Fundamentally, no. That’s just what it’s become.
ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee 1 month ago
BECAUSE CRYPTO IS A SCAM
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 month ago
utopiah@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I agree and in fact I feel the same with AI.
Fundamental cryptocurrency is fascinating. It is mathematically sound, just like cryptography in general (computational complexity, one way functions, etc) and it had the theoretical potential to change existing political and economical structures. Unfortunately (arguably) the very foundation it is based on, namely mining for greed, brought a different community who inexorably modified not the technology itself but its usages. What was initially a potential infrastructure for exchange of value became a way to speculate, buy and sell goods and services banned, ransomware, scam payments, etc).
AI also is fascinating as a research fields. It asks deep question with complex answers. Research for centuries about it lead to not just interesting philosophical questions, like what it’s like to be think, to be human, and mathematics used in all walks of life, like in logistics for your parcel to get delivered this morning. Yet… gradually the field, or at least its commercialization, got captured by venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, regulators, who main interest was greed. This in turn changed what was until then open to something closed, something small to something required gigantic infrastructure capturing resources hitherto used for farming, polluting due to lack of proper permit for temporary electricity sources, etc. The pinnacle right now being regulation to ban regulation on AI in the US.
So… yes, technology itself can be fascinating, useful, even important and yet how we collectively, as a society, decide to use it remains what matters, the actual impact of an idea rather than its idealization.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
The purpose of a system is what it does. Crypto is used to bypass regulations, generally for illegal or immoral things. Its also been used as a ponzi scheme over and over, I guess we call them rug pulls now but its the same bullshit.
Crypto is for gamblers or drug addicts, generally. Sometimes they are both. Sort of reminds me of the mortgage crisis in 2008 with people saying it wasnt the system just people abusing it. The system was built and modified to enable abuse.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Crypto is not used to bypass regulations. Failure to regulate is on the state, not the crypto. It is easier to regulate crypto because of the public multiple ledger system that is the Blockchain, allowing you to trace tokens all the way back to their conception.
The purpose of Crypto is that it removes the need for a bank for transactions and holding of nonphysical currency. Adoption rate proportional to total population is what gives them stability and makes them less susceptible to scams or pump and dumps.
utopiah@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Right, reminds me of the hacker mindset or more recently the workshop I did on “Future wheel foresight” with Karin Hannes. One can try their best to predict how an invention might be used but in practice it goes beyond what its inventors want it to be, it is truly about how what “it” does through actual usage.
Gsus4@mander.xyz 1 month ago
I can’t get past the adjustable difficulty lottery system they use for mining blocks every 10m… :/ there has to be a better way.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
there’s better methods than how Bitcoin works (PoW) like Proof of Stake, but that has its own problems, like bringing more centralization to the network. Like how with bitcoin if a miner controls more than half of the global hash rates, they can mint more money than should be, in a currency with PoS they could just buy half of the coins and do it
ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee 1 month ago
What any unregulated market becomes.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A lot of scams are dependent on the presence of regulations.
ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Regulations aren’t perfect, but the banking industry has gotten vastly more full of scans since congress repealed Glass Steagall. Regulations offer a structure to punish fraud and scamming. We need clear defined rules to at least attempt to control markets from their worst possible outcomes.
Honytawk@feddit.nl 1 month ago
But a lot more are dependent on the absence of them.
markovs_gun@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Idk. I’ve been reading about Bitcoin since the very beginning and while I don’t think it’s necessarily a “scam” the whole project was based on a flawed hyper-libertarian economic theory that inflationary currency is inherently evil and that the ideal currency has a fixed quantity, requires effort to produce, and becomes rarer over time. From that standpoint, I feel like Bitcoin has failed in its original mission. You simply cannot use it as a day to day currency and everyone is just using it to gamble essentially. I do agree that if crypto had been an outright scam from the beginning, Satoshi would have rugpulled already, though.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 month ago
In what way is Bitcoin not fundamentally a scam? There are multiple interpretations of “Bitcoin is a scam” you can take, and honestly with most of them I think it’s been true the whole time.
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
It would be better to state how it is a scam
Apart from that, well no big company or country profits from it. You’re not paying someone that’s actively trying to fuck you over. You’re not paying to fund a capitalistic villain that wants all the world money. You’re paying for an, at least the original goal was, uncensurable means of payment that’s decentralized and doesn’t rely on a government or a company.
A pseudonymous and trustless way of paying people. Believe in the maths, not a regulated entity that might seize your money at any time.
It’s the cypherpunk’s wet dream and I view it as such.
Most people only view it as investment and “ponzi scheme” because they don’t care about this. They don’t care about not giving too much power to a few individuals and don’t hate banks.
Any country can just print money and make what you have worthless, and it’s often done in poor countries as a way to wipe debts or similar bs. Crypto can shield them against that, which is probably the reason why it’s more used in those kind of countries (or in countries with oppressive governments)
Bitcoin is one of the cleanest cryptos. It’s old, doesn’t work that well, but it’s not owned by anyone and it has a strong identity
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
What putting money into crypto does is empower early bitcoin speculators
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
For example, I mainly hold crypto that I’ll be using for payments, or those I deem technologically interesting.
I’ve already made many crypto payments, know how they pretty much work, and prefer using them than paying by card, because fuck the banking system and those greedy visa/mastercard that takes huge cuts from payments. Also, anonymity benefit: don’t always want my name to be known, for example when donating to an individual or particular cause
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 month ago
Someone could say crypto “is a scam” in that the proof of work aspect encourages miners to keep adding more hash rate to the network so long as it is profitable to do so and not whether the network actually needs it. It takes crazy amounts of energy for simple transactions.
Someone could say crypto “is a scam” in that proof of stake algorithms (like Ether) is just a plot for the rich to get richer and favor early adopters who have more coins.
Someone could say crypto “is a scam” in that it’s controlled by technology and not laws and can’t be fixed. Someone stealing it is more likely to get away with it because it’s not like a company can just revert fraud.
Someone can say crypto “is a scam” because it doesn’t hold value. Stocks do hold value because you own a portion of that company and if they don’t reinvest their profits you get dividends. Money does hold value because even in the absence of a gold standard we’ve been using it long enough that it’s so ingrained in everything and everyone agrees it has value. Money has value in that the massive amount of financial regulations surrounding it creates a more stable value. Not everyone agrees crypto has value. Crypto is hardly regulated. Crypto wildly fluctuates in price.
Someone could say crypto “is a scam” because it is often used in scams and makes it easier for scammers to be anonymous and lock down funds they steal.
These are all the ways I could think of off the top of my head. I don’t because agree with all of them, and some I think are more valid arguments than others. The last one being the weakest since it feels odd to say scam instead of a trap or something.
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 month ago
In what way is it?
miridius@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Decentralised currencies are fundamentally too expensive to operate, while providing dangerously little safety and a far worse user experience than fiat.
The scam part is the idea that any crypto coin is an asset with inherent value, when in fact the price is created entirely by new investment, in other words it’s just a ponzi scheme
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 month ago
I think you may have misunderstood. I’m saying people call it a scam for a variety of reasons, so when someone says it isn’t a scam, I’m asking which way of calling it a scam are they saying it’s not a scam in relation to.
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
They believe shitcoins = the whole crypto economy
The only thing they know are ERC20 tokens
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Bitcoin is not directly a scam. Rather it is a vector for scams. It makes scamming just a bit easier until regulations catch up.
Now, the various meme coins are directly scams. You are guaranteed to lose money buying into them.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
It’s not a scam. It’s also not immune from valid criticism, but people who call it a scam don’t understand it well enough to make those criticisms.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 month ago
I think you’re doing a disservice by saying everyone who calls it a scam doesn’t understand it well enough. It’s not like everyone saying it is a scam are doing it for the same reason. There’s a variety of reasons people have for doing it.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
It’s not, but there are plenty of crypto scams. It’s not an investment and it’s also not a particularly good store of value, but it is decent for P2P transactions, with some coins also providing privacy.
If that’s not your use case, don’t buy cryptocurrencues. Most people shouldn’t buy them until more places accept them for payment.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Most people shouldn’t buy them until more places accept them for payment.
It’s not going to happen. You can’t price things when the value of the currency changes every 10 minutes.
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
You’re aware we just use the conversion price in fiat, right?
echodot@feddit.uk 1 month ago
I don’t know what you’re saying. If I charge a particular amount for a loaf of bread and then the price drops halfway through the day then that person still has the bread but I now don’t have the money.
The whole point of currency is to get away from the fluctuating value of exchange that everyone had to deal with when we used to buy things with gold and semi-precious stones.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Never gonna happen is a bit of a stretch. It used to be a thing. Steam accepted bitcoin. They stopped accepting it due to volatility and high transaction fees at the time. You still price things in your local currency but convert at checkout. There are “plug and play” payment processors who can handle it now… Spar in Switzerland accepts it.
But imo, its not something regular people should be using anyway.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 month ago
The fact that they stopped due to volatility kind of proved my point.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
That is not what’s stopping people for paying for things in bitcoin. When you buy something in BTC you pay the equivalent to whatever you would have paid in the local fiat. And on the vendor side, merchant services often convert that paid BTC into fiat in the moment after the sale. What actually keeps people from paying for day to day goods and services in BTC is Gresham’s Law, the observation that nobody wants to pay for purchases with an appreciating asset, so long as there’s also a depreciating asset they could pay with instead.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That happens to every currency, BTC is more volatile than many, but things can be priced.
Also until twiddling is made illegal, prices can be set by some other currency or some function, and be calculated in BTC from that, and displayed on electronic price tags for example.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I like GNU Taler, and I would like there to exist not just such a payment system, but also an electronic currency system without blockchains (global synchronization is a pain), unfortunately currencies are not like most applications.
I also wrote two smartass paragraphs completely wrong after this, and now thinking about it - Taler is as good a solution as possible. It’s basically what can be done. You can’t decentralize an issuer or a bank, except for the BTC way. If you can, then you can’t plug it in seamlessly , you need some synchronization (would be a shame if a failed transaction made it into Taler as passed).
If I understand that correctly.
Gosh. It’s year 2025, I’ve achieved nothing. I was blabbering on these subjects in year 2011! I’ll be 29 in less than a month. But so cool that someone is making the humanity better.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Taler is cool, but it solves a completely different set of problems vs cryptocurrencies, and is ripe for being replaced with alternatives, undermining its primary purpose.
Here are a few of the problems being solved here:
- transaction fees
- privacy
- decentralization
- independence from fiat
Taker largely attacks the first two, and cryptocurrencies largely attack the second two, and I’m mostly interested in the middle two. However, since Taler doesn’t do either of the last two, it’s subject to either being ignored (i.e. if no banks are willing to support it) or directly competed against with something that sacrifices one of the first two, and customers won’t get the option of Taler.
I think Taler makes a ton of sense for something with its own currency, such as microtransactions or a browser extension for rewarding creators (say, in lieu of displaying ads). I don’t see benefits for banks who make a ton from credit cards. There are some cryptocurrencies that hit the last three (e.g. Monero), so that’s what I’m excited to see take off.
flightyhobler@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Same way fiat is.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
What’s the GDP of Bitcoinistan?
Gsus4@mander.xyz 1 month ago
Probably the same as North Korea, with the amount of money laundering, ransomware and scams they do.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Can’t be any worse than the GDP of the 2025 fascist USA
echodot@feddit.uk 1 month ago
I mean, it is worse
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They’re the same the AI. Had these people been interested years ago, they would be sitting pretty. But they kept telling everyone it’s garbage. Now it’s just sunk costs for them
flightyhobler@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m sure that if they found a set of keys for a Bitcoin wallet, they would just throw it away.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 month ago
I certainly wouldn’t keep anything in cryptocurrency. I would transfer it to something stable.
theseer@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Monero is the only good crypto
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
No, but one of the good ones
RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No, it’s not.
LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
[deleted]untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
imagine not being able to read
they literally said some is a scam
therefore they don’t consider all of it to be good, and therefore they don’t ‘simp’ for it
Honytawk@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Even the “legit” parts are only used by people to try to get richt from it. It isn’t a currency and won’t ever be.
And as an investment it is bad. At least with real investments the company actually uses the money to improve. Crypto is nothing more than a sock under your bed.
RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You are wrong.
Psythik@lemm.ee 1 month ago
My portfolio disagrees.
Y’all should have bought BTC when the price was hovering around $19K about 3 years ago. I told you the price was going to go up, but no one listened. Now it’s at $105K, I’m $60k richer, and y’all are still whining and complaining that it’s a “scam”.
Hate to break it to you, but bitcoin isn’t to crash and burn anytime soon. It’s still early; buy in now or regret it for the rest of your life.
Honytawk@feddit.nl 1 month ago
It won’t crash indeed, cause it is too useful to scam people.
hark@lemmy.world 1 month ago
My Enron stock disagrees.
Psythik@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Your attack missed!
You can pull the Enron card when talking about investments in general; your comments do 0 damage.
hark@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The point did fly over your head, you’re right about that. Pointing at the current value of your scam investment as proof of it not being a scam does not make it legitimate.
fishy@lemmy.today 1 month ago
I had an acquaintance ask me about my opinion on crypto a few years ago and I explained it only has the perceived value and is highly volatile as a result, and that all but a few coins were basically rug pulls waiting to happen. He was satisfied with that and moved on. About a year later crypto had roughly doubled in value and he gave me shit about bad advice (it was an opinion not investment advice) and proceeded to move $10k into some coin I’d never heard of. About a month later a mutual friend said the other guy had lost like $8k of his $10k investment. Next time I saw the acquaintance there was no mention of crypto.
Gsus4@mander.xyz 1 month ago
Yeah, it’s like those people who fall for ads where people get rich going to the casino.
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 month ago
LOL they love to parade around the 1/10,000 winners and make them spokespeople for the casino for a week.
Honytawk@feddit.nl 1 month ago
It is the way all lottery works.
You are more likely to be hit by lightning than to win the lottery. Yet people believe they will win every time.
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 month ago
If you did give them advice, would it be different?
The problem is this person was looking at the market as a whole and then investing in some niche coin. At this point any coin that’s not well-established is mostly likely pure grift.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 month ago
Right, why invest in a rug pull coin when I can invest in an ETF of all the rug pull coins!
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
Bitcoin is the only crypto that has been approved by the SEC to be included in ETFs. So far.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 month ago
i notice that is usually conservatives that buys into the scam, and the ones that peddle it too.