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There’s so many little nuances that are technical and economic red flags to me that just elicit vacant expressions when I speak to zealots. Take these exchange

There’s so many little nuances that are technical and economic red flags to me that just elicit vacant expressions when I speak to zealots. Take these exchanges. Set aside for a second the lack of regulations/protections/security checks that they’d be subject to if they were above board. Just from a technical perspective: there are N tokens trading on the exchange. For each token, there is 1 logical implementation of that chain and there are P implementations of that logic (also often 1, sometimes more). You have X clients, with their own balances of each token B. So, even beyond your own code/risk management/security systems, you have (N * P) other blocks of code that you’ve never audited, that would cause you (X * B) liabilities to your customers that you didn’t cause and have no ability to prevent on an ongoing basis. The more successful your exchange is, the more those risks and liabilities grow - presumably exponentially. All I get back is vacant stares when I point this out. Or get told “I just don’t get it” or “have fun staying poor”. Sigh.

Mo3 4y ago
> Or get told “I just don’t get it” or “have fun staying poor”. Most moonboys or people on the inside are in absolute denial. Don't take it personally. I have an acquaintance who is a "DeFi" investor, you wouldn't believe how much incredibly, utterly stupid "projects" this rather smart intelligent man "invests" in. 95% of DeFi are simply cash grabs, and I have not yet seen ONE project that actually profits off being on a blockchain or would be worse off not being on one. It is absolute insanity and like the Dotcom bubble all over again, and the pop is going to hurt like never before.
- lokedhs 4y ago
  I'm not sure it'll hurt that much. The dotcom bust affected the entire economy and a vast number of people were directly invested in these companies. The impact of a complete implosion of the entirety of the cryptocurrency economy will not have anything close to that effect.
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    yes and no. Almost everyone I know never talks about crypto until they've had a couple of drinks or have run out of chat, then suddenly they're talking about their favourite tokens. I suspect the numbers of people invested are every bit as widespread as the media would have you believe. I'd be willing to bet it reaches even further into places you wouldn't expect (e.g. largely opaque pensions and company "cash" balances).
saurik 4y ago
The majority of these tokens are just ERC20 contracts running on Ethereum, not some custom one-off chain and service; and the reputable exchanges actually do run their own audits on the code they have to interface with (which I know from firsthand experience having a token listed on Coinbase). I also think it is entirely fair that if you buy a token and you can't withdraw that token due to a bug in that token, that's part of the risk of owning that token and that issue shouldn't infect any other behaviors or any other tokens at the exchange. (So, maybe "you just don't get it"? But if you aren't willing to hear such feedback then maybe you are yourself overly confident in your understanding?)
- highwaylights 4y ago
  Even in your example given above, if we assume (and it's a big if) that the exchanges are genuinely and thoroughly auditing every one of these tokens and their respective implementations - they're still at the mercy of any and all future bugs that might be introduced non-maliciously in the future. Sure, they can delist a token if they want to, but that's far from an instant switch and they most certainly would have an off-boarding process for their customer's balances that would not keep pace with a critical exploit in the wild.

Mo3 4y ago

> Or get told “I just don’t get it” or “have fun staying poor”. Most moonboys or people on the inside are in absolute denial. Don't take it personally. I have an acquaintance who is a "DeFi" investor, you wouldn't believe how much incredibly, utterly stupid "projects" this rather smart intelligent man "invests" in. 95% of DeFi are simply cash grabs, and I have not yet seen ONE project that actually profits off being on a blockchain or would be worse off not being on one. It is absolute insanity and like the Dotcom bubble all over again, and the pop is going to hurt like never before.

lokedhs 4y ago
I'm not sure it'll hurt that much. The dotcom bust affected the entire economy and a vast number of people were directly invested in these companies. The impact of a complete implosion of the entirety of the cryptocurrency economy will not have anything close to that effect.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  yes and no. Almost everyone I know never talks about crypto until they've had a couple of drinks or have run out of chat, then suddenly they're talking about their favourite tokens. I suspect the numbers of people invested are every bit as widespread as the media would have you believe. I'd be willing to bet it reaches even further into places you wouldn't expect (e.g. largely opaque pensions and company "cash" balances).

saurik 4y ago

The majority of these tokens are just ERC20 contracts running on Ethereum, not some custom one-off chain and service; and the reputable exchanges actually do run their own audits on the code they have to interface with (which I know from firsthand experience having a token listed on Coinbase). I also think it is entirely fair that if you buy a token and you can't withdraw that token due to a bug in that token, that's part of the risk of owning that token and that issue shouldn't infect any other behaviors or any other tokens at the exchange. (So, maybe "you just don't get it"? But if you aren't willing to hear such feedback then maybe you are yourself overly confident in your understanding?)

highwaylights 4y ago
Even in your example given above, if we assume (and it's a big if) that the exchanges are genuinely and thoroughly auditing every one of these tokens and their respective implementations - they're still at the mercy of any and all future bugs that might be introduced non-maliciously in the future. Sure, they can delist a token if they want to, but that's far from an instant switch and they most certainly would have an off-boarding process for their customer's balances that would not keep pace with a critical exploit in the wild.