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At this point the "real cryptocurrency economy has never been tried" sound an awful lot like "real communism has never been tried".

earthnail 2y ago
This comment made my day.
o11c 2y ago
There's a major difference: Crypto is often undermined by insiders pretending to be outsiders. Communism is often undermined by outsiders pretending to be insiders.
beeflet 2y ago
Does this constitute a "real economy"? Where are the goods and services being traded? It's all just speculation and worthless "web3" stuff like NFTs. It's not any more a real economy than the counter-strike skins economy or the baseball cards economy. There was a "real crypto economy" back in the days of the silk road. So I would say that the real cryptocurrency economy has been tried, and it was doing alright until they got busted by the feds. But the reason we don't have a crypto economy today is that drug dealers got drowned out by the more popular get-rich-quick schemers.
- knorker 2y ago
  Your point is a good one. I don't think it invalidates what I said, since my still valid message would get lost if I hedged it with "except (more or less) organized crime". But I agree that Silk Road was an economy. Just like slave trading and other human trafficking is an economy. We do still have an illegal cryptocurrency economy. It's more tilted towards the ransomware economy than drugs, though. So it's not just pyramid schemes. But I'm sure crypto drug kingpins and murderers like Ross Ulbricht are still out there. In fact recently I listened to a money podcast that investigated if hitmen paid in cryptocurrency on the dark web were a real thing. I can't find it now, but the answer was that most are scams, but yes actually there's a nonzero number who will kill the person. But back to my point: Most people talking about the cryptocurrency utopia (though most have given up on that, instead shifting to "it's a store of value!"), when they (de facto) say "real cryptocurrency economy has not been tried" mean the non-traditionally-criminal economy. So I also don't think that what I said was wrong. It depends what you mean by the word "real". :-)

earthnail 2y ago

This comment made my day.

o11c 2y ago

There's a major difference: Crypto is often undermined by insiders pretending to be outsiders. Communism is often undermined by outsiders pretending to be insiders.

beeflet 2y ago

Does this constitute a "real economy"? Where are the goods and services being traded? It's all just speculation and worthless "web3" stuff like NFTs. It's not any more a real economy than the counter-strike skins economy or the baseball cards economy. There was a "real crypto economy" back in the days of the silk road. So I would say that the real cryptocurrency economy has been tried, and it was doing alright until they got busted by the feds. But the reason we don't have a crypto economy today is that drug dealers got drowned out by the more popular get-rich-quick schemers.

knorker 2y ago
Your point is a good one. I don't think it invalidates what I said, since my still valid message would get lost if I hedged it with "except (more or less) organized crime". But I agree that Silk Road was an economy. Just like slave trading and other human trafficking is an economy. We do still have an illegal cryptocurrency economy. It's more tilted towards the ransomware economy than drugs, though. So it's not just pyramid schemes. But I'm sure crypto drug kingpins and murderers like Ross Ulbricht are still out there. In fact recently I listened to a money podcast that investigated if hitmen paid in cryptocurrency on the dark web were a real thing. I can't find it now, but the answer was that most are scams, but yes actually there's a nonzero number who will kill the person. But back to my point: Most people talking about the cryptocurrency utopia (though most have given up on that, instead shifting to "it's a store of value!"), when they (de facto) say "real cryptocurrency economy has not been tried" mean the non-traditionally-criminal economy. So I also don't think that what I said was wrong. It depends what you mean by the word "real". :-)