Crypto's Wild West Era Is Over
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Crypto's current era has never been more wild. It's actually quite insane.
The number of shitcoins is at an all-time high. Most crypto trading is of the gambling nature.
Bitcoin is getting relatively mainstream and not too wild, everything else is a shitshow. But even bitcoin for 99% of users is just a speculative asset, just more stable and mainstream. Virtually nobody is using it for transactions (except for illegal products), for banking, or as an inflation hedge. Even in high-inflation countries like Turkey, sub 1% of assets are held in bitcoin.
Poor journalism to make this wholly unsubstantiated claim about crypto's wild west era being over based on some new US legislation around stablecoins, even if the part about stablecoins was true.
This is false for almost everyone I know, when speaking specifically about Bitcoin (which you are).
The talk about e.g. it being layer-0 and day-to-day stuff being level-1 or whatever, that immediately deletes all the supposed benefits that bitcoin advocates for as it becomes "here is a bank that is backed with BTC just like normal modern ones are backed with fiat and old ones with gold".
I used it only to buy drugs.
Friends hold it as a gambling invest.
0.005% of earth population.
but yeah, it’s about the size of a single medium-sized accelerationist Thiel colony participating with each other.
like if Cincinnati was raising bonds to convert to a seastead.
The banking world have state that in 2019 https://web.archive.org/web/20240213185758/https://www.cimb.... and now it's just another small win of the new banksters...
Whether it’s a "shitcoin" or not really depends on perspective. Those who bought it voluntarily and profited likely don’t see it that way — and even some who lost money might not consider it trash. Their opinions matter just as much as yours.
In the end, it’s the collective will of the people that determines whether a memecoin survives or thrives. To me, that’s a perfect example of freedom in action.
Say what you want about the LLM hype, but there's been situations where i've used a LLM and thought oh yeah that makes sense, that makes my life easier. I've never seen a crypto project where I think, oh yeah, that was way easier than the current basis.
If any evangelist has a crypto project that does this, i'd be happy to support crypto/blockchain etc, but I've really not seen a useful outcome. I even own a crypto wallet, but there's a reason why I still pay for everything with visa.
Ask HN - imagine if the AI answered some of those questions.
Google has "Programmable Search Engine" - how about "Programmable AI" ? Then there's the whole monetization thing - can that revenue be somehow distributed back to sources?
If Bitcoin weren’t useful, people wouldn’t use it, and it certainly doesn’t exist to steal anything from anyone.
Honestly, is Bitcoin anything other than a speculative asset? It's useful in the sense that it's worth more money, but it feels more like a way of achieving a kind of gold mining in the digital age.
I suppose there's use from that angle, but i'm talking more about the actual projects (Helium, NFTs, etc) which all seem to fizzle into being far worse than what already exists.
Not everyone denominates their wealth in inflationary currencies.
The utility of things like gold and bitcoin is that no force on Earth at the moment has the ability to change policy and inflate them. Many people find that to be a big issue with fiat currencies. Those that don’t, of course, are not compelled to ever touch cryptocurrencies.
They are a purely opt-in alternative to people who find fiat currencies to be lacking for their use cases.
I’m personally not very interested in most random open source projects; they’re usually boring and uninspired. I’m not sure why we expect the bar to be any higher in crypto.
NFTs are a good example of something that get a lot of unnecessary hate. Nobody starts foaming at the mouth when rich people drop five or six figures on MTG or Pokémon cards (or Hermes bags, for that matter), but somehow NFTs are specifically bad?
I agree that it's a opt-in alternative for people who find FIAT currencies lacking, maybe store of value is a use but it just feels within the speculative asset aspect. I feel the same way about it as someone storing a bunch of gold in a vault, which kind of cements my view.
I suppose this is what I mean, I don't think NFTs are specifically bad, I value it in the same way i'd do dropping 6 figures on pokemon cards, except it's just slightly worse than owning a collectors item, which is my original point.
So yeah - if the argument is that crypto/blockchain just exists as an alternative currency, and that's all it will ever really be used for, I suppose that's a use, i'd probably have all my money in crypto if I lived in a highly inflationary country
What you describe (buy high, sell low) is the opposite so what incentive the government (or anyone else) has to loose money? Sticking it to Bitcoin?
BTW: it's not that I FIND fiat lacking. Fiat IS lacking. See all the printing of money by US, EU and everyone else. Most recent US budget is projected to add 5 $trillion, which will be printed.
I merely RECOGNIZE the fiat is lacking and Bitcoin isn't.
And I may be wrong here so feel free to direct me to how to actually do it, but I struggle buying things with bitcoin without major fees, what's the actual acceptable method of doing so?
Governments regularly seize crypto wallets and sell assets at market price. I’m not sure how much BTC the US government holds, but it might be possible for a government sized entity to crash the market (and make some people ludicrously rich when it rebounds).
No. Anyone purchasing an insane amount of Bitcoin would cause so much money to flow into the ecosystem that it would be quite difficult or impossible to crash later.
The market used to be shallow. It isn’t now. The order books are deeeeeep.
So, in a blockchain-run world, they would totally have a use. That’s just not the world for most people.
This patently not remotely true in the world of crypto.
When I was a kid, I had a typewriter. Was even still possible to buy ink ribbons for it in a local stationary store, not that I could afford them on pocket money, but I've not seen ink ribbons in a stationary store since the early 90s.
Despite that, typewriters are still around: https://www.amazon.com/Royal-79101t-Classic-Manual-Typewrite...
If you're using the bitcoin consensus approach in an interplanetary era, you quickly end up with using the full output of Dyson swarm just to stop someone else doing the same, not for any real gain over "I trust you to keep this ledger correct because we all know what 'accountants' and 'lawsuits' are".
If we don't have lawsuits, there's no process by which someone's failure to have an accountant could be held against them. If you don't have something accountant-shaped that can examine the real world, then you have no way to audit that your debit of 100 Martian Pesos was balanced with a credit of 100 traditional Martian didgeridoos, no matter if the Martian Peso was a cryptocurrency, a fiat currency, or commodity money consisting of transmuted post-transuranic-island-of-stability-metal. If you don't care about that, you're probably only playing with money and assets anyway and are functionally post-scarcity.
We might be post-scarcity, annihilated, or post-apocalyptic in 100 years, but none of these three would likely keep Bitcoin, and only one JavaScript.
Expand to other solar system and it will get worse still.
BTC might still be around but very much in the background in favor of newer ones.
Crypto is speech, not property.
I really don’t think you’d like where that can of worms leads.
It doesn’t even matter if you like cryptocurrencies or not; we all have a vested interest in being able to create p2p networks amongst the whole internet and send any kind of messages/frames within them that we wish.
So how can we have bank regulation, when everything that a bank does is just speech?
The answer is that the law is interested in the content of communications, and whether the messages are cryptographically peer-to-peer this-or-that is irrelevant. If your crypto messaging is about selling drugs or unregistered securities, it's not much of an excuse that you were doing it peer-to-peer.
Bitcoin network doesn't have a CEO. It is what it is and will always be that. Bitcoin network will not decide, at some point, to lend out your bitcoin at 100x leverage. There will never be a run on Bitcoin network because it always has the same amount of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin network is already "regulated" by the code.
Bitcoin regulations are merely governments trying to regain control they had with banks (they can get all the info they want about you, they can order banks to shutdown your account, like Canadian government did).
Crypto*graphy* is speech.
To assert that crypto*currency* is not property is quite bizarre.
Practically speaking, they can’t be anything but speech.
Bitcoin and derivatives are of little to use for people other than criminals and gamblers.
I wouldn't recommend it, except as a learning experience for how useless crypto is for personal travel usage.
Carrying hundreds of USD currency worked better and felt safer.
Did some successful exchanges from crypto to obtain cash in Argentina (useful to get discounted Blue Rate).
Certainly would be useful to get money safely to rellies in AR.
Conversational Spanish, so that wasn't a problem.
Definitely didn't feel that safe, although fortunately I was not robbed. I only had a few thousand worth of crypto.
I have absolutely no crypto now.
I always hear hand waivy notions like “no middleman,” “faster settlement,” and “lower fees,” but it has to be exchanged to fiat somewhere to be spent right? And there are fees and settlement periods there?
Many fiat P2P services are instant as well - when i Venmo a friend, they see it instantly. When I transfer to my bank, that may take several days to settle. But exchanging USDC for USD and transferring off the exchange to my bank will also take several days.
People always say “it COULD be used this magic way,” but I’ve never heard anyone say, “it IS used this magic way.”
What is the killer use case I’m missing?
Like, there was a webshop that accepted BTC, doing real-time ish price conversion between USD and BTC; if I was that webshop, I wouldn't have sold the BTC for fiat as it came in, but just let it accumulate until the BTC price went up favorably. A $100 purchase would become $200 with the BTC price appreciation over time.
Anyway yeah. Killer use case is a digital currency whose value is stable and predictable, so actually usable as a digital currency.
It seems like I’ve never seen a merchant accept a stablecoin as payment. Is that happening?
If USD is not official currency in those places, then does stablecoin become an underground, unregulated currency?
to be able to transact it into other coins without going through a fiat exchange.
I'm not particularly well versed into crypto but every time i've attempted anything similar it's always seemed wildly more expensive to do it via crypto than going into a currency exchange.
My guess is that it is just trying to avoid any legislation that would come into play when using pure fiat balances.
The problem is they arent. Tether for instance refuses to be properly audited. They keep saying that between cash and cash equivilants they are in parity. But per a Galaxy Research article its probably backed by 3% cash. and the rest is treasuries and commericial paper holdings. Which means that if some shit were to go down best case they can make 3% of people good. And the rest... who the hell knows. Its all a scam.
Oh, is this so you move in and out of BTC whenever you need at an exchange, and rather than offboarding to USD, you stay in the ecosystem by just holding USDT?
Remittances are a really big deal, and the permissionless nature of blockchains means there’s basically zero barrier to entry for anyone.
Sending BTC or ETH (fees aside) is just too much volatility for everyday users.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpqreZlmHGU [video][7m21s]
It's certainly an interesting, newsworthy development, but the piece is missing just a teeny bit of context: the crypto donations and Trump interests, the money lost in the last cycle, the risks involved in opening up volatile assets to broader markets, the really sketchy actors and use cases, the dubious history of Tether.
This is a puff piece.
Which rails in particular and to what extent? Any problems?
I read recently:
"Saying the vast majority of regulated financial assets will ultimately settle on blockchain rails is 'not a crazy prediction' anymore."
https://coinwy.com/ripple-ondo-finance-us-license-acquisitio...
Crypto has no purpose outside the wild west. Any attempts at applying a sheen of respectability over it all is just trying to find new bagholders.
That's when I understood that everything which exists and will ever exist is or will be a scam.
If something existed which wasn't a scam, you would not have heard about it.
If something which wasn't a scam was allowed to keep existing, that can only be because it was turned into a scam.
Everyone in the modern crony-capitalist system is a scammer. You have to be a scammer in order to have the competitive edge needed to keep existing.
Essentially all the people at the top are scammers so if you compete by honest means, your chance of success is zero. Your profit margins will always be smaller if not padded by the sweet, juicy proceeds of scams... There is no room for second best; there can only be one winner... It's a matter of time before your competitor uses their scam juice to squeeze your honest margins down to negative.
You either scam directly or benefit from scams built into the system. There is no alternative if you don't want to be a loser in this system.
Personally, I remain genuinely excited about crypto’s potential. The advocacy — DUKI (/ˈdjuːki/ – Decentralized Universal Kindness Income) In Action — is built around that belief. DUKI is a term I coined to describe UBI v2: a kinder, wiser evolution of Universal Basic Income. It’s not enforced by government taxation, but powered by voluntary participation, fairness, and shared values — by all, for all.
Yes, power — whether it is in the form of money or not — tends to concentrate and corrupt. But we must always remember: “All” is the true superpower — the collective that determines what truly survives and thrives. That’s why we need a kindness-driven system to embody that truth — and I believe DUKI is perfect for it .
The goal? To Make All Great Again — not through domination or empty words, but through the right kind of love and meaningful action.
Why do you think fiat is a scam? Where/how did you learn this?
Why would promoting bank runs be illegal, if it wasn't a scam. Surely they should fully held every single currency unit and be callable in seconds.
For example all money is created either by government or banks. Money moves fast; on average, each unit/dollar doesn't stay in the economy very long (in terms of how far it can travel) because it is quickly taxed down to nothing and ends up back in gov coffers. Each time it hops to a different person via a transaction, it gets taxed at say 30% (e.g. avg income tax)... How far from the gov or bank money printer can any newly created money travel before it's taxed down to nearly nothing? After just 6 hops, almost 90% has been taxed away... This creates an uneven playing field as communities which are further from a 'money printer' exist in an artificially scarce monetary environment. Read up on the "Cantillon effect".
But the system also scams most asset holders. As the money supply keeps inflating and pushing up asset prices, if you sell your asset, you have to pay a capital gains tax on it... Say you bought an asset and it went up in price 50% over 10 years but during this time inflation was also 50% (over that whole 10 year period)... You have to pay CGT tax on the price increase even though your real buying power has not increased... Tax is eating into your wealth even if it flatlined when measured in terms of buying power. BTW, does it ever get mentioned that inflation compounds? This means that people's loss of buying power compounds as well. This is especially bad for long 20 or 30 year contracts. Here I could go on a rant about gov treasury bills being a scam...
Don't get me started on how inflation errodes the true value of your employment contracts... Or how it pushes you up into higher tax brackets whenever you manage to negotiate a salary 'increase' (I put it in quotation marks because your salary increase is probably not actually an increase; even language has become a scam). You pay more tax whenever the fake fiat numbers get bigger, even if your real buying power has stayed flat.
Only big VCs, investors and founders who get crazy returns of 100x on their investments can beat inflation and the tax scam enough to actually make a profit in this system.
There are also big macro issues like how wars are used to prop up fiat currencies of certain powerful countries and to fill the pockets of weapons manufacturers.
Now let's not discuss the real reason why Africa cannot escape poverty and the unbelievable hypocrisy of blaming poor citizens for 'choosing' their predicament while western governments are actively helping to install and maintain corrupt dictators over there whilst publicly preaching the virtues democracy whenever it's convenient!
Literally everything has become a scam on top of a scam. As I said, even our language has become deceptive, often used unwittingly because the big fiat scam is redefining the very meaning of words like 'profit' and 'salary' from underneath us as a way to extract as much tax from us as possible.
I actually think capitalism has merit but you need a strong government on top to ensure that a level playing field is guaranteed and maintained.
I think this partly explains China's relative success over the past few decades. In spite of certain inefficiencies that come from trying to control everything, it seems that China did a better job at providing a more level playing field for their market system (at least internally, within China). I still think it's probably not level enough though as they also have the same basic fiat system. I think they just did a better job as identifying and stomping our rent-seeking from their economy.
Thankfully, you don't need to be a scammer to 'just get by' in such crooked system, it's complex and full of loopholes. You just need to find the loopholes.