4 ms·

That was an "ok" argument maybe 5-8 years ago, now there's too much evidence that no legitimate use case exists, and every alleged one turns out to be a fraud o

That was an "ok" argument maybe 5-8 years ago, now there's too much evidence that no legitimate use case exists, and every alleged one turns out to be a fraud or a get-rich-quick scheme.

yieldcrv 3y ago
everyone goes through a disillusionment phase with crypto from my perspective, there is simply a lack of coverage of things that function without incident, which are very numerous and solve frictions for a lot of people, whether you’re in the market for that or not like construction sites that showed “how many days since an incident”, because people only heard about the incidents
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Where are these mystical things that function because of crypto that wouldn't function with regular money, and which also are not fraud?
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Privacy. Censorship resistance. Monero is a great cryptocurrency.
    - jvanderbot 3y ago
      You can list features all day and not convince me of the existence of applications. Privacy that is obtained by obscuring signatories or blending assets is just laundering.
      - matheusmoreira 3y ago
        That's like saying effective cryptography is destruction of evidence. "Laundering" is a bullshit concept invented to legitimize total surveillance of financial transactions. This KYC/AML stuff is just the financial arm of global mass surveillance. We must resist it vigorously for the exact same reasons we resist warrantless dragnet data collection.
        jvanderbot 3y ago
        I see the misunderstanding: I used "laundering" to describe a method of obscuring a trail of exchanges, not a crime. I can exchange gold, or textiles or something, and not expect surveillance of those transactions. I do live in a country that requires some reporting of those for tax purposes, but not tracking of the assets the way crypto does. The moment I pick up a monetized piece of paper that the government printed with a serial number and all that, which is guaranteed by the full faith of the government, and is standardized by the government in a global financial system, I accept some side effects, such as the government's expectation of tracking and standardization. Similarly, the moment I pick up a crypto currency, I accept all the technical limitations / requirements of complete ledger accessibility, and methods of circumventing that are no more sophisticated than laundering. In effect, with gov-backed money and crypto, you are forced into a system of surveillance. I don't see the privacy angle one bit.
        GoblinSlayer 3y ago
        You clearly did mean crime: >Where are these mystical things that function because of crypto that wouldn't function with regular money, and which also are not fraud?
        jvanderbot 3y ago
        I was asking for examples of applications that are enabled by crypto in the first message that you quote. Next message someone listed features, not example applications. I had two responses: that's not an application, and in addition I somewhat sloppily said that even that feature (privacy) does not exist (because it's just laundering which is defeatable).
    - throwway120385 3y ago
      Is there some scheme past asymmetric cryptography that I'm not aware of? Because one of the fun drawbacks for criminals of having a distributed public ledger has been their immediate connection to all of their transactions once their public key is associated with them.
      - wmf 3y ago
        Yeah, it sounds like you're not aware of various things like ring signatures, SNARKs, STARKs, etc.
        EA-3167 3y ago
        That sounds like it was made for money laundering and making ransoms hard to trace.
        matheusmoreira 3y ago
        Yeah, and cryptography was made for pedophiles and terrorists. Am I right?
        EA-3167 3y ago
        This Motte & Bailey argument using cryptocurrency and cryptography is so old, so stale, and it was never very convincing to start with. A whole field of mathematics doesn't compare to digital pet rocks.
        matheusmoreira 3y ago
        It absolutely does compare. Especially when people start talking about how cryptocurrency was "made for crime". They sound a lot like those tiresome politicians complaining about pedophiles and terrorists "going dark" for the nth time.
        latchkey 3y ago
        Your argument about Madoff is old and stale and definitely not convincing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36227328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36227328
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    > Where are these mystical things that function because of crypto that wouldn't function with <existing other thing> that's not my standard. cater to a market because the market exists. there are many people in the crypto space now and they have frictions and pay to reduce those frictions, and are not defrauded in the process. its just too late to care about your standard. you can search for it if you want, but its at the expense of so many other opportunities that have nothing to do with fraud. its the entertainment sector, its the collectibles sector, its the financial services sector..... and the crux of most arguments and moving goalposts are that all those sectors in aggregate are worth zero when crypto is involved (or that crypto is worth zero because you're not the market for any of those sectors? lol? its a paradoxical antiquated argument) when the only trend is that crypto-versions just begin catering to even more sectors and pulling in those audiences, or crypto-natives begin being interested in those sectors.
  - tbrownaw 3y ago
    > function because of crypto that wouldn't function with regular money, and which also are not fraud? More things then just fraud are illegal.
  - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
    Pseudonymous accounts don't work with fiat digital money and also aren't fraud.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
barking_biscuit 3y ago
I'm with you on this one. It was a solid argument in 2017, but even by 2018 the writing was on the wall for crypto. John Oliver recently did another segment on crypto and he absolutely nailed it in saying that the only real currency in crypto is confidence, and that tends to attract a certain kind of individual, namely scammers/fraudsters.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
htss2013 3y ago
BTC has been around since 2008. Today in 2023 BTC is like $27k. Does the longevity, ubiquity, price and liquidity of BTC fit the pattern of a useless get rich quick scheme? Has any such scheme existed this long, despite so much scrutiny and hostility, based on hype and confidence alone? If no useless speculation scheme has ever thrived as long and as much as BTC, and it keeps on going, at what point do you have to ask if your opinion just doesn't fit with reality? The shady exchanges and shitcoins muddy the waters but have fundamentally nothing to do with BTC and a handful of other top cryptos.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  > BTC has been around since 2008. Today in 2023 BTC is like $27k. Does the longevity, ubiquity, price and liquidity of BTC fit the pattern of a useless get rich quick scheme? Has any such scheme existed this long, despite so much scrutiny and hostility, based on hype and confidence alone? Yes, Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme famously ran for decades, with everyone invested calling doubters idiots and pessimists. Until it all fell apart.
  - ascagnel_ 3y ago
    > Yes, Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme famously ran for decades, with everyone invested calling doubters idiots and pessimists. As an aside, I can think of exactly one person who benefitted from Madoff's scheme: former New York Met Bobby Bonilla, who is set to receive about USD$1.2MM from the team every July 1 through 2035. Bonilla's contract was bought out by the Mets in 2000, and instead of paying him the USD$5.9MM he was owed, the team offered a deferred payment scheme (with payments starting in 2011), as they were looking at double-digit returns from their Madoff investments in the deferred decade.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    This is a common straw man argument. Madoff was a single individual controlling the narrative. Bitcoin has no central actor. The same problem existed with FTX/SBF. But when they went down, it wasn't like Bitcoin died with them.

That was an "ok" argument maybe 5-8 years ago, now there's too much evidence that no legitimate use case exists, and every alleged one turns out to be a fraud or a get-rich-quick scheme.

yieldcrv 3y ago

everyone goes through a disillusionment phase with crypto from my perspective, there is simply a lack of coverage of things that function without incident, which are very numerous and solve frictions for a lot of people, whether you’re in the market for that or not like construction sites that showed “how many days since an incident”, because people only heard about the incidents

jvanderbot 3y ago
Where are these mystical things that function because of crypto that wouldn't function with regular money, and which also are not fraud?
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Privacy. Censorship resistance. Monero is a great cryptocurrency.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    You can list features all day and not convince me of the existence of applications. Privacy that is obtained by obscuring signatories or blending assets is just laundering.
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      That's like saying effective cryptography is destruction of evidence. "Laundering" is a bullshit concept invented to legitimize total surveillance of financial transactions. This KYC/AML stuff is just the financial arm of global mass surveillance. We must resist it vigorously for the exact same reasons we resist warrantless dragnet data collection.
      - jvanderbot 3y ago
        I see the misunderstanding: I used "laundering" to describe a method of obscuring a trail of exchanges, not a crime. I can exchange gold, or textiles or something, and not expect surveillance of those transactions. I do live in a country that requires some reporting of those for tax purposes, but not tracking of the assets the way crypto does. The moment I pick up a monetized piece of paper that the government printed with a serial number and all that, which is guaranteed by the full faith of the government, and is standardized by the government in a global financial system, I accept some side effects, such as the government's expectation of tracking and standardization. Similarly, the moment I pick up a crypto currency, I accept all the technical limitations / requirements of complete ledger accessibility, and methods of circumventing that are no more sophisticated than laundering. In effect, with gov-backed money and crypto, you are forced into a system of surveillance. I don't see the privacy angle one bit.
        GoblinSlayer 3y ago
        You clearly did mean crime: >Where are these mystical things that function because of crypto that wouldn't function with regular money, and which also are not fraud?
        jvanderbot 3y ago
        I was asking for examples of applications that are enabled by crypto in the first message that you quote. Next message someone listed features, not example applications. I had two responses: that's not an application, and in addition I somewhat sloppily said that even that feature (privacy) does not exist (because it's just laundering which is defeatable).
  - throwway120385 3y ago
    Is there some scheme past asymmetric cryptography that I'm not aware of? Because one of the fun drawbacks for criminals of having a distributed public ledger has been their immediate connection to all of their transactions once their public key is associated with them.
    - wmf 3y ago
      Yeah, it sounds like you're not aware of various things like ring signatures, SNARKs, STARKs, etc.
      - EA-3167 3y ago
        That sounds like it was made for money laundering and making ransoms hard to trace.
        matheusmoreira 3y ago
        Yeah, and cryptography was made for pedophiles and terrorists. Am I right?
        EA-3167 3y ago
        This Motte & Bailey argument using cryptocurrency and cryptography is so old, so stale, and it was never very convincing to start with. A whole field of mathematics doesn't compare to digital pet rocks.
        matheusmoreira 3y ago
        It absolutely does compare. Especially when people start talking about how cryptocurrency was "made for crime". They sound a lot like those tiresome politicians complaining about pedophiles and terrorists "going dark" for the nth time.
        latchkey 3y ago
        Your argument about Madoff is old and stale and definitely not convincing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36227328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36227328
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  > Where are these mystical things that function because of crypto that wouldn't function with <existing other thing> that's not my standard. cater to a market because the market exists. there are many people in the crypto space now and they have frictions and pay to reduce those frictions, and are not defrauded in the process. its just too late to care about your standard. you can search for it if you want, but its at the expense of so many other opportunities that have nothing to do with fraud. its the entertainment sector, its the collectibles sector, its the financial services sector..... and the crux of most arguments and moving goalposts are that all those sectors in aggregate are worth zero when crypto is involved (or that crypto is worth zero because you're not the market for any of those sectors? lol? its a paradoxical antiquated argument) when the only trend is that crypto-versions just begin catering to even more sectors and pulling in those audiences, or crypto-natives begin being interested in those sectors.
- tbrownaw 3y ago
  > function because of crypto that wouldn't function with regular money, and which also are not fraud? More things then just fraud are illegal.
- GoblinSlayer 3y ago
  Pseudonymous accounts don't work with fiat digital money and also aren't fraud.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

barking_biscuit 3y ago

I'm with you on this one. It was a solid argument in 2017, but even by 2018 the writing was on the wall for crypto. John Oliver recently did another segment on crypto and he absolutely nailed it in saying that the only real currency in crypto is confidence, and that tends to attract a certain kind of individual, namely scammers/fraudsters.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

htss2013 3y ago

BTC has been around since 2008. Today in 2023 BTC is like $27k. Does the longevity, ubiquity, price and liquidity of BTC fit the pattern of a useless get rich quick scheme? Has any such scheme existed this long, despite so much scrutiny and hostility, based on hype and confidence alone? If no useless speculation scheme has ever thrived as long and as much as BTC, and it keeps on going, at what point do you have to ask if your opinion just doesn't fit with reality? The shady exchanges and shitcoins muddy the waters but have fundamentally nothing to do with BTC and a handful of other top cryptos.

EA-3167 3y ago
> BTC has been around since 2008. Today in 2023 BTC is like $27k. Does the longevity, ubiquity, price and liquidity of BTC fit the pattern of a useless get rich quick scheme? Has any such scheme existed this long, despite so much scrutiny and hostility, based on hype and confidence alone? Yes, Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme famously ran for decades, with everyone invested calling doubters idiots and pessimists. Until it all fell apart.
- ascagnel_ 3y ago
  > Yes, Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme famously ran for decades, with everyone invested calling doubters idiots and pessimists. As an aside, I can think of exactly one person who benefitted from Madoff's scheme: former New York Met Bobby Bonilla, who is set to receive about USD$1.2MM from the team every July 1 through 2035. Bonilla's contract was bought out by the Mets in 2000, and instead of paying him the USD$5.9MM he was owed, the team offered a deferred payment scheme (with payments starting in 2011), as they were looking at double-digit returns from their Madoff investments in the deferred decade.
- latchkey 3y ago
  This is a common straw man argument. Madoff was a single individual controlling the narrative. Bitcoin has no central actor. The same problem existed with FTX/SBF. But when they went down, it wasn't like Bitcoin died with them.