The anti-crypto thread

[BFG10K]

Great news, crypto's collapsing across the board: https://www.techpowerup.com/282380/...ions-in-less-than-24-hours-did-the-bubble-pop

Also China's banned crypto, though individuals can still have it: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-financial-payment-bodies-barred-122712260.html

The sooner this cancerous parasite is wiped out, the better.

 

[ultimatebob]

I noticed that crypto seems to be sucking again. Ethereum is once again below $3,000, Solana is below $100, and Bitcoin is struggling to stay above $40,000.

Are we still blaming Russia for this, or is this something else?

 

[AdamK47]

I noticed that crypto seems to be sucking again. Ethereum is once again below $3,000, Solana is below $100, and Bitcoin is struggling to stay above $40,000.

Are we still blaming Russia for this, or is this something else?

It looks like the crypto collapse has begun.

 

[ultimatebob]

It looks like the crypto collapse has begun.

Again??

 

[VirtualLarry]

There hasn't been much negative press against crypto-mining trending; OP disappoints.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

I noticed that crypto seems to be sucking again. Ethereum is once again below $3,000, Solana is below $100, and Bitcoin is struggling to stay above $40,000.

Are we still blaming Russia for this, or is this something else?

It's hard to say. Crypto sort of moves with the market, just amplified ten times. We're dealing with an asset that barely moves when China bans it, but collapses if Elon musk tweets something mean.

 

[AdamK47]

It's hard to say. Crypto sort of moves with the market, just amplified ten times. We're dealing with an asset that barely moves when China bans it, but collapses if Elon musk tweets something mean.

Crypto Bros follow trendy US billionaires and pop culture stars, not world superpowers.

 

[ultimatebob]

Apparently all those zoomers losing their stimmy money in crypto are now having mental health issues:

‘Crypto Ruined My Life’: The Mental Health Crisis Hitting Bitcoin Investors

The stress and anxiety that goes with funneling your life savings into a volatile market is no joke.

www.vice.com

I guess that they should have thought twice before investing all their savings in Dogecoin. Much fail, very wow!

 

[TheVrolok]

Apparently all those zoomers losing their stimmy money in crypto are now having mental health issues:

‘Crypto Ruined My Life’: The Mental Health Crisis Hitting Bitcoin Investors

The stress and anxiety that goes with funneling your life savings into a volatile market is no joke.

www.vice.com

I guess that they should have thought twice before investing all their savings in Dogecoin. Much fail, very wow!

Shocking that people who continue to mistake gambling for investing have high levels of anxiety.

 

[biostud]

Besides investing (and an occasional pizza) is crypto currency used for anything legal?

 

[drnickriviera]

Besides investing (and an occasional pizza) is crypto currency used for anything legal?

I bought a few silver coins on apmex the other day and they used bitpay for crypto payments. Bitpay has a number of well known merchants.

 

[biostud]

I bought a few silver coins on apmex the other day and they used bitpay for crypto payments. Bitpay has a number of well known merchants.

But did you use crypto?

Or is there a way to find out how much crypto is actually used for payments?

 

[Clardfard]

DO I INVEST IN CRYTPO OR NOT?!?

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Besides investing (and an occasional pizza) is crypto currency used for anything legal?

You need crypto to "update the state" of its blockchain. So pretty much 99.9999% of use cases involve something legal at this point.

 

[JEDI]

DO I INVEST IN CRYTPO OR NOT?!?

yes!
it's low now.
put all your $ that you can spare into it

 

[DisarmedDespot]

Besides investing (and an occasional pizza) is crypto currency used for anything legal?

So, the "fun" thing about crypto is that it polymorphs the moment you criticize it.

Despite having 'currency' in the name, it really, really sucks as a currency and no one really uses it as one legally unless they're writing a clickbait puff-piece. The price swings so wildly you can't actually value the thing you're selling in crypto (since 1 poopcoin could halve or double in value from one moment to the next), so it's all valued in dollars/euros/other real money notes. If you want to actually buy something with crypto, you get to enjoy jugging ever-changing conversion values and eating sweet transaction fees as the blockchain chokes to death under light-to-moderate load. Hell, if you DO manage to find some place that takes crypto, 99.9% of the time they're just having a third-party convert it into actual money on the spot.

 

[drnickriviera]

But did you use crypto?

Or is there a way to find out how much crypto is actually used for payments?

No I didn't. Just noticed it as a way to pay. They even give you a discount off the credit card price, so at least they aren't screwing you completely.
I'd imagine a good bit of all crypto is just speculative and not used for transactions. Everyone hopes it will keep going up, but if this all fizzles out, nice to know you can actually buy something with it.

 

[biostud]

So, the "fun" thing about crypto is that it polymorphs the moment you criticize it.

Despite having 'currency' in the name, it really, really sucks as a currency and no one really uses it as one legally unless they're writing a clickbait puff-piece. The price swings so wildly you can't actually value the thing you're selling in crypto (since 1 poopcoin could halve or double in value from one moment to the next), so it's all valued in dollars/euros/other real money notes. If you want to actually buy something with crypto, you get to enjoy jugging ever-changing conversion values and eating sweet transaction fees as the blockchain chokes to death under light-to-moderate load. Hell, if you DO manage to find some place that takes crypto, 99.9% of the time they're just having a third-party convert it into actual money on the spot.

So people are buying into something that has no actual usefulness making it 100% gambling disguised as investment.

 

[Torn Mind]

So people are buying into something that has no actual usefulness making it 100% gambling disguised as investment.

It's basically forex trading with another currency.

But people can "print" the money themselves with equipment.

 

[biostud]

It's basically forex trading with another currency.

But people can "print" the money themselves with equipment.

But a currency that people don't use for buying anything....

 

[DrMrLordX]

Besides investing (and an occasional pizza) is crypto currency used for anything legal?

Yes. Here's an admittedly-crass example of what you can do with BTC over LN:

Lightning Network Stores Directory

The most comprehensive directory of stores/apps/services that accept bitcoin through the lightning network.

lightningnetworkstores.com

Lots of casinos, but if you scroll down you'll find some crap that doesn't involve vice. And that's just BTC over LN, which is awful from a technological point-of-view. Sooner or later, people are going to connect the dots with Polygon and Request Network and make stablecoin-based point-of-sale systems that will change commerce forever. And make Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover break out in a sweat.

(full disclosure; I do not currently hold any MATIC or REQ)

 

[DisarmedDespot]

So people are buying into something that has no actual usefulness making it 100% gambling disguised as investment.

Yeah. It's understood and accepted that cryptocurrencies currently suck for anything beyond speculation. If a place says it's accepting crypto, 99.9% of the time they immediately have someone convert the crypto to actual money.

That's why (like DrMrLordX's post above) pro-crypto arguments need to be based on potential. Doesn't matter how bad it is at its job now, it has the potential to do all these wonderful things once the silver bullets are developed. Even if these techs worked as planned, there's fundamental issues they don't solve, like:

1. How does a decentralized system handle fraud? Once your money is sent, you can't get it back unless the entire chain forks. Cryptocurrencies had the brilliant idea of tossing all consumer protections in the trash to try and be efficient (that failed horribly, btw). There's zero ways to recover lost funds, and that's not desirable for something people actually use.
2. How valuable are trustless immutable decentralized transactions, anyway? Any decentralized system that has to jump through crypto's hoops to secure its network will be less efficient than a centralized one that does not. Use-cases for them are really hard to find, and even when Bitcoin's fees were low it didn't see serious adoption. Around 2014 some companies like Dell started 'accepting' it, but just used a third-party to convert the crypto to real money, and dropped it after a few years of no one buying anything with it.

Since it sucks as a currency, increasingly the hype is moving the goalposts to other crazy things. DeFi, Decentralized finance, will revolutionize lending*! DAOs, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, will revolutionize governance**! NFTs, Non-fungible Tokens, will revolutionize something!*** Web3.0 will make the price go up somehow because reasons!****

* But only if you need a crypto-to-crypto collateralized loan, which is only useful for speculation or dodging capital gains taxes while risking getting liquidated.
** Please ignore the lack of any enforcement or the sheer hilarity of DAO hacks. No, really, they're insane even going all the way back to the OG.
*** Ignore the massive backlash to gaming companies that try to push NFTs and how those that do (re: Ubisoft) see none of them sell, and how rampant art theft is (seriously, it got the dinosaur that is Deviantart to build a tool to alert artists when their art is stolen for NFTs, THAT'S how bad it is). And don't ask how it will do anything, and DEFINITELY don't ask about the security risks!
**** Web3 is bad and should feel bad. Thankfully, with crypto's track record, it won't work.

 

[BFG10K]

I guess that they should have thought twice before investing all their savings in Dogecoin.

Yep, those people sure have it rough. Ruff, ruff.

 

[Saint Nick]

But a currency that people don't use for buying anything....

I was super into crypto when it first came out. But as time went on, I found that more people were talking about how they are making money with it as opposed to its utility. At that point I pretty much wrote it off as another way of just trading other currencies.

 

[ultimatebob]

I was super into crypto when it first came out. But as time went on, I found that more people were talking about how they are making money with it as opposed to its utility. At that point I pretty much wrote it off as another way of just trading other currencies.

Yeah... cryptocurrency doesn't seem to work well as an actual currency. The transaction times are slow, the transaction fees are high, and you're supposed to report every purchase transaction to the IRS because it's being treated as a security instead of a method of exchange.

I think that's why the Bitcoin folks pivoted to promoting it as a store of value like gold... because frankly, it's become as much of a hassle as buying stuff with actual gold.

 

[DrMrLordX]

The transaction times are slow, the transaction fees are high, and you're supposed to report every purchase transaction to the IRS because it's being treated as a security instead of a method of exchange.

Not entirely true. Thanks to the infrastructure bill (ha) you now also have to report transactions over $10k in blockchain tokens, just like you do with cash. The Feds can't make up their minds exactly how they want to treat it. Also:

SEC Chair Says Bitcoin Is Not A Security

SEC Chair Jay Clayton told CNBC that bitcoin is not a security. But he was not as forgiving about ethereum's tokens.

www.investopedia.com

IRS actually treats it as "property" according to their 2014 guidance.

Regardless if you want low txn fees and quick txn times, look at Polygon or . . . any number of non-Ethereum chains that address the issue.