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Comment by drewstiff | Hacker News Reader

Did you ever consider that the crypto scammers might not be the same people as the crypto freedom folks? It wasn't one grand trick by a collective of genius con artists... Much like the cashier at the store isn't to blame for that guy calling your grandma and trying to trick her into sending money from her bank account.

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The real problem is that when it matters there's no way to tell them apart.

Because one wants to look like the other for very obvious reasons.

could LLM's help the casual user differentiate between legit crypto technologies and scams?

Crypto is a speculative investment vehicle, its basically a lottery machine - why would people who are so invested in a lottery machine that you can avoid taxes or buy drugs with be surprised they are considered part of the con artists doing the pump and dumps?

Crypto is... a currency?

The people yoloing into crypto in the hopes it will go up are not the same people advocating for a global currency revolution.

And why exactly are we "hoping for a global currency revolution" - hint, its all the bad stuff that's hard to do with current currency regulations.

> And why exactly are we "hoping for a global currency revolution"

So that Visa and MasterCard can't censor things they don't like. So that PayPal can't block creators from withdrawing money because they made a Japanese style game

When institutional investors and yolo 'get rich' people sell their coins it will drop to (in case of Bitcoin) 2,000 USD again, it would be closer to a currency then. However people would go crazy, because it's only very, very rarely used as a currency. Most just use it as a speculative asset.

With all due respect, so is cash

Don't forget about regimes like Iran and North Korea using crypto to receive bribes, ransomware payments, and launder money. Crypto is a cesspool. Just wait for the bank runs when everyone tries to bail out. There's a reason we have banking regulations.

Don't forget about regimes like the USA a using crypto to receive bribes, ransomware payments, and launder money. Crypto is a cesspool.

Sadly, it's not limited to "evil dictatorships" on the other side of the world.

> Crypto is a cesspool.

Wait until you hear about the US Dollar.

I think it's clear that crypto has real market-based utility as an exchange of value. It's just that much of that utility is illegal, for a spectrum of meanings of that word. Paying crypto to murder people is not the same as wanting to get out from under your shitty government's currency into another more stable one.

The whole Epstein thing (the money, I mean) just shows that money has always wanted to be moved around, and a certain class of people don't care how it gets done- I mean the arms dealers, but also the billionaires hiding money in their charities. A libertarian would say that crypto democratizes that for everyone. I don't think it can last forever though.

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