6 ms·
i'm really tired of seeing every single year the same shit told by people that don't know anything about crypto, every single year it goes down and people say "
by str3wer 4y ago
i'm really tired of seeing every single year the same shit told by people that don't know anything about crypto, every single year it goes down and people say "the ponzi died", after a few months it goes back again and after a year it happens again, but people that still don't know anything about how crypto works still try to talk about them like they've been studying them for years.
- str3wer 4y agowith the same logic you can also consider gold a ponzi scheme because if people starts mass selling it the price crashes
- nytesky 4y agoThe Venn diagram of folks skeptical of crypto and calling it a Ponzi who are big gold investors is a dot. Edit: for erroneous autocorrect of Venn
- srvmshr 4y agoMy financial understanding is rudimentary but please correct me if wrong: Isn't gold eventually a tangible wealth (and currencies being linked to it) unlike crypto which is purely a digital construct. Gold is a rarer metal & historically attributed to wealth over centuries. If gold & its reserves become meaningless then we have no basis for monetary exchange. We go back to doing barter trade.
- cinntaile 4y agoThe term digital construct is hiding that the value of gold is, just like bitcoin, a social construct. The digital part about it is to create artificial scarcity.
- nr2x 4y agoYou can also build things with it.
- setr 4y agoAt the end of the day, the use of gold as a store of value and medium of exchange is simply a social agreement that this is the case. There’s nothing inherent to gold, except perhaps some useful properties like rarity, that make it so — and if we all decide to stop believing that gold can be used for further exchange, then its purpose is immediately lost. There’s nothing really stopping us from choosing another subject as that medium. Currency is largely a case of our particular choice isn’t that important, we just need to choose one, and everyone needs to agree on it. You have examples of other choices in prisons, where cigarettes and ramen are used, and the USD when it dropped the gold standard. Crypto is just another choice. Of course, there are certain things you want in a currency, that make some choices better than others, so you can’t just pick anything and say it’s the same as anything else (e.g. gold standard has a problem in that you can’t fully control the supply — if a new mine is found, then you just have to deal with the consequences of it’s existence; but this is less likely than say seashells. It won’t kill its wielder’s either, like say the choice of lead. Etc.), but you’re still left with quite a variety of choices, and certain properties have different impacts at different economic scales. From that perspective, there’s nothing really stopping crypto from being a valid choice. The issue is largely in whether it’s a good currency (it has useful properties versus other choices), and whether it’s better enough that you can convince enough people to make the switch (you need people to believe that they get crypto from you, they can use that crypto to exchange with others). The story however gets muddled because currencies can also be used as a speculative asset, driven by your belief in crypto being convincing enough to get people to make the switch. And you can also believe in other’s believing that it will switch, and bet on that. Which is where most speculation comes from — not the belief in crypto itself, but in that others will believe in it recursively.
- cirgue 4y agoYes, and gold based investment schemes are where most of the hucksters plied their trade before crypto.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoOK, then here's a request. The thing most bizarre to me about the crypto space over the last 5ish years (defi, staking, blah blah) is that it always appears to be a "circle jerk" for more crypto. E.g. crypto is borrowed in one currency to ... buy crypto in a different currency. "Real world" finance exists, at least nominally, to fund real business activities. People put their money in banks, who in turn loan it out to real businesses that need capital to build shit and provide services. Speculators provide at least a useful counterparty to real businesses that need to hedge, e.g. farmers selling their product in the future or airlines that need to buy jet fuel. With crypto "finance", I don't hear about or see any of these types of activities - it's always just plowing money into a different crypto scheme. I would be more than happy to admit I'm out of the loop and just unaware of the real business value that crypto provides. If you have any examples I'd love to hear them.
- nytesky 4y agoI assume the volatility of crypto work against it being used for real world finance?
- thfuran 4y agoWell, it makes it great for use by real world finance.
- 88913527 4y agoNobody is stopping you from using cryptocurrencies from funding legitimate business activities.
- cirgue 4y agoExactly. No one is stopping me or anyone else, but no one does because crypto is a shitshow full of opaque risk, and the whole point of a financial system is to make risk explicit.
- DangIsAWang 4y ago
- hi5eyes 4y agoall anyone needs to know is that bitcoin is the perfect ponzi. every 4 years it gets pumped, people forget about the ponzi, then they come back the ever diminishing supply and narratives, technical or otherwise, only serve the greatest ponzi with the simplest ponzinomics. dont have to overcomplicate a simple idea
- andirk 4y agoLooking at bitcoin like a game, which a ponzi scheme basically is, it is fair across the board for all people who have access to a computer and occasionally the internet. But yes it's not fair in that the largest holders of the coin can somewhat move the dial to their liking. I personally don't see that as a scam but more of a gaming a system according to its rules. The solution is more adoption to democratize the playing more evenly across that board. Until then, ride the waves.
- mgamache 4y agoThen you should invest and reap the 4 year reward, what's the problem?
- DangIsAWang 4y ago
- treeman79 4y agoIf it goes from 60,000 to a dollar. Not sure anyone will ever forget.
- DangIsAWang 4y ago
- str3wer 4y agoevery 4 year there is halving and the block rewards get smaller to combat inflation, and guess what's the opposite of inflation?
- jjtheblunt 4y agowhy do you think negative sentiment implies not knowing anything about crypto? some of us have crypto backgrounds of one or another type (NSA for example), and think it's overhyped.
- DangIsAWang 4y ago