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Crypto's fate is bound be like those alternative Reddits and Twitters. What kind of users an alternative Reddit attracts? 1. People who don't like Reddit beca
by raincole 3y ago
Crypto's fate is bound be like those alternative Reddits and Twitters.
What kind of users an alternative Reddit attracts?
1. People who don't like Reddit because of privacy concerns or other ideological reasons.
2. People who are banned by Reddit.
It turns out group 2 is much larger than group 1 and the community rots.
Now what kind of people who cryptos (a.k.a. alternative money) attract?
1. People who don't like banks or the government's monetary policy, and ideologically believe they have to own their own wallets.
2. People who literally cannot safely use normal money, from non-conventional porn artists to scammers and drug dealers.
It turns out group 2 is bigger than group 1 and you know the rest of story.
- cft 3y agoCrypto has a viable micropayments for content story, see e.g. https://stacker.news https://stacker.news . An upvote costs a minimum of 1 Satoshi (currently about 0.025¢)
- imtringued 3y ago>This is a special guide, for all those bitcoiners looking to escape from tyranny and go to El Salvador. I guess my definition of tyranny is different...
- dporter 3y agoImagine paying to upvote content as a consumer. I can see this being popular with brands that are already paying for engagement, but that’s just going to result in the same media landscape we’re already in.
- mrguyorama 3y agoCrypto boosters need to transactionalize absolutely everything and anything because every transaction, by design, incurs a tax to the miner/validator/magic oracle machine owner. Since you become that person by buying lots of physical hardware with real money, or buying lots of <token> with real money, it by design is someone who already has a lot. Crypto is people who see the tax that credit card networks are on all transactions, but their problem with it isn't that it's wealth redistribution from those with bad credit to those with good credit, but rather that they aren't the ones collecting the tax.
- lolinder 3y agoThat pretty much falls in the same category as #1—content micropayments are a niche use case that primarily interests people who are ideologically opposed to advertising. I count myself in that group, but it's not a large enough group to drive an entire currency. Illegal activity is.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- FabHK 3y agoMicropayments have been around since the 90’s, and never taken off. At any rate, a centralised version would likely be cheaper, more efficient, easier to use, with more functionality and better customer service.
- _5uxp 3y agoYou mean like Paypal etc and how they can just ban you and take your money? + Many countries can't access to "centralised version" by default. Imagine internet being country restricted and centralized so they can just choose which country/people can access it. That would be horrible
- ericd 3y agoI don’t know if a centralized payment service that’s usable for that and trustworthy, do you? Most of the services that I know of charge a fixed fee that’s ~7x higher than that, in addition to ~3%.
- drumttocs8 3y agoHow are you measuring which group is bigger?
- qzx_pierri 3y agoThere is no measurement. They’re talking out of their ass.
- sojournerc 3y agoEver heard of voat?
- Eisenstein 3y agoVoat ain't no measurement I ever heard of.
- EscapeFromNY 3y agoSay voat again, I dare you
- nroets 3y agoCrypto is used to circumvent capital controls: In other words to create a free market in foreign exchange for countries that ban it. Crypto is also used to evade taxes. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's not as bad as dealing drugs or scamming people.
- siwatanejo 3y ago> Crypto is also used to evade taxes. You know what, this narrative is funny, because 99.999% of the time in which "crypto" is used to evade taxes, it's the kind of taxes that would need to be paid because of capital gains on the crypto assets because their value increased. But most of the time, they are unrealized gains, which means that tax evasion didn't actually happen. But anyway, let's now think of the cases where the person sold the crypto back to fiat: how easy is to evade taxes at that moment? Not very, because most exchanges report trades to authorities. And anyway, the fact that their crypto balance increased is due ultimately to politicians doing QE! So they tax us in a hidden-way via money-printing, and after the scarce assets increase in value because of this, they want to tax us again.
- nroets 3y agoI've never owned any crypto. I'm changing my tax residence for legitimate reasons. (Hardest thing I've done in my life!) But I suppose some crypto owners are changing their tax residence without declaring their crypto i.e. no deemed disposal and exit tax.
- kahnclusions 3y agoThe big problem comes when they want to use their crypto horde to buy real world stuff. Want to buy a house? Now you need to convert your crypto into fiat and a deed transfer. People will start asking where your funds are coming from. This is where you tend to get caught.
- ethbr0 3y ago> People will start asking where your funds are coming from. This is a weird statement. If it's a cash offer, it's a seller's job to determine if you have the money, not if you paid taxes on it. If it's a mortgage down payment, then the bank is more interested in if your assets are going to disappear (e.g. are they actually a loan from a third party?). I've never had a mortgage bank inquire about my tax situation. If you're talking about IRS audits... then yes, they might be curious how you purchased a giant asset without any declared income. But that's similar to any unreported income situation.
- anoy8888 3y agoOutside the US , crypto is mainly used by criminals. It is the currency of drug dealers here in Southeast Asia like myanmar , Thai etc
- a2800276 3y agoNot just outside the US.
- Gazoche 3y agoThere's also group 3: people who don't give a damn about crypto's actual use cases but see the line go up and think they can make a quick buck by buying at the right time. I'd wager that group 3 is much larger than groups 1 and 2.
- jwestbury 3y agoYes, crypto is basically FOREX or precious metals to most people who buy and sell crypto -- a chance to make some money, nothing more.
- sieabahlpark 3y ago[dead]
- TeMPOraL 3y agoWhich is why crypto stuff goes down with a huge bang, while alternative Reddits decay and die in obscurity - in crypto case, group 3 is funding the new shitty crypto "products", while in alt Reddit case, group 3 is funding Reddit itself. (Yes, I'm considering VCs to be part of group 3.)
- 0xedd 3y agoThe banking industry makes 25 times more profit than all other industries around the world combined. It has no competition and abuses this fact. Isn't it interesting how little awareness this issue has?
- bunabhucan 3y ago[Citation Needed] Banking and financial services is about 1/4 of world GDP and insurance is about 1/12th of world GDP. Anything making 25x "than all other industries around the world combined" would be ~96% of the economy.
- FabHK 3y agoYes, GP might have misremembered 25%. To be clear: that is still way too high in my view. (That credit cards in less regulated economies like the US charge more than 2% is obscene.) However, the badly needed disruption will come (hopefully) from good old (centralised) FinTech (such as Wise), not from the crypto bros.
- tsimionescu 3y agoAn industry, by definition, can't have competition. The soft drinks industry also has no competition - if you want soft drinks, you have to buy from them. Competition happens inside an industry. And there is fierce competition between banks, much more so than in many other modern industries (e.g. there is much more competition than in tech).
- imtringued 3y agoAs someone who is interested in banking innovations, there is hardly any real competition worth its name. Just more and more consolidation into bigger banks.
- senttoschool 3y ago>The banking industry makes 25 times more profit than all other industries around the world combined. And that's why Apple is worth 6x more than JP Morgan Chase?
- drumhead 3y agoPossibly another group in the future, people trying to evade government control from a CBDC.
- WJW 3y agoHow is that group different than group 1, "People who don't like banks or the government's monetary policy, and ideologically believe they have to own their own wallets."?
- a2800276 3y agoIt's different because it also include the drug dealers from group 2 who need to evade government control and uses the fancy acronym CBDC.