>We’ve seen this story a million times before: Crypto project is launched. Something goes wrong. Founders, investors, whales, and some of the community make out like bandits. Most people are left out on the cold, only to be offered another, even greater opportunity with an upcoming token or project. Surely this time will be different.
I don't see how anyone can read about these crypto projects and see anything other than an extremely elaborate scam.
The greater fool theory handcuffs has them locked in TIGHT. I mean the fact that they call what they’re doing “recruiting” is full of all kinds of ugly signals.
I don’t talk to them anymore.
In 2017, people tried to innovate and imagine new applications for blockchain. There was AirBnB on blockchain, Uber on blockchain, dentists on blockchain, and thousands of other projects. All of these failed (their founders got rich), and now the whole space has devolved into just JPGs and blatant Ponzi-schemes with imaginary yields and elaborate "tokenomics". They aren't even trying to build anything useful anymore.
Just to be clear, I'm talking about these "crypto", "blockchain", and "Web 3.0" products, which are nothing but false promises. Bitcoin, and some stablecoins are working as intended, and are certainly useful as money.
My theory is that we live in a society that has long glamorized the get-rich-quick scheme (until it is revealed as a scam), and there a lot of people who have seen other people getting rich through technology investments (as opposed to technology work), and they don't want to "miss the boat" this time.
The Wolf of Wall Street was widely admired even though he was a criminal.
Everyone is incentivized to join to the upper class by easiest and most accessible means possible, and get-rich-quick schemes are the natural endpoint of that incentive.
Sure, Marx's critiques have stood the test of time pretty well.
> Everyone is incentivized to join to the upper class by easiest and most accessible means possible, and get-rich-quick schemes are the natural endpoint of that incentive.
I agree, but there is generally a inverse correlation between easy/accessible and real/successful. Sure, some people got a truly easy path to "rich" (massive inheritance, lucky bet on the right stock, seizing previously state-owned industries because of your connections), but they are statistically rare. So I'd argue that by the time we get to the get-rich scam scenario, very fewer are entering the upper class (or even the middle class) via these schemes.
Also, by "rich" here I don't mean "comfortable and able to pay the mortgage, an annual vacation, etc", but rather the more contemporary definition of "F-you money".
With the apes there is no illusion of this being a greater fool scheme.
I wonder how close they are skirting to illegally running a ponzi or pyramid scheme?
The only source of income or growth for this investment is new people buying in. It is worse than amway, herbilife, penny stocks. Probably similar to madoff except the idiots who buy will not be angry at the creators when they lose their shirts. See safemoon exit scam for an early view, or indeed any other crypto ponzi since 2008.
What about a raffle and dutch auction?
What about a dutch auction at 5 ether instead of 2.5 ether in Ape coin, which is the floor price of the "Land" now.
Even if you don't want to have a conversation that nuanced, it would be the most productive conversation to have now.
Maybe they read The Billion Dollar Mistake paper and were like “meh, that’s peanuts, we can do much better!”
It's the shitcoin casino that's bad. All people have to do is avoid it.
Get in on the ground floor now! Be the next whale.
But that doesn't apply to you because you live in the developed world, where you've never had to deal with not being allowed a bank account or extortionist fees or the government simply coming and seizing your assets for an arbitrary, amoral reason.
The Security XKCD says it better - it even uses the term "crypto"!
This offers users the chance to flee their country and retain their assets. Good luck getting your assets out of a legacy banking system in such a country.
You mean people don’t like it when the large amorphous and powerful body that asks its constituents to trust it pulls the rug, and all of their currency out from under them?
I'm not arguing for any system that has the power to rug their constituents, crypto systems included.
Crypto at least enables systems to be built. It's up to you to either trust it without any due diligence or read the source code yourself.
This is a step in the right direction for people who like to assume their own risk and don't like to pay for the bad decision-making of others.
I suppose so, but given that your entire conceit started off with a defense of people in under-developed nations, and their access to capital and money, is this really about serving those people? If so, how are people in a country with heavily-devalued currencies under authoritarian regimes served by reading source code for cryptocurrencies? How many people in these countries are you expecting to pop open a laptop and start reading the ETH source before they can buy these digital coins and buy their next meal with it?
I'm sorry but the response here of "just read the source code", given you yourself are holding up impoverished nations, where people are not even "allowed a bank account" as beneficiaries of cryptocurrencies is some LOUD hubris.
This is a step in the right direction for people who like to assume their own risk
Isn't this something someone can already do on established markets in the physical world?
don't like to pay for the bad decision-making of others
Isn't this exactly what just happened in the article we're discussing right now in this thread?
Name one trustless, permission-less system that avoids the double spending problem. I would love to know about it.
>Isn't this exactly what just happened in the article we're discussing right now in this thread?
I don't know what you're saying. Participants could do their due diligence and fully understand the risks before participating. Who paid for someone else's screw up?
Implying those who criticize a project or idea simply lack knowledge is facile; you mightaswell just write "because they're haters"
> you've never had to deal with not being allowed a bank account or extortionist fees or the government simply coming and seizing your assets for an arbitrary, amoral reason
So, you argue some value exists in Bitcoin as a political tool to subvert dictatorial influence; what exactly does that do to justify massive compute requiring fees 10-100x greater than the transaction value and associated use of real-world energy? Why would another system not serve this same idea in a better way? What guarantees do people using this as a financial system that it will deliver this value?
Ultimately, what you're saying is "this absurdly compute- and energy-heavy system serves an unintended purpose slightly better than the status quo it competes against in some circumstances, and that justifies all its downsides". I don't really agree with that, and I don't understand why you can't have an honest conversation with nuance about it
You're confused. Bitcoin does not have such fees. Ethereum, while it does have such fees, is moving to proof-of-stake and the energy argument no longer holds up. There are numerous non-PoW chains already actively used, for which the energy argument does not hold up.
This is the only way we know how to avoid double-spending in a trustless, permission-less way. If you know of another way that maintains those two properties, I would love to learn about it.
This is an Ethereum thread, is it not?
> Ethereum, while it does have such fees, is moving to proof-of-stake and the energy argument no longer holds up.
Um, excuse me, Ethereum very much has these fees still, so the argument is extremely valid in the moment; additionally, this "proof of stake" movement was meant to occur in 2019 no? They are 3 years late and at best 1/3 complete, 9 years of delay sounds about right - this space is full of speculation and grifters treating that speculation as truth to grift.
> There are numerous non-PoW chains
That have extremely unstable financial valuations, destroying the credibility of them as alternatives to existing financial systems.
Your arguments hold no water, they require hypothetical futures and blatantly false things to hold, so why are you making them?
> This is the only way we know how to avoid double-spending in a trustless, permission-less way
The value prop of this is 0 today. Maybe it's even a net negative on the world, with the transactions on these chains having an extremely significant scam rate while also using more energy than entire mid-sized countries do to literally exist. You need to justify why "trustless and permissionless" are important before you can just say "we need systems with these properties!". I can only feel that you are financially deep into these systems and rationalizing to hold your position, you seem like you'd be perfectly capable of constructing good arguments when not emotionally compromised by the topic.
> So, you argue some value exists in __Bitcoin__ as a political tool to subvert dictatorial influence; what exactly does that do to justify massive compute requiring fees 10-100x greater than the transaction value and associated use of real-world energy?
So yes, you're wrong about Bitcoin having such fees.
> the transactions on these chains having an extremely significant scam rate
Sure, let's re-assert the power of authoritarian regimes over their people because some people don't do their due diligence. Once again, someone argues that completely unrelated individuals should be punished for the bad-decision making of others.
My mistake, I meant Ethereum of course.
> Sure, let's re-assert the power of authoritarian regimes over their people because some people don't do their due diligence
Your argument is that people subjected to dictatorial misgivings in the financial realm should become internet and tech literate enough to... pick a chain with a stable valuation and guaranteed low fees and no scammers? You must be joking me, or literally paid to write what you are writing.
There are numerous chains with sub one-cent transaction fees which have tokens pegged to the dollar.
I can move arbitrary amounts of an asset which is 99% correlated with the US dollar at any time I want with only an internet connection. No governments or regulators need to give me the go ahead. Granted, I wouldn't want to evade regulations or break laws in a developed country. But it's a nice escape hatch for when you really, truly disagree with such laws and regulations and you need to GTFO of your country forever.
It seems as though you're arguing that, if crypto existed during WWII, refugees should be forced to give up all their assets and life savings in order to save their own life. Why?
Alright, so we agree - most chains are useless for monetary protection, and require you to use a "pegged to the dollar" token which implies centralization, links with the financial system, and more, such that the claim "[n]o governments or regulators need to give me the go ahead" is true for your particular transactions but in no way true of the overall chain which is susceptible to real-world enforcement. Cool, you've admitted 99% of blockchains are useless, it's a start
> It seems as though you're arguing that, if crypto existed during WWII, refugees should be forced to give up all their assets and life savings in order to save their own life. Why?
You'll really have to walk me thru this line of reasoning step by step LOL, you've lost the plot