5 ms·

It’s all a house of cards. I spent a little time in the industry and the most prominent voices are just snake oil salesmen and charlatans now. Anyone who truly

It’s all a house of cards. I spent a little time in the industry and the most prominent voices are just snake oil salesmen and charlatans now. Anyone who truly believed from the beginning made so much money that it’s not worth the risk for them to be publicly involved in the community. It became an MLM for bros and basement-dwellers alike to gamble their stimulus checks on.

Johnny555 4y ago
At least a house of cards has actual cards supporting it, it's not clear what's supporting cryptocurrency.
- geerlingguy 4y ago
  NFTs pointing to URLs of images of those cards.
- kd913 4y ago
  The latter answer is simple. Tether and other stable coins printing money from nothing. They have statements that they are backed as equivalent to dollars but it is utter nonsense. Just yesterday tether printed another billion usdt. They were openly proven to have only 3% of their currency backed by USD by the NY AG but everyone just ignores that judgement. They never held under audit, have proven to not be backed by USD and refuse to disclose their holdings. Their CFO is an Italian surgeon who sold pirated copies of Windows. When eventually that falls, the entire space I figure will implode.
  - thematrixturtle 4y ago
    The good news that their bank Deltec's chairman created Inspector Gadget, so when trouble looms he can just "go go Gadget helicopter" and fly out of trouble! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-10-07/crypto-mystery-where-s-the-69-billion-backing-the-stablecoin-tether https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-10-07/crypto-my...
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    Tether is propping up shitty exchanges/casinos — not cryptocurrency.
    - kd913 4y ago
      There are enough correlations to show Tether magic money being used to prop up btc, eth on these shady exchanges. It is obvious they are using fake magic money to prop/inject into the eco-system. When btc, eth props up, everything else tends to as well. IDK how it's not obvious to you unless you have some financial incentive to ignore the obvious.
      - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        To you, does "prop up" mean "act as the only value behind", or "noticeably increase the price"? This may be where we diverted from each other.
        kd913 4y ago
        For me it means both. I know absolutely that btc/eth didn't grow organically to the levels it did without significant propping from tether and manipulation from exchanges.
- john_moscow 4y ago
  Not a crypto optimist at all, just trying to be objective. For both crypto and gold, the price is supported by the amount of people willing to buy it as a store of value (yes, gold is also used for jewelry and some manufacturing, but that's a secondary use). Crypto is new, so it's mostly recognized by early adopters - people that are more likely to change their mind in the changing circumstances. There's also a lot of the "get rich quick" crowd, money laundering, illegal purchases, and other activities there, but these are all the factors that support the price of crypto. So yes, it's extremely volatile. Yes, its price depends on the mood of lots of moody people. But it's still a valid commodity backed by human greed.
  - vsareto 4y ago
    Gold's intrinsic value is what makes it a store of value. Bitcoin doesn't have that directly - the coins directly don't have any value, but the ledger and mining technology behind it has real value as invented knowledge because it was novel at the time. That's like saying gold has intrinsic value because there are manufacturers of jewelry, but not because of the physical properties of gold. IMO bitcoin can act as a commodity, but it needs more participation and infrastructure (importantly, the internet) to realize that. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than mining gold though, so that should be a good hint that if Bitcoin is any kind of store of value, it should end up cheaper than gold.

Johnny555 4y ago

At least a house of cards has actual cards supporting it, it's not clear what's supporting cryptocurrency.

geerlingguy 4y ago
NFTs pointing to URLs of images of those cards.
kd913 4y ago
The latter answer is simple. Tether and other stable coins printing money from nothing. They have statements that they are backed as equivalent to dollars but it is utter nonsense. Just yesterday tether printed another billion usdt. They were openly proven to have only 3% of their currency backed by USD by the NY AG but everyone just ignores that judgement. They never held under audit, have proven to not be backed by USD and refuse to disclose their holdings. Their CFO is an Italian surgeon who sold pirated copies of Windows. When eventually that falls, the entire space I figure will implode.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  The good news that their bank Deltec's chairman created Inspector Gadget, so when trouble looms he can just "go go Gadget helicopter" and fly out of trouble! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-10-07/crypto-mystery-where-s-the-69-billion-backing-the-stablecoin-tether https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-10-07/crypto-my...
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Tether is propping up shitty exchanges/casinos — not cryptocurrency.
  - kd913 4y ago
    There are enough correlations to show Tether magic money being used to prop up btc, eth on these shady exchanges. It is obvious they are using fake magic money to prop/inject into the eco-system. When btc, eth props up, everything else tends to as well. IDK how it's not obvious to you unless you have some financial incentive to ignore the obvious.
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      To you, does "prop up" mean "act as the only value behind", or "noticeably increase the price"? This may be where we diverted from each other.
      - kd913 4y ago
        For me it means both. I know absolutely that btc/eth didn't grow organically to the levels it did without significant propping from tether and manipulation from exchanges.
john_moscow 4y ago
Not a crypto optimist at all, just trying to be objective. For both crypto and gold, the price is supported by the amount of people willing to buy it as a store of value (yes, gold is also used for jewelry and some manufacturing, but that's a secondary use). Crypto is new, so it's mostly recognized by early adopters - people that are more likely to change their mind in the changing circumstances. There's also a lot of the "get rich quick" crowd, money laundering, illegal purchases, and other activities there, but these are all the factors that support the price of crypto. So yes, it's extremely volatile. Yes, its price depends on the mood of lots of moody people. But it's still a valid commodity backed by human greed.
- vsareto 4y ago
  Gold's intrinsic value is what makes it a store of value. Bitcoin doesn't have that directly - the coins directly don't have any value, but the ledger and mining technology behind it has real value as invented knowledge because it was novel at the time. That's like saying gold has intrinsic value because there are manufacturers of jewelry, but not because of the physical properties of gold. IMO bitcoin can act as a commodity, but it needs more participation and infrastructure (importantly, the internet) to realize that. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than mining gold though, so that should be a good hint that if Bitcoin is any kind of store of value, it should end up cheaper than gold.