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The reason for crypto to exist is to be a secondary financial system that you didn't need to be well connected to old-money entities or families in order to "wi

The reason for crypto to exist is to be a secondary financial system that you didn't need to be well connected to old-money entities or families in order to "win" from. The 2008 financial crash spurred many anti-capitalist and hyper-capitalist movements, one of the latter being cryptocurrency. They saw how nakedly well-connected people absolutely cashed the fuck out with the near-collapse of the banking system permitting absurd amounts of money to flow to the markets that had created the problem in the first place, and led to tons of well-paid executives being given golden parachutes out of their industry, so fucking rich they would never have to work again. The anti-capitalist response to that sort of thing is "this system is broken and should be destroyed" and the hyper-capitalist response is "how do I get in on this thing" and the truth of the matter was, there wasn't really a way to get in on it if you weren't already in on it. Hence the creation of an entire second financial sector, recreating all of the failures of the existing one, without any of the regulations, and resulting in the exact same outcomes: the little guys get screwed, and the whales sail away into the sunset with unfathomable profits for basically doing nothing. I'm not saying blockchain based technology itself is useless. Of course it has uses, some really good ones too. But cryptocurrency has always been 100% grift.

mrguyorama 2y ago
>you didn't need to be well connected to old-money entities or families in order to "win" from. And this was always a lie. One of the biggest boosters of crypto is Andreesen-Horowitz FFS, and plenty of the rest of the people well known in the industry are just Wall Street Finance bros or dotcom boom lottery winners.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  And to the extent that there are “normal people” making money in crypto, they’re doing it in all the same slimey ways the slimeballs of ye olde traditional finance did it: rent-seeking, speculation, and insider trading. Like seriously, how laughably obvious can the whole spiel be? Let’s all switch to this other currency because it’s “more fair,” and yes I do happen to already have a gigantic stake in this new currency and I’m just looking for you to come in at the ground floor so you can inflate my wealth! Anything productive happening at any point in any of this? Well considering my entire motto is HODL, how could I possibly be doing anything productive? It is the purest, most naked form of rent-seeking someone could invent.
faeriechangling 2y ago
Crypto might somewhat divest itself of old money but it’s utterly dominated by new money. It’s an oligarchy with democratic elements. Perhaps that’s inevitable though.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  It's certainly inevitable when you create a new financial system with all of the same problems as the old one and simultaneously not only strip away anything resembling consumer protections but in fact make them even harder to re-implement should anyone try. It's a direct clone of the existing system just practically engineered from jump for financial fraud. No shock at all then that the entire thing is absolutely awash in fraud. And the key word is need: yes it's absolutely dominated by old money assholes, but it didn't start that way, though I'm sure it was always intended which is why the most prominent crypto grifters follow the rich closely and invest in the same coins. Getting in early right before or after the big fish before the hyperdeflation kicks in (what they call "to the moon") is how you make money in crypto. You just need to then reckon with the fact that you only got rich because tons of other folks went broke, but again, if you're the hyper-capitalist type you probably see no issues at all with stepping on millions of your fellow workers if it means you get out of the wage-slave fuck barrel.

mrguyorama 2y ago

>you didn't need to be well connected to old-money entities or families in order to "win" from. And this was always a lie. One of the biggest boosters of crypto is Andreesen-Horowitz FFS, and plenty of the rest of the people well known in the industry are just Wall Street Finance bros or dotcom boom lottery winners.

llamaimperative 2y ago
And to the extent that there are “normal people” making money in crypto, they’re doing it in all the same slimey ways the slimeballs of ye olde traditional finance did it: rent-seeking, speculation, and insider trading. Like seriously, how laughably obvious can the whole spiel be? Let’s all switch to this other currency because it’s “more fair,” and yes I do happen to already have a gigantic stake in this new currency and I’m just looking for you to come in at the ground floor so you can inflate my wealth! Anything productive happening at any point in any of this? Well considering my entire motto is HODL, how could I possibly be doing anything productive? It is the purest, most naked form of rent-seeking someone could invent.

faeriechangling 2y ago

Crypto might somewhat divest itself of old money but it’s utterly dominated by new money. It’s an oligarchy with democratic elements. Perhaps that’s inevitable though.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
It's certainly inevitable when you create a new financial system with all of the same problems as the old one and simultaneously not only strip away anything resembling consumer protections but in fact make them even harder to re-implement should anyone try. It's a direct clone of the existing system just practically engineered from jump for financial fraud. No shock at all then that the entire thing is absolutely awash in fraud. And the key word is need: yes it's absolutely dominated by old money assholes, but it didn't start that way, though I'm sure it was always intended which is why the most prominent crypto grifters follow the rich closely and invest in the same coins. Getting in early right before or after the big fish before the hyperdeflation kicks in (what they call "to the moon") is how you make money in crypto. You just need to then reckon with the fact that you only got rich because tons of other folks went broke, but again, if you're the hyper-capitalist type you probably see no issues at all with stepping on millions of your fellow workers if it means you get out of the wage-slave fuck barrel.