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I think we really need to start talking about the broader "why" of why crypto. There's a good reason that we're seeing /r/antiwork and people throwing their las

I think we really need to start talking about the broader "why" of why crypto. There's a good reason that we're seeing /r/antiwork and people throwing their last pennies into crypto. People have seen that those with assets got rich and those that work get poorer. There's no point aspiring to a better life through work. In reality what has happened is inflation that we don't measure. Assets are inflated by easy money but the government thinks this is apparently a good thing. Now inflation in the broader economy is coming, and the government response is going to be push us into a recession. So in the boom times the rich get richer, and during the bust the poor get poorer. This is not a sustainable economic settlement.

pastacacioepepe 4y ago
I've been working real hard for the past 10+ years and I have very little to show for it yet. In the meantime a couple of friends who never worked got rich(er) just because they bought a few thousands $ (money borrowed...from their family) worth of crypto at the right moment. What is this bullshit? Why am I even busting my ass trying to create value, when I could just buy shitcoins and become a millionaire? I don't think this is healthy for any society. I don't even want to get rich with a fucking lottery. I want to earn it, to provide something to others and get something in return. No, I don't consider "making a market more efficient with my investments" as providing value. It's just speculation.
- pototo666 4y ago
  I would argue that crytpo is not pure lottery. It's a risky investment. As every assets, crypto can be over-valued or under-valued. As someone from China, where central government limit foregin currency exchange, Bitcoin is a god-given tech. I'm not arguing for its value and i don't mean to persuade anyone. This is my opinion. I believe in its value. And guess what? I miss the crypto train too. And I have zero crypto investments. Because I don't want to take unncessary finantial risk when I cannot. I didn't borrow to bet on Bitcoin. In fact, I didn't bet at all. I didn't envy those who bet and win. Because there 100 losers for each winner. Hard working provides higher expected return than betting. Wise investmens and hard working provide higher expected return than hard-working alone. Just my personal thoughts.
  - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
    > I would argue that crytpo is not pure lottery. It's a risky investment. Unless you have funds to throw on it and you become rich without ever moving a finger. I mean yeah, congrats for your ability to "see" the future, but I struggle to understand how you created any value, how there's anything more than luck and income inequality to support a case for your new wealth to be legit. You're just extracting value from whoever came after you, in what is a classic Ponzi scheme. If you already had capital to begin with, you never even really "risked" on it. If you have $10 milions and you risk $1 milion, that is in no way a risk comparable to someone who owns $1k and risks $100. > As someone from China, where central government limit foregin currency exchange, Bitcoin is a god-given tech. Why? Most usage of crypto I see is either tax eavsion or on the black markets. Drugs, weapons, fake ids and much much worse. China is doing well and the rest of the world is considering limitations on crypto as well. > Wise investmens and hard working provide higher expected return than hard-working alone. I agree on this, but fuck this world where you can get richer than people who work without doing any hard work.
    - pototo666 4y ago
      > China is doing well and the rest of the world is considering limitations on crypto as well. Well, it depends on how you view the condition. I believe that a citizen should be able to change any local curreny to foreign currency. If citizens are not allowed to do that, they are exploited by the governemnt, who can simple print money to finance its corrupted operation. And that's what happen in china. I don't care about the price of bitcoin. I care about the ability of moving my money wherever I want.
  - disillusioned 4y ago
    It's a risky investment in the exact same way a lottery ticket is a risky investment: unless a particular lightning bolt of luck strikes you, it stands to reason that no underlying value is being created to return to your investment, _particularly_ for the shitcoins. They're just "toss a few thousand dollars at the dartboard and see what pumps" pure luck. As evidenced by the falling knives people are trying to catch right now.
- pa7x1 4y ago
  I have long-suspected that a significant part of the hate for crypto from tech-literate people is resentment for not figuring out the success of something they were equipped to have seen earlier. And here is a little snippet of it at work. > If your friend only had $5k in total and threw them all in Terra then I guess the lesson he got in the crash is way more valuable than any savings he might have kept. He would have lost them anyway on the next shitcoin. So if they lose money, they deserve it. > In the meantime a couple of friends who never worked got rich just because they bought a few thousands $ (money borrowed...from their family) worth of crypto at the right moment. > What is this bullshit? Why am I even busting my ass trying to create value, when I could just buy shitcoins and become a millionaire? If they win money, they don't deserve it. I guess we should just send the money to you.
  - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
    Nah. You're just projecting your fears on me. > So if they lose money, they deserve it. I didn't say that. Just that it was bound to happen sooner or later. It's clear though that as with any other Ponzi scheme, there are people who join early and profit and people who join late and give all their savings to the early comers. OP's friend is one of the late comers. My friends are early comers. > If they win money, they don't deserve it. Again, never said this. I'm just saying that it's a lottery and that it's crazy to have masses of people betting their future livelihoods on this Ponzi scheme. By the way yes, I don't think you really "earned" your wealth if you got it on the lottery or from your parents. Sue me. Or better, get to work and earn your wealth. > resentment No resentment. Just pity for people who think they earned and deserve all they have, when in fact they've just born in the right family, in the right place, at the right time. > I guess we should just send the money to you. Keep your lottery money. As I pretty clearly stated, I want to earn mine with actual work.
    - junofan 4y ago
      Taking out a reasonable position is not entering a lottery. Even KPMG allocated.
  - imtringued 4y ago
- burntoutfire 4y ago
  Every week, there is someone whose lottery ticket wins millions or tens of millions of dollars. It's not fair, but such is life - some people are just more lucky than others. The smartest thing you can do about it is to not dwell on it too much, other people's extraordinary luck does not affect your life in any way anyway. That also applies to crypto - at any given point in time, plenty of people are investing in crazy speculative schemes. A minority of them win big, while a majority loses some or most of their money. The crypto crowd who bough 10 years ago just happened to select the right lottery ticket, while other people who at that time invested in equally far-fetched ideas (AR startups, synthetic meat, whatever crazy fad that died in the early stages before even reaching mainstream media) lost their money.
alangibson 4y ago
> This is not a sustainable economic settlement. Unfortunately it is. For most of human history the rich got richer and the poor just stayed poor. It's truly sad to say, but people will suffer along at a subsistence level pretty much indefinitely. Without a wartime boom or the threat of an organized Left to force concessions, which were the two major drivers of wealth moving to the lower 90% in the 20th century as far as I can tell, we will continue on our current path.
- BuckRogers 4y ago
  Concise and well said. Only one thing to add, war time booms are a bit of a myth. For example, where was the post Iraq War boom? It is a real thing. You have to blow up your industrial competitors to achieve a worthwhile and meaningful postwar boom. The difference today is that even if we blew up China, companies still wouldn’t invest here. They just go to India or Vietnam. We do need more unions in this country. Because our historically low union membership was not enough to stop outsourcing. My hometown‘s manufacturing was strong and has been gutted. It was an anti-union town. And no, the companies did not reward that. It just made it easier for them to go to Malaysia.
  - alangibson 4y ago
    > where was the post Iraq War boom? Indeed. I wartime booms are a thing of the past. I guess the reason is that mobilizations are smaller as a function of the total economy and/or the economy is a permanent wartime economy given that the USA is almost always at war somewhere. > We do need more unions in this country Agreed, but I don't think that would allow us to repeat the gains of the last century. Capital make big concessions to the working class in Europe and the US in the 20th century because there was a very real threat of a revolution lead by the organized Left.
    - BuckRogers 4y ago
      but I don't think that would allow us to repeat the gains of the last century. Agreed. Partially due to increased globalization. We've been globalized since colonial times, but instant communication was the real game-changer. There's no turning back now. No matter how many populist movements rise up around the world as a last gasp against it. It's hard work to achieve collective bargaining, easy to overthrow a government in a coup. People are clearly choosing the latter in the USA, but they won't like the loss of democratic freedom in the end. What unions in the US can achieve is dignity for workers. They won't get the share of wealth they once had, but they can be treated with more respect, more time off to enjoy themselves and their family and friends. Essentially we could achieve a western European quality of life, at best. There's nothing wrong with that. The way people live over there with less income, but overall better quality of life is the best-case scenario for the US going forward. While they have some serious security risks, I'm envious that they have already sorted these things out while the US still has struggle ahead economic side. And we may fail, and simply become another Brazil, rather than like Germany. I think Rio de Janeiro style slums are more likely in our future, rather than Berlin. Our people and leaders just don't have the culture and stick-to-it to achieve that reality, in my opinion. The working class here is too easily divided by the asset holding class. Just tell them unions are bad, or focus on minority issues, whether it be LGBTQ or racial minority strife and you have a distraction for 1 to 3 generations' lifespans. Right now, given the lack of focus on the working class and corporate focus on general social justice issues, we're kissing away the next 100 years that need to be put towards all working class people. Money and job security are what people need, no matter who you are. I don't see a true working class revolution begin in the US until 2060 or so. It may take all the way out to 2100. There's just too many people that would otherwise be working on this, that are extremely focused on gender and racial studies. No money is going to come out of that for anyone. Corporations and the capitalist class know it. You'll know you have achieved enlightened corporations when they are publicly promoting collective bargaining. They're flying rainbows instead, keeping the money, and everyone on both sides is feeling good. While that's a pessimistic take, the good news is that the propaganda that unions drove out US enterprise is demonstrably false. That has been revealed to have been a total scam and I think everyone sees it at this point. You lose nothing at all when you have collective bargaining rights, it's all upside. As long as the business is solvent, the boss may be angry at merely one Lamborghini rather than five though. Or just wealth for him to retire at 45, rather than generational wealth for the next 3 generations being available. Worker-owned enterprise also needs to happen. There's just no rational reason why for proven business models, like 7-Eleven out of Japan, needs to run half of our convenience stores when those could be owned and operated by the employees. With better pay and customer service as a result. I'm fine with venture capital and risk-reward for unproven business models, but many of these large corporations are parasites like 7-Eleven. We have to kick these corporations out and retake our local economy. No reason to allow them to have end-to-end control all the way, and it will encourage some local suppliers to pop up as fellow cooperatives see eye to eye and work together.
biztos 4y ago
> those with assets got rich and those that work get poorer I think this is the take-away of the modern world economy. If you can somehow get enough money to join the asset-holding class you have a chance, otherwise you have no chance. And even if you can, you're fighting a serious uphill battle against the people who got there earlier and got to that sweet free number-go-up zone while you were still toiling. Right now a friend of mine is trying to buy a modest house in the Bay Area (not SF) -- and he's worried that the $1.5M he can afford is not going to be enough (for things listed at $1.3M) because people with generational wealth, or people who won the tech lottery, are going to come in with $1.6M cash offers. It's not that insane yet in most of the world but I see no reason to believe this is not the direction. So, if you don't have a path from work-work into assets, what are you supposed to do?
- imtringued 4y ago
  >I think this is the take-away of the modern world economy. That is how it worked for the last two thousand years.
- rhexs 4y ago
  Move away from one of the single most expensive housing markets in the world? That’s a terrible example. Remote work is a thing if you for some reason have to work for Bay companies.
mmarq 4y ago
I’ve been saying for years that we should reduce taxes on work and increase taxes on assets and consumption. At the current level of taxation, accumulating wealth through work is out of the grasp of 95% of the population (at least in the UK, where they’d earn less than 90K).
PinguTS 4y ago
It is not the first bubble and it will be not the last. It is easy to blame the government, but don't to take the responsibilities by themselves. There are many people who warned about the crypto bubble and the ponzi scheme over the years. But the crypto-bro's told a different story. Many people expected that the bubble bust earlier. Some people where over that and stated that crypto is here to stay as long as there are people who can convince others to pour money in, yeah, like a ponzi scheme. Crypto-bro's told the blue sky's, because it is decentralized and no government is able to regulate it. Now the government is blamed. You may could blame the government, if it is regulated by the government. But it isn't. The crypto-bro's worked hard that it should not be regulated. So, you can't blame the government.
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  I blame the government for not tossing the crypto-bro's in prison where they belong.
  - gjs278 4y ago
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
it seems to be a key rule of the world that the rich get richer and poor get poorer, not even in an economic sense, in terms of everything in life, the world imo tends to lean toward this model.

pastacacioepepe 4y ago

I've been working real hard for the past 10+ years and I have very little to show for it yet. In the meantime a couple of friends who never worked got rich(er) just because they bought a few thousands $ (money borrowed...from their family) worth of crypto at the right moment. What is this bullshit? Why am I even busting my ass trying to create value, when I could just buy shitcoins and become a millionaire? I don't think this is healthy for any society. I don't even want to get rich with a fucking lottery. I want to earn it, to provide something to others and get something in return. No, I don't consider "making a market more efficient with my investments" as providing value. It's just speculation.

pototo666 4y ago
I would argue that crytpo is not pure lottery. It's a risky investment. As every assets, crypto can be over-valued or under-valued. As someone from China, where central government limit foregin currency exchange, Bitcoin is a god-given tech. I'm not arguing for its value and i don't mean to persuade anyone. This is my opinion. I believe in its value. And guess what? I miss the crypto train too. And I have zero crypto investments. Because I don't want to take unncessary finantial risk when I cannot. I didn't borrow to bet on Bitcoin. In fact, I didn't bet at all. I didn't envy those who bet and win. Because there 100 losers for each winner. Hard working provides higher expected return than betting. Wise investmens and hard working provide higher expected return than hard-working alone. Just my personal thoughts.
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  > I would argue that crytpo is not pure lottery. It's a risky investment. Unless you have funds to throw on it and you become rich without ever moving a finger. I mean yeah, congrats for your ability to "see" the future, but I struggle to understand how you created any value, how there's anything more than luck and income inequality to support a case for your new wealth to be legit. You're just extracting value from whoever came after you, in what is a classic Ponzi scheme. If you already had capital to begin with, you never even really "risked" on it. If you have $10 milions and you risk $1 milion, that is in no way a risk comparable to someone who owns $1k and risks $100. > As someone from China, where central government limit foregin currency exchange, Bitcoin is a god-given tech. Why? Most usage of crypto I see is either tax eavsion or on the black markets. Drugs, weapons, fake ids and much much worse. China is doing well and the rest of the world is considering limitations on crypto as well. > Wise investmens and hard working provide higher expected return than hard-working alone. I agree on this, but fuck this world where you can get richer than people who work without doing any hard work.
  - pototo666 4y ago
    > China is doing well and the rest of the world is considering limitations on crypto as well. Well, it depends on how you view the condition. I believe that a citizen should be able to change any local curreny to foreign currency. If citizens are not allowed to do that, they are exploited by the governemnt, who can simple print money to finance its corrupted operation. And that's what happen in china. I don't care about the price of bitcoin. I care about the ability of moving my money wherever I want.
- disillusioned 4y ago
  It's a risky investment in the exact same way a lottery ticket is a risky investment: unless a particular lightning bolt of luck strikes you, it stands to reason that no underlying value is being created to return to your investment, _particularly_ for the shitcoins. They're just "toss a few thousand dollars at the dartboard and see what pumps" pure luck. As evidenced by the falling knives people are trying to catch right now.
pa7x1 4y ago
I have long-suspected that a significant part of the hate for crypto from tech-literate people is resentment for not figuring out the success of something they were equipped to have seen earlier. And here is a little snippet of it at work. > If your friend only had $5k in total and threw them all in Terra then I guess the lesson he got in the crash is way more valuable than any savings he might have kept. He would have lost them anyway on the next shitcoin. So if they lose money, they deserve it. > In the meantime a couple of friends who never worked got rich just because they bought a few thousands $ (money borrowed...from their family) worth of crypto at the right moment. > What is this bullshit? Why am I even busting my ass trying to create value, when I could just buy shitcoins and become a millionaire? If they win money, they don't deserve it. I guess we should just send the money to you.
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  Nah. You're just projecting your fears on me. > So if they lose money, they deserve it. I didn't say that. Just that it was bound to happen sooner or later. It's clear though that as with any other Ponzi scheme, there are people who join early and profit and people who join late and give all their savings to the early comers. OP's friend is one of the late comers. My friends are early comers. > If they win money, they don't deserve it. Again, never said this. I'm just saying that it's a lottery and that it's crazy to have masses of people betting their future livelihoods on this Ponzi scheme. By the way yes, I don't think you really "earned" your wealth if you got it on the lottery or from your parents. Sue me. Or better, get to work and earn your wealth. > resentment No resentment. Just pity for people who think they earned and deserve all they have, when in fact they've just born in the right family, in the right place, at the right time. > I guess we should just send the money to you. Keep your lottery money. As I pretty clearly stated, I want to earn mine with actual work.
  - junofan 4y ago
    Taking out a reasonable position is not entering a lottery. Even KPMG allocated.
- imtringued 4y ago
burntoutfire 4y ago
Every week, there is someone whose lottery ticket wins millions or tens of millions of dollars. It's not fair, but such is life - some people are just more lucky than others. The smartest thing you can do about it is to not dwell on it too much, other people's extraordinary luck does not affect your life in any way anyway. That also applies to crypto - at any given point in time, plenty of people are investing in crazy speculative schemes. A minority of them win big, while a majority loses some or most of their money. The crypto crowd who bough 10 years ago just happened to select the right lottery ticket, while other people who at that time invested in equally far-fetched ideas (AR startups, synthetic meat, whatever crazy fad that died in the early stages before even reaching mainstream media) lost their money.

alangibson 4y ago

> This is not a sustainable economic settlement. Unfortunately it is. For most of human history the rich got richer and the poor just stayed poor. It's truly sad to say, but people will suffer along at a subsistence level pretty much indefinitely. Without a wartime boom or the threat of an organized Left to force concessions, which were the two major drivers of wealth moving to the lower 90% in the 20th century as far as I can tell, we will continue on our current path.

BuckRogers 4y ago
Concise and well said. Only one thing to add, war time booms are a bit of a myth. For example, where was the post Iraq War boom? It is a real thing. You have to blow up your industrial competitors to achieve a worthwhile and meaningful postwar boom. The difference today is that even if we blew up China, companies still wouldn’t invest here. They just go to India or Vietnam. We do need more unions in this country. Because our historically low union membership was not enough to stop outsourcing. My hometown‘s manufacturing was strong and has been gutted. It was an anti-union town. And no, the companies did not reward that. It just made it easier for them to go to Malaysia.
- alangibson 4y ago
  > where was the post Iraq War boom? Indeed. I wartime booms are a thing of the past. I guess the reason is that mobilizations are smaller as a function of the total economy and/or the economy is a permanent wartime economy given that the USA is almost always at war somewhere. > We do need more unions in this country Agreed, but I don't think that would allow us to repeat the gains of the last century. Capital make big concessions to the working class in Europe and the US in the 20th century because there was a very real threat of a revolution lead by the organized Left.
  - BuckRogers 4y ago
    but I don't think that would allow us to repeat the gains of the last century. Agreed. Partially due to increased globalization. We've been globalized since colonial times, but instant communication was the real game-changer. There's no turning back now. No matter how many populist movements rise up around the world as a last gasp against it. It's hard work to achieve collective bargaining, easy to overthrow a government in a coup. People are clearly choosing the latter in the USA, but they won't like the loss of democratic freedom in the end. What unions in the US can achieve is dignity for workers. They won't get the share of wealth they once had, but they can be treated with more respect, more time off to enjoy themselves and their family and friends. Essentially we could achieve a western European quality of life, at best. There's nothing wrong with that. The way people live over there with less income, but overall better quality of life is the best-case scenario for the US going forward. While they have some serious security risks, I'm envious that they have already sorted these things out while the US still has struggle ahead economic side. And we may fail, and simply become another Brazil, rather than like Germany. I think Rio de Janeiro style slums are more likely in our future, rather than Berlin. Our people and leaders just don't have the culture and stick-to-it to achieve that reality, in my opinion. The working class here is too easily divided by the asset holding class. Just tell them unions are bad, or focus on minority issues, whether it be LGBTQ or racial minority strife and you have a distraction for 1 to 3 generations' lifespans. Right now, given the lack of focus on the working class and corporate focus on general social justice issues, we're kissing away the next 100 years that need to be put towards all working class people. Money and job security are what people need, no matter who you are. I don't see a true working class revolution begin in the US until 2060 or so. It may take all the way out to 2100. There's just too many people that would otherwise be working on this, that are extremely focused on gender and racial studies. No money is going to come out of that for anyone. Corporations and the capitalist class know it. You'll know you have achieved enlightened corporations when they are publicly promoting collective bargaining. They're flying rainbows instead, keeping the money, and everyone on both sides is feeling good. While that's a pessimistic take, the good news is that the propaganda that unions drove out US enterprise is demonstrably false. That has been revealed to have been a total scam and I think everyone sees it at this point. You lose nothing at all when you have collective bargaining rights, it's all upside. As long as the business is solvent, the boss may be angry at merely one Lamborghini rather than five though. Or just wealth for him to retire at 45, rather than generational wealth for the next 3 generations being available. Worker-owned enterprise also needs to happen. There's just no rational reason why for proven business models, like 7-Eleven out of Japan, needs to run half of our convenience stores when those could be owned and operated by the employees. With better pay and customer service as a result. I'm fine with venture capital and risk-reward for unproven business models, but many of these large corporations are parasites like 7-Eleven. We have to kick these corporations out and retake our local economy. No reason to allow them to have end-to-end control all the way, and it will encourage some local suppliers to pop up as fellow cooperatives see eye to eye and work together.

biztos 4y ago

> those with assets got rich and those that work get poorer I think this is the take-away of the modern world economy. If you can somehow get enough money to join the asset-holding class you have a chance, otherwise you have no chance. And even if you can, you're fighting a serious uphill battle against the people who got there earlier and got to that sweet free number-go-up zone while you were still toiling. Right now a friend of mine is trying to buy a modest house in the Bay Area (not SF) -- and he's worried that the $1.5M he can afford is not going to be enough (for things listed at $1.3M) because people with generational wealth, or people who won the tech lottery, are going to come in with $1.6M cash offers. It's not that insane yet in most of the world but I see no reason to believe this is not the direction. So, if you don't have a path from work-work into assets, what are you supposed to do?

imtringued 4y ago
>I think this is the take-away of the modern world economy. That is how it worked for the last two thousand years.
rhexs 4y ago
Move away from one of the single most expensive housing markets in the world? That’s a terrible example. Remote work is a thing if you for some reason have to work for Bay companies.

mmarq 4y ago

I’ve been saying for years that we should reduce taxes on work and increase taxes on assets and consumption. At the current level of taxation, accumulating wealth through work is out of the grasp of 95% of the population (at least in the UK, where they’d earn less than 90K).

PinguTS 4y ago

It is not the first bubble and it will be not the last. It is easy to blame the government, but don't to take the responsibilities by themselves. There are many people who warned about the crypto bubble and the ponzi scheme over the years. But the crypto-bro's told a different story. Many people expected that the bubble bust earlier. Some people where over that and stated that crypto is here to stay as long as there are people who can convince others to pour money in, yeah, like a ponzi scheme. Crypto-bro's told the blue sky's, because it is decentralized and no government is able to regulate it. Now the government is blamed. You may could blame the government, if it is regulated by the government. But it isn't. The crypto-bro's worked hard that it should not be regulated. So, you can't blame the government.

Gibbon1 4y ago
I blame the government for not tossing the crypto-bro's in prison where they belong.
- gjs278 4y ago

strikelaserclaw 4y ago

it seems to be a key rule of the world that the rich get richer and poor get poorer, not even in an economic sense, in terms of everything in life, the world imo tends to lean toward this model.