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I'm honestly a little surprised that cryptospace is even still a thing at this point. No practical uses. Grift. Scams. This is the banking schemes of the 1800s

I'm honestly a little surprised that cryptospace is even still a thing at this point. No practical uses. Grift. Scams. This is the banking schemes of the 1800s played out with modern machines and cryptography. I genuinely feel sorry for all those people that got rich quick from BitCoin and now are going to have to go back to being, "not rich." Worse yet a critical mass of people still desperately holding on could bolster the price long enough to stall a complete failing of cryptocurrency markets outright. Who know magic computers monopoly money without government oversight would backfire on everyone? I guess sometimes your velociraptors turn on you.

sprash 4y ago
The real scam are central banks. Bitcoin is an attempt to make them obsolete. But if I were a central bank desperately clinging to power and with the ability to create and destroy money with the press of the button I would make bitcoin seem as unstable as possible. The price is the only thing they can manipulate at this point. The fundamentals are solid.
- paulgb 4y ago
  It’s funny how unflinchingly the narrative shifted from “bitcoin is an inflation hedge outside of government control” to “the government is manipulating the price of bitcoin through inflation”
  - thr0wawayf00 4y ago
    And it completely ignores the bubble that the crypto world created through things like NFTs, whose only value to their owners is the promise that they'll be worth more tomorrow. It's just the digital incarnation of Beanie Babies.
    - sprash 4y ago
      The "everything bubble" which also affected crpyto was created by central banks with the various QE programs and the relentless money printing. Don't blame crypto for creating a bubble.
      - thr0wawayf00 4y ago
        You can absolutely blame crypto for creating the NFT bubble. The banks flooded the economy with cash but they didn't tell everyone to start buying NFTs. All of these exchanges, stablecoins and crypto-derivative products were built solely on the self-propagating hype that needed the cheap cash flowing into the system. The banks didn't tell anyone to go buy crypto, the crypto companies did, which effectively tied the performance of the crypto market to the stock market because the average consumer saw crypto as a more enticing speculative investment, not a currency. If the crypto community was as focused on the fundamentals as you argue, there would be a lot more conversations around not allowing these billion-dollar exchanges creating derivative products with unsustainable rates to capture the market. But they did and the crypto world is where it is today because of it. The Fed may have cut the trees down, but the crypto community threw them in a pile, doused them in gas and set the whole thing on fire and it wound up burning out of control. How do you blame the Fed for the fire?
  - kkielhofner 4y ago
    A partial list of narrative shifts after each use case/benefit proved to be infeasible: - Digital cash (volatility, transaction rate, gas fees, etc). Only potential counter argument here is Lightning which essentially compromises on many of the original design goals of Bitcoin and comes with its own set of issues[1] PLUS still has the pesky volatility problem - Store of value (Volatility) - Inflation hedge (Volatility, essentially tracks other markets) - Outside government control (Law enforcement and tax authorities routinely seize, tax, and disrupt cryptocurrencies). There is the “fleeing a dictator” scenario but that’s a very limited use case that in no way supports the current market value. - Banking the unbanked, remittances (See El Salvador [2]). Money quote from the article: “There is no experiment where a currency was introduced with such strong incentives and still failed,” Fernando Álvarez, an economist at the University of Chicago I feel like registering “whatarewecallingbitcointoday.com” or some such to track these. 1 - https://medium.com/bitcoin-blockchain/lightning-network-on-btc-is-a-dead-end-even-if-it-works-as-claimed-d550d17053b1 https://medium.com/bitcoin-blockchain/lightning-network-on-b... 2 - https://restofworld.org/2022/el-salvador-chivo-bitcoin-wallet/ https://restofworld.org/2022/el-salvador-chivo-bitcoin-walle...
    - sprash 4y ago
      Those are all made up narratives by random media outlets. From the beginning there was only one true narrative: "Abolish central banks". Because they are at the core designed to enslave humanity. That is why Bitcoin is created. It was always an attempt to solve a political problem with technology. Not more not less. Will it succeed? I hope so.
      - paulgb 4y ago
        The digital cash use case is literally in the whitepaper title, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”
      - kkielhofner 4y ago
        I have yet to receive a point by point rebuttal with any kind of real data or sourcing. It always ends up in deflection or something along the lines of a conspiracy theory (any debate of which is infamously unproductive). I would like for blockchain technology to find its rightful place as a unique solution to a real problem with actual user adoption and meaningful real world impact but after 13 years, substantial investment, and several pivots/rebrands/etc it hasn't been successful at anything (relative to the total potential user base/"addressable market" of 5 billion internet users). I like to look at it as if Bitcoin (and to a larger extent blockchain) were a single technology startup. Let's call it "Blockchain Inc". If it weren't for the religious fervor of true believers, speculators, "hodlers" doing anything and everything to pump it, etc no investor or group of investors in their right mind would keep pouring untold billions of dollars into Blockchain Inc after its pivoted over half a dozen times, still has essentially no real world use case, and no meaningful user adoption (when compared to other 13 years old startups, platforms, technologies, etc with or without equivalent investment). It's a failed tech startup being propped up by speculation and its own engine of propaganda and constructed media narrative.
- kelnos 4y ago
  If Bitcoin's price is subject to manipulation like this, then the fundamentals are definitely not solid. If you want to replace central banks with something that isn't under control of governments, I'd think that a central feature of that thing would have to be that it can't be manipulated by governments. Seems like Bitcoin fails that test, if what you are saying is true.
  - Sebguer 4y ago
    Exactly, either you're a threat to governments and thus need to treat them as adversarial, or you're not. Crypto is in no way safe from state actors, unless those state actors are profiting from it.
    - sprash 4y ago
      The government collects taxes denominated in USD which is enforced with violence. This is why USD is in demand. As soon as this (in case of income tax even unconstitutional) collection mechanism by force fails the dollar becomes worthless over night.
      - ntoskrnl 4y ago
        We might find out if that's true soon enough. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/23/tax-return-backlog-is-crushing-the-irs-as-pileup-exceeds-21-million.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/23/tax-return-backlog-is-crushi...
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        You really need to look into the history of currency of you truly believe any of this. Currency is worth something because other people are willing to trade it for something useful at a stable exchange rate. Now, having a central bank that controls the currency, and a government that enforces that control, can help protect the stability that gives that currency value in times of economic instability, but that's only occasional interference. We know this because, in the past when states were weaker and less able to do this, huge swaths of people ignored their state currency, more or less, and used other states' currencies, ones that were more trustworthy (counterfeiting used to be a serious concern) and stable. Even today there are countries where people are in practice using the US dollar as their currency, ignoring local official currencies, simply because the dollar is recognizable and its price is extremely stable compared to their official legal tender. How does this square with your theory that the dollar would lose all value overnight if the US government stopped requiring it?
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  Bitcoin will never make "fiat" currency obsolete. It's ridiculously volatile, its transactions are irreversible (and therefore a magnet for fraud), it's inconvenient to use, and it doesn't scale. It's also brutally unforgiving in the sense that losing access to your wallet means losing all your money. These things might appeal to a few hardcore anarcho-capitalists or day-traders, but no rational person would choose Bitcoin over the existing banking system.
  - sprash 4y ago
    The volatility is generated by the central banks. They were printing money like there is no tomorrow since 2008. Now they are destroying it again with interest rate hikes and balance sheet reduction.
    - lumost 4y ago
      BTC volatility has been far in excess of even volatile commodities like oil. You can’t blame the government for crypto volatility.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      The coin has had 50% swings over the whole time it has existed, far before the current monetary policy changes by the Fed.
- CaptainZapp 4y ago
  Let's just say that I trust the ECB, The Bank of England, The Swiss National Bank or even The Fed a hell of a lot more than all those slick talking shysters shilling crypto. To each his own, I suppose.
mgraczyk 4y ago
Believing that the technology is worthless is just as naive as believing the space should have $2T in capital. There are tons of interesting things you can do with cryptocurrency and blockchains. Most are financial products, but some are just easier ways to develop software. None of this justifies the insane valuations of most coins, but I have built products that would not have been possible in the pre-ethereum world. For example, who wouldn't want a system that forces banks to track customer balances in a secure, private, and auditable data structure? This is completely possible with cryptography that was researched as a byproduct of cryptocurrency development. It would be a marginal improvement on the existing banking system, but it would provide real, practical use and would improve confidence in the banking system.
- byefruit 4y ago
  Genuinely interested in what products you've developed that weren't possible pre-crypto.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    I built an ICO platform that allowed companies to raise funds and I did not escrow the money or get approval from any financial institution. We operated outside the US. It would have been impossible to do anything remotely similar in terms of UX without crypto. Best alternative would have cost $XX millions to set up and would require users to wire money to an escrow entity. Nobody would have used that. We built ours with 2 engineers and very little capital in less than a month.
    - justapassenger 4y ago
      So, you’ve built a platform to help scam people (that’s what ICO were) in a way that doesn’t involve financial institutions (that give people at least some protection). Yeah, that’s what current uses of blockchain are all about.
somenewaccount1 4y ago
20k is near the floor of what it cost to mine crypto at scale, I think that's why it's a support point. Large miners have capital reserves to hold the Bitcoin if they can't sell it profitably. I'm guessing 2 years runway for well managed large operations. Which means one more 1/2ing in 2024, a price spike, and then it's final collapse 6-12 month later. My magic 8 ball is done answering questions now.
- paulgb 4y ago
  > Large miners have capital reserves to hold the Bitcoin if they can't sell it profitably. I'm guessing 2 years runway for well managed large operations. “Well managed” is the key sentence here. A number of larger miners became addicted to using cheap capital to fuel massive hashrate growth, and it’s coming back to bite them. Riot Blockchain had about one quarter of cash left as of their last filing; they’ve been selling off digital currency holdings into a falling market.

sprash 4y ago

The real scam are central banks. Bitcoin is an attempt to make them obsolete. But if I were a central bank desperately clinging to power and with the ability to create and destroy money with the press of the button I would make bitcoin seem as unstable as possible. The price is the only thing they can manipulate at this point. The fundamentals are solid.

paulgb 4y ago
It’s funny how unflinchingly the narrative shifted from “bitcoin is an inflation hedge outside of government control” to “the government is manipulating the price of bitcoin through inflation”
- thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  And it completely ignores the bubble that the crypto world created through things like NFTs, whose only value to their owners is the promise that they'll be worth more tomorrow. It's just the digital incarnation of Beanie Babies.
  - sprash 4y ago
    The "everything bubble" which also affected crpyto was created by central banks with the various QE programs and the relentless money printing. Don't blame crypto for creating a bubble.
    - thr0wawayf00 4y ago
      You can absolutely blame crypto for creating the NFT bubble. The banks flooded the economy with cash but they didn't tell everyone to start buying NFTs. All of these exchanges, stablecoins and crypto-derivative products were built solely on the self-propagating hype that needed the cheap cash flowing into the system. The banks didn't tell anyone to go buy crypto, the crypto companies did, which effectively tied the performance of the crypto market to the stock market because the average consumer saw crypto as a more enticing speculative investment, not a currency. If the crypto community was as focused on the fundamentals as you argue, there would be a lot more conversations around not allowing these billion-dollar exchanges creating derivative products with unsustainable rates to capture the market. But they did and the crypto world is where it is today because of it. The Fed may have cut the trees down, but the crypto community threw them in a pile, doused them in gas and set the whole thing on fire and it wound up burning out of control. How do you blame the Fed for the fire?
- kkielhofner 4y ago
  A partial list of narrative shifts after each use case/benefit proved to be infeasible: - Digital cash (volatility, transaction rate, gas fees, etc). Only potential counter argument here is Lightning which essentially compromises on many of the original design goals of Bitcoin and comes with its own set of issues[1] PLUS still has the pesky volatility problem - Store of value (Volatility) - Inflation hedge (Volatility, essentially tracks other markets) - Outside government control (Law enforcement and tax authorities routinely seize, tax, and disrupt cryptocurrencies). There is the “fleeing a dictator” scenario but that’s a very limited use case that in no way supports the current market value. - Banking the unbanked, remittances (See El Salvador [2]). Money quote from the article: “There is no experiment where a currency was introduced with such strong incentives and still failed,” Fernando Álvarez, an economist at the University of Chicago I feel like registering “whatarewecallingbitcointoday.com” or some such to track these. 1 - https://medium.com/bitcoin-blockchain/lightning-network-on-btc-is-a-dead-end-even-if-it-works-as-claimed-d550d17053b1 https://medium.com/bitcoin-blockchain/lightning-network-on-b... 2 - https://restofworld.org/2022/el-salvador-chivo-bitcoin-wallet/ https://restofworld.org/2022/el-salvador-chivo-bitcoin-walle...
  - sprash 4y ago
    Those are all made up narratives by random media outlets. From the beginning there was only one true narrative: "Abolish central banks". Because they are at the core designed to enslave humanity. That is why Bitcoin is created. It was always an attempt to solve a political problem with technology. Not more not less. Will it succeed? I hope so.
    - paulgb 4y ago
      The digital cash use case is literally in the whitepaper title, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”
    - kkielhofner 4y ago
      I have yet to receive a point by point rebuttal with any kind of real data or sourcing. It always ends up in deflection or something along the lines of a conspiracy theory (any debate of which is infamously unproductive). I would like for blockchain technology to find its rightful place as a unique solution to a real problem with actual user adoption and meaningful real world impact but after 13 years, substantial investment, and several pivots/rebrands/etc it hasn't been successful at anything (relative to the total potential user base/"addressable market" of 5 billion internet users). I like to look at it as if Bitcoin (and to a larger extent blockchain) were a single technology startup. Let's call it "Blockchain Inc". If it weren't for the religious fervor of true believers, speculators, "hodlers" doing anything and everything to pump it, etc no investor or group of investors in their right mind would keep pouring untold billions of dollars into Blockchain Inc after its pivoted over half a dozen times, still has essentially no real world use case, and no meaningful user adoption (when compared to other 13 years old startups, platforms, technologies, etc with or without equivalent investment). It's a failed tech startup being propped up by speculation and its own engine of propaganda and constructed media narrative.
kelnos 4y ago
If Bitcoin's price is subject to manipulation like this, then the fundamentals are definitely not solid. If you want to replace central banks with something that isn't under control of governments, I'd think that a central feature of that thing would have to be that it can't be manipulated by governments. Seems like Bitcoin fails that test, if what you are saying is true.
- Sebguer 4y ago
  Exactly, either you're a threat to governments and thus need to treat them as adversarial, or you're not. Crypto is in no way safe from state actors, unless those state actors are profiting from it.
  - sprash 4y ago
    The government collects taxes denominated in USD which is enforced with violence. This is why USD is in demand. As soon as this (in case of income tax even unconstitutional) collection mechanism by force fails the dollar becomes worthless over night.
    - ntoskrnl 4y ago
      We might find out if that's true soon enough. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/23/tax-return-backlog-is-crushing-the-irs-as-pileup-exceeds-21-million.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/23/tax-return-backlog-is-crushi...
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      You really need to look into the history of currency of you truly believe any of this. Currency is worth something because other people are willing to trade it for something useful at a stable exchange rate. Now, having a central bank that controls the currency, and a government that enforces that control, can help protect the stability that gives that currency value in times of economic instability, but that's only occasional interference. We know this because, in the past when states were weaker and less able to do this, huge swaths of people ignored their state currency, more or less, and used other states' currencies, ones that were more trustworthy (counterfeiting used to be a serious concern) and stable. Even today there are countries where people are in practice using the US dollar as their currency, ignoring local official currencies, simply because the dollar is recognizable and its price is extremely stable compared to their official legal tender. How does this square with your theory that the dollar would lose all value overnight if the US government stopped requiring it?
timmytokyo 4y ago
Bitcoin will never make "fiat" currency obsolete. It's ridiculously volatile, its transactions are irreversible (and therefore a magnet for fraud), it's inconvenient to use, and it doesn't scale. It's also brutally unforgiving in the sense that losing access to your wallet means losing all your money. These things might appeal to a few hardcore anarcho-capitalists or day-traders, but no rational person would choose Bitcoin over the existing banking system.
- sprash 4y ago
  The volatility is generated by the central banks. They were printing money like there is no tomorrow since 2008. Now they are destroying it again with interest rate hikes and balance sheet reduction.
  - lumost 4y ago
    BTC volatility has been far in excess of even volatile commodities like oil. You can’t blame the government for crypto volatility.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    The coin has had 50% swings over the whole time it has existed, far before the current monetary policy changes by the Fed.
CaptainZapp 4y ago
Let's just say that I trust the ECB, The Bank of England, The Swiss National Bank or even The Fed a hell of a lot more than all those slick talking shysters shilling crypto. To each his own, I suppose.

mgraczyk 4y ago

Believing that the technology is worthless is just as naive as believing the space should have $2T in capital. There are tons of interesting things you can do with cryptocurrency and blockchains. Most are financial products, but some are just easier ways to develop software. None of this justifies the insane valuations of most coins, but I have built products that would not have been possible in the pre-ethereum world. For example, who wouldn't want a system that forces banks to track customer balances in a secure, private, and auditable data structure? This is completely possible with cryptography that was researched as a byproduct of cryptocurrency development. It would be a marginal improvement on the existing banking system, but it would provide real, practical use and would improve confidence in the banking system.

byefruit 4y ago
Genuinely interested in what products you've developed that weren't possible pre-crypto.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  I built an ICO platform that allowed companies to raise funds and I did not escrow the money or get approval from any financial institution. We operated outside the US. It would have been impossible to do anything remotely similar in terms of UX without crypto. Best alternative would have cost $XX millions to set up and would require users to wire money to an escrow entity. Nobody would have used that. We built ours with 2 engineers and very little capital in less than a month.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    So, you’ve built a platform to help scam people (that’s what ICO were) in a way that doesn’t involve financial institutions (that give people at least some protection). Yeah, that’s what current uses of blockchain are all about.

somenewaccount1 4y ago

20k is near the floor of what it cost to mine crypto at scale, I think that's why it's a support point. Large miners have capital reserves to hold the Bitcoin if they can't sell it profitably. I'm guessing 2 years runway for well managed large operations. Which means one more 1/2ing in 2024, a price spike, and then it's final collapse 6-12 month later. My magic 8 ball is done answering questions now.

paulgb 4y ago
> Large miners have capital reserves to hold the Bitcoin if they can't sell it profitably. I'm guessing 2 years runway for well managed large operations. “Well managed” is the key sentence here. A number of larger miners became addicted to using cheap capital to fuel massive hashrate growth, and it’s coming back to bite them. Riot Blockchain had about one quarter of cash left as of their last filing; they’ve been selling off digital currency holdings into a falling market.