6 ms·

Tell me again about how crypto is not a scam?

rabbits_2002 3y ago
Thats the fun part, it is!
AnonCoward42 3y ago
Crypto (currencies) are not a scam. These are currencies and like any other currency are subject to devaluation and abolition.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  Funny thing about crypto enthusiasts is that they'll claim cryptocurrencies are currencies when it's convenient then claim they are "assets" or "a store of value" when it's not.
  - AnonCoward42 3y ago
    Obvious strawman.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    > they'll claim cryptocurrencies are currencies when it's convenient then claim they are "assets" or "a store of value" when it's not. It's been a while since I took an econ class, but aren't all currencies, by definition, assets / stores of value? Edit: Oh, you mean they're only assets but don't meet other criteria to be currencies?
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      Yeah, your edit. It's a common refrain among Bitcoiners when faced with the deficiencies of their scambucks.
      - AnonCoward42 3y ago
        How is Bitcoin a scam for you. Tell me.
        mvdtnz 3y ago
        I didn't say Bitcoin is a scam. It's almost exclusively used for scams and other crimes, though.
        AnonCoward42 3y ago
        You said "Bitcoiners" and "their scambucks" in one sentence. Before eCommerce took off the internet was almost exclusively used for scams and arguably that is still the case even if not exclusively it's still a big part, so we should declare the internet a scam I suppose. Disclaimer: I am not even heavily invested (in any sense). It's just a means to pay for stuff for me.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > aren't all currencies, by definition, assets / stores of value? Yes and no. Modern currencies separate the medium of exchange and unit of account functions, on one hand, from the store of value and standard of deferred payment functions, on the other hand. Paper and deposit dollars are the former, Treasuries are the latter. Someone complaining about inflation eroding their cash under a mattress's value is literally using their dollars wrong.
  - injeolmi_love 3y ago
    There’s over 1.8 million crypto tokens. You can find one for any concept that’s been thought up.
- creatonez 3y ago
  They are very unlike other currencies, in that almost all of them are rigged for a period of rapid hype-based growth followed by a deflationary apocalypse where late adopters are squeezed out by those who perpetuated the ponzi scheme (which is to say, nearly the entire community aside from Satoshi and maybe Vitalik Buterin -- who are probably good people, but hold silly beliefs)
  - AnonCoward42 3y ago
    > They are very unlike other currencies, in that almost all of them are rigged [...] So you're actually agreeing with me, that crypto currencies are not a scam. The number of currencies is also irrelevant even in a more colloquial sense. What's more important is how much is really invested in a given currency and the bad tokens are a niche. Ponzi scheme (or just new) coins are usually for gamblers and not in broad use and are comparable to jettons in a casino. Are jettons a scam in that sense?
    - creatonez 3y ago
      We should be alarmed about any money system that has the properties that give way to gambling and ponzi-like systems. I would not hesitate to criticize both the money system and the con artists who took advantage of it, when it's so clear that the money system's rules have such inevitable outcomes. I don't mind abolishing any of the money systems that turn out to be harmful and are pushed without broad sociopolitical consent.
      - AnonCoward42 3y ago
        Our current money system has the properties that give way to gambling. You can't pretend that gambling didn't exist before crypto.
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        Very few people are swapping yen and euros trying to get rich from them. The standard gambling that happens with "our current money system" can also happen with self-written IOUs. This kind of gambling isn't about the money, per se, whereas with crypto you get an additional kind of gambling on the currency itself.
dewey 3y ago
Searching HN for "insider trading", around 80% of the stories are about insider trading happening on Wall Street.
- deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Insider trading is when an insider knows the true price better than you do and takes advantage of that by making buys/sells on the market without disclosing the insider information. ------ What happened here is a rugpull. Not insider trading. The coin was collapsing, but plenty of people figured out how to make money even in the collapse. Rugpulls don't really happen in the regulated market. But they are a dime a dozen on cryptocoins.
  - dewey 3y ago
    > Analysis suggests at least three Reddit moderators dumped thousands of dollars worth of Moons just minutes before the actual announcement Sounds like they had...insider information?
- Tao3300 3y ago
  Tell me again about how crypto is not a scam?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Searching HN for "insider trading", around 80% of the stories are about insider trading happening on Wall Street Because most insider trading is trivial to catch. An insider trader has to act ex ante. That's difficult on multiple levels: acquisition of the information, predicting its effect and executing the trades all while evading capture. Detection, on the other hand, is ex post facto: find unusually profitable trades after the information has occurred. That's what the SEC does. To the extent insider traders aren't caught, it's because they failed to turn a profit. Look at the people being caught insider trading; they're rarely professionals. Because professionals know how hard it is relative to the gains. Instead, it's mostly numpties who heard about an acquisition from their spouse or whatever. With crypto, we have the tape. But linking the wallets to the numpties is hard. (Also fewer people care about the victims, let's be honest.) Imagine if this chain had real names attached to it. We'd have a predictable list of offenders to prosecute.
fturst 3y ago
The Internet contains a lot of scams. Does that make the WWW, a scam? No. Same thing.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  The internet also contains countless legit websites & services and offers many ways to use it productively. I think if blockchain projects offered a comparable value, people would have better ways to defend it than assuring everyone it's definitely not all a scam.
  - smolder 3y ago
    I have seen good, dispassionate defenses of blockchain tech pop up in the comments here, but this argument has played out many times and it probably wears on people. Anyway, Namecoin seemed like a pretty nice use case, even if it didn't take off. Smart contracts seem like a good idea to me. Behind all the hype and idiotic money chasing behavior and criminality there are some niche but proven-useful technical innovations. And despite people throwing blockchain-everything at the wall to see what sticks for some time, there's still plenty of opportunity for new applications to emerge.
  - hansvm 3y ago
    It's not the worst medium of exchange when the credit card oligopoly doesn't want PR risk or is a bit puritanical with an otherwise legitimate, legal, popular good or service. You (or some government) could probably build better or just legislate the equivalent of net neutrality on our payment processors, but we don't live in that world yet.
yanderekko 3y ago
Demand for an asset fell so its price dropped. Nothing scammy about this.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  I'm not sure if you're intentionally trying to miss the point - the scam is that people who knew that demand for the asset was about to crater - because they were about to crater it, by shutting it down, extracted their investment knowing that others would not be able to.
  - yanderekko 3y ago
    The reddit moderators who cashed out were not the ones who were shutting down the service. They simply had insider information that allowed them to move first with this information. This was not a rugpull scenario.

rabbits_2002 3y ago

Thats the fun part, it is!

Crypto (currencies) are not a scam. These are currencies and like any other currency are subject to devaluation and abolition.

mvdtnz 3y ago
Funny thing about crypto enthusiasts is that they'll claim cryptocurrencies are currencies when it's convenient then claim they are "assets" or "a store of value" when it's not.
- AnonCoward42 3y ago
  Obvious strawman.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > they'll claim cryptocurrencies are currencies when it's convenient then claim they are "assets" or "a store of value" when it's not. It's been a while since I took an econ class, but aren't all currencies, by definition, assets / stores of value? Edit: Oh, you mean they're only assets but don't meet other criteria to be currencies?
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    Yeah, your edit. It's a common refrain among Bitcoiners when faced with the deficiencies of their scambucks.
    - AnonCoward42 3y ago
      How is Bitcoin a scam for you. Tell me.
      - mvdtnz 3y ago
        I didn't say Bitcoin is a scam. It's almost exclusively used for scams and other crimes, though.
        AnonCoward42 3y ago
        You said "Bitcoiners" and "their scambucks" in one sentence. Before eCommerce took off the internet was almost exclusively used for scams and arguably that is still the case even if not exclusively it's still a big part, so we should declare the internet a scam I suppose. Disclaimer: I am not even heavily invested (in any sense). It's just a means to pay for stuff for me.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > aren't all currencies, by definition, assets / stores of value? Yes and no. Modern currencies separate the medium of exchange and unit of account functions, on one hand, from the store of value and standard of deferred payment functions, on the other hand. Paper and deposit dollars are the former, Treasuries are the latter. Someone complaining about inflation eroding their cash under a mattress's value is literally using their dollars wrong.
- injeolmi_love 3y ago
  There’s over 1.8 million crypto tokens. You can find one for any concept that’s been thought up.
creatonez 3y ago
They are very unlike other currencies, in that almost all of them are rigged for a period of rapid hype-based growth followed by a deflationary apocalypse where late adopters are squeezed out by those who perpetuated the ponzi scheme (which is to say, nearly the entire community aside from Satoshi and maybe Vitalik Buterin -- who are probably good people, but hold silly beliefs)
- AnonCoward42 3y ago
  > They are very unlike other currencies, in that almost all of them are rigged [...] So you're actually agreeing with me, that crypto currencies are not a scam. The number of currencies is also irrelevant even in a more colloquial sense. What's more important is how much is really invested in a given currency and the bad tokens are a niche. Ponzi scheme (or just new) coins are usually for gamblers and not in broad use and are comparable to jettons in a casino. Are jettons a scam in that sense?
  - creatonez 3y ago
    We should be alarmed about any money system that has the properties that give way to gambling and ponzi-like systems. I would not hesitate to criticize both the money system and the con artists who took advantage of it, when it's so clear that the money system's rules have such inevitable outcomes. I don't mind abolishing any of the money systems that turn out to be harmful and are pushed without broad sociopolitical consent.
    - AnonCoward42 3y ago
      Our current money system has the properties that give way to gambling. You can't pretend that gambling didn't exist before crypto.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        Very few people are swapping yen and euros trying to get rich from them. The standard gambling that happens with "our current money system" can also happen with self-written IOUs. This kind of gambling isn't about the money, per se, whereas with crypto you get an additional kind of gambling on the currency itself.

dewey 3y ago

Searching HN for "insider trading", around 80% of the stories are about insider trading happening on Wall Street.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dragontamer 3y ago
Insider trading is when an insider knows the true price better than you do and takes advantage of that by making buys/sells on the market without disclosing the insider information. ------ What happened here is a rugpull. Not insider trading. The coin was collapsing, but plenty of people figured out how to make money even in the collapse. Rugpulls don't really happen in the regulated market. But they are a dime a dozen on cryptocoins.
- dewey 3y ago
  > Analysis suggests at least three Reddit moderators dumped thousands of dollars worth of Moons just minutes before the actual announcement Sounds like they had...insider information?
Tao3300 3y ago
Tell me again about how crypto is not a scam?
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Searching HN for "insider trading", around 80% of the stories are about insider trading happening on Wall Street Because most insider trading is trivial to catch. An insider trader has to act ex ante. That's difficult on multiple levels: acquisition of the information, predicting its effect and executing the trades all while evading capture. Detection, on the other hand, is ex post facto: find unusually profitable trades after the information has occurred. That's what the SEC does. To the extent insider traders aren't caught, it's because they failed to turn a profit. Look at the people being caught insider trading; they're rarely professionals. Because professionals know how hard it is relative to the gains. Instead, it's mostly numpties who heard about an acquisition from their spouse or whatever. With crypto, we have the tape. But linking the wallets to the numpties is hard. (Also fewer people care about the victims, let's be honest.) Imagine if this chain had real names attached to it. We'd have a predictable list of offenders to prosecute.

fturst 3y ago

The Internet contains a lot of scams. Does that make the WWW, a scam? No. Same thing.

alpaca128 3y ago
The internet also contains countless legit websites & services and offers many ways to use it productively. I think if blockchain projects offered a comparable value, people would have better ways to defend it than assuring everyone it's definitely not all a scam.
- smolder 3y ago
  I have seen good, dispassionate defenses of blockchain tech pop up in the comments here, but this argument has played out many times and it probably wears on people. Anyway, Namecoin seemed like a pretty nice use case, even if it didn't take off. Smart contracts seem like a good idea to me. Behind all the hype and idiotic money chasing behavior and criminality there are some niche but proven-useful technical innovations. And despite people throwing blockchain-everything at the wall to see what sticks for some time, there's still plenty of opportunity for new applications to emerge.
- hansvm 3y ago
  It's not the worst medium of exchange when the credit card oligopoly doesn't want PR risk or is a bit puritanical with an otherwise legitimate, legal, popular good or service. You (or some government) could probably build better or just legislate the equivalent of net neutrality on our payment processors, but we don't live in that world yet.

yanderekko 3y ago

Demand for an asset fell so its price dropped. Nothing scammy about this.

FireBeyond 3y ago
I'm not sure if you're intentionally trying to miss the point - the scam is that people who knew that demand for the asset was about to crater - because they were about to crater it, by shutting it down, extracted their investment knowing that others would not be able to.
- yanderekko 3y ago
  The reddit moderators who cashed out were not the ones who were shutting down the service. They simply had insider information that allowed them to move first with this information. This was not a rugpull scenario.