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As if crypto wasn’t useless enough, it’s always at the center of endless scams. What’s it gonna take for people to walk away from this poison?
by bedhead 4y ago
As if crypto wasn’t useless enough, it’s always at the center of endless scams. What’s it gonna take for people to walk away from this poison?
- hef19898 4y agoA new poison? Crypto is the latest promise of fast, easy money. There will be new ones.
- once_inc 4y ago"Crypto" is useless. Bitcoin isn't. Maximalists have been warning against this stuff happening for nearly a year now. Ever since Luna collapsed, those voices grew louder, but the yield-farming degenerates chose not to listen.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago> "Crypto" is useless. Bitcoin isn't. What unique properties does Bitcoin have that makes it useful that other cryptocurrencies don't, beside first mover advantage?
- MichaelCollins 4y agoI'm guessing the logic is something along the lines of "all crypto is crap... except for the crypto I have of course."
- once_inc 4y agoYou guessed wrong.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoYou own no BTC then? That's strange for somebody who evidently thinks it so great.
- once_inc 4y agoBitcoin is provably the only decentralized system that has permissionless, borderless, digital scarcity. Other cryptocurrencies are less secure (the many direct forks, such as Bitcoin Cash and the like), less decentralized (Solana, BNB), less permissionless (any system that can be halted by its operators) or less scarce (Ethereum's emission schedule can be changed by a single organisation). Bitcoin's value (not in terms of money, but in terms of usefullness) is an emergent property of the combination of proof of work, the difficulty adjustment, and its peer-to-peer nature. Other cryptocurrencies suffer because their founders have changed one or more of those properties in an attempt to "fix bitcoin" (bigger blocks! faster blocks! more blocks!), but that cripples the resulting emergent value. If Bitcoin is directly cloned as Coinbit, and miners flock to it, and it achieves a greater total hash rate than Bitcoin, then its value supersedes Bitcoin's. Bitcoin's first mover advantage makes this unlikely (though non-zero).
- gitfan86 4y agoYou are describing a pyramid scheme, but in word salad format.
- rglover 4y agoWhat? Where is the pyramid scheme in this? Not once do they mention anything involving individuals having to coax other individuals into it. It's 100% voluntary and makes zero promise of some fantastical ROI (unlike every non-Bitcoin cryptocurrency).
- rednerrus 4y agoThere's no value unless you coax other individuals into it.
- rglover 4y agoThe good news is you don't need to coax anybody. Once you study how it works (legitimately), you realize it has a ton of intangible value [1] and can trade with others who think the same. Anybody who disagrees can choose not to use it. It's quite beautiful. It's universally frowned upon in the Bitcoin community to tell people they're going to make X in X time frame. All of that nonsense takes place with the Ethereum/shitcoin crowd which gets conflated with Bitcoin. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33586717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33586717
- xorcist 4y agoNot sure if the question is meant seriously but there are important differences between a serious attempt of private currency and any one of the "less serious": Bitcoin has a real multi stakeholder maintainership, where no single party can hard fork the currency or change the rules in any important way from the ones the users signed up for. This is what people mean when they say hard forks should be close to impossible to pull off. The only exceptions are where there is absolute consensus, such as pure security issues. Closely related to the above, the issuance model is clearly known to everyone in advance and will not change. The issuance is not the same thing as the consensus rules. That helps force stakeholders to play fair. There is no founder or foreground representative that has an undue influence in development. Even the core developers will have to convince everyone that their changes are sound and will not change the rules of anyone's investment, and more often than not, ends up with them dropped if consensus can not be reached. Again related to the above, there was no pre-mine. Since there was no central party, no one owned any coins before the public blockchain started. So no one could sell or promise any future winnings. There's this whole founding myth to build culture on, and npt everything may be true, but what's clear is that an effort was made to prove there was no pre-mine (someone included today's paper in the genesis block, before which per the protocol no coins can exist). The first mover advantage does not enter this. You could start a new serious attempt at a currency along the same lines as above, but very few bother when you are competing with outright scams. Personally I believe we have to wait some time to shake out the scammers before we can see any serious attempts at competing.
- nuclx 4y agoPrivacy coins aren't. The problem with Bitcoin is, that it CAN be regulated to death.
- once_inc 4y agoAnd privacy coins come with the appended issue that software issues could hide an inflation bug, which isn't provable at that moment. Is Bitcoin anonymous? Nope, but with some diligence, you can be quite protected.