BECAUSE CRYPTO IS A SCAM
Meta shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to explore adding Bitcoin to the company's treasury, with less than 1% voting in favor of the measure
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.dlnews.com/articles/markets/meta-bitcoin-treasury-play-flops-99-shareholders-vote-no/
Comments
ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
fishy@lemmy.today 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
Yeah, it’s like those people who fall for ads where people get rich going to the casino.
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
(it was an opinion not investment advice)
If you did give them advice, would it be different?
some coin I’d never heard of
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.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
i notice that is usually conservatives that buys into the scam, and the ones that peddle it too.
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Fundamentally, no. That’s just what it’s become.
utopiah@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
What any unregulated market becomes.
markovs_gun@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
flightyhobler@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Same way fiat is.
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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
theseer@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Monero is the only good crypto
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
No, but one of the good ones
RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No, it’s not.
Honytawk@feddit.nl 3 weeks 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.
Psythik@lemm.ee 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
It won’t crash indeed, cause it is too useful to scam people.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Why would they in the first place? It would be like a newspaper buying gold. If investors want to buy bitcoin they can just do that, mutual funds are already a thing.
Saleh@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
If i understood it correctly, meta wants to slap its own crypto-currency on everything.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Buying BTC doesn’t help them do that.
RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Businesses are following the lead of Microstrategy with keeping BTC on the treasury books to increase profits and hedge against inflation.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
But now they’re essentially just a bitcoin proxy, they even changed the logo to have a bitcoin on it.
Now that there’s lots of ETFs and stuff, why buy Microstrategy and not just bitcoin?
Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Apparently GameStop are considering it too.
porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Yeah but GameStop’s entire existence depends on crypto meme hype, while Meta’s depends on extracting our data as efficiently as possible
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
is gamestop even relevant anymore
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because holding USD is a liability these days.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
With how volitile the USD is under ahem this administration, Bitcoin is probably the slightly less shittier option.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
If only there were some other major currency, maybe controlled by some larger union of countries so that one country’s poor decisions can’t tank it
joel_feila@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Greece has entered the chat
Psythik@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Seriously, I do not have faith in USD anymore. What’s left of my paycheck after bills all goes to BTC, and I sell what I need on demand to cover day to day costs. Been doing this since 2019 and it has paid off handsomely.
RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It returns 50-80% on average… so yea, it’s better in that context.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I didn’t really parse what your comment is saying. Are you saying that whenever you buy BTC you later sell it for half your buy average? Or are you saying like 150%?
Is it just you or are you implying that everyone loses/gains 50% from the magical BitGoblin?
LMurch@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Coming soon: Meta announces they are buying bitcoin anyways, because fuck them plebs.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
most of the shareholders aren’t ‘plebs’
paraphrand@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I bet Zuck is regretting not going forward with their crypto scheme
Gsus4@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
They also tried to create their own shitcoin: ft.com/…/a88fb591-72d5-4b6b-bb5d-223adfb893f3
toastmeister@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I due not want my corporation holding Bitcoin, if I want exposure I’ll buy Bitcoin directly.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
TBH if the choices are USD or BTC then I think the latter has a better future at the momentm
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
Funny to hear from the company that went all in to the point it renamed itself. The metaverse failure seems to have a big impact
RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I wouldn’t say it’s a failure, it’s more in development still than anything else.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The metaverse is for creating, not really for visiting. If you are an artist, creating worlds in 3d in VR might be interesting to you. I wouldnt look at it as a way to make money, more of a hobby tool.
PTSDwarrior@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
If I were to become in charge of a post-Trump USA, crypto would be outlawed and anyone who creates crypto will be either given the death penalty or a slow death in a cement box in El Salvador. Crypto is evil and has allowed the evil in this world to flourish. Anyone who is pro-crypto here, I will figure out who you are and you will be on my list for the future.
Pulsar@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You can say the same about any technology advancement. The fire, wheel, black powder, electricity, radio, tv, internet, crypto, AI, etc. The problem doesn’t reside in the technology but in the people exploiting it for evil intentions.
CtrlAltDefeat@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Lmao
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I would like to be shot out of a cannon with poop
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Meta: Fuck it, we ball. (commits PR to add Bitcoin)
porsche13@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Just like MS’ shareholders did. Most of these big companies don’t need to at the moment given how successful they are under the current system but eventually they will.
There is no logical reason not to hold BTC on your balance sheet over short duration US treasuries. One is an appreciating asset that has been growing at 50-60% per year since inception, while the other can’t even keep up with inflation. And Trump has made it patently clear only four months in office that the US and the entire dollar system can’t be trusted anymore. Hence more and more foreign countries and entities moving their capital out of US stocks/bonds and into gold, international equities, bitcoin, etc.
ArchRecord@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
There is no logical reason not to hold BTC on your balance sheet over short duration US treasuries.
One is stable and is backed by the full faith and credit of a nation, the other’s value is determined solely by the current speculative state of the market. For a company which requires stability, they don’t want to invest in an extremely volatile asset. That is a highly logical reason.
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The Cult of the Torment Nexus knows a scam when it sees one.
Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Who even made the proposal?
vegeta@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why not Dogecoin?
Psythik@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
That was so funny I forgot to laugh.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
yeah people don’t understand DOGE might be the best investment known to mankind
spoiler
because some people on this thread cant take a joke, \s
badbytes@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Who was the 1%?
MummifiedClient5000@feddit.dk 3 weeks ago
Do the shareholders not realize how much easier it is to bribe the president with crypto?
taladar@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I don’t think people who give or take bribes usually like having a permanent history of the transaction.
shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Which is why they take the bribe in monero
FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Big incentive to keep trump in power if your bribery of him is public record. Someone else might do something about it
tfm@europe.pub 3 weeks ago
cointelegraph.com/…/what-is-a-cryptocurrency-mixe…
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Why would they care?
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Bribery isn’t illegal, theres no need to be coy and secretive about it.
RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That entirely depends on context. Bribing a cop is illegal. Bribing a politician doesn’t appear to be illegal anymore (USA)