only one right and one wrong answer.
        Uehreka 5y ago
        If folks are making the argument that risky speculative investments can be used as currency for day-to-day purchases, that’s an argument I’d hear out, but I feel like it would be a difficult argument to make. And for the record, the argument I’m perceiving from you (“crypto is a speculative investment, invest carefully, enjoy it if you win”) is the closest to reality of all of these arguments IMO. But I do also believe that highly speculative things like this make for bad day-to-day currencies, and have not yet been convinced otherwise.
  - mrmuagi 5y ago
    I am torn. If someone is holding a "ruining peoples lives" chunk in their portfolio, it's not a diversified one -- and it leads to a good life lesson. And if ones all in the stock market and it crashes -- surely you should not victim blame, because there is a road to redemption (just weather the storm), and it's really not their fault. Nobody can predict wether the number goes up or down reliably in the short term, yada yada. However given the nature of crypto landscape wrt. scams, attacks, takeovers, thefts, I can't help but say "buyer beware" and "it's a wild wild west out here". I mean, you must agree it is good advice in hindsight to not hold all your eggs in one basket in this case. I do.
- ejb999 5y ago
  Its not really supposed to be an 'investment' - anymore than the dollar is an investment? If crypto wants to replace dollars, they are going to have to do better than this. Would you tell someone who's dollars are stolen 'don't have more dollars than you can afford to lose'?
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    I think Axie Infinity is some sort of NFT game? How is that going to replace the dollar?
    - kemotep 5y ago
      The article covers that it was Ethereum that was stolen. On the surface it appears none of the Axie Infinity based tokens were touched.
      - AustinDev 5y ago
        Because ETH has much more intrinsic value than AXS and the other tokens created by Axie Infinity. Why would they bother with pennies when they can take 100 dollar bills? AXS's value is derived from a pseudo-feudalistic share cropping model called 'play to earn'. People in low income countries put up their real assets to borrow AXS tokens and NFT's to play the game to earn an income and farm items to sell to western players who can't spend all day grinding. Imagine if Blizzard designed WoW's monetization around exploiting all the Gold farmers?
- headmelted 5y ago
  Your response assumes the only victims are the people holding the bags, but its key feature is that it facilitates organised crime more effectively than anything in history. Now with that said, someone may respond to mention that it’s key feature is actually [a store of value/decentralised digital money/new gold etc] and that person will be wrong.
  - thinkmassive 5y ago
    > The majority of cryptocurrency is not used for criminal activity. According to an excerpt from Chainalysis’ 2021 report, in 2019, criminal activity represented 2.1% of all cryptocurrency transaction volume (roughly $21.4 billion worth of transfers). In 2020, the criminal share of all cryptocurrency activity fell to just 0.34% ($10.0 billion in transaction volume). https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-false-narrative-of-bitcoins-role-in-illicit-activity https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...
- bigtex88 5y ago
  Sorry you're getting so downvoted. Not surprising on HN. Somehow super-anti crypto, even though people here seemingly understand technology.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Has it occurred to you that this might be not "even though people here seemingly understand technology", but because people here understand the technology?
saboot 5y ago
You are neglecting to mention the great upsides in crypto currency. * Giving criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously. * Providing a source of funding North Korea's nuclear weapons program * Allowing nation states to engage in global commerce despite sanctions because they won't stop killing innocent people * Convincing older and gullible people to give their money to someone they don't know and a technology they can't explain * It's the future!! EDIT: Couple more * Transactions are so energy intensive that the currency eclipses the carbon footprint of many countries * Those transactions are also incredibly slow! * Matt Damon! I think there is a use for blockchain, but as a technology for everything from buying groceries to countries using it as a currency, no.
- mrmuagi 5y ago
  >* Giving criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously. I don't see how this is any different than the bog standard "encryption lets criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously.". Should money/txns be fundamentally track-able/examinable/un-encrypted but your private data/messages not? Surely this contention is something you also consider -- care to expand? >* Convincing older and gullible people to give their money to someone they don't know and a technology they can't explain I am surprised. My initial viewpoint was why would scammers bother to fish for bitcoin when bank transfers/gift cards are a lower barrier -- but seems you are right [1], the cat and mouse chase continues... [1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kitboga+bitcoin https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kitboga+bitcoin
  - allturtles 5y ago
    > I don't see how this is any different than the bog standard "encryption lets criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously." The obvious difference is that encryption has many, many actually useful and productive applications.
    - Sargos 5y ago
      >encryption has many, many actually useful and productive applications So does crypto but likewise opponents of encryption disregard the positives and focus on the negatives to align with their preformed ideas. The only way out of this trap is to have an open mind and internalize the fact that all technologies can be used for good and evil and thus are relatively neutral overall. Humanity must take the good and bad and see where the path goes in order to advance as a species.
3np 5y ago
I mean, you could replace "crypto" with "internet", "computers" or "collectible sidechain NFTs" depending on how big the tribe you want to attack is. Or for example > This is exactly why the cloud is such a disaster. Every week there is yet another scam where people losing their money. The feedback from cloud hosting enthusiasts is well look at those idiots for putting their money into some scheme <insert unintelligible jargon filled insanity statement here> or you are not smart enough use this thing. Look "nobody" understands what you are talking about. These technical systems are inscrutable and the problem is getting worse. You are building systems that are ruining peoples lives and making things worse for everyone. Please think about what you are doing and create system of value and meaning which improves humankind. ---- This line of reasoning is what may very well lead to a ban on end-to-end encryption and public access to non-backdoored general computing.
osrec 5y ago
Almost every criticism above could be applied to the current mainstream financial system too.
- malermeister 5y ago
  But the current financial system is quicker and more energy efficient. With everything else being equal, why are we doing this again?
mrjin 5y ago
Because the creator of crypto concept never understood why there are centralized institutions in the first place. It was so naive to think the problem was the correctness of the records and thus everyone should keep a copy of the global ledger!! I hardly if not never heard of any fraud that actually altered records held by the authority institutions and in fact, in all the fraud cases I know the records held by the authority institutions indeed correctly reflects what happened. So the problem was never about records but rather how to ensure the transaction happen as expected without having to know or trust the counter party. Of course in most of the cases the parties in a transaction don't know or trust each other and neither should they. So here come the neutral authority institutions which provides the instruments to allow the transactions to complete. So you can see that cryto is actually barking at the wrong tree and thus we again see authority institutions, exchanges or in this Ronin, emerged. Traditional institutions are heavily regulated and there is almost nothing for those so called exchanges.
- bhewes 5y ago
  People have been cooking the books forever. WorldCom or Tyco being examples.
  - bena 5y ago
    But that isn't solved by the blockchain. These scandals were found out by using the very books they had. There's no such thing as an uncookable book. As long as I can lie about information going in, I can manipulate it. Even in the crypto space, you have wash trading and the like.
    - bhewes 5y ago
      Makes it easier to track with more then one copy of the ledger and immutability of entries (lies or not). Probably would not take three years to find the fraud as in the case of WorldCom. Though this is all spec as not been tested in real life.
      - dmitriid 5y ago
mrb 5y ago
«This is exactly why crypto is such a disaster.» Correction: this is exactly why MONEY is such a disaster. There has always been scams involving money since, well, since money was invented. You guys portray crypto as being particularly terrible, but the truth is there are hundred times (or more) more money being lost to scams involving the US dollar or the Euro. Crypto is no better or no worse in this regard. Some people will always make dumb mistakes with their money. For example just in the US alone, last year, $5.8 billion was lost to fraud: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/consumers-lost-5point8-billion-to-fraud-last-year-up-70percent-over-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/consumers-lost-5point8-billi... that's excluding 7.6 billion people outside of America, or money lost to causes other than fraud (eg. theft), etc, etc
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Percentage wise, crypto is obviously the scam king.
- audiometry 5y ago
  Crypto is far worse. You need to normalize the amount-looted by the amount of transactions conducted. Very clearly 'traditional' finance is far safer. There's a reason financial institutions are annoying and stodgy -- they have centuries of hard-lessons-learned. Crypto 'disruption' is mostly throwing away that painful experience.
  - mrb 5y ago
    Bitcoin alone, excluding other cryptos, transacts 1500 billion USD per year. How much is lost to fraud yearly? 2 billions? That's 0.13%. Does fiat lose less than 0.13% to fraud?

cinntaile 5y ago

> You are building systems that are ruining peoples lives and making things worse for everyone. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose, it's the basis of any investment strategy. If someone puts enough money into highly risky, speculative assets such as these that it would ruin their life, then they only have themselves to blame if you ask me... People have to take responsibility for their own choices. Edit: -4 that's a new record for me, thanks guys!

warent 5y ago
Hideous victim blaming mentality here.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  I'm not blaming someone for getting scammed, that's on the scammer. But I am blaming someone for ruining their own life if they put more money into a speculative, highly risky asset than they can lose. This isn't confined to crypto, it can also be regular stocks or other investments. I mean this in a general sense. I don't mean people taking advantage of people that aren't in the right state of mind (for whatever reason) to be clear, of course I don't put the blame on those people.
  - mrmuagi 5y ago
    Not sure why you got such a negative reaction. This is basic 101 holding a investment portfolio (I hope I have it right [1]), the more all in the upper right (higher std dev) of this graph, the higher risk, the more bananas you'll lose in your basket if things go, proverbially, tits up. Diversifying is a tool/shield against this by minimizing risk against reward. [1] https://youtu.be/8TJQhQ2GZ0Y?t=1640 https://youtu.be/8TJQhQ2GZ0Y?t=1640
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      Crypto is a touchy subject here, so if I am a bit harsh on the people that ruined their lives by putting all their eggs in one crypto basket... I was prepared for it not to go well. Although I think some misunderstood my comment as blaming the victim, which was not what I meant. But that's ok, I'll try to phrase it better next time.
  - Uehreka 5y ago
    When we raise concerns about crypto’s riskyness, people like you show up and say “investment involves risk” and frame crypto as a speculative investment. Then when you’re gone someone else will show up hyping Bitcoin/Ethereum as a currency that will change the world, which implies that it is or will be stable enough to use to pay for goods and services (as opposed to being a vehicle for speculation). Our frustration stems from our inability to get both of you in the same room to duke it out once and for all.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      > Our frustration stems from our inability to get both of you in the same room to duke it out once and for all. If only the world were such a simple place where there is only one right and one wrong answer.
      - Uehreka 5y ago
        If folks are making the argument that risky speculative investments can be used as currency for day-to-day purchases, that’s an argument I’d hear out, but I feel like it would be a difficult argument to make. And for the record, the argument I’m perceiving from you (“crypto is a speculative investment, invest carefully, enjoy it if you win”) is the closest to reality of all of these arguments IMO. But I do also believe that highly speculative things like this make for bad day-to-day currencies, and have not yet been convinced otherwise.
- mrmuagi 5y ago
  I am torn. If someone is holding a "ruining peoples lives" chunk in their portfolio, it's not a diversified one -- and it leads to a good life lesson. And if ones all in the stock market and it crashes -- surely you should not victim blame, because there is a road to redemption (just weather the storm), and it's really not their fault. Nobody can predict wether the number goes up or down reliably in the short term, yada yada. However given the nature of crypto landscape wrt. scams, attacks, takeovers, thefts, I can't help but say "buyer beware" and "it's a wild wild west out here". I mean, you must agree it is good advice in hindsight to not hold all your eggs in one basket in this case. I do.
ejb999 5y ago
Its not really supposed to be an 'investment' - anymore than the dollar is an investment? If crypto wants to replace dollars, they are going to have to do better than this. Would you tell someone who's dollars are stolen 'don't have more dollars than you can afford to lose'?
- cinntaile 5y ago
  I think Axie Infinity is some sort of NFT game? How is that going to replace the dollar?
  - kemotep 5y ago
    The article covers that it was Ethereum that was stolen. On the surface it appears none of the Axie Infinity based tokens were touched.
    - AustinDev 5y ago
      Because ETH has much more intrinsic value than AXS and the other tokens created by Axie Infinity. Why would they bother with pennies when they can take 100 dollar bills? AXS's value is derived from a pseudo-feudalistic share cropping model called 'play to earn'. People in low income countries put up their real assets to borrow AXS tokens and NFT's to play the game to earn an income and farm items to sell to western players who can't spend all day grinding. Imagine if Blizzard designed WoW's monetization around exploiting all the Gold farmers?
headmelted 5y ago
Your response assumes the only victims are the people holding the bags, but its key feature is that it facilitates organised crime more effectively than anything in history. Now with that said, someone may respond to mention that it’s key feature is actually [a store of value/decentralised digital money/new gold etc] and that person will be wrong.
- thinkmassive 5y ago
  > The majority of cryptocurrency is not used for criminal activity. According to an excerpt from Chainalysis’ 2021 report, in 2019, criminal activity represented 2.1% of all cryptocurrency transaction volume (roughly $21.4 billion worth of transfers). In 2020, the criminal share of all cryptocurrency activity fell to just 0.34% ($10.0 billion in transaction volume). https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-false-narrative-of-bitcoins-role-in-illicit-activity https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...
bigtex88 5y ago
Sorry you're getting so downvoted. Not surprising on HN. Somehow super-anti crypto, even though people here seemingly understand technology.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Has it occurred to you that this might be not "even though people here seemingly understand technology", but because people here understand the technology?

saboot 5y ago

You are neglecting to mention the great upsides in crypto currency. * Giving criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously. * Providing a source of funding North Korea's nuclear weapons program * Allowing nation states to engage in global commerce despite sanctions because they won't stop killing innocent people * Convincing older and gullible people to give their money to someone they don't know and a technology they can't explain * It's the future!! EDIT: Couple more * Transactions are so energy intensive that the currency eclipses the carbon footprint of many countries * Those transactions are also incredibly slow! * Matt Damon! I think there is a use for blockchain, but as a technology for everything from buying groceries to countries using it as a currency, no.

mrmuagi 5y ago
>* Giving criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously. I don't see how this is any different than the bog standard "encryption lets criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously.". Should money/txns be fundamentally track-able/examinable/un-encrypted but your private data/messages not? Surely this contention is something you also consider -- care to expand? >* Convincing older and gullible people to give their money to someone they don't know and a technology they can't explain I am surprised. My initial viewpoint was why would scammers bother to fish for bitcoin when bank transfers/gift cards are a lower barrier -- but seems you are right [1], the cat and mouse chase continues... [1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kitboga+bitcoin https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kitboga+bitcoin
- allturtles 5y ago
  > I don't see how this is any different than the bog standard "encryption lets criminals and scammers the ability to exchange goods and services anonymously." The obvious difference is that encryption has many, many actually useful and productive applications.
  - Sargos 5y ago
    >encryption has many, many actually useful and productive applications So does crypto but likewise opponents of encryption disregard the positives and focus on the negatives to align with their preformed ideas. The only way out of this trap is to have an open mind and internalize the fact that all technologies can be used for good and evil and thus are relatively neutral overall. Humanity must take the good and bad and see where the path goes in order to advance as a species.

3np 5y ago

I mean, you could replace "crypto" with "internet", "computers" or "collectible sidechain NFTs" depending on how big the tribe you want to attack is. Or for example > This is exactly why the cloud is such a disaster. Every week there is yet another scam where people losing their money. The feedback from cloud hosting enthusiasts is well look at those idiots for putting their money into some scheme <insert unintelligible jargon filled insanity statement here> or you are not smart enough use this thing. Look "nobody" understands what you are talking about. These technical systems are inscrutable and the problem is getting worse. You are building systems that are ruining peoples lives and making things worse for everyone. Please think about what you are doing and create system of value and meaning which improves humankind. ---- This line of reasoning is what may very well lead to a ban on end-to-end encryption and public access to non-backdoored general computing.

osrec 5y ago

Almost every criticism above could be applied to the current mainstream financial system too.

malermeister 5y ago
But the current financial system is quicker and more energy efficient. With everything else being equal, why are we doing this again?

mrjin 5y ago

Because the creator of crypto concept never understood why there are centralized institutions in the first place. It was so naive to think the problem was the correctness of the records and thus everyone should keep a copy of the global ledger!! I hardly if not never heard of any fraud that actually altered records held by the authority institutions and in fact, in all the fraud cases I know the records held by the authority institutions indeed correctly reflects what happened. So the problem was never about records but rather how to ensure the transaction happen as expected without having to know or trust the counter party. Of course in most of the cases the parties in a transaction don't know or trust each other and neither should they. So here come the neutral authority institutions which provides the instruments to allow the transactions to complete. So you can see that cryto is actually barking at the wrong tree and thus we again see authority institutions, exchanges or in this Ronin, emerged. Traditional institutions are heavily regulated and there is almost nothing for those so called exchanges.

bhewes 5y ago
People have been cooking the books forever. WorldCom or Tyco being examples.
- bena 5y ago
  But that isn't solved by the blockchain. These scandals were found out by using the very books they had. There's no such thing as an uncookable book. As long as I can lie about information going in, I can manipulate it. Even in the crypto space, you have wash trading and the like.
  - bhewes 5y ago
    Makes it easier to track with more then one copy of the ledger and immutability of entries (lies or not). Probably would not take three years to find the fraud as in the case of WorldCom. Though this is all spec as not been tested in real life.
    - dmitriid 5y ago

mrb 5y ago

«This is exactly why crypto is such a disaster.» Correction: this is exactly why MONEY is such a disaster. There has always been scams involving money since, well, since money was invented. You guys portray crypto as being particularly terrible, but the truth is there are hundred times (or more) more money being lost to scams involving the US dollar or the Euro. Crypto is no better or no worse in this regard. Some people will always make dumb mistakes with their money. For example just in the US alone, last year, $5.8 billion was lost to fraud: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/consumers-lost-5point8-billion-to-fraud-last-year-up-70percent-over-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/consumers-lost-5point8-billi... that's excluding 7.6 billion people outside of America, or money lost to causes other than fraud (eg. theft), etc, etc

NicoJuicy 5y ago
Percentage wise, crypto is obviously the scam king.
audiometry 5y ago
Crypto is far worse. You need to normalize the amount-looted by the amount of transactions conducted. Very clearly 'traditional' finance is far safer. There's a reason financial institutions are annoying and stodgy -- they have centuries of hard-lessons-learned. Crypto 'disruption' is mostly throwing away that painful experience.
- mrb 5y ago
  Bitcoin alone, excluding other cryptos, transacts 1500 billion USD per year. How much is lost to fraud yearly? 2 billions? That's 0.13%. Does fiat lose less than 0.13% to fraud?