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Why is crypto still a thing ? I may be dumb but just don't get it.
by codegeek 3y ago
Why is crypto still a thing ? I may be dumb but just don't get it.
- sircastor 3y agoMy wife has a saying "If you want to know why a thing is a thing, the reason is money" Either poor(ish) people trying to get rich, or rich people trying to get richer.
- ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y agoMoney laundering, ransomware, speculation/gambling, purchasing illegal goods and services
- aierou 3y agoCrypto literally cannot be stopped, turned off, banned, or otherwise censored. That is its entire purpose and design. Whether that is good or bad is a different question. (Yes, crypto can be regulated. Of course it can. The point is that it will continue to exist irrespective of regulation.)
- keyringlight 3y agoAs I understand it, the regulation is largely on how it interacts with a country's own currency or banking system, which indicates to me that users need to do this in order to have real-world use. You can have all the virtual currencies you like online and as far as I'm aware no government cares, the taxman isn't looking at your millions of gold in WoW or Eve-online ISK, but they would if it's used the same way crypto currencies have been in their jurisdictions.
- FabHK 3y agoIt can certainly be banned, prohibited, and censored to an extent (current BTC gossip protocol is unencrypted via TCP, if I'm not mistaken), plus the on/off-ramps can be outlawed.
- asadotzler 3y ago"You can't regulate it away" "Of course, you can regulate it away."
- hellojesus 3y agoI coincidentally just came to HN looking for this exact answer following the headlines about BTC soaring. [1] The use cases for it I see are: 1. Cheaply send large payments without having to pay a bank fee (instead you pay btc fees plus conversion to and from fiat fees). 2. Anonymously transfer money if using a washing service (illegal to offer one in the US) or if you spend rawly mined coins. IMO, crypto is a US gov invention that was pushed to speculative theater to give threat actors huge incentive to break sha256/512 publically, as the best use of such tech atm is to steal massive amounts of money. It therefore acts as a canary for when someone finally does figure out how to crack it or easily solve prime factorization. [1] https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/bitcoin-soars-post-etf-launch-highs-net-inflows-explode https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/bitcoin-soars-post-etf-laun...
- lurking15 3y agoweird how you discount the obvious use case espoused by the bitcoin community: an absolutely scarce digital commodity secured through energy itself
- hellojesus 3y agoI have a hard time understanding what the value of that is in its pure form. What is the value of a scare digital commodity in and of itself?
- lurking15 3y agoapparently the value is $47k and counting
- hollerith 3y agoPeople need a way to store money. Sometimes, the government-approved ways of doing that have severe problems. Gold would be worth much less than it actually is if people weren't using it to store money. It is easier to store bitcoin than to store gold. (E.g., bitcoin is easier to hide from thieves than gold is.)
- dazc 3y agoBecause most of it is held by a small number of people who have a vested interest?
- kobalsky 3y agohaving something like zelle on your phone makes it hard to understand. I'd recommend reading "Check Your Financial Privilege".
- stratigos 3y agocontrarianism is a very powerful and often understated force within human culture