That's Celsius, Voyager, Blockfi, Genesis and now nexo all in some level of financial/legal trouble.
The question is how much is still to be uncovered.
Crypto doesn’t create any value, like with an investment in a regular business. So that must mean any profit is just money from the latest “unfortunates” that were foolish or desperate enough to buy in.
Generally, I agree that a lot of "cryptocoin" usages are basically fraudulent and scams. Some of them are nothing more than "bragging rights" aka "look at me, I'm rich enough to waste 100 bucks on an NFT by the 45th" or that time when Twitter allowed one to display an NFT as a profile picture.
There is one legitimate usage for cryptocurrencies however: anonymity. The amount of traceability that banks, secret services and police have into our lives simply by mapping our transaction activity is insane. Unfortunately, Bitcoin has way too much of an energy consumption and too high latency for mainstream usage outside of drug deliveries via dark web marketplaces, and the alternatives are way too volatile even compared to Bitcoin.
The key issue isn’t anonimity but policy and politics. No technology can be above any law by definition.
Lightning Network also has some interesting capabilities & seems like it might actually evolve into something with real utility. Block is investing pretty significantly into that.
The minority of Bitcoin enthusiasts in the crypto space might turn out to be at least somewhat right. Assuming western governments don’t ban proof of work, at least.
The project is 13 years old at this point and has failed to provide any meaningful use, has failed in terms of mainstream appeal and isn't nowhere near revolutionary. All of this while being an environmental disaster, burning through electricity and producing e-waste like there's no ecological emergency.
That farce needs to stop and the sooner the better.
But it’s incredibly fascinating to see how much the Bitcoin fans can ignore all of the fraud and the collapse of crypto markets, instead focusing on hypothetically perfect retroactive market timing.
So much of the Bitcoin propaganda is different versions of “Well if you had bought Bitcoin on <specific date in the past> then you’d be up right now!”
But yes that last part is right, people are always saying stuff like that and it’s a terrible argument if you can even call it that.
Yield products aren't the problem, they're a symptom.
The problem is wanting to buy something that has no value and hoping to sell it to someone else who in turn is also hoping to sell it to someone else even higher.
Bitcoin, NFT, yield products, etc, they're all manifestations of the same thing.
Bitcoin going down: this is good for bitcoin!
It's probably one of the less shady ones out there (i.e. it wasn't "invented" by a twitch streamer, hyped up and sold to their audience then abandoned) but I think a few people are maybe a little bit too hopeful and optimistic about it.
I'm just saying Bitcoin is up 15% off of lows from 15,760. All of the bad news about it and people are clearly still buying it/most likely dollar cost averaging into it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34334535
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34334993
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34335017
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34334902
>If ChatGPT doesn’t get a better grasp of facts, nothing else matters:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90833017/openai-chatgpt-accuracy...
>OpenAI’s astoundingly glib bot is going to change the world. Before it does, let’s hope it gets far better at knowing what it’s talking about.
I was trying to prove (in a conversation how crypto isn't trustworthy) that some people commonly believe 1. the government isn't perfect in terms of being trustworthy (especially when it comes to money) and 2. neither can Wall Street.
Please, leave me alone. I'm asking nicely.
Not really great numbers.