Yes, I know that it still exist, and yes, decentralized currency which utilizes distributed, cryptographic validation is not actually a strictly bad idea, but…
Is the speculative investment scam, which crypto substantially represented, finally dead? Can we go back to buying gold bars and Pokemon cards?
I feel like it is, but I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen. Maybe crypto scammers moved on to selling LLM “prompts?” Maybe the rug just got pulled enough times that everyone lost trust.
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As an actual currency, it’s functionally useless. Even if every retailer on the planet were to accept it, the overhead for making the transaction is just a non-starter
Because of that, it’s entirely just funny money. Even further, since it’s entirely a virtual asset, if the power goes out, your wallet goes with it
The environmental impacts are horrifying. This fact alone means that it should all be eradicated. Destroying the planet for Internet funny money isn’t an acceptable proposition
For a decentralized currency, people sure do love centralizing under large exchanges, and the massive losses, thefts, fraud, etc. have shown that no matter how “decentralized” it’s supposed to be, it’s still susceptible to the same bullshit as any other currency
Its high profile association with grifters, scammers, malware, and dark web shenanigans has completely soured its image in the public mind
It’s entirely a speculative investment scam now. There’s no way to decouple it from that.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but since ETH moved to a proof of stake model rather than proof of work (i.e. “mining”), isn’t its environmental footprint now a fraction of the wasteful behemoth it was previously?
(Though I 100% agree given the ‘gas fees’ (transaction costs), it’s still absolutely useless as an actual currency.)
You’re right about the environmental footprint - proof of stake dropped the energy consumption by 99.95%
Ether (ETH) was never intended to serve as a digital currency. it was only meant to be the fuel or incentive for computational tasks on the Ethereum network. An L2 like Optimism or Arbitrum runs on top of Ethereum and facilitates transactions that are significantly faster (tens of thousands of transactions per second), for a fraction of the cost (pennies or fractions of pennies)
I’ve found that the same folks who crowed the loudest about cryptocurrencies being decentralized were working the hardest behind the scenes to build the first generation of exchanges and online wallets.
I’m a fan of cryptocurrencies, and I would dearly love for the “speculative investment scam” aspect of it to be dead. It’s been a massive drag on the technology’s reputation for many years, preventing it from being used for all kinds of applications that would really benefit from some form of cryptocurrency integration. Unfortunately even if the “speculative investment scam” aspect dies the bad reputation will linger, so hopefully those applications will find ways to sneak it in where useful without drawing too much attention.
Technology rarely advances for reasons that benefit the majority. It advances to make a few people rich, kill people very efficiently, or to increase profit margins on porn sales (see item 1, I guess).
If you think about the really good applications of things like crypto, NFTs, blockchain, etc., you quickly realize that they are things that aren’t marketable or profitable for the entities that would need to implement them. If all the banks and credit companies bought into something like blockchain or NFTs, then transaction fraud and identity theft would disappear overnight… but what would THEY get out of it? The only way it’s ever going to happen is with coordinated government mandates, and nobody running for office has the faintest idea of what crypto tech is other than “dumb way for the nouveau riche to waste their money”
I don’t think transaction fraud or identity theft would disappear overnight, they would just take on different forms.
I think a big part of why cryptocurrencies don’t take off as actual currencies (beyond speculative investors ruining everything), is the fact that there are a lot of clear benefits to a centralized system that blockchains have yet to adequately replace.
1: Scale. The amount of processing power it would require for all McDonald’s global credit card transactions on a blockchain is many orders of magnitude greater than that of using Visa or Mastercard. Even when you account for proof-of-stake coins like Ethereum. Maintaining a single large centralized database will always be more energy efficient than maintaining many large decentralized databases, especially when the latter comes wrapped in a dozen layers of cryptography.
2: Reversibility. If I buy something from a stranger on the internet and use my debit or credit card, my bank can issue a chargeback if said stranger tries to screw me over. This is fundamentally impossible on a blockchain without relying on some kind of middleman to hold funds in escrow, at which point you’re basically back to using big centralized banks to do all the heavy lifting. Sellers may view this as a positive aspect of using a blockchain, but they can’t realistically force buyers to use a payment processor more amenable to their desires. If they could, PayPal would have vanished years ago.
On top of that, one of the big problems that blockchain solves can be solved through centralized systems as well. The big one that people bring up is credit card fraud, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that credit card fraud is a lot less common outside the US than within. This is because places like the EU have mandated security measures such as chip-and-pin (the US only requires the chip part). Smartphone-based contactless payment systems like Apple Pay also provide effective 2-factor authentication at the point of sale. And while blockchain is theoretically more secure, in practice these mechanisms are “good enough” for everyday use.
Fuck, let’s pray it is
It mainly lost it appeal as crashes, arrests, lawsuits, and thief keep happeneding. It was shown to be scammy with scammers scamming.
And yeah the new hotness of LLMs also helped. The tech bros who use to be pushing “X but with crypto” are now looking to push “X but with AI”.
Yeah this, mainstream big players in financial markets already figured out crypto is useless, so IT firms switched to selling AI to corporates instead.
yes, everyone likes to talk that USD/EUR is risky, you have inflation, you have banks closing and stock market crashing, but so far it seems crypto is much much riskier. I feel much safer having my money in bank than having it on some blockchain, accessible only if I know private key and if I loose it there is 0 change I will ever see any of my money.
Weak hands got shaken out, and the economy is teetering on recession. When inflation stops and interest rates fall, and quantitative easing starts back up it’s gonna come roaring back. The SEC and CFTC aren’t trying to kill crypto, they are just trying to decide who’s jurisdiction it falls under. The crypto industry will benefit from regulation, it will get safer, and you’ll feel like an idiot for asking this question instead of buying while it’s cheap. Hit me up in 2025!
Oh boy, wait until you find out about CBDC (Government’s version of cryptocurrency with dypotian spin on it such as deleting your money if they don’t like you.)
They wouldn’t delete your money just because they don’t like you.
They’d “arrest” your money for some crime that may or may not be legit. Paperwork and people getting their cut would be involved.
I mean, this already happens. Most states can easily freeze domestic assets when crimes are suspected
Well they can delete your money for not liking you, just look at how Republicans have been treating the LGBT community lately. if they have the chance to, they would absolutely love to delete all money owned by LGBT people.
If you think about what side is more tech-savvy, more likely the gays find a way to delete anti-gay money first lol. Even if they are less likely to use it
You mean the thing that was a blue sky research effort? From that website it doesn’t even sound like anything exists, it’s just a thought experiment to see if it would make sense. How is that in any way dystopian or nihilistic or whatever tone you appear to be going for?
This is how public policy should work. It would be foolish and irresponsible not to investigate if a new technology has a valid and useful application.
This is like noticing that the Army has plans for a Zombie invasion without applying any of the context and then using that as evidence that zombies are real and the gubment is covering it up. Instead of applying a tiny bit of actual research and finding out it’s a common way that the military plans for politically unsavory possibilities like Canada invading the US. Also known as doing their actual job in a professional and not-at-all-suspicious way.
That’s a reasonable response, but the other guy’s concerns are absolutely not meritless. Tech platforms demonstrating and offering up these kinds of currencies or tokens do explicitly talk about ideas such as limiting certain currencies from being spent on certain things, or enabling/disabling from a central authority.
China is already rolling out this type of currency albeit with limited success, and while I haven’t heard anything about the e-CNY being tied to their social credit system, or punishments being inflicted in the shape of limiting access to funds, it’s absolutely a possible option.
The concern in concept is totally valid, yes, but presenting it as if something that is being actively pursued for nefarious purposes is just misleading.
More fact info
The problem with CBDC is that they are actively developing it in a way they intended on rolling it out to the public (they are trying to set up campaign to roll it out) and we would be very screwed if it ever goes live, because it is not decentralized, there is going to be no due process and the authority is controlled by the government which historically have screwed people over repeatedly, just look at civil forfeiture surpassing robbery in USA, they could just do it with a mouse click in CBDC.
Even Yermack points out the risk of political abuse of CBDC and yet they are still going for it.
Crypto won’t ever die, too many people have too much money invested in it for it to die.
But it’s going nowhere. If I can’t buy groceries with a bitcoin, then it’s worthless. It got popular because people used it to trade drugs. I don’t even think you can do that on tor anymore.
You could not be more incorrect about that last point
Well, the irony is hard to miss, right? Crypto was born out of this grand idea of decentralization, but then everyone just rushed over to these centralized exchanges. Kinda sounds like a death knell to me. Seems like the original spirit of crypto got lost in the rush for profits.
I do think the tech and the concept will keep evolving, and eventually, it’ll morph into something new, get a new name or something. Here’s hoping that when it does, people will get that it’s better to trust the collective ‘us’ instead of just a select few. After all, these are often the same folks messing things up. But, what can you do, huh?
Now say it again but replace crytpocurrecy with Website aggregation. Its honestly not that different from leaving the big centralized reddit for the Fediverse… only to mostly end up in a few relatively huge alternatives in the name of decentralizing. Its just… human nature.
It’s just another kind of MLM right now. It always has been. The superbowl Larry David add was the swan song for crypto mainstream appeal.
And you are right, most of the people that were telling you to buy cryptocurrency for reasons, now are into the “prompt engineering” fad.
Por metaverse, only the really unicorn-chasing and completely clueless about technology marketing “gurus” got into it.
Dear god, I hope so
I hate watching so many people get scammed
I’m glad I never got into cryptocurrency. For all intents & purposes, it might as well be Monopoly money.
I’m not a big fan of crypto for a number of reasons but that “for all intents and purposes” bit applies to all fiat cash.
Cash is monopoly money, with the key distinction of being backed by a government.
In the majority of people’s eyes crypto is seen as a scam and something to avoid. The only thing crypto ever did for me was make things I actually care about more expensive.
I think it would take a lot to recover from the bad reputation it has gotten.
the pyramid scheme of crypto is dead. Partially because there are no suckers left to buy in and partially because interest rates have gone up, meaning that money is no longer free and investments need to promise a return, which crypto can’t provide as it lacks meaningful utility.
The long and short of it is that crypto was never a good idea, a currency where no one is “in charge” Is a currency where no one is responsible, so if something goes wrong no one is to be expected to fix it.
I’m not about to say that the federal reserve is the perfect system, but it is much better than anything the crypto world has come up with. Bitcoin is deflationary and inefficient, ethereum is undemocratic and has it’s attention split, and everything else lacks a broad base.
The centralization or currency was never the problem and these alternatives are worse in just about every way.
Oh I don’t know maybe it has something to do with Sam Bankman-Fried swindling $8 billion.
No. Bitcoin is the future of money. It really is the best form of money humanity has invented so far. People just need to stop trading shit coins.
Bitcoin (as it uses proof of work) is incapable of handling all transaction of the world without creating insane amounts of wasted energy.
Updating the ledger (actually writing down transactions) is only a fraction of the total computing resources it consumes. Most of it is just spent doing random hashes over and over again (the proof of work part). This is computing power that does not actually do any of the money related tasks, it’s just there to keep the ledger trusted.
This is an awesome idea in theory, but completely unscalable in reality.
Other Blockchain technologies like proof of stake don’t have this issue of energy waste, but they have other hurdles.
But Bitcoin as it is implemented now can never be the money of the future in my opinion.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about Lightning Network, but this is a layer on top of the bitcoin blockchain that is much more suitable for small payments. That’s how I do most of my bitcoin payments now, and while it’s still a maturing technology, it mostly works well. Transactions are fast and inexpensive.
Do you use Bitcoin in real life?
I used to work at a liquor store and we had one regular customer who paid with a bitcoin card. This was around 2015 or so. It was funny because he said it was because of “anonymity” but everyone knew him as “the guy who pays with bitcoin.”
Do you use and gold in real life to pay for stuff?
No, and I also seriously question people’s obsession with gold.
bitcoin will never be the dominant global currency. it couldn’t even maintain its position as the dominant darknet currency. bitcoin is not perfect and you are part of a religious cult that bans people for pointing out its shortcomings.