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I’ve been watching crypto from the sideline for a few years. In the last six months I have realised what it actually is: a big Dutch tulip Ponzi scheme but unli

I’ve been watching crypto from the sideline for a few years. In the last six months I have realised what it actually is: a big Dutch tulip Ponzi scheme but unlike what we saw in the dot com boom with VCs inverting in speculative start ups because of FOMO. When interest rates go up further and people get incentivised to put their cash in the bank to earn some low risk, yet boring interest rates on term deposits, I hope we will see this giant Ponzi scheme come crashing down like there’s no tomorrow.

lamontcg 4y ago
Cash is flooding out of Coinbase already. Be interesting to see what happens when they run out and can't raise any more, and people with their crypto on the platform become unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy. Another way to look at crypto is a banking system with no lender of last resort or controls like FDIC to prevent a systemic bank panic. The only real hope that the crypto system has is that billionaires who are still True Believers will step in to serve as lenders of last resort and buy it all up on a firesale, but if they instead don't choose to catch a falling knife it'll just fall. The crypto system as a whole has never yet had to survive a high interest rate sustained collapse of the external economic environment yet. The 2020 pandemic wasn't really a test because everything got immediately bailed out. Concretely, if Tesla is pretty screwed because nobody has money to buy cars any more and everyone is out of work, will someone like Musk toss cash at crypto to save it or not?
curlftpfs 4y ago
Yes this is copy and pasted on every crypto thread. Tulip Mania, dot-com bubble, fomo, a Ponzi scheme with no substitute for Charles Ponzi. It's so decentralized it's dangerous AND somehow simply controlled by a single Madoff-like entity. Do you have any thoughts about the subject of the article? If not please add another hot take like "crypto uses too much energy!"
- LBJsPNS 4y ago
  Damn, your losses are that high, huh?
  - curlftpfs 4y ago
    I must be a crypto maximalist right?! No! I want to talk about this with people who are actually making things for it, in a detailed way. Including...hold your breath...inviting people to criticize it!

lamontcg 4y ago

Cash is flooding out of Coinbase already. Be interesting to see what happens when they run out and can't raise any more, and people with their crypto on the platform become unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy. Another way to look at crypto is a banking system with no lender of last resort or controls like FDIC to prevent a systemic bank panic. The only real hope that the crypto system has is that billionaires who are still True Believers will step in to serve as lenders of last resort and buy it all up on a firesale, but if they instead don't choose to catch a falling knife it'll just fall. The crypto system as a whole has never yet had to survive a high interest rate sustained collapse of the external economic environment yet. The 2020 pandemic wasn't really a test because everything got immediately bailed out. Concretely, if Tesla is pretty screwed because nobody has money to buy cars any more and everyone is out of work, will someone like Musk toss cash at crypto to save it or not?

curlftpfs 4y ago

Yes this is copy and pasted on every crypto thread. Tulip Mania, dot-com bubble, fomo, a Ponzi scheme with no substitute for Charles Ponzi. It's so decentralized it's dangerous AND somehow simply controlled by a single Madoff-like entity. Do you have any thoughts about the subject of the article? If not please add another hot take like "crypto uses too much energy!"

LBJsPNS 4y ago
Damn, your losses are that high, huh?
- curlftpfs 4y ago
  I must be a crypto maximalist right?! No! I want to talk about this with people who are actually making things for it, in a detailed way. Including...hold your breath...inviting people to criticize it!