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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

I am sorry for every individual who gets hurt and loses money. I genuinely hope they get recourse and their funds restored.

I am not sorry for Voyager, 3AC, Celsius, or any firm that has insolvency issues. I do not care if liquidation pushes crypto far lower. I am happy there are no government bailouts and any rescues are by strong private firms at fire-sale prices.

The crypto industry will be stronger after such shakeouts ruin the scammers, moronic risk-takers, and shady operators. Retail investors who got burned will not return, and if they do, learned a valuable lesson.

I only wish 2008 had a similar outcome rather than subsidized losses and zero pain for the rich and connected. I'm happy markets still work somewhere in this world.

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Could you point me towards parts of the crypto industry that aren’t scammers, unwise risk-takers, or shady operators?

I could respond with a long and well-argued comment but this is HN so it would get downvoted to oblivion no matter the content as it is positive towards crypto. Few on this website argue in good faith on this subject and trying to convince someone to change their mind is useless.

What I will say is the 2018 bear market was exactly the same and know-it-all commenters predicted mass casualties, Tether destruction, ponzi, and so on and so forth while the industry rose back to new highs.

> I could respond with a long and well-argued comment

I’ve seen crypto-people try to give some concrete examples, but all of them can usually be done better with boring tech (tickets, supply chains, land deeds) or public-private key signing (certificates, proof of authenticity). It was quite painful how even Marc Andreesen couldn’t give a single example and the guy is plowing billions into the industry. You could power wind turbines with the amount of handwaving that typically surrounds descriptions of usecases for crypto.

> What I will say is the 2018 bear market was exactly the same and know-it-all commenters predicted mass casualties, Tether destruction, ponzi, and so on and so forth while the industry rose back to new highs.

In 2018 the market penetration of crypto was nothing compared to now. Now there are public companies blasting ads 24/7 on every single channel, so the amount of naive new money may be tapped out for good. And all of the existing “investors” are getting burnt real bad.

The primary actual use case for crypto is for illegal money transfers, and to facilitate illegal activity.

It has the benefits of cash (from an annonyminity point of view) but without the need for a risky physical handover.

It also allows illegal cross-border money movement. Whether this movement is moral or not, its still illegal. There are cases one can make that it allows the bypassing of laws for morality reasons, but unfortunately that attribute works equally well more mial and immoral reasons.

For Joe Public getting on with his life, crypto adds no functionality that isn't better, cheaper, and faster done another way.

But ponzi schemes and greed go together like bread and butter - they are baked into the human condition.

PS. I have some tulip bulbs, willing to swap for Bitcoin. Contact me please if you are interested.

The Supreme Court says states can decide how to regulate abortion, and that is now the law in the land of the USA. But many cry and bemoan how this is illegitimate, immoral, wrong, and elected officials encourage their citizens to help others violate the law.

The Supreme Court says no state can prevent a citizen from having a concealed gun, and New York immediately passes an obvious violation of the new law to restrict rights.

I’m not passing judgement on anything. What I’m saying is what is “illegal” doesn’t have a basis on morality - or else thousands of years of state-sanctioned slavery (literal human bondage) you would justify as “The Law” regardless of morals.

This is exactly my point. I make no judgement as to whether the law is moral or not.

Crypto facilitates illegal activity. You may consider that a feature or a bug - I make no judgement either way.

I would suggest though that when the primary utility is for illegal activity, then it's likely to attract more regulation, and fewer honest users. And that may ultimately affect its attractiveness as a store of value.

I don’t have the energy to fight anymore here but you can go through my prior comments

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

> I don’t have the energy to fight anymore

I mean ... good?

People shouldn't be fighting for economic products and systems, they should be evaluating them fairly based on present capabilities. As such, even you seem to think we're 5-10 years from delivery on effectiveness (personally I'm on the 'never' side).

The current wave of speculation-mania and its associated out-and-out scams needs to come to an end. If there's any real use-case here, it'll emerge quietly and with little fanfare, because it can actually do things better than existing or alternative systems and will take over the market that way. It's not going to emerge from "HODL TO THE MOOOOON".

(And it's certainly not seeming to emerge from an incestuous community of 'funds' and 'investments' offering unrealistic returns while all speculating and investing with each other!)

(I see you agree that it's good these things get shaken out - great! My hope is they get shaken out so much that the regulators step and in and severely restrict anything marketed to the public, and anything related to PoW. After that, you do you, feel free to chase those unicorns)

I don’t think spinning around useless cryptocurrency into derivatives is a value add to anybody. Most DAOs end up spoiled by whales and are supposedly democratic, but more like oligarhic in practice, with even less transparency than non-crypto organizations.

At least with realworld complex financial products, the underlying commodity is useful.

Yes yes, move the goalposts, nothing anyone ever says will ever convince you. Just typical HN commenter crypto stuff.

I would have assumed the requirement of a usecase to be actually useful, not just possible was clear to everybody.

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