this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Along with the rest of crypto, but don’t tell them…
No, you can't paint that broad of a stroke. It's true that crypto INVESTING might be no better gambling, but crypto wasn't invented to be an investment tool, it was invented to be a financial transaction tool, and in that regard it has some real utility.
But that's not how most people use it anymore. It's become almost entirely a speculation market. Plus, transaction times for payments on Bitcoin e.g. make it totally infeasible for use in any retail application.
It's just a bunch of people passing Monopoly money around to each other at this point, trying to pretend they're making bank.
No, they made it to be an investment tool from the start. They wanted it to be a new gold standard, where the limited resource increases in value over time. Completely ignoring history on why that is a bad idea. It's was created to be the ultimate, "I got mine, so fuck you!"
Bitcoin at least is inherently deflationary because there's a fixed market cap of 21 million bitcoins. Once all of those are mined, all value from then on is some fraction of a fraction of one of those, thus they decrease in value over time. I should also note, I like Bitcoin as a proof of concept but don't think it's viable as a currency, and PoW isn't viable as a consensus protocol (although it demonstrated that such consensus protocols are possible).
Deflationary means the costs of goods and services fall relative to the currency. So holding onto 1BTC or whatever would make you richer in the future just by holding onto it. Also means debts become increasingly more expensive over time.
Hm, yeah I think you're right. I was wondering why it wasn't sitting right in my head. Deflation encourages hoarding because the value of each unit keeps increasing so if you spend now instead of later you lose some amount of potential value. I don't think it was meant to be a scam though. In this case I'd consider it ignorance of the knock-on effects later exploited rather than an explicit conspiracy from the get-go.
Which it failed at
Negative utility is still utility, right?
As with everything else, it only holds the value we assign to it
You may not mean it this way, so no offense intended either way, but...
Crypto bros love to say "Oh, the value of any currency is arbitrary, it's all just based on people believing that it's worth something!"
But you know why I prefer transacting in USD? Cuz on a yearly basis, the government comes asking for a certain amount from me, and they'll only take USD. And if they don't get it, they'll do all sorts of bad things to me.
So while I may think gold or Dogecoin or limited edition Beanie Babies are a superior medium of exchange, I still have an unavoidable need to acquire USD. It's not my belief in USD that gives it value -- it's the guy with the sword.
Ironically, there is a similar way in which crypto has value. Cuz ransomware attacks tend to demand payment in crypto.
So they did actually make a legitimate currency, but the value doesn't come from belief. It comes from blackmail.
Kinda sorta, but not really. Cryptocurrency's real value comes from people willing to trade it in exchange for real items. Unfortunately these items tended to be drugs in the beginning. Once someone was able to buy that first pizza with Bitcoin is when it became legitimized. As long as people are willing to exchange it for real items, it's a legitimate currency.
He paid someone else in Bitcoin, but that person bought the pizza in USD. Even today, no major business is accepting direct crypto payments for anything besides publicity stunts. There are, however, plenty of services which automate what happened in the "crypto pizza" case: they'll convert it to USD for you so that you can say the transaction was kinda sorta done via crypto.
That doesn't negate all of the real stuff you can buy today with cryptocurrency. It may not be legal stuff, but it's still physical and still commerce. And the fact that there are people willing to convert cryptocurrency to USD and exchange that for stuff means that cryptocurrency is considered a legitimate currency. As soon as no one is willing to trade real dollars for crypto is when crypto will die. Of course this is cryptocurrency's strength, and it's fatal weakness. It's only worth something as long as someone will willing to accept it, and that can change in a heartbeat.
Buying drugs with Bitcoin is more of a legitimate use than NFTs at least
Yeah you right, I didn’t mean it in that way. Actually I completely agree with you, except with the caveat that USD does work the exact same way, but the value assigned to it is agreed upon by wayyyyyyy more people, and backed by the government (but again that’s just a group of people with a lot of power). But all currencies work that way, hence exchange rates.
We can only exchange little green papers for actual goods because everybody agrees it’s worth something, hence why they can turn around and exchange it for whatever they want. Crypto doesn’t have the same history or consistency, and in a slightly hilarious way it looks like it never will, opposed to what many people thought. Yeah, I don’t understand people that are intensely dogmatic about things, like change your beliefs with emerging evidence yes? Crypto bros: it’s still the future bro! It’ll happen!
@Pinklink @kibiz0r and in the meantime, cryptocurrencies have power usage comparable to whole countries to do what they do (which is not terribly much).
What? Are you saying that insane amounts of electricity goes into processing new blockchain nodes and the fossil fuels burned to create that electricity it absolutely horrendous and continuing to contribute to climate change at a time when we need emergency measures to mitigate (notice I didn’t say prevent) harm done to the planet while contributing nothing to actual economics and society? Cus if so: yes.