For me crypto was always Ponzi scheme and nothing more, but it is because I don't laundry money or sell drugs, so I am not the target for crypto.
A couple a weeks ago I did a wire half way across the globe. It took almost 7 days for the money to arrive. With bitcoin? 60 minutes.
Remember when OnlyFans was in trouble because of the payments processors wanting to pull the rug? You probably don't and you probably are not aware how many people would have been impacted.
Do you watch porn? How many times have have sites that provide it been in trouble because of some puritan bs from the dark ages? Do you know this is the majority of the internet? Are you aware that a lot of innovations (the internet included) took off and became mainstream because of porn?
Do you know about civil asset forfeiture? How do you feel about losing everything you own just on the suspicion that maybe you did something?
You are a target for crypto. You believe you are not because of all the bs the media peddles. Stick with Bitcoin and ETH and treat it as a high risk investment and you'll be fine.
Apart from everything else, even if all crypto goes away tomorrow, the real innovation when it comes to crypto is the blockchain. Without the blockchain crypto is just digital money (and 90%+ of money is already digital - ie numbers in bank systems, ie not real).
Blockchain tech is here to stay.
I think it’s hilarious that you think your wire was slow because of the geographical distance the message had to travel (“halfway across the world”) as opposed to the fact that it had to travel across jurisdictions with different laws.
If I want to send someone money within the US, for example, it’s near instantaneous, whether through a credit card/debit card purchase, Zelle/Venmo, PayPal, direct bank transfer, etc.
To the extent some forms of transfer require waiting a day it’s because, once again, banks do settlements once a day to reduce costs and to meet federal government regulations that prevent fraud and/or help keep the economy more stable.
Blockchain tech is significantly slower than decades old banking technology. You can go hours before someone mines something to close out a bunch of transactions. What slows down banking transactions is the very stuff the absence of which meant that $30bn of wealth evaporated overnight in FTX.
I don’t see anything in the post you are replying to that indicates they believe this. They noted the distance, which makes clear many practical issues (it was not only another country but not in a trading or common regulation block like the EU).
It’s clear the amount of time involved is the obstacle the person had issue with. This seems like a use case for crypto (even if I personally would tend to just do the wire whenever practical).
Condescending straw man here.
Being able to use BTC to do this, routing around the various jurisdictional settlement layers, is a huge practical improvement.
Those 7 days don't make society better, they're a drag on the economy and the wallets of anyone who doesn't have access to quicker mechanisms.
Your comment is also assuming funds would only be seized for a shared definition of "fraud, money laundering or terrorism" when that is not always the case. Preventing "terrorism" by placing embargoes on all individuals of disagreeable governments would seem like an overreach for many individuals with family overseas.
They meant exactly that. The claim that blockchain is faster because of technology is obviously a complete strawman.
That's not a universal statement -- that calculus could change -- but this is the case for me in the developed world in 2022.
It's the least private system you could conceive.
Ignoring the week-long wire detail (which deserves an explanation because that doesn't resonate with my experience), depending on when you sent that transaction, your wire could've lost a decent amount of value due to the price instability of bitcoin. Losing 5% in a matter of minutes because everyone is panicking is not a good deal.
Every country could severely limit mining, and the supply would continue its steady velocity, whereas sometimes executive behavior spurs financial institutions to simply make the federal banks buy everything.
Fractional reserve banking is an inherently unstable system.
True federation is not.
Ethereum crossed a similar threshold at the merge reducing the calculus, but it's not clear to me if there are any more "difficulty bombs" built in where executive control can be expressed, say in the consensus layer where unilateral control can be expressed over supply.
No, I'm talking about the exchange rate. I don't care what bitcoin means internally or how it functions, I care about what it's worth on the market today and tomorrow, because there's no to way live in the purely crypto world.
That's the whole point of a currency, that you and I agree that some instrument of value will stay consistent enough to transact with. Crypto is just not there because the ecosystem is full of scams. You could design a perfectly federated system that's worthless because bad actors abuse the platform. If you build a system that assumes everyone is a criminal, then that's what you wind up building, a system in which everyone is a criminal.
And how long does it take to convert the Bitcoin to money in the destination country?
SWIFT wires normally clear the same day. If it took seven days, your transaction was being held for legal reasons. It’s foolish to think that Bitcoin somehow solves this problem — it just moves the responsibility for inspecting transactions to the “off-ramp” exchange you’d be using in the destination country.
Simply making illegal activity more burdensome with fiat money requires less effort than what's currently being spent on these processes.
It's perfectly reasonable for the party receiving the funds to ask for a proof that the money didn't come from human trafficking. But that should be a fully automated process in most cases, and no one but the receiving party should have anything to say.
The issue here is the American puritan mindset being forced on the world due to the duopoly of Visa and Mastercard. Similar issues stem from American social media. Here in Europe I see ads in the subway from museums that would violate e.g. the nudity rules on Instagram.
This idea that it’s both useful for large international transfers and a highly volatile investment also seems contradictory.
Everyone and their dog hates Thiel nowadays but the ideas in the book ring true more than ever. Here is one of the questions asked in the book: “What important truth do very people agree with you on?”
Some people see the potential for crypto and believe in it. Most people think it's a scam. And it may eventually collapse and go to 0. But the point here is that for radical new things conventional ways of thinking rarely work out.
Where's the crypto with high stability and low changes? I guess stablecoins seem to fit that niche the most but they also seem very centralized and owned by specific companies?
* Wire transfers
* Paying for porn
* Avoiding civil asset forfeiture
I think 99% of people watch free/ad-supported porn, and anyone concerned about civil asset forfeiture is likely either a criminal, or a conspiracy theorist and/or paranoid schizo (i.e. a small minority of the population).
Wire transfers are a legitimate use-case maybe. I don't really know much about that as I've never personally had to do it. But if that's the only legitimate use case for cryptocurrency, then it's probably a better idea to try and improve the efficiency of traditional wire transfers than to use fake money that's a magnet for fraud/scams/crimes.
> Blockchain tech is here to stay.
This I agree with. Blockchain as a general technology is useful, but not for financial products/services.
Huh. You'd be surprised.
> anyone concerned about civil asset forfeiture is likely either a criminal, or a conspiracy theorist and/or paranoid schizo
This right here is the problem. Your argument goes along the lines of: I am doing nothing wrong/illegal therefore I have nothing to worry about. This assumes perfect laws, perfect law enforcement and following proper procedures. Sorry to burst your bubble but this is not how the real world works. You don't need to prove anything and you shouldn't just throw away your rights because you want to prove you're not schizo.
In the case you are a criminal, should the punishment fit the crime and should there be due process or are we just going to throw anyone that breaks a law, any law in jail and sentence them to death?
How many laws do you break during a day? https://www.businessinsider.com/most-commonly-broken-laws-in... Should the government just come in an take all your stuff now because they suspect you've connected to an unsecured wifi? They don't even need to prove anything and poof... your stuff is gone. this is civil asset forfeiture. This is how dumb it is.
Wise or CurrencyFair take your money on a local account anywhere on the globe, and deposit it anywhere else with a local currency from a local account.
Rates are within 0.5% of the currency exchange, and no fixed or percentage fee, no wire fee since it’s all local accounts (it’s an example / please check the terms / this is not financial advice).
I honestly don’t see what’s there to save with crypto. Fees for credit card transactions are often 5 times above (2.5%).
What you want in a currency is fungiblity (if that’s an actual word) and a stable store of value.
What you get with crypto is a billion competing chains and a “high risk investment”.
To compensate for this you get exchanges who also share your view that customer deposits are a “high risk investment” instead of a warehousing operation which is their legal obligation.
Perhaps I’m not the target of crypto because I can see it for what it is and not the utopian dream people want you to see?
You really think that billions were poured into the Internet infrastructure to deliver porn more efficiently?
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-porn-drives-innovation-i...
What it really does is highlight inadequacies in education and discourse, and how intransparent "how things really work" (and by extension, what the tough problems are) can be even to intelligent people.
* Financial infrastructure that is transparent and does not rely on corporate CEOs being honest: Enron, Lehman Brothers, and now FTX have shown that global regulators cannot be trusted to protect ordinary people when institutions are corrupted from the top. DeFi markets are fully transparent—with code and data being open and replicated thousands of times over—and users maintain custody of their assets at all times.
* Instantaneous settlement for payments and trades: With blockchain tech, vendors and merchants don't need to wait for credit-card payments to be deposited in their bank accounts—tokens are transferred in real-time. Traders don't need to wait for the proceeds of their sale to be wired to them two days after the trade takes place—settlement happens instantaneously with each DeFi trade. In some developed parts of the world, these settlement delays are slowly being fixed, but blockchain technology does this out of the box, today, and works everywhere.
* Security and automatic transfer of lending collateral: Overcollateralized DeFi loans hold collateral on-chain, and will instantly liquidate any outstanding loan that dips below the collateralization ratio. This is one reason that even through all the recent turbulence in crypto markets no one who leant money through DeFi on an overcollateralized basis—including, for instance, to Celsius—has lost money. (Note however that the courts have not yet ruled as to the disposition of these DeFi loans in bankruptcy cases.)
I think it's also important to differentiate between "crypto" and "blockchains". Cryptocurrencies are a type of application that can run on blockchains, and they play an important role by creating a unified market to reimburse providers for delivering the computation and storage services that blockchains depend upon. I would agree with those that believe that they have been overhyped, however.
Cryptocurrency does not settle instantaneously, in fact credit cards are usually faster. Nobody is “waiting” for settlement. The transaction is done very fast.
Defi collateralised loans have actually had several instances of losing money and whole schemes failing - ‘whales’ holding illiquid assets have taken out massive loans with no intention of repaying, and the collateral is sometimes only “over” on paper.
Sure, but this is market risk, not counter-party risk, and is unmitigated in traditional markets as well. Just look at how Apple stock was affected by Lehman Brothers’ failure.
> Cryptocurrency does not settle instantaneously, in fact credit cards are usually faster.
Come again? If you pay me for goods using crypto, I can spend that money immediately, pending finalization.
> Nobody is “waiting” for settlement. The transaction is done very fast.
Can a merchant spend its customers’ money immediately after running the credit card? No.
Money from a credit card transaction processed on a Friday will hit the merchant’s account on Monday or Tuesday.
> Defi collateralised loans have actually had several instances of losing money and whole schemes failing - ‘whales’ holding illiquid assets have taken out massive loans with no intention of repaying, and the collateral is sometimes only “over” on paper.
OK. Yes, if your underlying collateral is worthless, or if there isn’t a meaningful pricing mechanism or liquid market in which to sell the collateral, automatic liquidation of the loan won’t work, and a different approach must be taken.
Like with anything in the world, there are some basic preconditions required for the thing to work. “This technology is inappropriate for these particular use cases” is not a very strong argument against it.
That being said, I am unaware of these particular cases that you are referring to. If you could point them out to me, I would appreciate it.
Yep, but with cryptocurrency the entire market is a shitshow. Unless you can somehow prevent these folks from playing their games, you haven’t improved upon the situation you complain about.
> Can a merchant spend its customers’ money immediately after running the credit card? No.
I see you’ve never used Square, the answer is “Yes”
> Particular cases
There was the near-collapse of Solend, and shenanigans around it earlier in the year. Looks like they had another problem with bad debt due to oracle manipulation recently too. BendDAO, had issues earlier in the year.
Moola Market and Mango Market both experienced some sort of collateral manipulation attack that drained reserves.
New Free DAO lost a million or so in a flash loan attack… There have been a lot.
These examples are best categorized as hacks, though, which are important to distinguish from losses incurred due to bad debt.
The distinction is important because the question at stake is whether DeFi in general has value. If you look at more mainstream protocols like Aave, you don’t see these same problems. In the mid- to long-term, after the technology has stabilized, all the benefits of DeFi will accrue to users without the risks that you are pointing out.
With regards to Square: yes, you can get your money wired to you at the end of the day—if you are willing to pay an extra 1.5% fee.
This is more akin to very expensive financing—having an annualized interest rate in excess of 300%!—than “instantaneous settlement”. It’s also not standard. Square’s standard settlement process is as I described:
https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5438-next-business-d...
With BTC/ETH/USDC it takes seconds. The whole process is entirely transparent. It doesn't get blocked if you reach some threshold. And the fees are smaller than with the traditional banking system.
And unlike with banks, anybody is allowed to open a new wallet. You don't have to get approval, which is difficult if you live in the streets or in a 3rd-world country.
I'm not endorsing the rest of crypto but having a trusted and transparent ledger for large transactions is nice.
Continued use of such a medium could over the long-term conceivably lead to widespread adoption, regulation, and a global currency. Fiat is disadvantaged when transactions cross borders.
I think we'll look back on this period as a painful learning process, which will set back such a digital currency by years. Perhaps it is inevitable, though, that some people will in the short-term exploit such situations for personal gain at the expense of the rest of us. Now we have to sort out the mess and wait.
It seems that both in the adtech (Facebook etc.) and crypto spaces, our industry has disgraced itself. We are at an incredible moment in history when our skills are pivotal - we're building the infrastructure of the modern world. We need to use our skills to improve things. The most obvious way to improve the situation is to carefully choose who we work for.
It doest't replace day-to-day payment but is pretty good for paying invoices.
Or the mysterious disappearance of literally billions from various exchanges?
FDIC put people at ease about putting their money in bank. banking regulations created over years to protect people's money.
crypto bros preach about decentralized. what can go wrong?
For different reasons: - easier & safer to store - much more stable than their countries own currency - not controlled by the regime
And they will likely keep using it, despite major crypto exchanges crashing down, or despite the unclear dangers of USDT.
https://restofworld.org/2022/argentina-nigeria-terra-crash/ ("From Argentina to Nigeria, people saw Terra as more stable than local currency. They lost everything")
Unfortunately, twitter does not provide a history of tweets/profiles I have visited; I hope they add something like reddit. Would really like to revisit this account now.
20% APY in dollars was too good to be true.
And when it started to crash most of us quickly converted everything away from it. I lost a few bucks though.
But I had a friend who didn't know better back then who tried to apply the "HODL" meme and yes, he lost everything
It totally collapsed, but not a big deal, because you were smarter than others, so they took the loss in a zero-sum game ("who gets to take the remaining liquidity")?
It might seem like crypto is all the rage online, but most people don't actually live in this bubble.
Obviously not a proper sample or authoritative, but pretty easy way to counter “these countries love crypto.”
Regarding the subject, it is indeed very popular. You can go to restaurants, car parts stores and clothing stores and find the Binance QR code prominently displayed.
And a LOT of freelancers working online have no way of receiving payments from abroad other than through Binance (verifying Paypal here because of currency controls). No one wants to receive the local currency.
I wouldn't say that you'll see grandmothers in the grocery store buying stuff with USDT, but it's definitely used.
In Poland it's a mild slur meaning short man
Yeah they do use a "dollar denominated stable coin": dollar bills under the mattress. Or just pegging transaction to USD/EUR etc and doing the conversion at transaction time
BTC might be useful for transferring money, but compared to existing mechanisms (legal or kinda legal), maybe not so much
Same with the "funding activists in repressive states" argument. Now you have a few centralized entities that can share data with the authorities. And they do, cf. Binance in Russia.
Ironically a CBDC from a powerful but non-cooperative state like China would probably be much safer for these people in Iran or Venezuela.
For me, Bitcoin (and the whole disappearing creator act and hints of NSA involvement) has always been a tinfoil moment. This is the perfect mechanism for total economic awareness not the supposed virtues, such as anonymity, that it does not really have. The Ponzi schemes seem to have been permitted to establish the necessary infrastructure (mining, exchanges, etc.) and normalize the technology. Next stop should be the regulators post MSM preparatory media campaign (“Explainer: why we need crypto regulations today”). Then it will likely support CBDCs transactions (the CBDCs being the actual main event here btw). You will get a ‘wallet’ at birth and say goodbye to banks and remember that all you spendings are now recorded for posterity. (Remember “cash is bad” & is also a vector of nasty viruses).
If the big 5 scammers go to real jail — double digit billions of dollars are involved here — and don’t end up suiciding themselves, i will reconsider my current take on this entire affair.
However, S.Nakamoto was always anonymous and Bitcoin never stated to be anonymous, not even in the white paper. I think that the correct term here is pseudonymous.
P.S. To those suggesting regulation, do you realise that regulations are being crafted by people like these (SBF's family)? Is it really going to improve anything or just equalise it all with the absolute worst?
1. https://law.stanford.edu/directory/joseph-bankman/ 2. https://law.stanford.edu/directory/barbara-fried/
Crypto is no more of a Ponzi Scheme than Fiat currency is, the big difference is Fiat currency is back by threats of violence (aka government).
That's a delicate illusion and does not survive well when largish minorities declare the social contract void.
So that alone invalidates the idea that voting is "consent to be governed", saying that is like saying when a mugger that comes upon you with a demand of "your money or your life" means you "consented" to give the mugger you money when you hand it over.
Second people feel the force of government every day, most have assimilated this consent threat into their lives as just a part of living but even in the most "free" nations consent threat is there, did you fill out your tax return correctly... is that cop going to pull me over.... etc etc etc etc
The delicate illusion is that this consent overriding threat of violence by the state is somehow legitimate, ethical and moral
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”
-- Author Unknown
No, if voters don't like the result, they can still use force, anytime they like. Like what Belarusians did in 2020 after obviously rigged circus election (though their force was far from enough vs. their government-in-power backed by Russia).
However so is the "responsibility" narrative. Both are over stating the importance and function of voting. One does not, and can not have a responsibility or obligation to choose between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich [1].
Low participation rate is an indictment of the entire system.
It’s different if you are under Venezuelan rule, it’s government is small, authoritarian and incompetent.
There is no fix for that.
"Fiat" currency has a lot of people overseeing it, and armies protecting it. I'll take that over SBF any day.
Even with fiat's issues--for example, with a stroke of a pen, Biden can print and confiscate money and transfer it to privileged college borrowers, causing inflation--it still works better. In this case, our court system is slowing the process down
<<Checks US Debt Clock site>>>>
Fact Check: False.... not slowing down at all... US Government spending is still extreme irresponsible and fast approaching insolvency... but hey the courts stopped a 0.0000015% increase so yea.....
Also, I thought that not every single alt-coin is a ponzi-like fraud, but I will probably be disproven once again.
I find Bitcoin very intriguing because unlike TradFi it is not built in debt. Every dollar you have in your account is someone else's debt to you. Which is also the reason Bitcoin gets compared so much to gold! There is a fixed amount of nuggets and no debt is involved.
(Yes, I know that about 8% of the gold demand is actually driven by the technology sector, but the majority of gold's price is driven through pure speculation on... nothing productive! Gold's price is mostly driven by greed / price action.)
I think if you call gold or Bitcoin a Ponzi, you're using the wrong term. Greater Fool Theory is more fitting.
For most normal (non-techy) people, what's the allure of Bitcoin once you remove all the marketing? Perhaps gold indeed still relies on the greater fool, but that fool on average is still less of a fool than the greater fool who has too much "invested" in cryptocurrency.
To break it down: If I have 1 dollar in my account, the bank owes me 1 dollar. And this goes all the way up.
When you have 1 dollar in your account, the bank still has the dollar! It's a liability owed to you.
Every financial asset is somebody else's liability. Every financial asset is similar to a promissory note. If you sign one, it is your liability, but it would be an asset for the note's holder. This is also true for your bank account. Your account statement is a promissory note that the bank owes you 1 dollar.
The US Dollar is a big scam too, if COVID didn't highlight that then... well, it doesn't really matter.
What COVID did is reveal what a currency actually is. It’s a bet on the reliability of the backers of the currency. In the case of the USD, that would be the US government and economy.
BTC only has value because people don’t seem to understand this basic fact of a currency.