pinkybanana

People in invest in crypto because the gains have been ridiculously good. However some people have lost their money because of bad security or scams. You can mentally it like, you invest $1000, plan to exist when the value hits 10x and have 5% probability of losing it all, you can calculate the expected value and decide if the risk is for you.

Better analogy would be "it is not worth living because you might die"

There have been plenty of news articles about these people. For example in Scandinavia top tax payers are published yearly, there have been some crypto investors who have made it to the top of the list, and have given out interviews.

Reading some of these it is not that much different to someone winning in the lottery or getting some making million-level exit from IT business.

> It's pretty crazy the number of people who bought Bitcoin/crypto at such an early stage (e.g spending >$1000 on something nearly worthless and very obscure) yet are very bad at the security of this. You would think the first step to recovering >$10M plus would involve a Google search or two.

Though $1000 is a money typical let's say IT employee can easily spend and lose without having major issues. The issue with some early BTC adopters is that it was like buying a lottery ticket, most probably assumed that they would be likely losing the money, therefore they didn't invest in security and careful planning. Many people working for FAANG for example don't have to work that long to make $1000, so it is quite natural not to spend several hours of r&d on $1000 investment.

> I understand that often, we think something new will solve all our problems

New things fix some old problems, but also introduce new ones that we hadn't before. The value of solving the old problems is greater than the total cost of the new problems, why we stay with new things even when they add problems to our lives.

However crypto has made lots of people millionaires and that kind of hippie stuff doesn't. It is not like reinventing old institutions, Bitcoin has features that central banking based systems are fundamentally unable to offer (such as limited supply).

It would be good way to avoid taxes, as you can write it as a loss and then go enjoy your BTC stash to some other country tax-free.

The problem is though that the BTC will still be traced to you...

There are already Bitcoin ETFs and other stock-market tradable products in many jurisdictions (not US though). These are very straightforward for casual user, I don't see how it would be any more insecure than buying for example Gold ETF.

What has really helped me to relax with my crypto holdings was reading couple of cancer stories. Basically as how nature is, cancer can come any time and take anyones life away. Just treat Bitcoin as the nature, but a less severe version as you won't die if you lose your crypto.

That said, crypto loss is very preventable. Lots of people have put lots of effort to make holding bitcoin/crypto more secure.

> Keeping your coins in a self-hosted wallet is like handling millions in physical cash or precious metals.

Definitely not. I'm sure that for someone who has middle-level skills at basic IT and basic understanding of cryptocurrencies, safe storage and handling of cryptocurrencies is 10x safer than handling the same amount of physical cash or gold at home. Considering also that you want to use your assets.

If I were routinely transfering tens of thousands worth of cash from my home to somewhere to spend it would surely catch some attention, I would guess. With crypto I can just use it from safety of my own home at online shops and similar.

There are lots of custodians with different storage models. If you have account at some reputable service, good password and 2FA set up (non-mobile) then I think accidents are always super ultra-rare or basically nonexistant. Of course you also have to just HODL and for example not send your crypto to some scammer (that ofc isn't a problem that a custodian will solve anyway).

Have to note that when there are millions or maybe hundred of millions of people with crypto wallets, there will be also some amount of "false positives" reporting lost BTC, for example people who have sent their BTC to wrong address drunk or high, and then afterwards think that its the platforms fault.

The people have been always there, it is just that now they have the tools. I personally have no problem, bitcoin should be for adults who can manage their own risks. You can always opt out and not use it. This whole thing has been repeated since the early Bitcoin times ad infinitum and shouldn't be a surprise.

This issue has been fixed in Electrum a long time ago already. However the problem is that no one can prevent people from running older versions.

This kind of problems are to be expected in crypto in the future as well, so always stay cautious.

> (Or there are externalities: techies will work for less money if you let them work on space travel.)

I guess the salaries are about the same in companies like SpaceX etc, but I would guess that working hours etc are not. Some engineer working for a bank will probably demand quite relaxed hours, negotiate low pressure tasks and have some holiday time with family, while with the same salary guy working for SpaceX will be busting his ass off and working weekends multiple times an year.

> that aren't doing anything actually useful (finance, fintech, adtech)*.

Cut that crap. Most of the companies in these spaces are value-adding services and products. It is annoying that this kind of thinking is prevalent "If I don't understand how it generates value, it must be useless."

Dude, to me it sounds like you are missing the point of music, which is that there isn't a point. It is just to experiment and do whatever feels good for you, which can be quite different things for different people.

> Why should you expect different treatment from Google than Twitter et al.?

Well, because you aren't twitter. Expecting google to treat indie dev the same as multibillion dollar corporations would be stupid. World isn't fair place and crying after fairness is often waste of time.

This kind of blog post might affect the situation and I think it makes sense to make it in polite way. However my default assumption would be that no one inside google will do anything about this, because thats how giant corporations work.

Bitcoin pretty much always works 100%. It is the fiat that often has problems. In this case the issue is that you can't deposit British Pounds to Binance. If you already converted all your useless fiat currency to various cryptocurrencies, you are safe and free to use your money however you like.

> Why should the least well off in society be part of a crypto-coin whose supply has been given to early adopters and insiders?

They shouldn't, what Bitcoin is enabling is the ability for whoever to use whatever kind of coin they want. Bitcoin opened the whole pandoras box where anyone can create their own coin if they want.

However, for each crypto coin there is clear incentive to make the coin more useful in transactions, both for those more well off and for those less fortunate. Typical BTC holder wants to make BTC useful for everyone, because that adds value for their holdings. That usefulness might add value to those less well-off. If not, they can use something else - in the end there is more choice in the marketplace which should (in theory) benefit everyone.

I wouldn't say BTC is fair, but it is clearly fairer. With PoS coins, it is clear that minting new coins will heavily centralize for exchanges and big holders. With BTC, miners are clearly categorized as separate economic actor, where the skillset and capital needed to mint new coins is very different from let's say operating an exchange.

> However you want to look at it, this coin looks crappy from both sides. Unless you're a miner.

Depends on what you are comparing to. For me, Bitcoin is easier to understand than the fiat system we are currently using, and that's why I'm heavily invested in to it.

In addition to miners making huge profits, there have been also cases where miner operations have turned sour, KnC Miner being one example.

Yes, there might be better systems out there. But BTC has very clear and simple protocol rules which are easy to understand, and it has properties which are very lucrative (permissionless, decentralized, limited supply, easily verifiable and transferable and so on). Other consensus mechanisms fail to deliver their promise in as effective way.

Verisign going to be the next rocket stonk

> If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game.

The reality is that this ain't going to happen. There will be never enough volunteer-based work to enable the level of effort that it requires to develop consumer devices like smartphones. Commercial actors have so much money and power, and people have bills to pay. This is something where full open source model just doesn't work.

> they don't expend much time investigating "small" crimes and their definition of small is surprisingly large to the average person.

On the other crime types, for example drug related, law enforcement seems to pay a lot attention to the small-time criminals.

So what. That guy helped the poor people, and helped himself even more. However on absolute terms, everyone involved is better off. If you are unhappy on how he did it, maybe you can donate your funds to poor people in a no-strings attached way. I don't see however why that would be much better for society.

Good luck storing and handling that pile of cash, I'll stay with my crypto hardware wallet.

The point of adopting BTC is generally to get wealthier. Merchants accept BTC to have more customers, more revenue and ultimately more profit. As I have witnessed it, there has been increasing adoption of BTC slowly but surely. In El Salvador however now they have to accept BTC because the government mandates that. Whether that makes sense or not, I don't know, but it is happening in any case.

Physical cash is ridiculously cumbersome and difficult to handle in larger quantities. I wouldn't probably be able to get $10k worth of cash from my local bank, and getting something like $100k would probably require days and lots of work. However if I have millions worth of BTC at some big exchange, I can move that amount to a secure self custody in 10 minutes without a hassle.

> If they were concerned about remittance fees they could just set up a bank in the US with low fees, instead of getting kickbacks from OCGs and Western Union / Money Gram etc.

Can you elaborate? With remittance there is people with physical cash in tens of different local currencies and countries, and they need to transfer that value to some other (obscure) country. I don't see any scenario how "just set up a bank in the US" is going anywhere near in fixing that problem.

Both. Some people (probably minority) will use self-hosted wallets. Majority will use custodials (banks).

> And if the latter, why would bitcoin be of help at all? A normal bank account would be simpler and less worrisome.

USD will still stay as the official currency of El Salvador. However now merchants have to accept also BTC. The hypotheses is that for example foreign businessmen will bring BTC in form of investments to the country, and people will send BTC via remittances. There is possibility that there isn't actual demand, but there is also possibility that El Salvador might get some serious economical boost because of this.

> Who the hell has time to figure out all this stuff?

Nobody will have to learn this stuff, if the BTC economy develops there will be professional custodials for all levels. Eg. banks.

But the importance is that there is always the option to self-custody if you want to. With fiat you don't have that option even in theory. I think the option for self-custody is what makes BTC powerful alternative, not necessarily how widespread self-custody is going to be.

It is not dumb. Custodians are useful, very useful actually. With Bitcoin you can use custodians, but you can also host your bitcoins yourself if you want. The opportunity to do latter is the most important and makes Bitcoin valuable. However majority people in majority of cases prefer to use custodians, and there is nothign wrong with that.