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Every time a crypto article is posted there are one of two people in the comments; those acknowledging yet another failure in a continuous display of cryptocurr

Every time a crypto article is posted there are one of two people in the comments; those acknowledging yet another failure in a continuous display of cryptocurrency's blatant inability to be a valid currency, and those who mindlessly still think there's any hope for cryptocurrency to be a global currency. Those who say that CEXs aren't part of the core values of cryptocurrency are right, except also completely ignorant to the fact that without CEXs, crypto's usability as a currency is practically 0. CEXs have failed, hardware wallets have failed, soft wallets have failed, seed phrases are fundamentally problematic, etc. Cryptocurrency won't ever be functional on a large-scale as a global currency, and that much is evident. It's not even a matter of opinion; the core idea of decentralization which "makes crypto great" makes it unusable as a currency for the vast majority of people- who would need to rely on some centralized authority in order for crypto to operate within the real world. Anybody left in the space must just be hanging onto greater fool theory, that or has drank the kool-aid.

DigiDigiorno 3y ago
Every time a crypto article is posted there are a large amount of people who are only capable of thinking in absolutes like you.* I don't think it's a very good currency (in the tx time/volume sense), but I think viewing crypto's viability as an all-or-nothing game is unreasonable--that includes both those for it and those against it. As for your assertions about failures: - CEXs have failed (in the worst way possible too, see MtGox, BTC-e, FTX), but that doesn't mean they have all failed--or that there isn't a future for them. - Hardware wallets haven't failed at all really. Like, Trezor and Ledger are the largest I think, and those are fine AFAIK. Are you referring to Ledger's recent news with the optional update including a backdoor for those that want to sync keys with Ledger's new service? (Seems like a dumb business decision imho, seems oxymoronic--hardware wallet as a service? lol) - Soft wallets have been hacked and are risky, but I think the success rate here is pretty high. A large percent of crypto users use soft wallets like Brave's Wallet and MetaMask, the vast majority of these are fine AFAIK. Not exactly safe IMO, but considering the amount of people who use them and haven't been hacked, this is certainly not an obvious "failure" Also, unrelated to crypto, but reducing people who disagree with you to "kool-aid drinkers" and "accidentally correct people" is a negative life choice IMO * I think you are capable of not thinking in absolutes, I just wanted to be mean on the internet
- hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
  > * I think you are capable of not thinking in absolutes, I just wanted to be mean on the internet While I disagree with your post, that last frank comment made me smile.
- EdwardDiego 3y ago
  Maybe they're a Sith. But hey, the dark side is a pathway to abilities many consider... unnatural.
  - downvotetruth 3y ago
    Not equal "thinking" and "deal in" are
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Only a Sith thinks in absolutes. Also, Yoda, who made the absolute statement describing Sith. Ergo, Yoda is a Sith Lord. Also, taking philosophy from Hollywood movies is a bad idea. That's entertainment, not ethics, philosophy, or morals. Its overall very shallow in terms of thinking. And I don't think anyone ever thought Star Wars Episode 3 was a thoughtful deep movie. --------- The philosophical discussion of moral relativity vs moral absolutism is hundreds of years old IIRC. Plenty of ethical people believe in absolutes. Plenty of other ethical people prefer moral relativism. I don't think we'd settle the discussion here in any case. Bypassing the absolute vs relativism discussion for a second, it has become abundantly clear that major cryptocoin groups, from Mt. Gox, to FTX, to Voyager, to Celsius, to Binance and more... have stolen funds from their users and otherwise mismanaged money. And not in a "kinda-similar way to banks". I mean completely, and utterly lied about their operations entirely, to a way unfathomable to mainstream finance groups (be it a bank, shareholder, bondholder or more). The cryptocoin world needs to learn how to establish trust in its system. The primary currency of banks isn't money, but trust. (Mostly: trust that your money will come back). Cryptocoiners have failed time-and-time again. ---------- If we think in terms of absolutism, I think we can say that lying and stealing from others is universally wrong. As FTX did to its customers. If we discuss moral relativism, cryptocoins are *relatively* more stealing / less reliable / more cheating than their competitors at Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, and other such financial institutions. SIVB and FRC got all their money back, but we all know someone who lost money at Mt. Gox, Celsius, Voyager, or FTX, right? So its a lose-lose regardless of your personal stance on the matter.
scyclow 3y ago
You're building a straw man argument against the pro-crypto side though. Not everyone there is a crypto0libertarian anrarcho-capitalist. There are a lot of people who are optimistic about the technology who also welcome regulation on the CEX side. I feel like most people in the pro-crypto camp also acknowledge that several of the ancillary components that make up the crypto ecosystem (such as wallet technology) are really problematic from a UX standpoint -- but also that they are fixable. That said, the whole global-reserve currency thing might be les of a straw man, as it correctly describes the views of a lot of Bitcoin maxis (who are delusional IMO). But we're talking about a broad technology with other use cases, and isn't accurate for everyone.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  > but also that they are fixable Yet after 14 years they don't seem to ever actually get fixed - from just this week[0]. The fundamentals of crypto - irreversible, be your own bank, no margin of error, medieval castle level security practices/requirements, etc go against fundamental human nature. We forget things. We make mistakes. We're not capable of securing financial resources against an entire internet full of marauding bandits. How many CC charges are disputed daily? How many password resets do you think Bank of America does daily? Answer is: staggering numbers. Post-FTX many "crypto users" (read: have an account on a CEX) actually interacted with blockchain for the first time and transferred crypto to a wallet. Ledger wallet sales exploded. It didn't take long for them to deal with such tremendous incoming of people losing access, forgetting seeds, etc to implement a backup mechanism. It didn't go well[1]. [0] - https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/atomic-wallet-hacks-lead-to-over-35-million-in-crypto-stolen/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/atomic-wallet... [1] - https://decrypt.co/140317/ledger-crypto-wallet-under-fire-over-seed-phrase-recovery-service https://decrypt.co/140317/ledger-crypto-wallet-under-fire-ov...
  - scyclow 3y ago
    True, Bitcoin has been around for about 14 years, but we're only a couple years into the current wave of consumer hardware wallets. And from a smart contract standpoint we're still seeing innovative for different ways to control the flow of assets. I don't think that the future of blockchain transactions necessarily needs to involve consumers interacting with the technology on such a low level. It's seems like there's plenty of room to build abstractions on top of it... which I'm sure the purists wouldn't like. But ultimately, I'd give it a few years to see what happens before writing it off.
gemstones 3y ago
I think you might be missing some people in your reasoning, there. (But I agree that your two types of people both exist and are the loudest in the room!) (Some) crypto is a deflationary store. There are not many deflationary stores, and the ones that exist (like precious metals) either require a lot of effort to store and secure, or you hold a claim on some precious metal somewhere and not the thing itself. Lots of people want a deflationary store, especially in a time when inflation looks like a fact of life! Crypto has no inherent value, unlike precious metals. It can (and depending on the crypto, often does) go to zero. That is a risk of the currency. However, if I were to buy a claim on precious metals, I would still have the risk of going to zero (maybe if things really go sideways, no one wants to honor my claim to the metals?) Crypto will not be useful as a currency for everyday transactions, it is useful only as a thing to hold and store, or useful as a part of black-market transactions. I don't want to make any black-market transactions, but I do want something deflationary to hold and store. So the target market for crypto you're missing are people: * Who want a deflationary asset * Who are comfortable with the idea that the actual trading activity attracts a lot of criminals, but don't intend to do anything criminal themselves * Who view the risk of a Bitcoin or Ethereum going to zero about the same as their contacts for gold going to zero in a true financial crisis
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Investing in "deflationary assets" is exactly the greater fool theory.
  - gemstones 3y ago
    Sounds like a great theory, TBH! Seems like you can make a lot of money that way, not sure why I should view it as a bad thing.
    - vikramkr 3y ago
      Why does it sounds like you can make a lot of money that way? Bring reliant on someone else being willing to pay more on the basis that they'll find someone else later to pay even more doesn't create a stable foundation
nubb 3y ago
congrats on this successful karma farming post
samstave 3y ago
[flagged]
- jfghi 3y ago
  I prefer those banks over the current crop of initial-named “CEOs”
cultureswitch 3y ago
I agree with you, but I also think the other things we call currency are equally dysfunctional in different ways.
avip 3y ago
What we need less of is dichotomic views on complex issues.
Canada 3y ago
> crypto's usability as a currency is practically 0. I don't read any comments here from anyone who uses it as a currency, and yet I personally do. For me it works really well. I don't buy coffee with it, I swap it for cash for that purpose, but I've paid most larger bills with it for more than 2 years. I had a good initial experience being paid with it years ago. I find it extremely convenient. I prefer it very much now. It is currently my preferred method of accepting payment. I guess I'll just keep using it until it all collapses or whatever.
- cde-v 3y ago
  Just because you can and do doesn't mean you should.
  - Canada 3y ago
    Why not?
- oblio 3y ago
  > but I've paid most larger bills with it for more than 2 years. Do you have examples? Have you paid rent, your mortgage, your car, for a laptop, etc, with cryptocurrency?
  - giobox 3y ago
    > Do you have examples? Have you paid rent, your mortgage, your car, for a laptop, etc, with cryptocurrency? Of course they don't, if they live in a vaguely developed nation. I can't speak to the stories some tell of using it countries where the national currency is unstable, and my apologies to previous commenter if this is legitimately a problem the have, but everywhere else this is easy enough to answer. In somewhere such as the US or Europe, who in their right mind as a landlord or mortgage provider is going to take the volatility risk of accepting crypto as a primary means of settling rent/home payments, when well in excess of 99 percent of customers wouldn't use it anyway? The very few businesses that do accept often do so as a novelty - see the use of dogecoin on some fan stores etc etc. As always, I'm sure there are exceptions that prove the rule, but I can tell you right now my mortgage provider, car dealer and computer vendor would all laugh at me if I even asked.
throwway120385 3y ago
It seems like the people who use it successfully are either in on the scheme and waiting for it to start to fall, or they're using it as a very distributed version of Western Union to transfer money to other people across national borders.
nathias 3y ago
yea, the owner of the current world currency attacking it makes all the more evident right?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
The “true believers” need a greater fool to be their exit liquidity, it’s that simple.
TX81Z 3y ago
There’s a third perspective, largely unspoken: organized crime is a valid use-case for crypto and it will likely remain so. Even if all “legit” CEXs went bust you’d still have a path for cross-boarder transfers of value that can be exchanged on local black markets.
pbarnes_1 3y ago
I work in Web3 and I would say cryptocurrency as a "currency" / speculative asset etc is a failure. However, the underlying technology is legitimately interesting and solves a lot of hard problems (e.g. distributed systems, consensus, clock synchronisation across wide networks, provable ownership of assets, etc, etc). I don't see any value in the coins blockchains operate on except maybe as a means for paying for execution on that network. I do see a tonne of value in say, abstracting something like USDC payments/remittance/etc that runs very cheaply/quickly on (for example) Solana and remove middle men from these equations. I think the market/world will optimize out of the un-interesting parts over time and the use cases that add value to the world will rise to the top.
jongjong 3y ago
Those who have had experience in crypto for a while know why all popular projects turn out to be scams... Whoever has been funding and controlling the industry is literally only allowing scams to succeed. Crypto as we know it is probably a very expensive, elaborate psyop. There was an obvious shift around early 2018 where project founders just stopped caring for no apparent reason. I have this perspective because I was an employee of a major project at the time. I've mostly withdrawn from crypto for now because it has the same kind of 'horse with a carrot dangling from a stick' kind of vibe as the mainstream economy. I joined crypto because I felt that the existing economy was working against me so you bet I noticed the sudden shift when the crypto economy also started working against me.

DigiDigiorno 3y ago

Every time a crypto article is posted there are a large amount of people who are only capable of thinking in absolutes like you.* I don't think it's a very good currency (in the tx time/volume sense), but I think viewing crypto's viability as an all-or-nothing game is unreasonable--that includes both those for it and those against it. As for your assertions about failures: - CEXs have failed (in the worst way possible too, see MtGox, BTC-e, FTX), but that doesn't mean they have all failed--or that there isn't a future for them. - Hardware wallets haven't failed at all really. Like, Trezor and Ledger are the largest I think, and those are fine AFAIK. Are you referring to Ledger's recent news with the optional update including a backdoor for those that want to sync keys with Ledger's new service? (Seems like a dumb business decision imho, seems oxymoronic--hardware wallet as a service? lol) - Soft wallets have been hacked and are risky, but I think the success rate here is pretty high. A large percent of crypto users use soft wallets like Brave's Wallet and MetaMask, the vast majority of these are fine AFAIK. Not exactly safe IMO, but considering the amount of people who use them and haven't been hacked, this is certainly not an obvious "failure" Also, unrelated to crypto, but reducing people who disagree with you to "kool-aid drinkers" and "accidentally correct people" is a negative life choice IMO * I think you are capable of not thinking in absolutes, I just wanted to be mean on the internet

hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
> * I think you are capable of not thinking in absolutes, I just wanted to be mean on the internet While I disagree with your post, that last frank comment made me smile.
EdwardDiego 3y ago
Maybe they're a Sith. But hey, the dark side is a pathway to abilities many consider... unnatural.
- downvotetruth 3y ago
  Not equal "thinking" and "deal in" are
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Only a Sith thinks in absolutes. Also, Yoda, who made the absolute statement describing Sith. Ergo, Yoda is a Sith Lord. Also, taking philosophy from Hollywood movies is a bad idea. That's entertainment, not ethics, philosophy, or morals. Its overall very shallow in terms of thinking. And I don't think anyone ever thought Star Wars Episode 3 was a thoughtful deep movie. --------- The philosophical discussion of moral relativity vs moral absolutism is hundreds of years old IIRC. Plenty of ethical people believe in absolutes. Plenty of other ethical people prefer moral relativism. I don't think we'd settle the discussion here in any case. Bypassing the absolute vs relativism discussion for a second, it has become abundantly clear that major cryptocoin groups, from Mt. Gox, to FTX, to Voyager, to Celsius, to Binance and more... have stolen funds from their users and otherwise mismanaged money. And not in a "kinda-similar way to banks". I mean completely, and utterly lied about their operations entirely, to a way unfathomable to mainstream finance groups (be it a bank, shareholder, bondholder or more). The cryptocoin world needs to learn how to establish trust in its system. The primary currency of banks isn't money, but trust. (Mostly: trust that your money will come back). Cryptocoiners have failed time-and-time again. ---------- If we think in terms of absolutism, I think we can say that lying and stealing from others is universally wrong. As FTX did to its customers. If we discuss moral relativism, cryptocoins are *relatively* more stealing / less reliable / more cheating than their competitors at Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, and other such financial institutions. SIVB and FRC got all their money back, but we all know someone who lost money at Mt. Gox, Celsius, Voyager, or FTX, right? So its a lose-lose regardless of your personal stance on the matter.

scyclow 3y ago

You're building a straw man argument against the pro-crypto side though. Not everyone there is a crypto0libertarian anrarcho-capitalist. There are a lot of people who are optimistic about the technology who also welcome regulation on the CEX side. I feel like most people in the pro-crypto camp also acknowledge that several of the ancillary components that make up the crypto ecosystem (such as wallet technology) are really problematic from a UX standpoint -- but also that they are fixable. That said, the whole global-reserve currency thing might be les of a straw man, as it correctly describes the views of a lot of Bitcoin maxis (who are delusional IMO). But we're talking about a broad technology with other use cases, and isn't accurate for everyone.

kkielhofner 3y ago
> but also that they are fixable Yet after 14 years they don't seem to ever actually get fixed - from just this week[0]. The fundamentals of crypto - irreversible, be your own bank, no margin of error, medieval castle level security practices/requirements, etc go against fundamental human nature. We forget things. We make mistakes. We're not capable of securing financial resources against an entire internet full of marauding bandits. How many CC charges are disputed daily? How many password resets do you think Bank of America does daily? Answer is: staggering numbers. Post-FTX many "crypto users" (read: have an account on a CEX) actually interacted with blockchain for the first time and transferred crypto to a wallet. Ledger wallet sales exploded. It didn't take long for them to deal with such tremendous incoming of people losing access, forgetting seeds, etc to implement a backup mechanism. It didn't go well[1]. [0] - https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/atomic-wallet-hacks-lead-to-over-35-million-in-crypto-stolen/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/atomic-wallet... [1] - https://decrypt.co/140317/ledger-crypto-wallet-under-fire-over-seed-phrase-recovery-service https://decrypt.co/140317/ledger-crypto-wallet-under-fire-ov...
- scyclow 3y ago
  True, Bitcoin has been around for about 14 years, but we're only a couple years into the current wave of consumer hardware wallets. And from a smart contract standpoint we're still seeing innovative for different ways to control the flow of assets. I don't think that the future of blockchain transactions necessarily needs to involve consumers interacting with the technology on such a low level. It's seems like there's plenty of room to build abstractions on top of it... which I'm sure the purists wouldn't like. But ultimately, I'd give it a few years to see what happens before writing it off.

gemstones 3y ago

I think you might be missing some people in your reasoning, there. (But I agree that your two types of people both exist and are the loudest in the room!) (Some) crypto is a deflationary store. There are not many deflationary stores, and the ones that exist (like precious metals) either require a lot of effort to store and secure, or you hold a claim on some precious metal somewhere and not the thing itself. Lots of people want a deflationary store, especially in a time when inflation looks like a fact of life! Crypto has no inherent value, unlike precious metals. It can (and depending on the crypto, often does) go to zero. That is a risk of the currency. However, if I were to buy a claim on precious metals, I would still have the risk of going to zero (maybe if things really go sideways, no one wants to honor my claim to the metals?) Crypto will not be useful as a currency for everyday transactions, it is useful only as a thing to hold and store, or useful as a part of black-market transactions. I don't want to make any black-market transactions, but I do want something deflationary to hold and store. So the target market for crypto you're missing are people: * Who want a deflationary asset * Who are comfortable with the idea that the actual trading activity attracts a lot of criminals, but don't intend to do anything criminal themselves * Who view the risk of a Bitcoin or Ethereum going to zero about the same as their contacts for gold going to zero in a true financial crisis

marcosdumay 3y ago
Investing in "deflationary assets" is exactly the greater fool theory.
- gemstones 3y ago
  Sounds like a great theory, TBH! Seems like you can make a lot of money that way, not sure why I should view it as a bad thing.
  - vikramkr 3y ago
    Why does it sounds like you can make a lot of money that way? Bring reliant on someone else being willing to pay more on the basis that they'll find someone else later to pay even more doesn't create a stable foundation

nubb 3y ago

congrats on this successful karma farming post

samstave 3y ago

[flagged]

jfghi 3y ago
I prefer those banks over the current crop of initial-named “CEOs”

cultureswitch 3y ago

I agree with you, but I also think the other things we call currency are equally dysfunctional in different ways.

avip 3y ago

What we need less of is dichotomic views on complex issues.

Canada 3y ago

> crypto's usability as a currency is practically 0. I don't read any comments here from anyone who uses it as a currency, and yet I personally do. For me it works really well. I don't buy coffee with it, I swap it for cash for that purpose, but I've paid most larger bills with it for more than 2 years. I had a good initial experience being paid with it years ago. I find it extremely convenient. I prefer it very much now. It is currently my preferred method of accepting payment. I guess I'll just keep using it until it all collapses or whatever.

cde-v 3y ago
Just because you can and do doesn't mean you should.
- Canada 3y ago
  Why not?
oblio 3y ago
> but I've paid most larger bills with it for more than 2 years. Do you have examples? Have you paid rent, your mortgage, your car, for a laptop, etc, with cryptocurrency?
- giobox 3y ago
  > Do you have examples? Have you paid rent, your mortgage, your car, for a laptop, etc, with cryptocurrency? Of course they don't, if they live in a vaguely developed nation. I can't speak to the stories some tell of using it countries where the national currency is unstable, and my apologies to previous commenter if this is legitimately a problem the have, but everywhere else this is easy enough to answer. In somewhere such as the US or Europe, who in their right mind as a landlord or mortgage provider is going to take the volatility risk of accepting crypto as a primary means of settling rent/home payments, when well in excess of 99 percent of customers wouldn't use it anyway? The very few businesses that do accept often do so as a novelty - see the use of dogecoin on some fan stores etc etc. As always, I'm sure there are exceptions that prove the rule, but I can tell you right now my mortgage provider, car dealer and computer vendor would all laugh at me if I even asked.

throwway120385 3y ago

It seems like the people who use it successfully are either in on the scheme and waiting for it to start to fall, or they're using it as a very distributed version of Western Union to transfer money to other people across national borders.

nathias 3y ago

yea, the owner of the current world currency attacking it makes all the more evident right?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

web3-is-a-scam 3y ago

The “true believers” need a greater fool to be their exit liquidity, it’s that simple.

TX81Z 3y ago

There’s a third perspective, largely unspoken: organized crime is a valid use-case for crypto and it will likely remain so. Even if all “legit” CEXs went bust you’d still have a path for cross-boarder transfers of value that can be exchanged on local black markets.

pbarnes_1 3y ago

I work in Web3 and I would say cryptocurrency as a "currency" / speculative asset etc is a failure. However, the underlying technology is legitimately interesting and solves a lot of hard problems (e.g. distributed systems, consensus, clock synchronisation across wide networks, provable ownership of assets, etc, etc). I don't see any value in the coins blockchains operate on except maybe as a means for paying for execution on that network. I do see a tonne of value in say, abstracting something like USDC payments/remittance/etc that runs very cheaply/quickly on (for example) Solana and remove middle men from these equations. I think the market/world will optimize out of the un-interesting parts over time and the use cases that add value to the world will rise to the top.

jongjong 3y ago

Those who have had experience in crypto for a while know why all popular projects turn out to be scams... Whoever has been funding and controlling the industry is literally only allowing scams to succeed. Crypto as we know it is probably a very expensive, elaborate psyop. There was an obvious shift around early 2018 where project founders just stopped caring for no apparent reason. I have this perspective because I was an employee of a major project at the time. I've mostly withdrawn from crypto for now because it has the same kind of 'horse with a carrot dangling from a stick' kind of vibe as the mainstream economy. I joined crypto because I felt that the existing economy was working against me so you bet I noticed the sudden shift when the crypto economy also started working against me.