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Crypto’s collapse may have done the economy a favor
- fourstar 4y ago>Let's give SBF more positive exposure! - WSJ
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoAlso note the absence of politicians who cry about evil billionaires being silent on an actual evil (former) billionaire who stole from the masses. E.g., all AOC could muster is a self-congratulatory joke about League of Legends. And he is still scheduled to speak at the NYTimes event next week. NYT has harassed others for much much less (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/business/media/bari-weiss-resignation-new-york-times.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/business/media/bari-weiss...). https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-arent-you-in-jail-already-internet-erupts-after-sam-bankman-fried-confirms-participating-in-new-york-times-dealbook-11669295184 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-arent-you-in-jail-alre...
- oneoff786 4y agoYou must follow AOC very closely to be able to comment on what she didn’t say
- xwdv 4y agoShe said it on a live stream.
- autotune 4y agoI wouldn't have even known AOC was still relevant until OP's complaint about her.
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoPowerful but corrupt politicians who want to fundamentally change our economic system are not relevant? TIL.
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoThis is 2022. Searching isn't hard. Maybe if you are AoC or her fans you need follow someone hard to know what they said and didn't say. But why don't you address my comment instead of taking a swipe at me?
- oneoff786 4y agoYour comment is dumb. That’s the bulk of it. She’s a Congresswoman. Judging her on what she didn’t say is nonsense. It’s not particularly related to her. Why would she comment on it? Do you need her to make a press conference to confirm it was bad?
- js8 4y agoWell, to be fair - if you were an honest politician, where would you rather spend your energy: (a) trying to prosecute the con men (helps no one, is just a punishment) (b) systemic changes to prevent such crime in the future (helps middle class not to make a stupid decision) (c) some other policy, like, I dunno, better healthcare access (helps people in peril regardless what their decision is) Rationally, there are many systemic problems to solve by policy and proper justice is just too low on the list when it comes to benefit/cost ratio.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago<< (a) trying to prosecute the con men (helps no one, is just a punishment) I take issue with this statement. I accept that there are limited resources and there is a question of how to use those resources wisely. However, there is a reason beyond simple question of karma/balance for a society to ensure that sufficiently egregious crime is punished. I absolutely disagree that it helps no one as it very well may stem a tide of future con-men, which is not without a toll. Now compare that to option c ( other policy change ), which, in current gridlock setup seems somewhat unlikely. That said, I accept that there are other considerations at play here.
- js8 4y agoYeah, but you already have a police/justice system, right? From the perspective of a politician, the decision (a) is more about "prioritize the police/justice system to do its work on these cases". The justice will have to drop something else they are doing to work on this, and that something else might be beneficial in preventing the future crime in the same way you're arguing. (If you mean make sure systemic changes are made to the prioritization, that's another variant of the (b) option.) But to be honest, I am not sure retributive punishment really prevents crime all that well. U.S. has a lot of laws against fraud, and has a pretty good track record in investigating and punishing as far as different governments do, and fraudsters still appear. I think in most cases, people aren't rational about committing a crime, they often self-delude themselves somehow that whatever they are doing is morally acceptable. I think there was an interview with the FTX CEO, who answered the interviewer's question with incredulous "the way you describe what we do, it indeed looks like a fraud". So I think some people have the ability NOT to see their pyramid scheme as a pyramid scheme. On the other hand, people who will rationally consider whether to do a crime or not, should not necessarily think that because someone got away with a crime, they will get away with it too. You might as well think that the police/justice will be better prepared to a similar crime now.
- encryptluks2 4y agoI don't care about the economy. It is something made up to justify all sorts of evils. Who cares if it helped or hurted it. The economy is easily manipulated by the wealthy from job numbers to inflation. What matters is how is it impacting the bottom-half. Telling a large percentage of the population that the economy is booming when they can't even afford basic needs does nothing for them.
- tiahura 4y agoThe poor are more sensitive to economic cycles than the rich.
- black_13 4y ago
- galaxyLogic 4y agoYou are right the "economy" is too much of an abstraction to throw around as a single word. Still people do need jobs. But more than that they need equal rights and democracy, and literacy and a safety-net. The slave-economy of South was doing great as well. Everybody had a job. But what kind of job.
- WalterBright 4y ago> The slave-economy of South was doing great Not really. Their economy was in crisis which is one of the main reasons they tried to secede. Slave labor could not compete with free labor.
- galaxyLogic 4y agoI thought the reason they wanted to secede was to allow them keep their slaves. No? Why would they want to keep their slaves so much so that they would go to war over that? I assume it was because slavery was good for THEIR (meaning the slave-owning class) economy. If as you say "Slave labor could not compete with free labor" then why didn't they (the slave-owning class) switch to free labor ASAP?
- zeofig 4y agoNot that I can read this paywalled article, but the ideas that the economy is Doing Great and crypto is Dead are both wishful thinking
- hereme888 4y agoMy thoughts exactly. We have yet to feel what's actually coming to the global economy next year, and crypto may rise again. After all, everyone was expecting a horrible bear market and correction in crypto this year, but between FTX, Terra and other situations it just came sooner than expected.
- galaxyLogic 4y agoWhy is crypto a bad thing?
- Finnucane 4y agoIt’s a high-tech reinterpretation of Andrew Jackson’s monetary policy.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoIt's purported benefits (exchanging money through boundaries either legally or financially created) outweigh its drawbacks carbon footprint/gpu market manipulation. Those who disagree weigh the benefits higher than the drawbacks and those who agree weight the drawbacks higher than the benefits. Systemically it serves as a transaction/computational system built almost entirely on the inability to manage negative externalizes.
- anon291 4y agoCrypto is neither good nor bad. Convincing unsophisticated people to take money that has empirical value in the current economy and invest that in a token that means absolutely nothing and entitles you to no money that means anything useful or has any empirical value.... that is perhaps not criminal, but very anti-social behavior. If there were a real government demanding payment of taxes in bitcoin, then it would have value. Until then, it does not. El Salvador does not count because El Salvador is inconsequential, and either way they have no army. Also, it's obviously a political stunt by their young and hip president.
- cardamomo 4y agohttps://archive.ph/8074Z https://archive.ph/8074Z
- muttantt 4y agoJust as it comes to light that SBF bought a US bank... WSJ comes to the rescue again.
- andyp-kw 4y agoIt's always been my assumption that the economy would become more and more connected to cryptocurrency over time. I wonder how accurate this article will look in 10 years.
- Animats 4y agoAt this point, it looks like it will be less connected. The WSJ is saying that it's a good thing it all collapsed before it contaminated the entire economy and we had a mortgage-derivative sized collapse. Without the advantage that, since real houses were involved, the market eventually came back. Think of some stablecoin being used on the scale of Treasury bills, and then going to 0.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoI can offer some semi-credible information here ( I did not personally verify those, but the source is legitimate partially since it is crypto averse; plus ledgers are by design public, but one can have reasonable doubts about it ). Based on a fairly recent seminar, it would appear that crypto today averages approximately 100b in transactions daily and note that it is not that far away from US ACH payments ( 146b in 2021)[1] although there is a valid criticism here that we should be comparing apples to apples ( one currency to one currency[2] and not just payment type, but that data is harder for me to find ). Not bad for a payment type that is so consistently vilified. It should be noted that most of it appears to be int BTC. This is primarily why I think crypto is here to stay in one form or the other unless either majority of the population is convinced its worthless ( as a speculative or money transfer tool ) for one reason or there is another reason to kill it ( if I had to guess, I would bet on environmental since it seems to have most sway now ). [1]https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fedach_yearlycomm.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fedach_yearlyc... [2]https://www.barchart.com/crypto/quotes/%5EBTCUSD/technical-analysis https://www.barchart.com/crypto/quotes/%5EBTCUSD/technical-a... edit: some additional disclaimers in brackets
- belltaco 4y agoIt's all wash trading. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierpaz/2022/08/26/more-than-half-of-all-bitcoin-trades-are-fake/?sh=424d7b606681 https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierpaz/2022/08/26/more-than-...
- jsemrau 4y ago“Once crypto banks obtain deposits from investors, these firms borrow, lend, and trade with themselves. They do not interact with firms connected to the real economy.” That's the reality. The only reason prices went up is because the "whales" build up this domino bonanza sucking in real people's money in the process. Since no sane person would invest in crypto in the short to medium term, I don't see how the industry will recover from that. Personally, I believe the only way is to "earn" for doing stuff on the internet. Yet, the experience is that earning in a highly volatile currency is not the incentive many people think it is.
- mupuff1234 4y agoMost of the population isn't really that sane (see lottery ticket sales)
- plandis 4y agoI’ll admit that I bought a lottery ticket for the first time ever when the US Powerball was over $1B. I don’t think people entirely buy lottery tickets expecting to win and doing the rational thing of calculating expectation values and taking calculated risks after weighing opportunity costs. They just want to daydream and paying a few dollars for a ticket makes that more exciting.
- mupuff1234 4y agoWhich is quite similar to "investing" in crypto I think. It's basically being marketed as a get rich quick scheme to most retail.
- system2 4y ago
- mradek 4y agoThings that are obvious to a monkey for $100 monke_face_nft-2 (copy).png
- UberFly 4y agoForget the economy. It's just been really enjoyable to watch all the online crypto cultists shed their robes and huddle quietly into support groups. ;)
- 35amxn35 4y agoCrypto is doing perfectly fine :) For anyone wondering, the purpose of crypto is not to be a store of value, but to be a currency. If you don't want to speculate on its price you buy BTC that day, you transfer that BTC to purchase whatever good you want. The seller can do the same, converting his BTC to something else or for cash as soon as he makes a sale. To clarify: 1) It is a lot better if Bitcoin is used by a relative minority of people and flies under the radar. In places where it's really needed it's penetration will be a lot higher. We see that in Venezuela and in many places in Latin America with high inflation. 2) Centralized exchanges using a centralized digital coin with no backing != crypto 3) Most crypto != crypto. Bitcoin surely is. 4) Speculating on its price is an unintended side-effect. 5) The purpose of crypto is to remove the middleman. 6) The SBF saga has nothing to do with crypto. I hope that explains some of it.
- rajup 4y ago> For anyone wondering, the purpose of crypto is not to be a store of value, but to be a currency. I have zero skin in the game and I couldn’t care less if btc goes to zero or 1 million. But btc seems to be terrible even as a currency with terrible transaction processing times and overheads.
- polio 4y agoIt's worse than fiat, but that isn't an alternative if you're a North Korean hacker, a ransomware artist, or an international drug dealer. Crypto does well at facilitating these use cases.
- 35amxn35 4y agoIt's true. It's also helpful when you live in an authoritarian/corrupt country. Same as cash. The day cash is banned, it's completely over.
- imtringued 4y agoIf cash is banned and a central bank gets the funny idea of setting the short term negative interest rate to -5% permanently, then corruption would disappear because the return on money obtained via corruption is no longer guaranteed to be positive unless it helps the economy more than the initial corruption damaged it. A few years later cash with demurrage fees would be implemented.
- singularity2001 4y agoIt didn't collapse yet, so far it's an ordinary correction
- MrRiddle 4y ago