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.
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.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
hark@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
From the very beginning it was sold as a way to work outside the existing banking system and all it did was recreate the earlier days of banking with little-to-no regulation.
The key to regulation is enforcement. While some regulation was put on the books, the government has been very lax with enforcement. Obvious pump and dump schemes, which would be illegal with securities, are left completely alone with crypto. Ridiculous amounts of leverage has been used to pump up the value of bitcoin, including fraudulent printing (see Tether). Also, while the bitcoin ledger is public, you can shuffle and obscure entry and exit points enough to make it anonymous.
It removes the bank and introduces mining consensus. In the case of bitcoin, this consensus is slow and costly so people have built more centralized networks on top of it. Those are your new banks right there. Plus there is the issue of mining pools becoming too large and thus having more say in the consensus. Now talk about Proof of Stake and you’ll find it’s just a system where the more you hold, the more power you have (i.e. like the rich who hold more money).