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The final paragraph sums it up nicely: >We’ve seen this story a million times before: Crypto project is launched. Something goes wrong. Founders, investors, wh

by daenz 4y ago

The final paragraph sums it up nicely: >We’ve seen this story a million times before: Crypto project is launched. Something goes wrong. Founders, investors, whales, and some of the community make out like bandits. Most people are left out on the cold, only to be offered another, even greater opportunity with an upcoming token or project. Surely this time will be different. I don't see how anyone can read about these crypto projects and see anything other than an extremely elaborate scam.

dvtrn 4y ago
At least with regards to one person I previously thought was someone who would otherwise “know better” after an incredibly confusing conversation about their NFT Group “recruiting” people from poor communities (their definition of recruiting meant nothing more than getting them to create accounts on OpenSea and buying shit)…they don’t care. The greater fool theory handcuffs has them locked in TIGHT. I mean the fact that they call what they’re doing “recruiting” is full of all kinds of ugly signals. I don’t talk to them anymore.
siftrics 4y ago
Because they know more than surface-level details and understand that trustless, permission-less financial systems offer a huge amount of value, especially to those in less-developed and authoritarian countries, who are regularly abused by a small group of people running their country's financial affairs. But that doesn't apply to you because you live in the developed world, where you've never had to deal with not being allowed a bank account or extortionist fees or the government simply coming and seizing your assets for an arbitrary, amoral reason.
- vosper 4y ago
  I'm sure these authoritarian governments are definitely just going to sit by while some foreign technology disrupts their control of the financial system. The Security XKCD says it better - it even uses the term "crypto"! https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
  - siftrics 4y ago
    You make a good point, but this is still a step in the right direction. This offers users the chance to flee their country and retain their assets. Good luck getting your assets out of a legacy banking system in such a country.
    - vosper 4y ago
      Yup that's a good point, and one I haven't seen before.
- dvtrn 4y ago
  or the government simply coming and seizing your assets for an arbitrary, amoral reason. You mean people don’t like it when the large amorphous and powerful body that asks its constituents to trust it pulls the rug, and all of their currency out from under them?
  - siftrics 4y ago
    Red herring. I'm not arguing for any system that has the power to rug their constituents, crypto systems included. Crypto at least enables systems to be built. It's up to you to either trust it without any due diligence or read the source code yourself. This is a step in the right direction for people who like to assume their own risk and don't like to pay for the bad decision-making of others.
    - dvtrn 4y ago
      It's up to you to either trust it without any due diligence or read the source code yourself. I suppose so, but given that your entire conceit started off with a defense of people in under-developed nations, and their access to capital and money, is this really about serving those people? If so, how are people in a country with heavily-devalued currencies under authoritarian regimes served by reading source code for cryptocurrencies? How many people in these countries are you expecting to pop open a laptop and start reading the ETH source before they can buy these digital coins and buy their next meal with it? I'm sorry but the response here of "just read the source code", given you yourself are holding up impoverished nations, where people are not even "allowed a bank account" as beneficiaries of cryptocurrencies is some LOUD hubris. This is a step in the right direction for people who like to assume their own risk Isn't this something someone can already do on established markets in the physical world? don't like to pay for the bad decision-making of others Isn't this exactly what just happened in the article we're discussing right now in this thread?
      - siftrics 4y ago
        >Isn't this something someone can already do on established markets in the physical world? Name one trustless, permission-less system that avoids the double spending problem. I would love to know about it. >Isn't this exactly what just happened in the article we're discussing right now in this thread? I don't know what you're saying. Participants could do their due diligence and fully understand the risks before participating. Who paid for someone else's screw up?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- HomeGear 4y ago
  The “developed world” is who is holding the values up. Crypto is not a savings account for poor people to avoid authoritarian governments. It has no use. It’s nothing more than gambling at this point.
- nawgz 4y ago
  > Because they know more than surface-level details Implying those who criticize a project or idea simply lack knowledge is facile; you mightaswell just write "because they're haters" > you've never had to deal with not being allowed a bank account or extortionist fees or the government simply coming and seizing your assets for an arbitrary, amoral reason So, you argue some value exists in Bitcoin as a political tool to subvert dictatorial influence; what exactly does that do to justify massive compute requiring fees 10-100x greater than the transaction value and associated use of real-world energy? Why would another system not serve this same idea in a better way? What guarantees do people using this as a financial system that it will deliver this value? Ultimately, what you're saying is "this absurdly compute- and energy-heavy system serves an unintended purpose slightly better than the status quo it competes against in some circumstances, and that justifies all its downsides". I don't really agree with that, and I don't understand why you can't have an honest conversation with nuance about it
  - siftrics 4y ago
    > what exactly does that do to justify massive compute requiring fees 10-100x greater than the transaction value and associated use of real-world energy? You're confused. Bitcoin does not have such fees. Ethereum, while it does have such fees, is moving to proof-of-stake and the energy argument no longer holds up. There are numerous non-PoW chains already actively used, for which the energy argument does not hold up. This is the only way we know how to avoid double-spending in a trustless, permission-less way. If you know of another way that maintains those two properties, I would love to learn about it.
    - nawgz 4y ago
      > You're confused. Bitcoin does not have such fees This is an Ethereum thread, is it not? > Ethereum, while it does have such fees, is moving to proof-of-stake and the energy argument no longer holds up. Um, excuse me, Ethereum very much has these fees still, so the argument is extremely valid in the moment; additionally, this "proof of stake" movement was meant to occur in 2019 no? They are 3 years late and at best 1/3 complete, 9 years of delay sounds about right - this space is full of speculation and grifters treating that speculation as truth to grift. > There are numerous non-PoW chains That have extremely unstable financial valuations, destroying the credibility of them as alternatives to existing financial systems. Your arguments hold no water, they require hypothetical futures and blatantly false things to hold, so why are you making them? > This is the only way we know how to avoid double-spending in a trustless, permission-less way The value prop of this is 0 today. Maybe it's even a net negative on the world, with the transactions on these chains having an extremely significant scam rate while also using more energy than entire mid-sized countries do to literally exist. You need to justify why "trustless and permissionless" are important before you can just say "we need systems with these properties!". I can only feel that you are financially deep into these systems and rationalizing to hold your position, you seem like you'd be perfectly capable of constructing good arguments when not emotionally compromised by the topic.
atwebb 4y ago
There's a lot of people who haven't played the game yet or think they know it better this time.
annoyingnoob 4y ago
> even greater opportunity with an upcoming token or project. Surely this time will be different. Get in on the ground floor now! Be the next whale.
danans 4y ago
> I don't see how anyone can read about these crypto projects and see anything other than an extremely elaborate scam. My theory is that we live in a society that has long glamorized the get-rich-quick scheme (until it is revealed as a scam), and there a lot of people who have seen other people getting rich through technology investments (as opposed to technology work), and they don't want to "miss the boat" this time.
- canadaduane 4y ago
  I wonder what would happen if we (as a society) took each case of got-rich-through-a-get-rich-quick-scheme and analyzed it like we do post-mortems--with "the social contract failed here, what went wrong?" kind of twist. No one's to blame. We just want it to be more effective and productive for everyone next time.
- nikanj 4y ago
  We go further than that: we glamorize the get-rich-quick schemes even after they're revealed as scams. The scammers get to keep their money, and launch successful careers as motivational speakers / authors (of books detailing their crimes) / etc. The Wolf of Wall Street was widely admired even though he was a criminal.
  - danans 4y ago
    Yeah, I think of it as the "what can you get away with" mentality, and it feels like it's gotten more pervasive.
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  I mean, that kind of gets at the fundamental conceit of Marxist critiques of capitalism, doesn't it? That there are two classes of individual, an upper class of those who primarily get their income by owning assets and not doing work (the titular capitalists) and an underclass of those get their income for doing actual work (the proletariat). Everyone is incentivized to join to the upper class by easiest and most accessible means possible, and get-rich-quick schemes are the natural endpoint of that incentive.
UncleEntity 4y ago
> I don't see how anyone can read about these crypto projects and see anything other than an extremely elaborate scam. Maybe they read The Billion Dollar Mistake paper and were like “meh, that’s peanuts, we can do much better!”
Geee 4y ago
It's very profitable to create a token, pump up the price and run with the money, rather than building something actually useful. Combine that with the fact that it's incredibly hard or impossible to build something useful on a blockchain. This means that the incentives simply aren't there for non-scam projects. All currently functioning products are directly or indirectly just fueling this broken incentive model. In 2017, people tried to innovate and imagine new applications for blockchain. There was AirBnB on blockchain, Uber on blockchain, dentists on blockchain, and thousands of other projects. All of these failed (their founders got rich), and now the whole space has devolved into just JPGs and blatant Ponzi-schemes with imaginary yields and elaborate "tokenomics". They aren't even trying to build anything useful anymore. Just to be clear, I'm talking about these "crypto", "blockchain", and "Web 3.0" products, which are nothing but false promises. Bitcoin, and some stablecoins are working as intended, and are certainly useful as money.
quickthrower2 4y ago
With Bitcoin there was the promise (and to a tiny extent still is) the promise of it becoming a disruptive technology. With the apes there is no illusion of this being a greater fool scheme. I wonder how close they are skirting to illegally running a ponzi or pyramid scheme? The only source of income or growth for this investment is new people buying in. It is worse than amway, herbilife, penny stocks. Probably similar to madoff except the idiots who buy will not be angry at the creators when they lose their shirts. See safemoon exit scam for an early view, or indeed any other crypto ponzi since 2008.
vmception 4y ago
I think the real discussion is what kind of launch is best. Yuga Labs specifically decided against a Dutch auction, lending on their credibility to make it seem like that something to believe in, and then they did this fiasco instead. Some people are saying "false dilemma, a raffle would have been better!" okay, would a raffle be better? What about a raffle and dutch auction? What about a dutch auction at 5 ether instead of 2.5 ether in Ape coin, which is the floor price of the "Land" now. Even if you don't want to have a conversation that nuanced, it would be the most productive conversation to have now.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
The cryptocurrencies themselves aren't scams. BTC and ETH are here to stay and there are other good coins like XMR. It's the shitcoin casino that's bad. All people have to do is avoid it.

by daenz 4y ago

dvtrn 4y ago

At least with regards to one person I previously thought was someone who would otherwise “know better” after an incredibly confusing conversation about their NFT Group “recruiting” people from poor communities (their definition of recruiting meant nothing more than getting them to create accounts on OpenSea and buying shit)…they don’t care. The greater fool theory handcuffs has them locked in TIGHT. I mean the fact that they call what they’re doing “recruiting” is full of all kinds of ugly signals. I don’t talk to them anymore.

siftrics 4y ago

Because they know more than surface-level details and understand that trustless, permission-less financial systems offer a huge amount of value, especially to those in less-developed and authoritarian countries, who are regularly abused by a small group of people running their country's financial affairs. But that doesn't apply to you because you live in the developed world, where you've never had to deal with not being allowed a bank account or extortionist fees or the government simply coming and seizing your assets for an arbitrary, amoral reason.

vosper 4y ago
I'm sure these authoritarian governments are definitely just going to sit by while some foreign technology disrupts their control of the financial system. The Security XKCD says it better - it even uses the term "crypto"! https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- siftrics 4y ago
  You make a good point, but this is still a step in the right direction. This offers users the chance to flee their country and retain their assets. Good luck getting your assets out of a legacy banking system in such a country.
  - vosper 4y ago
    Yup that's a good point, and one I haven't seen before.
dvtrn 4y ago
or the government simply coming and seizing your assets for an arbitrary, amoral reason. You mean people don’t like it when the large amorphous and powerful body that asks its constituents to trust it pulls the rug, and all of their currency out from under them?
- siftrics 4y ago
  Red herring. I'm not arguing for any system that has the power to rug their constituents, crypto systems included. Crypto at least enables systems to be built. It's up to you to either trust it without any due diligence or read the source code yourself. This is a step in the right direction for people who like to assume their own risk and don't like to pay for the bad decision-making of others.
  - dvtrn 4y ago
    It's up to you to either trust it without any due diligence or read the source code yourself. I suppose so, but given that your entire conceit started off with a defense of people in under-developed nations, and their access to capital and money, is this really about serving those people? If so, how are people in a country with heavily-devalued currencies under authoritarian regimes served by reading source code for cryptocurrencies? How many people in these countries are you expecting to pop open a laptop and start reading the ETH source before they can buy these digital coins and buy their next meal with it? I'm sorry but the response here of "just read the source code", given you yourself are holding up impoverished nations, where people are not even "allowed a bank account" as beneficiaries of cryptocurrencies is some LOUD hubris. This is a step in the right direction for people who like to assume their own risk Isn't this something someone can already do on established markets in the physical world? don't like to pay for the bad decision-making of others Isn't this exactly what just happened in the article we're discussing right now in this thread?
    - siftrics 4y ago
      >Isn't this something someone can already do on established markets in the physical world? Name one trustless, permission-less system that avoids the double spending problem. I would love to know about it. >Isn't this exactly what just happened in the article we're discussing right now in this thread? I don't know what you're saying. Participants could do their due diligence and fully understand the risks before participating. Who paid for someone else's screw up?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
HomeGear 4y ago
The “developed world” is who is holding the values up. Crypto is not a savings account for poor people to avoid authoritarian governments. It has no use. It’s nothing more than gambling at this point.
nawgz 4y ago
> Because they know more than surface-level details Implying those who criticize a project or idea simply lack knowledge is facile; you mightaswell just write "because they're haters" > you've never had to deal with not being allowed a bank account or extortionist fees or the government simply coming and seizing your assets for an arbitrary, amoral reason So, you argue some value exists in Bitcoin as a political tool to subvert dictatorial influence; what exactly does that do to justify massive compute requiring fees 10-100x greater than the transaction value and associated use of real-world energy? Why would another system not serve this same idea in a better way? What guarantees do people using this as a financial system that it will deliver this value? Ultimately, what you're saying is "this absurdly compute- and energy-heavy system serves an unintended purpose slightly better than the status quo it competes against in some circumstances, and that justifies all its downsides". I don't really agree with that, and I don't understand why you can't have an honest conversation with nuance about it
- siftrics 4y ago
  > what exactly does that do to justify massive compute requiring fees 10-100x greater than the transaction value and associated use of real-world energy? You're confused. Bitcoin does not have such fees. Ethereum, while it does have such fees, is moving to proof-of-stake and the energy argument no longer holds up. There are numerous non-PoW chains already actively used, for which the energy argument does not hold up. This is the only way we know how to avoid double-spending in a trustless, permission-less way. If you know of another way that maintains those two properties, I would love to learn about it.
  - nawgz 4y ago
    > You're confused. Bitcoin does not have such fees This is an Ethereum thread, is it not? > Ethereum, while it does have such fees, is moving to proof-of-stake and the energy argument no longer holds up. Um, excuse me, Ethereum very much has these fees still, so the argument is extremely valid in the moment; additionally, this "proof of stake" movement was meant to occur in 2019 no? They are 3 years late and at best 1/3 complete, 9 years of delay sounds about right - this space is full of speculation and grifters treating that speculation as truth to grift. > There are numerous non-PoW chains That have extremely unstable financial valuations, destroying the credibility of them as alternatives to existing financial systems. Your arguments hold no water, they require hypothetical futures and blatantly false things to hold, so why are you making them? > This is the only way we know how to avoid double-spending in a trustless, permission-less way The value prop of this is 0 today. Maybe it's even a net negative on the world, with the transactions on these chains having an extremely significant scam rate while also using more energy than entire mid-sized countries do to literally exist. You need to justify why "trustless and permissionless" are important before you can just say "we need systems with these properties!". I can only feel that you are financially deep into these systems and rationalizing to hold your position, you seem like you'd be perfectly capable of constructing good arguments when not emotionally compromised by the topic.

atwebb 4y ago

There's a lot of people who haven't played the game yet or think they know it better this time.

annoyingnoob 4y ago

> even greater opportunity with an upcoming token or project. Surely this time will be different. Get in on the ground floor now! Be the next whale.

danans 4y ago

> I don't see how anyone can read about these crypto projects and see anything other than an extremely elaborate scam. My theory is that we live in a society that has long glamorized the get-rich-quick scheme (until it is revealed as a scam), and there a lot of people who have seen other people getting rich through technology investments (as opposed to technology work), and they don't want to "miss the boat" this time.

canadaduane 4y ago
I wonder what would happen if we (as a society) took each case of got-rich-through-a-get-rich-quick-scheme and analyzed it like we do post-mortems--with "the social contract failed here, what went wrong?" kind of twist. No one's to blame. We just want it to be more effective and productive for everyone next time.
nikanj 4y ago
We go further than that: we glamorize the get-rich-quick schemes even after they're revealed as scams. The scammers get to keep their money, and launch successful careers as motivational speakers / authors (of books detailing their crimes) / etc. The Wolf of Wall Street was widely admired even though he was a criminal.
- danans 4y ago
  Yeah, I think of it as the "what can you get away with" mentality, and it feels like it's gotten more pervasive.
LordDragonfang 4y ago
I mean, that kind of gets at the fundamental conceit of Marxist critiques of capitalism, doesn't it? That there are two classes of individual, an upper class of those who primarily get their income by owning assets and not doing work (the titular capitalists) and an underclass of those get their income for doing actual work (the proletariat). Everyone is incentivized to join to the upper class by easiest and most accessible means possible, and get-rich-quick schemes are the natural endpoint of that incentive.

UncleEntity 4y ago

> I don't see how anyone can read about these crypto projects and see anything other than an extremely elaborate scam. Maybe they read The Billion Dollar Mistake paper and were like “meh, that’s peanuts, we can do much better!”

Geee 4y ago

It's very profitable to create a token, pump up the price and run with the money, rather than building something actually useful. Combine that with the fact that it's incredibly hard or impossible to build something useful on a blockchain. This means that the incentives simply aren't there for non-scam projects. All currently functioning products are directly or indirectly just fueling this broken incentive model. In 2017, people tried to innovate and imagine new applications for blockchain. There was AirBnB on blockchain, Uber on blockchain, dentists on blockchain, and thousands of other projects. All of these failed (their founders got rich), and now the whole space has devolved into just JPGs and blatant Ponzi-schemes with imaginary yields and elaborate "tokenomics". They aren't even trying to build anything useful anymore. Just to be clear, I'm talking about these "crypto", "blockchain", and "Web 3.0" products, which are nothing but false promises. Bitcoin, and some stablecoins are working as intended, and are certainly useful as money.

quickthrower2 4y ago

With Bitcoin there was the promise (and to a tiny extent still is) the promise of it becoming a disruptive technology. With the apes there is no illusion of this being a greater fool scheme. I wonder how close they are skirting to illegally running a ponzi or pyramid scheme? The only source of income or growth for this investment is new people buying in. It is worse than amway, herbilife, penny stocks. Probably similar to madoff except the idiots who buy will not be angry at the creators when they lose their shirts. See safemoon exit scam for an early view, or indeed any other crypto ponzi since 2008.

vmception 4y ago

I think the real discussion is what kind of launch is best. Yuga Labs specifically decided against a Dutch auction, lending on their credibility to make it seem like that something to believe in, and then they did this fiasco instead. Some people are saying "false dilemma, a raffle would have been better!" okay, would a raffle be better? What about a raffle and dutch auction? What about a dutch auction at 5 ether instead of 2.5 ether in Ape coin, which is the floor price of the "Land" now. Even if you don't want to have a conversation that nuanced, it would be the most productive conversation to have now.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

The cryptocurrencies themselves aren't scams. BTC and ETH are here to stay and there are other good coins like XMR. It's the shitcoin casino that's bad. All people have to do is avoid it.