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It almost seems like the crypto space has, from my perspective, conflicting narratives: 1. Institutions/governments are bad, and manipulate currencies for evil

It almost seems like the crypto space has, from my perspective, conflicting narratives: 1. Institutions/governments are bad, and manipulate currencies for evil purposes, Bitcoin is good because they can't manipulate it, etc. And 2. Institutional adoption is a good thing because it will bring money into the space and cause the next bull run and we'll all be rich, etc. I mean, when has Blackrock(or really any privately held corporation with shareholder profit as priority #1) ever had good/pure intentions in line with 1? They don't care about Bitcoin being "the future of money", they just want to make a buck off the commissions. Same deal with the various futures and derivative products based on its price. Or maybe they're just trying not to say the quiet part loud?

7ewis 4y ago
Agree I think you're either in it for the money or the tech, but sadly it seems those two are too tightly linked.
api 4y ago
The narrative for 90% is “number go up.” Institutional is good if it make number go up. Institutions are bad if they regulate or do anything that make number not go up.
- cynusx 4y ago
  To be fair, retail stock market investors behave exactly the same. I do wonder who is still in crypto for the tech, at least in europe I don't know any senior dev that speaks positively about blockchains from a technical POV
- Humdeee 4y ago
  My understanding here is regulation would open the door for many more institutions to pour in, solely from a confidence perspective. Ergo, "to the moon"?
  - api 4y ago
    So in the end instead of a new form of money that’s separate from central backs what we get is a… hollow stock. It’s a stock in nothing but the hype about the stock. Once the hype wears off then what?
  - lottin 4y ago
    It will probably bubble up for a while and crash again. Remember cryptocurrencies have no practical purpose. They are only worth something because of the expectation that a greater fool will show up later willing to buy at a higher price. But we also know that there's a limited supply of fools, so sooner or later the bubble has to pop. And this will go on and on until governments intervene. This is my prediction.
jksmith 4y ago
Yeah. And all the mouthpieces on YT talking about how significant this is are assuming BR really believes anything in anything. All BR may be doing is setting the world up for a crypto pump/dump of Shakespearean proportions. I'll continue my own relationship with BTC, but always qualified by knowing the world is mostly lies. Human, All Too Human.
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Why does it matter? BlackRock can't print extra bitcoins, can't take them away from you (unless you give it to them to manage it first), can't block you from spending it one way or another, can't prevent you from sending it to someone else, can't block you from receiving it from someone... so, yeah.. the only problems are market manipulations, which ave been happening from day one. In comparison, governments can print extra money (and they did, fucking up the economy with that), they can block your accounts, they can block accounts from people you want to send money to, they can block international money transfers if they don't like the other country, and in case of fully digital currencies, they can implement all the conspiracy theories, from social scores onwards...
- soperj 4y ago
  > governments can print extra money Aren't most coins doing exactly that constantly when people mine them?
  - Empact 4y ago
    The coins have to be introduced to the market somehow. Mining is a fair, open way to distribute these new funds. Literally anyone can participate on equal terms. In the case of bitcoin, the monetary inflation/issuance rate of bitcoin is currently ~1.7%, below the Fed's target for the USD, and will drop by 50% in 2024. https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-inflation/ https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-inflation/
    - _hcuq 4y ago
      And anyone with a bit of marketing power can create a new crypto currency.
      - latchkey 4y ago
        As @aantonop has said for a long time... "the next bitcoin, is bitcoin" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0ftZgCEZos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0ftZgCEZos
shawabawa3 4y ago
These aren't necessarily conflicting because institutions can't (or at least so far have not been able to) manipulate Bitcoin, no matter how much they buy or trade or promote
scotty79 4y ago
I don't think those two narratives are really conflicting. Governments can manipulate money and they can't do that with bitcoin because they have no control over the supply. At the same time for the Bitcoin to be significant enough for it to have any impact on governments and money system it needs to adopted as widely as possible so institutuonal adoption is good. Also the best thing about bitcoin for me is that it doesn't depend on narrative because it survived all narratives and thrives unhindered by their content and validity or the lack thereof.
- gitfan86 4y ago
  All monetary systems are dependent on narratives to have real world value. If everyone stopped believing in the value of the dollar, it's real world value would plummet. The cash in my wallet would still exist but it would be of no value for buying real actual things. Bitcoin is no different.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    I don't think any actual currency ever died because people out of blue stopped believing it has value. The cause was always excess of supply. People are slow. Things first become actually worthless, then people stop believing in their value.
    - gitfan86 4y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_dollar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_dollar
  - nradov 4y ago
    Belief has nothing to do with it. My taxes bills are all denominated in dollars. Even if I stop believing, I still have to get enough dollars to pay those taxes. Otherwise the government will use force to seize my other assets (real estate, cars, stocks, etc) and sell those to satisfy the delinquent tax bills. Cryptocurrency advocates seem ridiculously naive about how money actually works in the real world. It's like they're all little children or something.
rvz 4y ago
That has been the main narrative and delusion of the majority of Bitcoin and Ethereum maximalists. 'Bitcoin will be the world reserve currency', 'Bitcoin is a great hedge against inflation', 'It's the future of money', 'Ethereum will be used for everything', 'Smart contracts for DeFi, Healthcare, Law, etc will be the future', etc. Hence this maximalism, is what infuriates the hard anti-crypto folks for years who are praying for the 'complete and total collapse of all cryptocurrencies' and suggesting 'All of it should die in a fire' and a 'Total ban on everyone using them'. We have heard the same calls for this for more than a decade, yet it's 2022 and they are still here, which tells me that the anti-crypto folks are also under their own delusion and crypto is not going away that easily. A more realistic outcome of what will happen to crypto rests all on the regulations, which many companies have been waiting for before re-entering again into using them. This is the reason why it won't 'just die in a fire' easily or that it won't 'take over the current system'. The regulators are not after Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. but are after the truly decentralized privacy coins, privacy tools, etc to be banned from exchanges, de-listed, contract addresses blacklisted etc. The reality is the two camps that will be disappointed are the absolutist pro-crypto folks and the absolutist anti-crypto folks as both of their utopian goals are unrealistic. With regulations around the corner, this makes sure that customers like Stripe, MoneyGram, etc hand picks cryptocurrencies that work for their use case, especially the ISO 20020 compliant cryptos. Like it or not, crypto regulation and compliance is coming and that will allow cryptocurrencies and projects to survive and at the same time it will weed out the useless meme projects.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Proof-of-waste systems have to go as well, or a lot more than bitcoin is going to "die in a fire".
- tyrfing 4y ago
  I disagree with your maximalism definition, it usually refers to the opinion that all other crypto is worthless garbage and [BTC/ETH/___] is the only one that will survive. It's possible to have those extreme pro-crypto opinions without being a maximalist.
  - 4y ago
codethief 4y ago
This is similar to another pair of conflicting narratives: 1. We will soon all be using $CRYPTO_CURRENCY for day-to-day payments. (Implying that the value of said currency will be stable enough, so that we can measure the value of objects – i.e. determine their price – and store our savings in that currency without high risk of losses.) 2. $CRYPTO_CURRENCY is definitely going to go to the moon in the mid- to long-term future because of 1). I'm putting all my money on it.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
I'm not sure these are irreconcilable. I think the idea is that everyone on a crypto network is untrusted in an idealized scenario - no elevated privileges. Institutions/governments have elevated privileges in their financial systems. For example, it's illegal for you to personally print currency while someone in an institution somewhere has currency printing privileges. Relative to you, they have elevated privileges. Saying you don't trust government/institutions with elevated privileges in a system you operate in is different than saying you don't trust them to operate in any system with you. If your goal is to reduce the scope of their elevated privileges, than legitimization of a system by institutions/governments could be viewed as a net-positive: they're coming into your ecosystem to operate by rules you've adopted, not the other way around. The argument gets fuzzy as you explore the edges. Some folks in some crypto networks do have elevated privileges through real world social contracts (i.e. core devs forking a chain) - and governments do have elevated privileges under threat of violence.
izzydata 4y ago
There are a lot more institutions than governments. Also private institutions don't write the laws that govern the money so there isn't really a conflict of interest.
bufferoverflow 4y ago
How is it conflicting? #2 is just taking money/wealth out of existing institutions into the crypto. Seems very aligned and logical.
mikeryan 4y ago
Seems there's space for both narratives in the Crypto world. TBH I'd appreciate having access to some form of a regulated chain, which validates identity and has overseen safeguards for transfers and exchanges living side-by-side with the traditional chains that exist today. I think it would be good for crypto in general to have both and you'd see greater uptick in usage for traditional commerce if you had access to both.
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
>ever had good/pure intentions in line with 1? Intentions are free, bitcoin doesn't tell people what to think.
dqpb 4y ago
> conflicting narratives It’s almost as if there is no central authority.

7ewis 4y ago

Agree I think you're either in it for the money or the tech, but sadly it seems those two are too tightly linked.

api 4y ago

The narrative for 90% is “number go up.” Institutional is good if it make number go up. Institutions are bad if they regulate or do anything that make number not go up.

cynusx 4y ago
To be fair, retail stock market investors behave exactly the same. I do wonder who is still in crypto for the tech, at least in europe I don't know any senior dev that speaks positively about blockchains from a technical POV
Humdeee 4y ago
My understanding here is regulation would open the door for many more institutions to pour in, solely from a confidence perspective. Ergo, "to the moon"?
- api 4y ago
  So in the end instead of a new form of money that’s separate from central backs what we get is a… hollow stock. It’s a stock in nothing but the hype about the stock. Once the hype wears off then what?
- lottin 4y ago
  It will probably bubble up for a while and crash again. Remember cryptocurrencies have no practical purpose. They are only worth something because of the expectation that a greater fool will show up later willing to buy at a higher price. But we also know that there's a limited supply of fools, so sooner or later the bubble has to pop. And this will go on and on until governments intervene. This is my prediction.

jksmith 4y ago

Yeah. And all the mouthpieces on YT talking about how significant this is are assuming BR really believes anything in anything. All BR may be doing is setting the world up for a crypto pump/dump of Shakespearean proportions. I'll continue my own relationship with BTC, but always qualified by knowing the world is mostly lies. Human, All Too Human.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

Why does it matter? BlackRock can't print extra bitcoins, can't take them away from you (unless you give it to them to manage it first), can't block you from spending it one way or another, can't prevent you from sending it to someone else, can't block you from receiving it from someone... so, yeah.. the only problems are market manipulations, which ave been happening from day one. In comparison, governments can print extra money (and they did, fucking up the economy with that), they can block your accounts, they can block accounts from people you want to send money to, they can block international money transfers if they don't like the other country, and in case of fully digital currencies, they can implement all the conspiracy theories, from social scores onwards...

soperj 4y ago
> governments can print extra money Aren't most coins doing exactly that constantly when people mine them?
- Empact 4y ago
  The coins have to be introduced to the market somehow. Mining is a fair, open way to distribute these new funds. Literally anyone can participate on equal terms. In the case of bitcoin, the monetary inflation/issuance rate of bitcoin is currently ~1.7%, below the Fed's target for the USD, and will drop by 50% in 2024. https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-inflation/ https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-inflation/
  - _hcuq 4y ago
    And anyone with a bit of marketing power can create a new crypto currency.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      As @aantonop has said for a long time... "the next bitcoin, is bitcoin" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0ftZgCEZos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0ftZgCEZos

shawabawa3 4y ago

These aren't necessarily conflicting because institutions can't (or at least so far have not been able to) manipulate Bitcoin, no matter how much they buy or trade or promote

scotty79 4y ago

I don't think those two narratives are really conflicting. Governments can manipulate money and they can't do that with bitcoin because they have no control over the supply. At the same time for the Bitcoin to be significant enough for it to have any impact on governments and money system it needs to adopted as widely as possible so institutuonal adoption is good. Also the best thing about bitcoin for me is that it doesn't depend on narrative because it survived all narratives and thrives unhindered by their content and validity or the lack thereof.

gitfan86 4y ago
All monetary systems are dependent on narratives to have real world value. If everyone stopped believing in the value of the dollar, it's real world value would plummet. The cash in my wallet would still exist but it would be of no value for buying real actual things. Bitcoin is no different.
- scotty79 4y ago
  I don't think any actual currency ever died because people out of blue stopped believing it has value. The cause was always excess of supply. People are slow. Things first become actually worthless, then people stop believing in their value.
  - gitfan86 4y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_dollar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_dollar
- nradov 4y ago
  Belief has nothing to do with it. My taxes bills are all denominated in dollars. Even if I stop believing, I still have to get enough dollars to pay those taxes. Otherwise the government will use force to seize my other assets (real estate, cars, stocks, etc) and sell those to satisfy the delinquent tax bills. Cryptocurrency advocates seem ridiculously naive about how money actually works in the real world. It's like they're all little children or something.

rvz 4y ago

That has been the main narrative and delusion of the majority of Bitcoin and Ethereum maximalists. 'Bitcoin will be the world reserve currency', 'Bitcoin is a great hedge against inflation', 'It's the future of money', 'Ethereum will be used for everything', 'Smart contracts for DeFi, Healthcare, Law, etc will be the future', etc. Hence this maximalism, is what infuriates the hard anti-crypto folks for years who are praying for the 'complete and total collapse of all cryptocurrencies' and suggesting 'All of it should die in a fire' and a 'Total ban on everyone using them'. We have heard the same calls for this for more than a decade, yet it's 2022 and they are still here, which tells me that the anti-crypto folks are also under their own delusion and crypto is not going away that easily. A more realistic outcome of what will happen to crypto rests all on the regulations, which many companies have been waiting for before re-entering again into using them. This is the reason why it won't 'just die in a fire' easily or that it won't 'take over the current system'. The regulators are not after Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. but are after the truly decentralized privacy coins, privacy tools, etc to be banned from exchanges, de-listed, contract addresses blacklisted etc. The reality is the two camps that will be disappointed are the absolutist pro-crypto folks and the absolutist anti-crypto folks as both of their utopian goals are unrealistic. With regulations around the corner, this makes sure that customers like Stripe, MoneyGram, etc hand picks cryptocurrencies that work for their use case, especially the ISO 20020 compliant cryptos. Like it or not, crypto regulation and compliance is coming and that will allow cryptocurrencies and projects to survive and at the same time it will weed out the useless meme projects.

pjc50 4y ago
Proof-of-waste systems have to go as well, or a lot more than bitcoin is going to "die in a fire".
tyrfing 4y ago
I disagree with your maximalism definition, it usually refers to the opinion that all other crypto is worthless garbage and [BTC/ETH/___] is the only one that will survive. It's possible to have those extreme pro-crypto opinions without being a maximalist.
- 4y ago

codethief 4y ago

This is similar to another pair of conflicting narratives: 1. We will soon all be using $CRYPTO_CURRENCY for day-to-day payments. (Implying that the value of said currency will be stable enough, so that we can measure the value of objects – i.e. determine their price – and store our savings in that currency without high risk of losses.) 2. $CRYPTO_CURRENCY is definitely going to go to the moon in the mid- to long-term future because of 1). I'm putting all my money on it.

r3trohack3r 4y ago

I'm not sure these are irreconcilable. I think the idea is that everyone on a crypto network is untrusted in an idealized scenario - no elevated privileges. Institutions/governments have elevated privileges in their financial systems. For example, it's illegal for you to personally print currency while someone in an institution somewhere has currency printing privileges. Relative to you, they have elevated privileges. Saying you don't trust government/institutions with elevated privileges in a system you operate in is different than saying you don't trust them to operate in any system with you. If your goal is to reduce the scope of their elevated privileges, than legitimization of a system by institutions/governments could be viewed as a net-positive: they're coming into your ecosystem to operate by rules you've adopted, not the other way around. The argument gets fuzzy as you explore the edges. Some folks in some crypto networks do have elevated privileges through real world social contracts (i.e. core devs forking a chain) - and governments do have elevated privileges under threat of violence.

izzydata 4y ago

There are a lot more institutions than governments. Also private institutions don't write the laws that govern the money so there isn't really a conflict of interest.

bufferoverflow 4y ago

How is it conflicting? #2 is just taking money/wealth out of existing institutions into the crypto. Seems very aligned and logical.

mikeryan 4y ago

Seems there's space for both narratives in the Crypto world. TBH I'd appreciate having access to some form of a regulated chain, which validates identity and has overseen safeguards for transfers and exchanges living side-by-side with the traditional chains that exist today. I think it would be good for crypto in general to have both and you'd see greater uptick in usage for traditional commerce if you had access to both.

GoblinSlayer 4y ago

>ever had good/pure intentions in line with 1? Intentions are free, bitcoin doesn't tell people what to think.

dqpb 4y ago

> conflicting narratives It’s almost as if there is no central authority.