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Perhaps previous exit scams in the crypto space dulled your senses? If anything, I feel like you should share your story to protect others, especially during t

Perhaps previous exit scams in the crypto space dulled your senses? If anything, I feel like you should share your story to protect others, especially during times when crypto is peaking (like now) and others are tempted to jump in: use exchanges to buy/sell and get out, store your keys on a cold storage device, and transfer out fiat ASAP.

CivBase 3y ago
Surely the better takeaway is to just not bet on crypto in general? It's supposed to act like a currency, not a stock. So long as people keep feeding into these pump-and-dump schemes they'll keep happening. Money doesn't come from nowhere. For every dollar you make on crypto, somone loses a dollar. All these BS coins do is shuffle wealth from the unlucky gamblers to the lucky ones. Go spend your money at a casino instead.
- fragmede 3y ago
  > For every dollar you make on crypto, somone loses a dollar. If that's not true of the stock market, why would that be true of crypto?
  - CivBase 3y ago
    This is oversimplifying, but stocks are essentially purchasing a stake in ownership of the company. The company uses that money to advance its mission - ideally generating more profits which are shared with the stockholders (dividends). It's that stake in ownership and expected dividends that give stocks inherent value. There is no company behind crypto currencies that holders get ownership of. There is no product or service to drive profits. There are no dividends, voting power, or anything that gives inherent value to the coins. It's all pure speculation. Just money getting shifted around among the holders - with exchanges taking a cut off the top of each transaction.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      I'm sorry, but what am going to do with my Class C shares of Google which have no voting rights? They also haven't paid dividends. My buying of them didn't give Google any money, either. My infinitesimal ownership in Google doesn't get anything other than it's a number in a database somewhere that hopefully goes up. There's underlying assets there, sure, but as we've seen with GME, TSLA, and now NVDA, it's all just vibes. In this case though, FTX had their own token FTT that gave people that owned it voting rights in FTX and "staking rewards" aka dividends. It's not worth anything today due to the fraud that SBF perpetrated, but that sure smells a awful lot like a stock to me.
      - hgomersall 3y ago
        Right. There seems to be a real aversion to accepting that trading shares is really just middle class gambling.
        methodical 3y ago
        Stocks are not completely nondeterministic games of chance, which is why most people who hold properly diversified stock portfolios have seen long-term growth instead of loss. That's probably why people don't call it gambling.
        Zpalmtree 3y ago
        Crypto is not a completely nondeterministic game of chance either. There are people in crypto who are consistently profitable.
        methodical 3y ago
        Who in crypto is consistently profitable?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        3y ago
  - skaag 3y ago
    Publicly traded companies make money by creating value and selling products or services. At least, the good companies that actually sell something (you'll find a bunch of them don't do crap or are just outright scams). Take Apple or Coca Cola for example: They have well established lines of products and lines of business. You know people will keep buying iPhones and MacBooks and AirPods and whatever else Apple makes. You know people will keep buying Coca Cola drinks forever and ever. The popular blockchains do not create any intrinsic value (Looking at Bitcoin and Ethereum). They are heavy and cumbersome and can't handle planetary scale. Some blockchain solutions promise secure, fee-less transfers (for example IOTA and NANO). In my opinion, those blockchains at least partially implement the true promise of Crypto that, if successful, would be able to replace the existing financial system which is extremely wasteful. Just think about how much money it costs to implement FIAT: You have to print it, which is very expensive (both notes and coins). You then have to move it around using heavy armored vehicles. You have to secure it in extremely expensive vaults. You then need to keep securing it across the entire vertical: Every business that takes cash has to deal with theft, securing the cash, fake notes, etc. Even credit cards are very expensive to maintain. Cards have to be printed & mailed out all the time. It's all plastic, and it all ends up in landfills. The inks are toxic, as are the metals in the chips. The equipment required to process cards is expensive, breaks and needs to be replaced, is annoying, slow, ridden with fraud and theft and chargebacks and a host of other issues. I implemented EMV and 3D-Secure for card processing, a few years ago. I also implemented cash processing equipment. It ALL sucks. You have no idea how Crypto is a breath of fresh air compared to those crappy standards and mechanisms that take an insane amount of time and money and bureaucracy to implement and maintain. A really good blockchain that does secure, fee-less transactions in less than a second and can handle planetary scale, now that is the holy grail! You don't need equipment, you already have a phone. The merchants get their money instantly, and they are done, that's it. They have their money. Done. They need to pay their vendors? They pay them, done! They could even instantly pay their vendors at the moment of sale. Can you imagine how revolutionary that is? how this completely changes the game for commerce? The entire crypto world has been held back by greedy assholes, tens of thousands of scammers (how many ICOs and rug pulls have screwed countless users?!), governments, government bodies and banks, and unregulated companies that behave irresponsibly with customer funds (for example FTX and BlockFi). Leadership that lacks vision and initiative (Any 1st world country that accepts crypto and leads with it, would make its citizens rich, by definition, on a planetary scale).
- skaag 3y ago
  Except greed...
- Zpalmtree 3y ago
  Crypto is one of the only markets where someone with virtually zero investment can become very rich. It's not easy, but smart traders can make a lot of money. You are not doing that at the casino.
  - CivBase 3y ago
    Same can be said about the lottery. I don't recommend that as an investment either.
- immibis 3y ago
  Crypto is supposed to act like a stock. Very few people actually want decentralized digital dollars. Compared to the number of people who want decentralized digital get rich quick schemes.
forgotmyinfo 3y ago
If it isn't obvious already that cryptocurrency is one giant grift, then I don't know how many more stories are going to help. The SEC or Congress or someone with power needs to just make it illegal, or else this kind of thing will keep happening. It happened before we got our shit together in the early 20th century, but we collectively realized markets were actively doing shady things, and then we legislated to fix things. Will we do it again?

CivBase 3y ago

Surely the better takeaway is to just not bet on crypto in general? It's supposed to act like a currency, not a stock. So long as people keep feeding into these pump-and-dump schemes they'll keep happening. Money doesn't come from nowhere. For every dollar you make on crypto, somone loses a dollar. All these BS coins do is shuffle wealth from the unlucky gamblers to the lucky ones. Go spend your money at a casino instead.

fragmede 3y ago
> For every dollar you make on crypto, somone loses a dollar. If that's not true of the stock market, why would that be true of crypto?
- CivBase 3y ago
  This is oversimplifying, but stocks are essentially purchasing a stake in ownership of the company. The company uses that money to advance its mission - ideally generating more profits which are shared with the stockholders (dividends). It's that stake in ownership and expected dividends that give stocks inherent value. There is no company behind crypto currencies that holders get ownership of. There is no product or service to drive profits. There are no dividends, voting power, or anything that gives inherent value to the coins. It's all pure speculation. Just money getting shifted around among the holders - with exchanges taking a cut off the top of each transaction.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    I'm sorry, but what am going to do with my Class C shares of Google which have no voting rights? They also haven't paid dividends. My buying of them didn't give Google any money, either. My infinitesimal ownership in Google doesn't get anything other than it's a number in a database somewhere that hopefully goes up. There's underlying assets there, sure, but as we've seen with GME, TSLA, and now NVDA, it's all just vibes. In this case though, FTX had their own token FTT that gave people that owned it voting rights in FTX and "staking rewards" aka dividends. It's not worth anything today due to the fraud that SBF perpetrated, but that sure smells a awful lot like a stock to me.
    - hgomersall 3y ago
      Right. There seems to be a real aversion to accepting that trading shares is really just middle class gambling.
      - methodical 3y ago
        Stocks are not completely nondeterministic games of chance, which is why most people who hold properly diversified stock portfolios have seen long-term growth instead of loss. That's probably why people don't call it gambling.
        Zpalmtree 3y ago
        Crypto is not a completely nondeterministic game of chance either. There are people in crypto who are consistently profitable.
        methodical 3y ago
        Who in crypto is consistently profitable?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        3y ago
- skaag 3y ago
  Publicly traded companies make money by creating value and selling products or services. At least, the good companies that actually sell something (you'll find a bunch of them don't do crap or are just outright scams). Take Apple or Coca Cola for example: They have well established lines of products and lines of business. You know people will keep buying iPhones and MacBooks and AirPods and whatever else Apple makes. You know people will keep buying Coca Cola drinks forever and ever. The popular blockchains do not create any intrinsic value (Looking at Bitcoin and Ethereum). They are heavy and cumbersome and can't handle planetary scale. Some blockchain solutions promise secure, fee-less transfers (for example IOTA and NANO). In my opinion, those blockchains at least partially implement the true promise of Crypto that, if successful, would be able to replace the existing financial system which is extremely wasteful. Just think about how much money it costs to implement FIAT: You have to print it, which is very expensive (both notes and coins). You then have to move it around using heavy armored vehicles. You have to secure it in extremely expensive vaults. You then need to keep securing it across the entire vertical: Every business that takes cash has to deal with theft, securing the cash, fake notes, etc. Even credit cards are very expensive to maintain. Cards have to be printed & mailed out all the time. It's all plastic, and it all ends up in landfills. The inks are toxic, as are the metals in the chips. The equipment required to process cards is expensive, breaks and needs to be replaced, is annoying, slow, ridden with fraud and theft and chargebacks and a host of other issues. I implemented EMV and 3D-Secure for card processing, a few years ago. I also implemented cash processing equipment. It ALL sucks. You have no idea how Crypto is a breath of fresh air compared to those crappy standards and mechanisms that take an insane amount of time and money and bureaucracy to implement and maintain. A really good blockchain that does secure, fee-less transactions in less than a second and can handle planetary scale, now that is the holy grail! You don't need equipment, you already have a phone. The merchants get their money instantly, and they are done, that's it. They have their money. Done. They need to pay their vendors? They pay them, done! They could even instantly pay their vendors at the moment of sale. Can you imagine how revolutionary that is? how this completely changes the game for commerce? The entire crypto world has been held back by greedy assholes, tens of thousands of scammers (how many ICOs and rug pulls have screwed countless users?!), governments, government bodies and banks, and unregulated companies that behave irresponsibly with customer funds (for example FTX and BlockFi). Leadership that lacks vision and initiative (Any 1st world country that accepts crypto and leads with it, would make its citizens rich, by definition, on a planetary scale).
skaag 3y ago
Except greed...
Zpalmtree 3y ago
Crypto is one of the only markets where someone with virtually zero investment can become very rich. It's not easy, but smart traders can make a lot of money. You are not doing that at the casino.
- CivBase 3y ago
  Same can be said about the lottery. I don't recommend that as an investment either.
immibis 3y ago
Crypto is supposed to act like a stock. Very few people actually want decentralized digital dollars. Compared to the number of people who want decentralized digital get rich quick schemes.

forgotmyinfo 3y ago

If it isn't obvious already that cryptocurrency is one giant grift, then I don't know how many more stories are going to help. The SEC or Congress or someone with power needs to just make it illegal, or else this kind of thing will keep happening. It happened before we got our shit together in the early 20th century, but we collectively realized markets were actively doing shady things, and then we legislated to fix things. Will we do it again?