Hacker News Reader

Comment by pantulis | Hacker News Reader

Not sure if all crypto is a scam necessarily, but sure that world is chock full of scammers trying to out-scam each other.

View on HN

And if you give the scammers a platform that's not useful for anything else than building endless variations of memecoins and productless fake-tech penny stocks, what is the expected output?

  Not sure if all crypto is a scam necessarily, but sure that world is chock full of scammers trying to out-scam each other.

It's all scams. Even if the coin itself is not a total scam, the exchanges do some of the most shady things you can imagine. They'll actively trade against their customers. They'll do insider trading, rugpull their customers, gets "hacked" by an insider and steal all your coins, etc.

Even BTC and ETH are shady. ETH should have been classified as security. BTC is an environmental disaster and centralized by a few large miners.

I don't think that it's all a scam, but I do think that it gives scammers a vehicle to con people without oversight or regulation. They also end up with "real" money which can be spent.

[flagged]

You can keep telling yourself that, but there's enough utility and momentum behind it that it is not going anywhere. I'm saying this as a person with no stake in the matter, just observing from the sidelines.

What is the utility behind it? I don't see people using to actually do any transactions because of the volatility and fluctuating transaction fees. Scams can have momentum behind them

True fiscal self-sovereignty. Albeit quite volatile.

You can't have this if you are a citizen of any country

Again, I'm going to mention that I'm looking at this from the sidelines.

I would argue that people make more purchases with Bitcoin than they do with gold.

Gold is similarly worthless as a currency. Which is why we don't use it as one any more.

It has plenty of utility, though. Open up any electronic device.

There are people who use crypto for transactions. Stablecoins are stable and for some people the fees are far lower than any alternatives.

I'm not much aware of this type of use case, but is that really the future of crypto? Stablecoins for countries hit by sanctions, etc.?

Bernie Madoff's investments had a lot of utility and momentum for decades, too.

This is true but his records were well hidden, and the Bitcoin ledger is public.

Nothing in the Bitcoin ledger will tell you when someone's doing wash trading to manipulate the price.

Wash trading still happens in the NYSE, despite being illegal.

Interesting point about wash trading being somewhat untraceable. How about a coin that connects a hash whatever to each chunk of the token as it moves around so every coin has a backstory written into the blockchain. And that sounds like current fiat banking.

Ditto baseball cards.

You can't send baseball cards instantly across the world and you have no guarantee of their authenticity.

You can sell ownership across the world instantly, and you can use a centralized authority for authenticity and grading. Done. All for less cost than crypto and without enabling DPRK to steal your card with no recourse.

This is exactly what happened with gold, and then people realized that basing money on gold was stupid, so now we have the system we have today. Cryptofools are two financial revolutions behind modernity.

I hear what you are saying and you're putting an awful lot of trust in that centralized authority.

We used to back our money with precious metals, but no longer do so. The dollar is now backed by aircraft carriers, jets, and military might.

> you're putting an awful lot of trust in that centralized authority.

No, I'm putting my trust in the rule of law.

> The dollar is now backed by aircraft carriers, jets, and military might.

It is mainly backed by trust in government monetary policy. Otherwise, what is the GBP backed by? The Royal Navy isn't what it used to be.

Tbh, I just made this comment because I thought it would be funny to use your username in it. (Doesn't mean my opinion is something else, though)

Ha, I was wondering. Thanks for the chuckle. :-)

Really? Seems more like the scams that keep it going? What's the utility that is keeping it going?

Well, now I’m convinced

Glad I was able to help.

This is an absurd claim since it takes a single counter-example to disprove.

E.g. you can pay for Mullvad in crypto, Mullvad is not a scam. You can trade predictions on Polymarket, Polymarket is not a scam.

People don't want logic, they want to believe what they want.

Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We want curious conversation here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

the dynamics of the crypto market seem to push non scammers out.

im not sure whether this is gresham's law or the dynamics of a lemon market in action or what though.

  the dynamics of the crypto market seem to push non scammers out.

Anyone with any morals would leave crypto after a while.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com