24 ms·

Is this the end of crypto?

164 points by edward 4y ago

jpadkins 4y ago
my take: crypto (PoS shitcoins) will take a hit, bitcoin comes out looking better than ever.
bertman 4y ago
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." -Betteridge's law (Although in this case I wish the answer would be yes)
- cryptonym 4y ago
  Another headline ending with a question mark: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/will-crypto-recover-heres-what-you-should-know https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/will-crypto-recover-heres-wh... I think we hit a paradox.
rvz 4y ago
Betteridge's Law of headlines suggests: No. So no, it is not the end of crypto, no matter how many scams, rug-pulls, bans, etc, etc. Sorry to burst the bubble and to give the answer you didn't want to hear, especially for those who have been begging for its end after 14+ years for it to all be banned and to be 100% totally shutdown. Crypto is here to stay.
- citiguy 4y ago
  Wow, I never heard of Betteridge's law before, but it makes perfect sense. TIL something new!
bena 4y ago
Bitcoin survived MtGox. I'm sure crypto will survive to tulip another day.
- felipellrocha 4y ago
  i see what you did there
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
firmnoodle 4y ago
I look forward to the day when The Economist and FT don't conflate Bitcoin with all the crypto tokens out there.
- worik 4y ago
  But they are all basically the same. They have the same properties. Some difference in unimportant details. The central feature is the vector for scam delivery!
  - kayamon 4y ago
    The details you consider 'unimportant' are the precise reason cryptocurrency was invented.
bearjaws 4y ago
Didn't blow up enough to scare people away long term, it will be back soon enough.
- varispeed 4y ago
  This is coming up every now and then that Bitcoin is no more. This video is still relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  Exactly. FTX.com wasn't even legal in the US. The Terra/Luna crash was WAY worse for people, and that didn't do much to scare people away. BTC has held above $16k, which is really saying something considering the circumstances.
  - lupire 4y ago
    BTC, A deflationary currency that lost 75% in value in a year, despite all the problems coming from projects that aren't even BTC.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
      > A deflationary currency that lost 75% in value in a year I don't know, my BTC is still worth one BTC.
      - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
        Well sure. And one Papiermark is still worth one Papiermark.
      - reducesuffering 4y ago
        That is sure to comfort you if it buys the equivalent of a candy bar.
        4y ago
zeruch 4y ago
No.
mjburgess 4y ago
This is just such an awful betrayal of their mission. The Economist should know better, and everyone I have spoken to which is senior in their readership does know better. This is still a pro-crypto-scam article. They repeat the same scam-artist lies, crypto is somehow an innovation in "trust", somehow more "efficient" than existing infrastructure, somehow "smart contracts" are more reliable than actual contracts. Things "become possible". How can an article like this, at the moment the Emporer's clothes start to fall off, be written? By the economist. It is just as-if homeopathy falls away and The Lancest is still interested in "innovations in water science"! This is, in my view, genuinely unconscionable. The problems blockchains solves are highly academic csci issues around "trust" and "programming" in absurdly distributed systems. They have nothing to do with trust, risk, contracts, ownership or rights in anything like an economic, political or moral sense. Repeating these lies now is such an awful betrayal of their obligations to their readers. They should be the ones informing the public on the actual economic meaning of these terms, and not participating in trying to keep the flame of these pyramid schemes alive. EDIT: since the article is paywalled, consider the following quote: > Amid the wreckage of the past week, it is worth remembering the technology’s underlying potential. Conventional banking requires a vast infrastructure to maintain trust between strangers. This is expensive and is often captured by insiders who take a cut. Public blockchains, by contrast, are built on a network of computers, making their transactions transparent and, in theory, trustworthy. Interoperable, open-source functions can be built on top of them, including self-executing smart contracts that are guaranteed to function as written. A system of tokens, and rules governing them, can collectively offer a clever way to incentivise open-source contributors. And arrangements that would be expensive or impractical to enforce in the real world become possible—allowing artists to retain a stake in the profits from the resale of their digital works, for instance. For this to appear in a serious article on crypto outside of the scamming community is outrageous. The economist here is repeating a fraud.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  The Economist represents a world viewpoint from the days of the United Kingdom: as in a small island nation with a monarchy exerting centralized economic control over a vast worldwide imperial empire. Why would they like cryptocurrency in any way, unless the Bank of England had monopolistic control over it?
Laaas 4y ago
The mainstream response to this debacle is a bit incomprehensible. FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency; it was a centralised exchange, that was also trying to become a bank, and was AFAICT trying to kill DeFi [0]. The failure/success of FTX has no relation to the soundness of cryptocurrency. I do however hope that this crash means fewer people will speculate on the prices such that it can finally stabilise a bit (and be useful without using stablecoins). [0] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/11/15/the-sbf-bill-whats-in-the-crypto-legislation-backed-by-ftx-founder/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/11/15/the-sbf-bill-what...
- godzillabrennus 4y ago
  I love the irrational optimism you have for this solution in search of a problem.
- Victerius 4y ago
  > FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency No true scotsman. "The USSR wasn't real communism." What cryptocurrency could be or should be in an ideal world is irrelevant. If cryptocurrency fails to live up to its ideals, it may be because these ideals are impossible to fulfill. That could be due to technological limitations, human nature, or something else. And in this case, we have no choice but to judge crypto for what it looks like in the world of today. What matters is what cryptocurrency looks like in practice. And that is FTX, Mt Gox, Three Arrows, and others. Crypto isn't sound enough to have mass adoption. The USSR was real communism. And FTX is crypto principles at work.
  - whatwherewhy 4y ago
    I'm a user of Bitcoin and I never used any exchange.
    - legitster 4y ago
      Okay, pray tell, how do you buy bitcoin?
cooljacob204 4y ago
When Crypto was young it was this cool new technology that mostly interesting because of the underlying tech. But even back then it was mostly valuable for buying drugs online and other illegal stuff. Now it's that and a way to scam people of their life savings. I do hope it dies out, it should have been heavily regulated from the get go. Way too many people saw these high production commercials with their favorite celebrities they trust telling them to invest in crypto and lost everything. It never had a real use outside of scamming people and buying illegal shit, no matter how hard others pushed to normalize crypto it never happened. And why would it? Everyone was yelling at people to hold. Don't spend it, it will go to the moon! And sure it keeps your money away from the spooky scary government. But I prefer my government insured bank account using a government managed currency and recourse for any scams/hacks that might happen to me. But I don't think it will ever die. Just like MLMS, pyramid schemes and other crap like that. Also don't even get me started on these centralized exchanges where you don't even own your key and have to verify your identity (Which is how most users interacted with crypto). It's completely counter to the point of crypto.
- lupire 4y ago
  Good government is a luxury many lack.
  - biohax2015 4y ago
    USD is available to anyone
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      What exactly do you mean by that, because if you do mean American dollar, I can point out multiple parties who simply cannot use US currency? Hell, I can point out to transactions that are prohibited if they even touch some type of activity and are in US dollars. In other words, could you elaborate?
    - TremendousJudge 4y ago
      Ask any Argentinian
m00dy 4y ago
No, There is no entity to bail out corrupted, centralized crypto exchanges. The philosophy is that what doesn't kill you makes you just stronger. So, Crypto will come back stronger than ever. Nothing is too big to fail in crypto, unlike cancerous financial institutions in the current system
colesantiago 4y ago
Yes and it should be the start of the complete downfall of Crypto. So sick and tired of this absolute grift, it always 100% guaranteed ends in failure.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
violiner 4y ago
> Never before has crypto looked so criminal, wasteful and useless. That’s really saying something!
ryanSrich 4y ago
If I had a nickel for every time the MSM called the death of crypto I'd probably be able to buy one bitcoin by now.
- throwaway743 4y ago
  Seriously. This has been asked and called time and time again, but has been proven wrong each time
  - lupire 4y ago
    Ah yes, the logistic fallacy. There are always new people to rope in, the world's population is not finite.
    - jmnicolas 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure crypto didn't reach all of Earth's 8 billions people yet.
    - throwaway743 4y ago
      Good job, cheap and irrelevant take.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    It has that in common with everything that has ever failed, in that none of those things had ever failed before they failed.
    - throwaway743 4y ago
      That can be applied to anything. I was speaking more to the naysayers calling for the death of crypto every time prices dropped significantly over the last 13 years or so, nevermind the fact that crypto hasn't failed as of now. Meta is looking rough, and if we're to go by the definition of failure that media and others are applying to crypto rn, then Meta is a failure, though it isnt.
revskill 4y ago
Yes, end of a circle for a new circle ;)
etskinner 4y ago
https://archive.ph/coBBz https://archive.ph/coBBz
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Piggybacking on this link, since many seem not to have read the article. But this is one of the most pro-crypto articles I've ever read. It may as well be a submarine, in the PG sense.
coffeeblack 4y ago
Another year, another “the end of crypto” craze.
dragontamer 4y ago
Fundamental issues of cryptocurrency economy: 1. Biggest pushers are seemingly tech-bros from FANG companies. These companies are laying off staff in record numbers. The biggest cryptocoin believers therefore, will have less income than ever before (in ~3 months or so, after their severance is paid, they'll have to start drawing on savings if they didn't get a job yet... and getting a job in this economy is going to be harder) 2. Fed Rate hikes. Cryptocoins and stablecoins (especially "staking" concepts) were rationally attractive when your savings account returned 0% and when Treasury Bonds were 0.1% to 1.5%. A risky yield-earning instrument may have been... erm... risky, but it seemed like even with the risks you'd beat a savings account. Today, HYSA savings accounts are 3% and the St. Louis Fed President argues they're going to 5%. Its a much more difficult to sell yield-making instruments (such as "staking" Ethereum) when the "safe" risk-free rate is at 5%. 3. Inflation. Instead of being a hedge on inflation, cryptocoins collapsed in the face of it. There are still inflation worries in the economy. 4. Mainstream awareness. Earlier this year, Cryptocoins bombarded the typical normie with advertisements. Matt Daemon said "Fortune favors the bold" for Crypto.com. FTX had Larry David do ads for them. FTX bought out the Miami Heat stadium naming rights. NFTs were on talk-shows, being shilled by Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton. Cryptocoin's era of growth is over, everyone is now "aware" of cryptocoins and adjacently NFTs. Entering the public consciousness only happens once, from now and forever more, people are "aware" of cryptocoins and have formed opinions on it. It will not happen again. 5. Scammy reputation. The Celsius and FTX bankruptcies are in the public consciousness. (See #4: for many people, FTX was the public face of cryptocoins thanks to their superbowl ads). That these institutions couldn't even last 1 year after their commercial will forever damage cryptocoin reputation. Sure, Mt. Gox had similar issues back in 2014, but Mt. Gox didn't buy the naming rights to a stadium or host Superbowl commercials. Seeing cryptocoins grow under these circumstances seems like a longshot to me.
- jimcavel888 4y ago
- latchkey 4y ago
  ETH validators are around 8% right now, not 5%. The 'risk' is that the developers don't successfully implement withdrawal or that the whole network goes down. Two, imho, huge risks and part of the reason I don't personally stake at this time. That said, eip-1559 and 'the merge' did happen, without much of a hitch at all, which are pretty major accomplishments. Confidence in the developers is a bit higher now as a result. source: validator rewards section of https://ultrasound.money/ https://ultrasound.money/
throwup 4y ago
I'll add this to the list. http://bitcoinisdead.org/ http://bitcoinisdead.org/
- colesantiago 4y ago
  Looks this website is dead and gone, just like all the money people invested in FTX, crypto and bitcoin.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
    I think it moved to the obituaries...
  - jobs_throwaway 4y ago
    my bitcoin is up a few 1000% actually
- xtracto 4y ago
  I prefer this one: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/ https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    Some great content there. Randomly clicked at one reportedly from 2011[1]: >Beyond the most hardcore users, skepticism has only increased. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote that the currency’s tendency to fluctuate has encouraged hoarding. Stefan Brands, a former ecash consultant and digital currency pioneer, calls bitcoin “clever” and is loath to bash it but believes it’s fundamentally structured like “a pyramid scheme” that rewards early adopters. They were correct on both counts. Since then, proponents have simply stopped trying to sell it as a currency (buy your games in bitcoin! pay your rent in bitcoin! -- that was the initial pitch), and its pyramid scheme structure has only been exploited, not fixed. [1] https://99bitcoins.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-bitcoin/ https://99bitcoins.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-bitcoin/
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
agentultra 4y ago
It will continue to fall under increased scrutiny and market regulation until it's no longer profitable to run any kind of financial system on it. There will still be believers and people who will throw money at it and try. But I think they will have a harder time convincing investors going forward. I suspect it will end up mirroring the MLM market: still there, still profitable for a few, but depends largely on an uninformed base of people getting roped in by their friends and relatives who are already caught up in it. Like Avon but for tech bros.
- strix_varius 4y ago
  I would argue it's already Avon for tech bros. That $10,000 Avon "investment" by a teacher making $30k is similar to a $100,000 crypto "investment" by a tech bro making $300k.
  - agentultra 4y ago
    Trying to imagine Bloomberg managing an Avon market analysis dashboard and reporting on every peak and drop.
mig39 4y ago
No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
legitster 4y ago
> Moreover, sceptics should acknowledge that nobody can predict which innovations will bear fruit and which will not. People should be free to devote time and money to fusion power, airships, the metaverse and a host of other technologies that may never come good. Crypto is no different. As the virtual economy develops, useful decentralised applications may yet appear—who knows? The underlying technology continues to improve. > Instead of over-regulating or stamping out crypto, regulators should be guided by two principles. One is to ensure that theft and fraud are minimised, as with any financial activity. The other is to keep the mainstream financial system insulated from further crypto-ructions. I know people knock the Economist for pretty superficial analysis, but honestly appreciate their level-headed take here.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  It's not level-headed. They've started with the classical Economist premise: gov regulation bad. Then rather than understand or research cypto, they contrast lies told by charlatans against an unmentioned "sceptical" reality. They then conclude with their premise. This is an exercise in pure ideology, conveys no information, and presents the scam sales-pitch around crypto entirely verbatim. It is that most common of trap that classical liberals fall into, defending private forces of unfreedom on the basis that they underpin the "free" market. What a bleak picture, and as a defender of free markets, a betray of that world view. Freedom, as a contingent property of markets, is a careful and precious thing. It requires us to be on the guard against a variety of feudal forces, the pinnace of which could be nothing other than crypto. Here, The Economist, on the basis of classical liberalism, advocates for a feudalist scam. It's quite saddening.
  - vvpan 4y ago
    The Blockchain Socialist would disagree with you and so would I. https://theblockchainsocialist.com/ https://theblockchainsocialist.com/
  - alsetmusic 4y ago
    I was with you for the first two paragraphs.
SevenNation 4y ago
> The disappointment is that, 14 years after the Bitcoin blockchain was invented, little of this promise has been realised. Crypto’s frenzy drew in talent from bright graduates to Wall Street professionals, and capital from vc firms, sovereign-wealth and pension funds. Vast quantities of money, time, talent and energy have been used to build what amount to virtual casinos. Efficient, decentralised versions of mainstream financial functions, such as currency exchanges and lending, exist. But many consumers, fearful of losing their money, do not trust them. Instead they are used to speculate on unstable tokens. Money-launderers, sanctions-dodgers and scammers abound. Here's the thing: Bitcoin doesn't need you, Mr. Entrepreneur. It doesn't need your black turtleneck savant charisma. It doesn't need your ambition. It doesn't need your "innovation." It doesn't need your groveling before regulators to build your moat. And most of all, it doesn't need your VC money. This is a problem for said entrepreneurs and VCs. Because they have turtlenecks beanbags, money, innovation, and groveling just burning holes in their collective pockets - waiting to find an outlet. But it turns out that "crypto" and "DeFi" do need Mr. Entrepreneur and his merry band of VCs. A lot. Why? Because these are efforts to replicate the existing financial system on the sandy foundation of "blockchain." And that's an expensive business. Toss in the loosest monetary policy in US history and the recipe is complete. A quorum of charismatic entrepreneurs fleecing gullible VCs and depositors out of fake wealth, tossing it into a big pile, dousing with a liberal quantity of gasoline, and setting the entire thing ablaze. This may or may not be the end of "crypto," but Bitcoin continues to operate just as before - without the need for exchanges, regulators, entrepreneurs, financiers, or visionaries.
- lupire 4y ago
  What is Bitcoin doing while it operates?
  - SevenNation 4y ago
    Facilitating the exchange of stored value for goods and services without a trusted third party.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
  Here's the thing: the public doesn't need Bitcoin. The public needs quite a few of the services and functions that the existing financial system provides. Bitcoin on its own is unable to provide many / most of these. The last handful of True Believers can shuffle Bitcoin among themselves indefinitely, this is true. But does that have any more significance to the world than a multiplayer game someone creates for only them and their friends to play, handing game items back and forth among themselves?
boringg 4y ago
Curious what Chris Dixon and A16z have to say about it.
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  Something like this, most likely: https://www.semafor.com/article/11/16/2022/andreessen-passed-on-ftx-while-venture-firms-early-crypto-investors-are-up https://www.semafor.com/article/11/16/2022/andreessen-passed...
  - boringg 4y ago
    Sounds like it didn't pass the sniff test with them.
Bhurn00985 4y ago
Are we already seeing the positive impact on total energy consumption levels ? What a waste this has been.
sbf501 4y ago
"There's a sucker born ever minute." So, no, not the end.
smithcoin 4y ago
Which will come first: the year of the linux desktop, full self driving teslas or the death of crypto?
- strix_varius 4y ago
  Hell, we're already in the age of the linux desktop, we're just not calling it that: > At 37 million units, Chromebooks represent just under 11 percent of the total PC market, ahead of the Mac, with 27 million units and a 7.8 percent share. https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/chrome-os/chromebook/262126/report-chromebook-sales-grew-13-5-percent-in-2021 https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/chrome-os/chromebook/262126/...
  - fsflover 4y ago
    Time to talk about Linux on mobile perhaps.
  - worik 4y ago
    I regularly use MacOS, iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux GUIs. The age of the Linux desktop is definitely here. It is a tussle between MacOS and Linux Mint whatever I have from them for the best desktop. It depends on your particular needs.
- MrMan 4y ago
  self-murdering crypto on the desktop is already here, so
willio58 4y ago
Most crypto-related projects are scams or money-rushes. But SOME will survive and be built after this with all of the learnings of the past few years. This is all very reminiscent of the dot com crash and how media was talking about the internet during the crash. If things follow that same path for crypto, this is really just the beginning of crypto.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
I think more than anything, this has made a16z and Sequoia lose all their merit and credibility. They are now no more than some sneaky crypto grifters who can sneak off to Argentina or Dubai and their ideas and thoughts have zero intellectual value.
1970-01-01 4y ago
Here's how I see it: Crypto as an investment - Not your keys, not your coin. Crypto as a currency - I can't directly buy food, water, shelter, transportation, energy, or anything fundamental with it. I know acceptance is growing, but 10+ years later, crypto still has extremely limited acceptance for daily goods and services. It is almost exclusively held as an investment.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  > Crypto as a currency - I can't directly buy food, water, shelter, transportation, energy, or anything fundamental with it. Cryptocurrency payments is a flourishing market, btw.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Where? I don't mean this as snark. Are there any household brands that actually accept crpyto?
    - livueta 4y ago
      I think household brands are the exact opposite of where there's been movement: ime, it's concentrated in spaces where there's a need or incentive to dodge moralistic payment processing cartels. The classic example is obviously DNMs, but it is expanding into areas that are legal but difficult to process payments for, like firearm parts or porn. Since those payment processors are, if anything, getting more opinionated, I bet that trend will continue, along with the "I personally disapprove of or do not require the utility provided by the technology, so I will claim it has no utility at all" arguments.
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  This is not an investment because there is no asset behind it. (no production) It is a speculative vehicle.
  - cynusx 4y ago
    It's an abstraction of the stock market imo. People who bought and sold stocks also never understood there was something of value beneath it and just look for "is it going to go up?" and "why is it down?"
legutierr 4y ago
We are making steady and inexorable progress through the technology hype cycle. From earlier this year: https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/articles/images/hype-cycle-for-emerging-tech-2022.png https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/articles/image... Now we enter the Trough of Disillusionment. Given the general accuracy of this model/metaphor in the past, should we consider it to be any different this time around?
- jmcphers 4y ago
  The hype cycle is not applicable to every technology. Some, probably even most, technologies are eventually found to not be useful or valuable, and never recover once the hype bust happens and the technology is forced to compete in the marketplace based wholly on its merits.
  - legutierr 4y ago
    Are you saying that crypto (or blockchain) cannot compete based wholly on its merits?
- olalonde 4y ago
  Because the "Trough of Disillusionment" has already happened 3-4 times...
- efficax 4y ago
  This graph is missing a key aspect: the "it utterly fails and we never speak of it again" section.
  - legutierr 4y ago
    I imagine that would be your preferred outcome.
    - efficax 4y ago
      well i'd prefer if it had never gotten to where it is, because every crash in the crypto markets wipes out the savings of some sucker who didn't know better. that sucks.
nineplay 4y ago
I'm not a crypto user so I may not understand the ramifications, but while I can see why "imminent death of crypto" headlines seem like clickbait, is it fair to say that this is the end of the crypto exchanges? This is the end of the your average Joe investing in crypto because they saw a cool ad during the Super Bowl? I could understand how that would translate to "gone" in the practical sense. There will still be the true believers and get-rich-quick believers and criminals, but it will be completely out of the public's view. No more ads and stadiums and F1 sponsorships.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > ... is it fair to say that this is the end of the crypto exchanges? I think it's fair to say that exchanges and websites promising 8% or 15% year-on-year returns are done. They're not coming back any time soon. They'll now be called out by everybody. And probably legislated out of existence too. But the end of Coinbase? Coinbase seems legit. Sadly for them the very bank they're using, Silvergate (ticker SI), may be a goner. So USDCs emitted by Coinbase may or may not be worthless (and moreover seizable by the state to bail out Coinbase investors before Coinbase customers). I'd like to see how exposed to Silvergate Coinbase is. I hope Bitfinex dies a painful death. I hope Binance crashes and burn. I hope every single exchange accepting USDTs falls. But I do hope Coinbase, a HN unicorn, survives.
grzes 4y ago
i would say that it is just begining
sgt101 4y ago
There will be another go around - at least one. Next time will be different(TM) There will be a new breed of crypto entrepreneurs(TM). There will be a new generation of smarter, more savvy, sophisticated investors (TM). Everyone will wear crisp white cotton this time. They will be blonder, or darker, or more vegan. The wheel will spin again, some people will steal some money off other people who will loose everything.
barbazoo 4y ago
I never know what people mean when they say "crypto". Are we talking about coins, de-fi, blockchain? Just yesterday I was presented with an option to pay for a standing desk in ETH and I don't see how FTX's downfall would change that. Is ETH just another scam? Very confusing stuff.
- worik 4y ago
  ETH is a meta scam: Very useful for delivering scams, not much else. You got a chance to pay for a real world service in ETH. Did that make any sense? Any utility over using money? Perhaps dodging taxes....
smileysteve 4y ago
No, but for retail, yes. It's going to be a long time before the retail $16bn + contagion try it again, and they probably won't trust it for growth, interest bearing accounts; It also may not be needed for interest bearing accounts as the Federal Reserve seems to be on a path to offer meaningful rates for the long term. So it's likely the end of mass market crypto? or effective advertising for major sporting events (F1, Miami Heat, LA)
Animats 4y ago
China has shut down every crypto asset activity in China that they can find.[1] The hammer came down in 2021. Mining farms had their power cut, and several hundred people were arrested. (There's a "digital yuan", but that's a payment system run by the People's Bank of China.) So a big part of the world has already ended crypto as an asset class. [1] https://coinpedia.org/cryptocurrency-regulation/cryptocurrency-regulation-in-china/ https://coinpedia.org/cryptocurrency-regulation/cryptocurren...
- hellotomyrars 4y ago
  I think this is a major contributing factor in why crypto isn’t going to work.
  - web3isgoing 4y ago
    I can’t think of anything else that China is attempting to restrict that the rest of the developed world is open to. Edit: perhaps need a /s tag here.
    - lend000 4y ago
      Being an Uyghur? Freedom of speech? Encryption? The coronavirus (still)?
      - j0hnyl 4y ago
        I believe that was sarcasm.
- AlwaysRock 4y ago
  Isnt this just one of those headlines that isnt really true though? Like that China banned video games for kids? From the same comic sansesk article you posted: "Even though crypto-mining cracked down in China many miners have come out with several ways to continue the operations and escape detection. Twenty percent of the bitcoin network remains in China according to experts’ report." Doesnt exactly seem like they have ended crypto if 20% of the bitcoin network remains there. It sounds like they cracked down on some and let others keep running.
tb_technical 4y ago
No, not really. But we have to be honest with ourselves. Crypto failed. It was supposed to allow people to make transactions without trusted institutions, and the manipulations of the Federal Reserve. Unfortunately it's been subverted as a security.
honestduane 4y ago
I can only hope crypto dies soon. Its actively a violation of the GDPR and this illegal in the EU. It violates human rights laws, including privacy laws, and is this illegal in most other places. It violates all the laws around SWIFT, at the international level, so its illegal under these laws. It never should have existed. Its a grift and a scam; Even NFT's vanish when the host doesn't want the expense of hosting other peoples images.
- kirevmaco 4y ago
  > It violates all the laws around SWIFT, at the international level, so its illegal under these laws. But SWIFT itself is working with a "crypto" project: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/swift-is-partnering-with-chainlink-here-s-the-down-low-on-the-blockchain-data-provider/ar-AA13Fy0h https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/swift-is-partn...
- j0hnyl 4y ago
  How does crypto violate gdpr? It's pseudonymous so no PII. What privacy laws does it violate? On-chain NFTs will not vanish.
wzy 4y ago
MLM and Ponzi are is still going strong, so crypto has nothing to worry about.
johnnymorgan 4y ago
This again...every single time we get the death of Bitcoin articles. And every single time the honey badger of financial networks just doesn't give a shit. The tech is solid, people are not, this is not a new information
davewritescode 4y ago
I hope it is but I suspect it won't be. The bottom line is that the benefits of crypto have been exaggerated by people who, in may cases, don't have everyone's best interest at heart while the downsides have been vastly understated. It's particularly frustrating to hear people tout the ability to bypass the government when it fact that the most popular cryptocurrencies make it trivial for governments to track every transaction. The reality that crypto evangelists never want to talk about is that to the average person, crypto is a MUCH worse experience than what they have today. Why would I buy something with crypto when my credit card offers me a ton of consumer protections? Especially if I'm buying something from an entity on the internet who may or may not be trustworthy.
AzzieElbab 4y ago
I love the tech but I keep looking at crypto as a financial system build on nothing and backed by nothing. Financial system is a luxury that has to be a functional layer build on top of some economy but crypto is so standalone it is basically only supported by peoples interest in it. They forgot to build the economy and went straight to money and finance
k__ 4y ago
The sentiment "inside of crypto" seems to be "The MtGOX collapse was worse" Less money, but overall bigger negative impact.
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  Massively so. Gox wasn't far off the entire market. We had BTC-E, stamp, gox. Probably some smaller players that I'm forgetting but whatever. Oh, and there was basically only BTC and LTC. Other coins either didn't exist or were just traded for each other, very little value, etc. When Gox went under there wasn't even really a proper market price for Bitcoin for a significant period. We had goxbucks and goxbtc. Even if Coinbase went down now it'd be less of a big deal than Gox was back in the day.
doc_gunthrop 4y ago
Another case of Betteridge's law.
ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
This is the final chapter of the blockchain story, created from the scratch by the bankers, who lured early adopters with ideals of anonymity, digital anarchy and other cryptopunk ravings, made them run the prototype of bankers' future monetary system at their own and later investors' expense, provided for schemes to make rich richer and poor poorer, made huge profits for the energy-generating companies, and what the economist really says now is a gloating 'thank you, nerds and wannabe-billionaires, you can now go to hell and don't mess in the way of us the big guys' Expect a world-wide blockchain-based banker-controlled centralized biometrically authenticated One World Currency soon, which you can loose access to for walking a red light, wearing a pajama in public, not joining the next scheduled Je Suis Charlie charade or refusing to jab.
g42gregory 4y ago
Very interesting. When people begin to ask questions like "Is this the end of X?", is it the time to buy X? Are we at the crypto's bottom yet? The equity market does not seem to have fallen through yet, and I fear that it may affect crypto (and everything else) further. Any thoughts?
sys_64738 4y ago
Did anybody on here make any $$$ from crypto? It was all a scam in my eyes so I just focused on VTI.
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  I've bought a lot of cool (illicit) stuff using crypto, and my investments in it are still massively up
- mmkos 4y ago
  Yes. I made $30k by selling dogecoin that I bought all the way back in 2014. Not a fortune by any means, but a respectable amount nonetheless.
- marton78 4y ago
  I did. I bought the token of a decentralised exchange (gainsnetwork.io if you're interested) after the LUNA crash, it went up a lot and is still holding strong, as the narrative shifts away from centralised to decentralised exchanges due to the FTX crash. It also pays nice dividends from users' trading fees. But yes, with pretty much everything else I ever did in crypto I just lost money.
z3 4y ago
full article -> https://archive.is/coBBz https://archive.is/coBBz
kurtreed 4y ago
The end of cryptography? Somehow I doubt it.
curioushacking 4y ago
As a general financial instrument there seems to be too large an opportunity for fraud and scams that it seems to generally not be worth it outside of hedges against hyper inflation. But the general idea of web3, personal ownership of data that you can seamlessly move to different interfaces, and as a way to trust documents still all seem like great reasons to have public ledgers. This may not be in the currency space, but I feel like general crypto is something I would like to see in the future. I also love the idea of moving fully to stable coins for better tracking related to tax implications. I'm not sure of how this would work fully, but there seems far too much opportunity for tax evasion and fraud under the current systems and moving to a stable coin seems like it could aid in that regard.
rafaelero 4y ago
Bitcoin won't die. Crypto will, and hopefully soon. The community here is so oblivious to the characteristics that make Bitcoin the best monetary system we could have invented that I can only believe people haven't really thought things through. That's why we see these comparisons with Bitcoin and other cryptos. I am actually glad all this mess is happening so we can finally move on with all those crypto scams that want to confuse people by walking in the shadow of the true innovation.
- ganksalot 4y ago
  > The community here is so oblivious to the characteristics that make Bitcoin the best monetary system we could have invented that I can only believe people haven't really thought things through. is this satire?
  - DJBunnies 4y ago
    No, it's true, this place has a difficult time seeing nuance between bitcoin and crypto.
    - Balgair 4y ago
      Ok, I'll bite. Give me the elevator pitch. I'm not in tech [0] so treat me as you would a grandmother. Average speaking speed is ~150 words/minute. Say the average elevator ride is ~30 seconds. So, in ~75 words, tell me what the nuance is as you would say to a grandmother? That fair? To be clear, I'm honestly not trying to be snarky. Sorry if it comes off that way. I can only multitask through this meeting so well. [0] I'm in biotech, so I can hang with you all and be a hacky programmer, but most in depth discussion go over my head.
      - rafaelero 4y ago
        Let me try. If you were to create the best monetary system, how would it be? The answer to that is a system with a policy that simply doesn't change. That's the best system because predictability is the only quality that matters when you are storing value. The best governments in the world try their best to achieve that, but they always fail. How then can we achieve that? With decentralization. That's a very expensive, inefficient and slow way to go about things. But it is all that matters if we want to build a sane monetary system, which doesn't allow anyone to change its emission rate. No "crypto" achieves that same trust we all have about the decentralized quality of Bitcoin. That's why they don't matter.
giantdude 4y ago
I hope it's the end of centralized exchanges.
ploppyploppy 4y ago
No
meehow 4y ago
Fractional reserve is a scam, not crypto. Every institution which doesn't have money which they promised to keep safe, should collapse. Proof of reserves and audits are extremely easy in crypto and it doesn't require any regulations. Self custody of crypto is also pretty simple. Market is young, people greedy and as a result we got this domino of falling companies. Even after Mt. Gox collapse people didn't learn much, but I quietly hope it will come.
- audunw 4y ago
  > Fractional reserve is a scam, not crypto. Why? Because you say so? Fractional reserve banking is generally heavily regulated such that most of the value created from new loans are tied to actual physical value in the real world. Fraction reserve banking is genius in my opinion, because if you want to take out a loan to build say a mine, or an oil well, that you know is going to generate millions in value, you're not fully dependent on finding smoe kind benefactors to loan you their own money to open that mine. If you can prove to the bank that you are likely to be able to create value greater than what you're borrowing, they'll create that money for you. And that's how it should be. If you're adding say $10 million to the economy, it's not a problem at all that $5 million was created out of thin air to enable that. In fact, that's exactly what you want. Ideally nobody who is able to create significant value should be stopped just by the lack of capital. There are cases where lending isn't tied to value creation, like loans for consumption or stock gambling. Those should be regulated out of existence, but that's not fundamentally a problem with fractional reserve banking. Loans for purchasing land is also iffy.. I think Georgism may be a solution to that. Crypto is the exact opposite of a well regulation fractional reserve banking system. The creation of cryptocurrencies, espcially with PoW, is tied to the destruction of value (wasted electricity and silicon), not creation of value. IMO, that makes it fundamentally unsustainable. > Proof of reserves and audits are extremely easy in crypto and it doesn't require any regulations. You say that, but everything we've seen so far indicates the exact opposite. Perhaps it's easy in theory, but nobody seems to be interested in doing it. I suspect with all the regulations, external systems and oracles necessary to make sure it's all correctly audited, you'll find that you could just as easily do without a PoW/PoS blockchain and have a far more efficient system. Maybe a proof-of-authority blockchains can make sense, just so you have some explicit cryptographically signed trace of who you're trusting in a transaction. Trustless systems are a lie. You'll always find you need to trust some humans/organization in the end.
nathias 4y ago
> FTX has dealt a catastrophic blow to crypto’s reputation I've been in crypto since 2013 and people have been insulting crypto and everyone in it as scammers, I'm not sure how another centralized exchange stealing user funds is any diferent than all the past ones.
RadixDLT 4y ago
economist, axios, ect. are spreading fud to drive the price down
dudeinhawaii 4y ago
The end of crypto? No. But could it become the Magic Cards, AOL, or MySpace of this generation? Sure. They may even have the staying power of MLM companies like Amway.
achenatx 4y ago
crypto is supposed to be money that is outside the control of central banks or governments. As a result it is good for: Getting your money out of a country that is trying to stop you from doing that Transferring your money across borders when the government wants to impose high tariffs Protecting your money from central banks when governments have decided to freeze your bank accounts Protecting your money from a government that reckless with the native currency where you have no way to have accounts to store large amounts of foreign currency You might say that this only applies to criminals, but the definition of criminal might just be whoever happens to be a target of a government. Many governments around the world are dictatorships and can decide to confiscate assets on a whim (e.g. china). When the jews fled germany or the chinese fled communist china, they took what they could (often times gold or gems). Crypto is potentially a way to flee a bad situation while avoiding being robbed by carrying your wealth as gold. Finally it would be interesting if BRICS started transacting oil in crypto. It would be a way to possibly break the US dollar as the world reserve currency.
tabtab 4y ago
Evolution generally requires "extinction events" to shake things up.
eddsh1994 4y ago
People say this every bear market. We will be hearing this again in a few years after it goes up and back down again.
wageslv 4y ago
"This surely is the end of Crypto!" says increasingly nervous journalist...
hnaccountme 4y ago
As long as there are people claiming blockchain has some value the next crypto scam is just around the corner. All Crypto is a scam and blockchain has no real application that couldn't be solved much easily by some other means.
kerkeslager 4y ago
Betteridge's Law of Headlines remains steady. Crypto goes through boom/bust cycles, and in every bust, people predict that crypto is over, yet mysteriously it keeps coming back. Why? Crypto has value. Not "value" in the sense of it's actually good for anything--I'd argue it has some of that, but not nearly enough to justify the hype and price. But I'd also argue that the destructive potential of it more than outweighs that value. No, what I'm talking about here is the term "value" in the capitalist sense, i.e. if someone is willing to pay for something, it has value, even if it's snake oil. The number of people involved in crypto clearly hasn't maxed out yet. Talk to 10 random friends outside a silicon valley bubble, and most of them won't have ever had any involvement in crypto. But, a lot of those people will say they've been meaning to get involved, or are interested. People cite fear as a reason they haven't gotten involved, but as crypto gets easier to use and more accessible, those fears will go away, and those people are going to get involved. That's probably a bad thing for those people. Ease of getting into crypto isn't equivalent to financial literacy, and there's a culture around crypto that's openly hostile to applying financial principles to cryptocurrency, which opens those users up to scams and losing money on things that aren't intended to be scams. I spent a bunch of time trying to educate people about OHM/TIME back when those were on the upswing--a rudimentary understanding of economics should have made their inevitable crash obvious. But for every person like me, there were 100 true believers who wouldn't be swayed, spouting nonsense. I'm not sure I actually helped anyone. I don't have a systemic solution. Regulation can limit the scope of some of the biggest issues (i.e. prevent pension funds and mutual funds from investing in the most obvious crypto scams) but ultimately I don't think it will be possible to protect individuals who want to invest in crypto even though they don't know how to do it safely. You can provide education but a lot of people simply won't accept it.
carlosjoe22 4y ago
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carlosjoe22 4y ago
Have your bitcoins or cryptocurrency been stolen from your wallet, or have you invested in a bogus crypto investment organization that turns out to be a scam? If so, I have some excellent news for you. I initially lost $489,050 on a crypto investment platform in just three months. I contacted the authorities, who introduced me to QUICK RECOVERY , which assisted me in recovering all of my money in less than two days. I'm speaking out to raise awareness about cryptocurrency thieves and do everything I can to decrease the number of victims to the bare minimum. Simply contact; henrywalter5530 @ GM AIL . C OM if you have been a victim.
robertdiane 4y ago

164 points by edward 4y ago

my take: crypto (PoS shitcoins) will take a hit, bitcoin comes out looking better than ever.

"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." -Betteridge's law (Although in this case I wish the answer would be yes)

cryptonym 4y ago
Another headline ending with a question mark: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/will-crypto-recover-heres-what-you-should-know https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/will-crypto-recover-heres-wh... I think we hit a paradox.

rvz 4y ago

Betteridge's Law of headlines suggests: No. So no, it is not the end of crypto, no matter how many scams, rug-pulls, bans, etc, etc. Sorry to burst the bubble and to give the answer you didn't want to hear, especially for those who have been begging for its end after 14+ years for it to all be banned and to be 100% totally shutdown. Crypto is here to stay.

citiguy 4y ago
Wow, I never heard of Betteridge's law before, but it makes perfect sense. TIL something new!

bena 4y ago

Bitcoin survived MtGox. I'm sure crypto will survive to tulip another day.

felipellrocha 4y ago
i see what you did there

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

firmnoodle 4y ago

I look forward to the day when The Economist and FT don't conflate Bitcoin with all the crypto tokens out there.

worik 4y ago
But they are all basically the same. They have the same properties. Some difference in unimportant details. The central feature is the vector for scam delivery!
- kayamon 4y ago
  The details you consider 'unimportant' are the precise reason cryptocurrency was invented.

bearjaws 4y ago

Didn't blow up enough to scare people away long term, it will be back soon enough.

varispeed 4y ago
This is coming up every now and then that Bitcoin is no more. This video is still relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg
ryanSrich 4y ago
Exactly. FTX.com wasn't even legal in the US. The Terra/Luna crash was WAY worse for people, and that didn't do much to scare people away. BTC has held above $16k, which is really saying something considering the circumstances.
- lupire 4y ago
  BTC, A deflationary currency that lost 75% in value in a year, despite all the problems coming from projects that aren't even BTC.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
    > A deflationary currency that lost 75% in value in a year I don't know, my BTC is still worth one BTC.
    - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
      Well sure. And one Papiermark is still worth one Papiermark.
    - reducesuffering 4y ago
      That is sure to comfort you if it buys the equivalent of a candy bar.
      - 4y ago

zeruch 4y ago

No.

mjburgess 4y ago

This is just such an awful betrayal of their mission. The Economist should know better, and everyone I have spoken to which is senior in their readership does know better. This is still a pro-crypto-scam article. They repeat the same scam-artist lies, crypto is somehow an innovation in "trust", somehow more "efficient" than existing infrastructure, somehow "smart contracts" are more reliable than actual contracts. Things "become possible". How can an article like this, at the moment the Emporer's clothes start to fall off, be written? By the economist. It is just as-if homeopathy falls away and The Lancest is still interested in "innovations in water science"! This is, in my view, genuinely unconscionable. The problems blockchains solves are highly academic csci issues around "trust" and "programming" in absurdly distributed systems. They have nothing to do with trust, risk, contracts, ownership or rights in anything like an economic, political or moral sense. Repeating these lies now is such an awful betrayal of their obligations to their readers. They should be the ones informing the public on the actual economic meaning of these terms, and not participating in trying to keep the flame of these pyramid schemes alive. EDIT: since the article is paywalled, consider the following quote: > Amid the wreckage of the past week, it is worth remembering the technology’s underlying potential. Conventional banking requires a vast infrastructure to maintain trust between strangers. This is expensive and is often captured by insiders who take a cut. Public blockchains, by contrast, are built on a network of computers, making their transactions transparent and, in theory, trustworthy. Interoperable, open-source functions can be built on top of them, including self-executing smart contracts that are guaranteed to function as written. A system of tokens, and rules governing them, can collectively offer a clever way to incentivise open-source contributors. And arrangements that would be expensive or impractical to enforce in the real world become possible—allowing artists to retain a stake in the profits from the resale of their digital works, for instance. For this to appear in a serious article on crypto outside of the scamming community is outrageous. The economist here is repeating a fraud.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago
The Economist represents a world viewpoint from the days of the United Kingdom: as in a small island nation with a monarchy exerting centralized economic control over a vast worldwide imperial empire. Why would they like cryptocurrency in any way, unless the Bank of England had monopolistic control over it?

Laaas 4y ago

The mainstream response to this debacle is a bit incomprehensible. FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency; it was a centralised exchange, that was also trying to become a bank, and was AFAICT trying to kill DeFi [0]. The failure/success of FTX has no relation to the soundness of cryptocurrency. I do however hope that this crash means fewer people will speculate on the prices such that it can finally stabilise a bit (and be useful without using stablecoins). [0] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/11/15/the-sbf-bill-whats-in-the-crypto-legislation-backed-by-ftx-founder/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/11/15/the-sbf-bill-what...

godzillabrennus 4y ago
I love the irrational optimism you have for this solution in search of a problem.
Victerius 4y ago
> FTX was the antithesis of cryptocurrency No true scotsman. "The USSR wasn't real communism." What cryptocurrency could be or should be in an ideal world is irrelevant. If cryptocurrency fails to live up to its ideals, it may be because these ideals are impossible to fulfill. That could be due to technological limitations, human nature, or something else. And in this case, we have no choice but to judge crypto for what it looks like in the world of today. What matters is what cryptocurrency looks like in practice. And that is FTX, Mt Gox, Three Arrows, and others. Crypto isn't sound enough to have mass adoption. The USSR was real communism. And FTX is crypto principles at work.
- whatwherewhy 4y ago
  I'm a user of Bitcoin and I never used any exchange.
  - legitster 4y ago
    Okay, pray tell, how do you buy bitcoin?

cooljacob204 4y ago

When Crypto was young it was this cool new technology that mostly interesting because of the underlying tech. But even back then it was mostly valuable for buying drugs online and other illegal stuff. Now it's that and a way to scam people of their life savings. I do hope it dies out, it should have been heavily regulated from the get go. Way too many people saw these high production commercials with their favorite celebrities they trust telling them to invest in crypto and lost everything. It never had a real use outside of scamming people and buying illegal shit, no matter how hard others pushed to normalize crypto it never happened. And why would it? Everyone was yelling at people to hold. Don't spend it, it will go to the moon! And sure it keeps your money away from the spooky scary government. But I prefer my government insured bank account using a government managed currency and recourse for any scams/hacks that might happen to me. But I don't think it will ever die. Just like MLMS, pyramid schemes and other crap like that. Also don't even get me started on these centralized exchanges where you don't even own your key and have to verify your identity (Which is how most users interacted with crypto). It's completely counter to the point of crypto.

lupire 4y ago
Good government is a luxury many lack.
- biohax2015 4y ago
  USD is available to anyone
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    What exactly do you mean by that, because if you do mean American dollar, I can point out multiple parties who simply cannot use US currency? Hell, I can point out to transactions that are prohibited if they even touch some type of activity and are in US dollars. In other words, could you elaborate?
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    Ask any Argentinian

m00dy 4y ago

No, There is no entity to bail out corrupted, centralized crypto exchanges. The philosophy is that what doesn't kill you makes you just stronger. So, Crypto will come back stronger than ever. Nothing is too big to fail in crypto, unlike cancerous financial institutions in the current system

colesantiago 4y ago

Yes and it should be the start of the complete downfall of Crypto. So sick and tired of this absolute grift, it always 100% guaranteed ends in failure.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

violiner 4y ago

> Never before has crypto looked so criminal, wasteful and useless. That’s really saying something!

ryanSrich 4y ago

If I had a nickel for every time the MSM called the death of crypto I'd probably be able to buy one bitcoin by now.

throwaway743 4y ago
Seriously. This has been asked and called time and time again, but has been proven wrong each time
- lupire 4y ago
  Ah yes, the logistic fallacy. There are always new people to rope in, the world's population is not finite.
  - jmnicolas 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure crypto didn't reach all of Earth's 8 billions people yet.
  - throwaway743 4y ago
    Good job, cheap and irrelevant take.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  It has that in common with everything that has ever failed, in that none of those things had ever failed before they failed.
  - throwaway743 4y ago
    That can be applied to anything. I was speaking more to the naysayers calling for the death of crypto every time prices dropped significantly over the last 13 years or so, nevermind the fact that crypto hasn't failed as of now. Meta is looking rough, and if we're to go by the definition of failure that media and others are applying to crypto rn, then Meta is a failure, though it isnt.

revskill 4y ago

Yes, end of a circle for a new circle ;)

etskinner 4y ago

https://archive.ph/coBBz https://archive.ph/coBBz

mjburgess 4y ago
Piggybacking on this link, since many seem not to have read the article. But this is one of the most pro-crypto articles I've ever read. It may as well be a submarine, in the PG sense.

coffeeblack 4y ago

Another year, another “the end of crypto” craze.

dragontamer 4y ago

Fundamental issues of cryptocurrency economy: 1. Biggest pushers are seemingly tech-bros from FANG companies. These companies are laying off staff in record numbers. The biggest cryptocoin believers therefore, will have less income than ever before (in ~3 months or so, after their severance is paid, they'll have to start drawing on savings if they didn't get a job yet... and getting a job in this economy is going to be harder) 2. Fed Rate hikes. Cryptocoins and stablecoins (especially "staking" concepts) were rationally attractive when your savings account returned 0% and when Treasury Bonds were 0.1% to 1.5%. A risky yield-earning instrument may have been... erm... risky, but it seemed like even with the risks you'd beat a savings account. Today, HYSA savings accounts are 3% and the St. Louis Fed President argues they're going to 5%. Its a much more difficult to sell yield-making instruments (such as "staking" Ethereum) when the "safe" risk-free rate is at 5%. 3. Inflation. Instead of being a hedge on inflation, cryptocoins collapsed in the face of it. There are still inflation worries in the economy. 4. Mainstream awareness. Earlier this year, Cryptocoins bombarded the typical normie with advertisements. Matt Daemon said "Fortune favors the bold" for Crypto.com. FTX had Larry David do ads for them. FTX bought out the Miami Heat stadium naming rights. NFTs were on talk-shows, being shilled by Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton. Cryptocoin's era of growth is over, everyone is now "aware" of cryptocoins and adjacently NFTs. Entering the public consciousness only happens once, from now and forever more, people are "aware" of cryptocoins and have formed opinions on it. It will not happen again. 5. Scammy reputation. The Celsius and FTX bankruptcies are in the public consciousness. (See #4: for many people, FTX was the public face of cryptocoins thanks to their superbowl ads). That these institutions couldn't even last 1 year after their commercial will forever damage cryptocoin reputation. Sure, Mt. Gox had similar issues back in 2014, but Mt. Gox didn't buy the naming rights to a stadium or host Superbowl commercials. Seeing cryptocoins grow under these circumstances seems like a longshot to me.

jimcavel888 4y ago
latchkey 4y ago
ETH validators are around 8% right now, not 5%. The 'risk' is that the developers don't successfully implement withdrawal or that the whole network goes down. Two, imho, huge risks and part of the reason I don't personally stake at this time. That said, eip-1559 and 'the merge' did happen, without much of a hitch at all, which are pretty major accomplishments. Confidence in the developers is a bit higher now as a result. source: validator rewards section of https://ultrasound.money/ https://ultrasound.money/

throwup 4y ago

I'll add this to the list. http://bitcoinisdead.org/ http://bitcoinisdead.org/

colesantiago 4y ago
Looks this website is dead and gone, just like all the money people invested in FTX, crypto and bitcoin.
- WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
  I think it moved to the obituaries...
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  my bitcoin is up a few 1000% actually
xtracto 4y ago
I prefer this one: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/ https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Some great content there. Randomly clicked at one reportedly from 2011[1]: >Beyond the most hardcore users, skepticism has only increased. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote that the currency’s tendency to fluctuate has encouraged hoarding. Stefan Brands, a former ecash consultant and digital currency pioneer, calls bitcoin “clever” and is loath to bash it but believes it’s fundamentally structured like “a pyramid scheme” that rewards early adopters. They were correct on both counts. Since then, proponents have simply stopped trying to sell it as a currency (buy your games in bitcoin! pay your rent in bitcoin! -- that was the initial pitch), and its pyramid scheme structure has only been exploited, not fixed. [1] https://99bitcoins.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-bitcoin/ https://99bitcoins.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-bitcoin/
MacsHeadroom 4y ago

agentultra 4y ago

It will continue to fall under increased scrutiny and market regulation until it's no longer profitable to run any kind of financial system on it. There will still be believers and people who will throw money at it and try. But I think they will have a harder time convincing investors going forward. I suspect it will end up mirroring the MLM market: still there, still profitable for a few, but depends largely on an uninformed base of people getting roped in by their friends and relatives who are already caught up in it. Like Avon but for tech bros.

strix_varius 4y ago
I would argue it's already Avon for tech bros. That $10,000 Avon "investment" by a teacher making $30k is similar to a $100,000 crypto "investment" by a tech bro making $300k.
- agentultra 4y ago
  Trying to imagine Bloomberg managing an Avon market analysis dashboard and reporting on every peak and drop.

mig39 4y ago

No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

legitster 4y ago

> Moreover, sceptics should acknowledge that nobody can predict which innovations will bear fruit and which will not. People should be free to devote time and money to fusion power, airships, the metaverse and a host of other technologies that may never come good. Crypto is no different. As the virtual economy develops, useful decentralised applications may yet appear—who knows? The underlying technology continues to improve. > Instead of over-regulating or stamping out crypto, regulators should be guided by two principles. One is to ensure that theft and fraud are minimised, as with any financial activity. The other is to keep the mainstream financial system insulated from further crypto-ructions. I know people knock the Economist for pretty superficial analysis, but honestly appreciate their level-headed take here.

mjburgess 4y ago
It's not level-headed. They've started with the classical Economist premise: gov regulation bad. Then rather than understand or research cypto, they contrast lies told by charlatans against an unmentioned "sceptical" reality. They then conclude with their premise. This is an exercise in pure ideology, conveys no information, and presents the scam sales-pitch around crypto entirely verbatim. It is that most common of trap that classical liberals fall into, defending private forces of unfreedom on the basis that they underpin the "free" market. What a bleak picture, and as a defender of free markets, a betray of that world view. Freedom, as a contingent property of markets, is a careful and precious thing. It requires us to be on the guard against a variety of feudal forces, the pinnace of which could be nothing other than crypto. Here, The Economist, on the basis of classical liberalism, advocates for a feudalist scam. It's quite saddening.
- vvpan 4y ago
  The Blockchain Socialist would disagree with you and so would I. https://theblockchainsocialist.com/ https://theblockchainsocialist.com/
- alsetmusic 4y ago
  I was with you for the first two paragraphs.

SevenNation 4y ago

> The disappointment is that, 14 years after the Bitcoin blockchain was invented, little of this promise has been realised. Crypto’s frenzy drew in talent from bright graduates to Wall Street professionals, and capital from vc firms, sovereign-wealth and pension funds. Vast quantities of money, time, talent and energy have been used to build what amount to virtual casinos. Efficient, decentralised versions of mainstream financial functions, such as currency exchanges and lending, exist. But many consumers, fearful of losing their money, do not trust them. Instead they are used to speculate on unstable tokens. Money-launderers, sanctions-dodgers and scammers abound. Here's the thing: Bitcoin doesn't need you, Mr. Entrepreneur. It doesn't need your black turtleneck savant charisma. It doesn't need your ambition. It doesn't need your "innovation." It doesn't need your groveling before regulators to build your moat. And most of all, it doesn't need your VC money. This is a problem for said entrepreneurs and VCs. Because they have turtlenecks beanbags, money, innovation, and groveling just burning holes in their collective pockets - waiting to find an outlet. But it turns out that "crypto" and "DeFi" do need Mr. Entrepreneur and his merry band of VCs. A lot. Why? Because these are efforts to replicate the existing financial system on the sandy foundation of "blockchain." And that's an expensive business. Toss in the loosest monetary policy in US history and the recipe is complete. A quorum of charismatic entrepreneurs fleecing gullible VCs and depositors out of fake wealth, tossing it into a big pile, dousing with a liberal quantity of gasoline, and setting the entire thing ablaze. This may or may not be the end of "crypto," but Bitcoin continues to operate just as before - without the need for exchanges, regulators, entrepreneurs, financiers, or visionaries.

lupire 4y ago
What is Bitcoin doing while it operates?
- SevenNation 4y ago
  Facilitating the exchange of stored value for goods and services without a trusted third party.
sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
Here's the thing: the public doesn't need Bitcoin. The public needs quite a few of the services and functions that the existing financial system provides. Bitcoin on its own is unable to provide many / most of these. The last handful of True Believers can shuffle Bitcoin among themselves indefinitely, this is true. But does that have any more significance to the world than a multiplayer game someone creates for only them and their friends to play, handing game items back and forth among themselves?

boringg 4y ago

Curious what Chris Dixon and A16z have to say about it.

jdminhbg 4y ago
Something like this, most likely: https://www.semafor.com/article/11/16/2022/andreessen-passed-on-ftx-while-venture-firms-early-crypto-investors-are-up https://www.semafor.com/article/11/16/2022/andreessen-passed...
- boringg 4y ago
  Sounds like it didn't pass the sniff test with them.

Bhurn00985 4y ago

Are we already seeing the positive impact on total energy consumption levels ? What a waste this has been.

sbf501 4y ago

"There's a sucker born ever minute." So, no, not the end.

smithcoin 4y ago

Which will come first: the year of the linux desktop, full self driving teslas or the death of crypto?

strix_varius 4y ago
Hell, we're already in the age of the linux desktop, we're just not calling it that: > At 37 million units, Chromebooks represent just under 11 percent of the total PC market, ahead of the Mac, with 27 million units and a 7.8 percent share. https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/chrome-os/chromebook/262126/report-chromebook-sales-grew-13-5-percent-in-2021 https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/chrome-os/chromebook/262126/...
- fsflover 4y ago
  Time to talk about Linux on mobile perhaps.
- worik 4y ago
  I regularly use MacOS, iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux GUIs. The age of the Linux desktop is definitely here. It is a tussle between MacOS and Linux Mint whatever I have from them for the best desktop. It depends on your particular needs.
MrMan 4y ago
self-murdering crypto on the desktop is already here, so

willio58 4y ago

Most crypto-related projects are scams or money-rushes. But SOME will survive and be built after this with all of the learnings of the past few years. This is all very reminiscent of the dot com crash and how media was talking about the internet during the crash. If things follow that same path for crypto, this is really just the beginning of crypto.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

I think more than anything, this has made a16z and Sequoia lose all their merit and credibility. They are now no more than some sneaky crypto grifters who can sneak off to Argentina or Dubai and their ideas and thoughts have zero intellectual value.

1970-01-01 4y ago

Here's how I see it: Crypto as an investment - Not your keys, not your coin. Crypto as a currency - I can't directly buy food, water, shelter, transportation, energy, or anything fundamental with it. I know acceptance is growing, but 10+ years later, crypto still has extremely limited acceptance for daily goods and services. It is almost exclusively held as an investment.

ignoramous 4y ago
> Crypto as a currency - I can't directly buy food, water, shelter, transportation, energy, or anything fundamental with it. Cryptocurrency payments is a flourishing market, btw.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Where? I don't mean this as snark. Are there any household brands that actually accept crpyto?
  - livueta 4y ago
    I think household brands are the exact opposite of where there's been movement: ime, it's concentrated in spaces where there's a need or incentive to dodge moralistic payment processing cartels. The classic example is obviously DNMs, but it is expanding into areas that are legal but difficult to process payments for, like firearm parts or porn. Since those payment processors are, if anything, getting more opinionated, I bet that trend will continue, along with the "I personally disapprove of or do not require the utility provided by the technology, so I will claim it has no utility at all" arguments.
stephc_int13 4y ago
This is not an investment because there is no asset behind it. (no production) It is a speculative vehicle.
- cynusx 4y ago
  It's an abstraction of the stock market imo. People who bought and sold stocks also never understood there was something of value beneath it and just look for "is it going to go up?" and "why is it down?"

legutierr 4y ago

We are making steady and inexorable progress through the technology hype cycle. From earlier this year: https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/articles/images/hype-cycle-for-emerging-tech-2022.png https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/articles/image... Now we enter the Trough of Disillusionment. Given the general accuracy of this model/metaphor in the past, should we consider it to be any different this time around?

jmcphers 4y ago
The hype cycle is not applicable to every technology. Some, probably even most, technologies are eventually found to not be useful or valuable, and never recover once the hype bust happens and the technology is forced to compete in the marketplace based wholly on its merits.
- legutierr 4y ago
  Are you saying that crypto (or blockchain) cannot compete based wholly on its merits?
olalonde 4y ago
Because the "Trough of Disillusionment" has already happened 3-4 times...
efficax 4y ago
This graph is missing a key aspect: the "it utterly fails and we never speak of it again" section.
- legutierr 4y ago
  I imagine that would be your preferred outcome.
  - efficax 4y ago
    well i'd prefer if it had never gotten to where it is, because every crash in the crypto markets wipes out the savings of some sucker who didn't know better. that sucks.

nineplay 4y ago

I'm not a crypto user so I may not understand the ramifications, but while I can see why "imminent death of crypto" headlines seem like clickbait, is it fair to say that this is the end of the crypto exchanges? This is the end of the your average Joe investing in crypto because they saw a cool ad during the Super Bowl? I could understand how that would translate to "gone" in the practical sense. There will still be the true believers and get-rich-quick believers and criminals, but it will be completely out of the public's view. No more ads and stadiums and F1 sponsorships.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> ... is it fair to say that this is the end of the crypto exchanges? I think it's fair to say that exchanges and websites promising 8% or 15% year-on-year returns are done. They're not coming back any time soon. They'll now be called out by everybody. And probably legislated out of existence too. But the end of Coinbase? Coinbase seems legit. Sadly for them the very bank they're using, Silvergate (ticker SI), may be a goner. So USDCs emitted by Coinbase may or may not be worthless (and moreover seizable by the state to bail out Coinbase investors before Coinbase customers). I'd like to see how exposed to Silvergate Coinbase is. I hope Bitfinex dies a painful death. I hope Binance crashes and burn. I hope every single exchange accepting USDTs falls. But I do hope Coinbase, a HN unicorn, survives.

grzes 4y ago

i would say that it is just begining

sgt101 4y ago

There will be another go around - at least one. Next time will be different(TM) There will be a new breed of crypto entrepreneurs(TM). There will be a new generation of smarter, more savvy, sophisticated investors (TM). Everyone will wear crisp white cotton this time. They will be blonder, or darker, or more vegan. The wheel will spin again, some people will steal some money off other people who will loose everything.

barbazoo 4y ago

I never know what people mean when they say "crypto". Are we talking about coins, de-fi, blockchain? Just yesterday I was presented with an option to pay for a standing desk in ETH and I don't see how FTX's downfall would change that. Is ETH just another scam? Very confusing stuff.

worik 4y ago
ETH is a meta scam: Very useful for delivering scams, not much else. You got a chance to pay for a real world service in ETH. Did that make any sense? Any utility over using money? Perhaps dodging taxes....

smileysteve 4y ago

No, but for retail, yes. It's going to be a long time before the retail $16bn + contagion try it again, and they probably won't trust it for growth, interest bearing accounts; It also may not be needed for interest bearing accounts as the Federal Reserve seems to be on a path to offer meaningful rates for the long term. So it's likely the end of mass market crypto? or effective advertising for major sporting events (F1, Miami Heat, LA)

Animats 4y ago

China has shut down every crypto asset activity in China that they can find.[1] The hammer came down in 2021. Mining farms had their power cut, and several hundred people were arrested. (There's a "digital yuan", but that's a payment system run by the People's Bank of China.) So a big part of the world has already ended crypto as an asset class. [1] https://coinpedia.org/cryptocurrency-regulation/cryptocurrency-regulation-in-china/ https://coinpedia.org/cryptocurrency-regulation/cryptocurren...

hellotomyrars 4y ago
I think this is a major contributing factor in why crypto isn’t going to work.
- web3isgoing 4y ago
  I can’t think of anything else that China is attempting to restrict that the rest of the developed world is open to. Edit: perhaps need a /s tag here.
  - lend000 4y ago
    Being an Uyghur? Freedom of speech? Encryption? The coronavirus (still)?
    - j0hnyl 4y ago
      I believe that was sarcasm.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
Isnt this just one of those headlines that isnt really true though? Like that China banned video games for kids? From the same comic sansesk article you posted: "Even though crypto-mining cracked down in China many miners have come out with several ways to continue the operations and escape detection. Twenty percent of the bitcoin network remains in China according to experts’ report." Doesnt exactly seem like they have ended crypto if 20% of the bitcoin network remains there. It sounds like they cracked down on some and let others keep running.

tb_technical 4y ago

No, not really. But we have to be honest with ourselves. Crypto failed. It was supposed to allow people to make transactions without trusted institutions, and the manipulations of the Federal Reserve. Unfortunately it's been subverted as a security.

honestduane 4y ago

I can only hope crypto dies soon. Its actively a violation of the GDPR and this illegal in the EU. It violates human rights laws, including privacy laws, and is this illegal in most other places. It violates all the laws around SWIFT, at the international level, so its illegal under these laws. It never should have existed. Its a grift and a scam; Even NFT's vanish when the host doesn't want the expense of hosting other peoples images.

kirevmaco 4y ago
> It violates all the laws around SWIFT, at the international level, so its illegal under these laws. But SWIFT itself is working with a "crypto" project: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/swift-is-partnering-with-chainlink-here-s-the-down-low-on-the-blockchain-data-provider/ar-AA13Fy0h https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/swift-is-partn...
j0hnyl 4y ago
How does crypto violate gdpr? It's pseudonymous so no PII. What privacy laws does it violate? On-chain NFTs will not vanish.

wzy 4y ago

MLM and Ponzi are is still going strong, so crypto has nothing to worry about.

johnnymorgan 4y ago

This again...every single time we get the death of Bitcoin articles. And every single time the honey badger of financial networks just doesn't give a shit. The tech is solid, people are not, this is not a new information

davewritescode 4y ago

I hope it is but I suspect it won't be. The bottom line is that the benefits of crypto have been exaggerated by people who, in may cases, don't have everyone's best interest at heart while the downsides have been vastly understated. It's particularly frustrating to hear people tout the ability to bypass the government when it fact that the most popular cryptocurrencies make it trivial for governments to track every transaction. The reality that crypto evangelists never want to talk about is that to the average person, crypto is a MUCH worse experience than what they have today. Why would I buy something with crypto when my credit card offers me a ton of consumer protections? Especially if I'm buying something from an entity on the internet who may or may not be trustworthy.

AzzieElbab 4y ago

I love the tech but I keep looking at crypto as a financial system build on nothing and backed by nothing. Financial system is a luxury that has to be a functional layer build on top of some economy but crypto is so standalone it is basically only supported by peoples interest in it. They forgot to build the economy and went straight to money and finance

k__ 4y ago

The sentiment "inside of crypto" seems to be "The MtGOX collapse was worse" Less money, but overall bigger negative impact.

throwaway22032 4y ago
Massively so. Gox wasn't far off the entire market. We had BTC-E, stamp, gox. Probably some smaller players that I'm forgetting but whatever. Oh, and there was basically only BTC and LTC. Other coins either didn't exist or were just traded for each other, very little value, etc. When Gox went under there wasn't even really a proper market price for Bitcoin for a significant period. We had goxbucks and goxbtc. Even if Coinbase went down now it'd be less of a big deal than Gox was back in the day.

doc_gunthrop 4y ago

Another case of Betteridge's law.

ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago

This is the final chapter of the blockchain story, created from the scratch by the bankers, who lured early adopters with ideals of anonymity, digital anarchy and other cryptopunk ravings, made them run the prototype of bankers' future monetary system at their own and later investors' expense, provided for schemes to make rich richer and poor poorer, made huge profits for the energy-generating companies, and what the economist really says now is a gloating 'thank you, nerds and wannabe-billionaires, you can now go to hell and don't mess in the way of us the big guys' Expect a world-wide blockchain-based banker-controlled centralized biometrically authenticated One World Currency soon, which you can loose access to for walking a red light, wearing a pajama in public, not joining the next scheduled Je Suis Charlie charade or refusing to jab.

g42gregory 4y ago

Very interesting. When people begin to ask questions like "Is this the end of X?", is it the time to buy X? Are we at the crypto's bottom yet? The equity market does not seem to have fallen through yet, and I fear that it may affect crypto (and everything else) further. Any thoughts?

sys_64738 4y ago

Did anybody on here make any $$$ from crypto? It was all a scam in my eyes so I just focused on VTI.

jobs_throwaway 4y ago
I've bought a lot of cool (illicit) stuff using crypto, and my investments in it are still massively up
mmkos 4y ago
Yes. I made $30k by selling dogecoin that I bought all the way back in 2014. Not a fortune by any means, but a respectable amount nonetheless.
marton78 4y ago
I did. I bought the token of a decentralised exchange (gainsnetwork.io if you're interested) after the LUNA crash, it went up a lot and is still holding strong, as the narrative shifts away from centralised to decentralised exchanges due to the FTX crash. It also pays nice dividends from users' trading fees. But yes, with pretty much everything else I ever did in crypto I just lost money.

z3 4y ago

full article -> https://archive.is/coBBz https://archive.is/coBBz

kurtreed 4y ago

The end of cryptography? Somehow I doubt it.

curioushacking 4y ago

As a general financial instrument there seems to be too large an opportunity for fraud and scams that it seems to generally not be worth it outside of hedges against hyper inflation. But the general idea of web3, personal ownership of data that you can seamlessly move to different interfaces, and as a way to trust documents still all seem like great reasons to have public ledgers. This may not be in the currency space, but I feel like general crypto is something I would like to see in the future. I also love the idea of moving fully to stable coins for better tracking related to tax implications. I'm not sure of how this would work fully, but there seems far too much opportunity for tax evasion and fraud under the current systems and moving to a stable coin seems like it could aid in that regard.

rafaelero 4y ago

Bitcoin won't die. Crypto will, and hopefully soon. The community here is so oblivious to the characteristics that make Bitcoin the best monetary system we could have invented that I can only believe people haven't really thought things through. That's why we see these comparisons with Bitcoin and other cryptos. I am actually glad all this mess is happening so we can finally move on with all those crypto scams that want to confuse people by walking in the shadow of the true innovation.

ganksalot 4y ago
> The community here is so oblivious to the characteristics that make Bitcoin the best monetary system we could have invented that I can only believe people haven't really thought things through. is this satire?
- DJBunnies 4y ago
  No, it's true, this place has a difficult time seeing nuance between bitcoin and crypto.
  - Balgair 4y ago
    Ok, I'll bite. Give me the elevator pitch. I'm not in tech [0] so treat me as you would a grandmother. Average speaking speed is ~150 words/minute. Say the average elevator ride is ~30 seconds. So, in ~75 words, tell me what the nuance is as you would say to a grandmother? That fair? To be clear, I'm honestly not trying to be snarky. Sorry if it comes off that way. I can only multitask through this meeting so well. [0] I'm in biotech, so I can hang with you all and be a hacky programmer, but most in depth discussion go over my head.
    - rafaelero 4y ago
      Let me try. If you were to create the best monetary system, how would it be? The answer to that is a system with a policy that simply doesn't change. That's the best system because predictability is the only quality that matters when you are storing value. The best governments in the world try their best to achieve that, but they always fail. How then can we achieve that? With decentralization. That's a very expensive, inefficient and slow way to go about things. But it is all that matters if we want to build a sane monetary system, which doesn't allow anyone to change its emission rate. No "crypto" achieves that same trust we all have about the decentralized quality of Bitcoin. That's why they don't matter.

giantdude 4y ago

I hope it's the end of centralized exchanges.

ploppyploppy 4y ago

meehow 4y ago

Fractional reserve is a scam, not crypto. Every institution which doesn't have money which they promised to keep safe, should collapse. Proof of reserves and audits are extremely easy in crypto and it doesn't require any regulations. Self custody of crypto is also pretty simple. Market is young, people greedy and as a result we got this domino of falling companies. Even after Mt. Gox collapse people didn't learn much, but I quietly hope it will come.

audunw 4y ago
> Fractional reserve is a scam, not crypto. Why? Because you say so? Fractional reserve banking is generally heavily regulated such that most of the value created from new loans are tied to actual physical value in the real world. Fraction reserve banking is genius in my opinion, because if you want to take out a loan to build say a mine, or an oil well, that you know is going to generate millions in value, you're not fully dependent on finding smoe kind benefactors to loan you their own money to open that mine. If you can prove to the bank that you are likely to be able to create value greater than what you're borrowing, they'll create that money for you. And that's how it should be. If you're adding say $10 million to the economy, it's not a problem at all that $5 million was created out of thin air to enable that. In fact, that's exactly what you want. Ideally nobody who is able to create significant value should be stopped just by the lack of capital. There are cases where lending isn't tied to value creation, like loans for consumption or stock gambling. Those should be regulated out of existence, but that's not fundamentally a problem with fractional reserve banking. Loans for purchasing land is also iffy.. I think Georgism may be a solution to that. Crypto is the exact opposite of a well regulation fractional reserve banking system. The creation of cryptocurrencies, espcially with PoW, is tied to the destruction of value (wasted electricity and silicon), not creation of value. IMO, that makes it fundamentally unsustainable. > Proof of reserves and audits are extremely easy in crypto and it doesn't require any regulations. You say that, but everything we've seen so far indicates the exact opposite. Perhaps it's easy in theory, but nobody seems to be interested in doing it. I suspect with all the regulations, external systems and oracles necessary to make sure it's all correctly audited, you'll find that you could just as easily do without a PoW/PoS blockchain and have a far more efficient system. Maybe a proof-of-authority blockchains can make sense, just so you have some explicit cryptographically signed trace of who you're trusting in a transaction. Trustless systems are a lie. You'll always find you need to trust some humans/organization in the end.

nathias 4y ago

> FTX has dealt a catastrophic blow to crypto’s reputation I've been in crypto since 2013 and people have been insulting crypto and everyone in it as scammers, I'm not sure how another centralized exchange stealing user funds is any diferent than all the past ones.

RadixDLT 4y ago

economist, axios, ect. are spreading fud to drive the price down

dudeinhawaii 4y ago

The end of crypto? No. But could it become the Magic Cards, AOL, or MySpace of this generation? Sure. They may even have the staying power of MLM companies like Amway.

achenatx 4y ago

crypto is supposed to be money that is outside the control of central banks or governments. As a result it is good for: Getting your money out of a country that is trying to stop you from doing that Transferring your money across borders when the government wants to impose high tariffs Protecting your money from central banks when governments have decided to freeze your bank accounts Protecting your money from a government that reckless with the native currency where you have no way to have accounts to store large amounts of foreign currency You might say that this only applies to criminals, but the definition of criminal might just be whoever happens to be a target of a government. Many governments around the world are dictatorships and can decide to confiscate assets on a whim (e.g. china). When the jews fled germany or the chinese fled communist china, they took what they could (often times gold or gems). Crypto is potentially a way to flee a bad situation while avoiding being robbed by carrying your wealth as gold. Finally it would be interesting if BRICS started transacting oil in crypto. It would be a way to possibly break the US dollar as the world reserve currency.

tabtab 4y ago

Evolution generally requires "extinction events" to shake things up.

eddsh1994 4y ago

People say this every bear market. We will be hearing this again in a few years after it goes up and back down again.

wageslv 4y ago

"This surely is the end of Crypto!" says increasingly nervous journalist...

hnaccountme 4y ago

As long as there are people claiming blockchain has some value the next crypto scam is just around the corner. All Crypto is a scam and blockchain has no real application that couldn't be solved much easily by some other means.

kerkeslager 4y ago

Betteridge's Law of Headlines remains steady. Crypto goes through boom/bust cycles, and in every bust, people predict that crypto is over, yet mysteriously it keeps coming back. Why? Crypto has value. Not "value" in the sense of it's actually good for anything--I'd argue it has some of that, but not nearly enough to justify the hype and price. But I'd also argue that the destructive potential of it more than outweighs that value. No, what I'm talking about here is the term "value" in the capitalist sense, i.e. if someone is willing to pay for something, it has value, even if it's snake oil. The number of people involved in crypto clearly hasn't maxed out yet. Talk to 10 random friends outside a silicon valley bubble, and most of them won't have ever had any involvement in crypto. But, a lot of those people will say they've been meaning to get involved, or are interested. People cite fear as a reason they haven't gotten involved, but as crypto gets easier to use and more accessible, those fears will go away, and those people are going to get involved. That's probably a bad thing for those people. Ease of getting into crypto isn't equivalent to financial literacy, and there's a culture around crypto that's openly hostile to applying financial principles to cryptocurrency, which opens those users up to scams and losing money on things that aren't intended to be scams. I spent a bunch of time trying to educate people about OHM/TIME back when those were on the upswing--a rudimentary understanding of economics should have made their inevitable crash obvious. But for every person like me, there were 100 true believers who wouldn't be swayed, spouting nonsense. I'm not sure I actually helped anyone. I don't have a systemic solution. Regulation can limit the scope of some of the biggest issues (i.e. prevent pension funds and mutual funds from investing in the most obvious crypto scams) but ultimately I don't think it will be possible to protect individuals who want to invest in crypto even though they don't know how to do it safely. You can provide education but a lot of people simply won't accept it.

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carlosjoe22 4y ago

robertdiane 4y ago