I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's <i>some</i> promise in <i>some</i> places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises.<p>Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stupid, toxic, illegal, scammy behaviour in the crypto community. Even if you're curious about hearing how the latest project is justifying itself, you can't have a conversation about it because the entire conversation is dominated by memes and spam about other scam projects. At some point the reasonable thing to do is to say "No, actually this whole thing is just bad, and shouldn't be treated seriously". There's only so many times that you can humor the same lie. Web3, NFTs, DAOs, Altcoins, Smart Contracts, Stable coins. It's just the same grift repeated every 6 months. For every claim of how this tech <i>could</i> help someone there are thousands of people who have been harmed by scams using this tech.
Unfortunately, given:<p>"How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?
How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web?
How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information?
How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system?
How can we make information more available to everyone?
How can we fix a society where so many people are in untenable financial situations?
How can we reduce the enormous wealth disparity in today’s society—both in the existing distribution of wealth but also in access to new opportunities to earn it?
How can we enable creatives to make a fair living from their art?
How can we address inequities on a global scale?
How can we create self-governing communities around shared interests or goals?"<p>Cryptocurrencies as a tech are not the answer for any of those questions, they could be a tool to support some of those things but as of now are not the most efficient way to improve those. Maybe the "movement" / hype behind cryptos could help but you have to an absolute uncynical person to think that given the types that are most loudely hyping it up, society won't be worse off in the end.
I don’t think there’s a bifurcation between “good” and “bad” people in crypto, the real world is a lot more grey, and how people behave doesn’t depend so much on their character, but on culture and incentives.<p>These days, we painfully observe the culture of crypto in every single online medium that isn’t very carefully moderated, for example Twitter.<p>And about incentives, I think it’s very hard not to become some kind of “evangelist” or “shill” when a significant fraction of your net worth is invested in a digital item whose sole value depends on enough other people also believing in the project. You <i>need</i> to spread the hype.<p>In my opinion, all of this would be fun and games if it weren’t for the massive negative externalities all of this cause in terms of environmental damage and accelerating the climate catastrophe. This is completely evident, which doesn’t stop some crypto holders from denying it with all kinds of illogical arguments. That’s understandable — see previous paragraph.
"How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?"<p>The same as national health insurance. You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy.
The crypto world is full of serious, borderline genius innovation as well as scammers and lies. I don't know why people can't accept that both can be true at the same time.<p>What percentage of emails sent in the world are legitimate vs spam? I don't think in principle we care about the volume of BS, we only care about how easily we can filter it out from the genuine stuff. I think over time our ability to do that will get better.<p>Once crypto as a platform has more useful products, it'll be more obvious that it's worth it to put in the work to filter out the BS. For now, I can see why it's not so obvious. But don't be disappointed that you didn't get in early.
IMHO the problem with crypto is the very thing that its proponents cite as one of its key benefits, its decentralised nature.<p>We are told that crypto is supposedly a way to "stick it to the man", to fight those "evil banks/governments".<p>The trouble is that unlike fiat currency, there is no fundamental means of valuation. Crypto is worth what its worth on the day based largely or exclusively on entirely non-economic valuation, which is why its so incredibly volatile.<p>The trouble is that you cannot escape the truth that the world is based on trade. People make goods, people supply services and other people buy goods and buy services. People also buy and sell essential commodities. This happens both domestically and cross-border.<p>The value of fiat currency is ultimately tied to the economics of global, and therefore provides an objective means to value said currencies, both themselves and relative to other currencies.<p>You don't get that with crypto.<p>Well, you <i>could</i> argue that you do to a limited extent, <i>but</i> that limited extent would only make crypto comparible to emerging world fiat currency of some tiny country.... high-frequency boom and bust cycles, high volatility, potential for episodes of illiquidity etc.
The problem is that while these topics are interesting (and even crucial these days) they're often used in bad faith by people who are just in it because of the get-rich-quick scheme. You'll often see people push some cryptotoken using a thin veneer of political activism, saying that it's about taking control back or redistributing wealth etc... but it's rarely more than that.<p>In my experience if you attempt to push back and ask how exactly they propose to fix these problems they'll just resort to enumerating the failings of our current system (the 2008 crisis, wealth inequality, tax evasion by the wealthiest etc...) which is all fair, but how does cryptocurrency fix this? I'd argue that so far it's mostly demonstrated that it shares all these issues, only even more pronounced.<p>The pyramid scheme at the core of cryptocurrency poisons the well, that's the original issue with this entire thing. You can't have a good faith discussion when one side expects that they're going to be billionaires if things go their way. I acknowledge that there's definitely toxicity coming from us cryptoskeptics, but you have to acknowledge that these days easily 90% of any discussion involving cryptocurrencies is going to use shallow catchphrases pushed by people who don't understand the technology, don't understand basic economic principles and are just hoping that their $1000 in ShitCumShibaCoin is going to make them millionaires.<p>On top of that the cryptocurrency side has over a decade of unfulfilled promises to account for. As far as I'm concerned we've exhausted the discussion years ago. Any debate surrounding cryptocurrencies on HN from 2017 is equally as relevant today, there's no need to keep repeating the same arguments over and over again from both sides. So today I mostly dismiss anything cryptocurrency-related as a scam and move on. It works well, too.
I don't think I am <i>ever</i> going to get used to "crypto" meaning "cryptocurrency" and not "cryptography". Can't we just keep calling it "cryptocurrency"? I thought this article would be about the various misguided governments' attempts to outlaw cryptography.
In my view it is quite difficult to find insightful and civilized long-form discussion on the topic of crypto, compared to most other "controversial" topics I'm personally intersted in (e.g. geopolitics or economics). I might be mistaken – but it is my impression that the blockchain-space is fast growing and attracts a ton of intelligent people. Surely there must be a lot to talk about?<p>On reddit, the crypto-themed subreddits (that I know of) are almost entirely comprised of doom-and-gloom-sentiment and astroturfing, while subreddits outside of this bubble are reminiscent of HN, where specific crypto projects almost never reach the frontpage and if they do, the discussion is seldomly about specifics.
It's unfortunate that Bitcoin has become so mired in partisan politics.<p>For me its purpose is simple.<p>If my money is a representation of my time and effort, why should I accept the central banks' inflation "target" of even 2%, due to money printing? I don't see why anyone should be okay with that, particularly given that central banks rarely meet that target for long and more often than not overshoot by a significant amount.<p>It's insane to me that anyone should expect the purchasing power of their money to reduce, debasing their own time and effort. Why is that acceptable to people?
Crypto offers nothing but highly volatile securities trading. That can never accomplish any of the positive goals listed in the article. Simple realistic analysis is all that is necessary to reject crypto as currently offered as an agent of positive change. Having noble ideas or goals is no excuse for doing damage with inherently unstable technologies.
> If you feel the urge to “cyberbully” someone in crypto, direct it at the powerful players behind crypto projects that are actively taking advantage of the vulnerable.<p>Phrased like that, sure, how can anyone disagree?<p>But what about urging folks to not loose their shirts in a scam? Situations like going to a wedding, meeting up with relatives/family-friends, and finding out they're about to get involved in Amway, bizarre religions, Tony Robbins or other self-help guru's, or nutritional supplement scams? Does it ever work to intervene? Probably not often, but there's value in speaking to them about it. Same thing with crypto.<p>One useful thing you can do is to direct folks to the "Line Goes Up" video from Dan Olson (<a href="https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g</a>). It's an epic, 2 hour long take-down that's perhaps the most comprehensive and air-tight argument against crypto thus far. Does it convince people? I hope so. It should?<p>It pains me to see even smart progressive orgs like Popula (<a href="https://popula.com/" rel="nofollow">https://popula.com/</a>) get themselves involved in crypto. And I don't want the most vulnerable people to be left "holding the bag" when this stuff inevitably pops.
Nowadays, I don't really discuss Bitcoin anymore with anyone.<p>The people who need it the most will ask questions like: <i>"How can I send money from the EU to the Dominican Republic without paying 25% 'banking commissions'?"</i> or <i>"How can I help my mother in Jakarta to get money quickly?"</i> and totally organically, we come to the conclusion that Bitcoin is the answer...<p>We in the West tend to be blind from the problems and solutions that the rest of humanity has found by using bitcoin...<p>See also: <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-privilege" rel="nofollow">https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-pri...</a>
You cannot solve contract/legal problems and wrong transactions through decentralization. You can't also make a democratic system act on every conflict. You assign a central authority to act on them and you select that authority through a democratic process, which is what we already have.<p>- I want to have a beer!<p>- ok, scan this QR, and accept the transaction<p>- there you go!<p>- thank you, here are your 5 beers<p>- oh, did I just pay for 5? I wanted 1! can you refund me and take these back?<p>- no can do! pretty sure you said 5!<p>You can convince the 51% to cancel the transaction or you can call the police. What would you do?<p>Bitcoin <i>may</i> fix some friction issues if it's integrated into the current financial system, but it'd then just be a very small cog in a giant machine.<p>You may not agree, it may also be that you do not want to agree, and it's ok.<p>Now if you start calling people toxic because they state what's obvious for them, you can never get a proper discussion. It's also a little red flag that should make you question if you are in a cult.
You can't get rich with bitcoin any more. That's a good thing and also separates the people who believe in better money, from the "get rich quick with crypto" types.<p>If you believe that Bitcoin is better money, then you also realize that we need just one Bitcoin. In this world view, every copy-cat project doesn't serve any purpose, other than making their founders and early investors rich.<p>Bitcoin toxicity stems from this mindset. Bitcoiners are anti-crypto. There has been so many broken promises, and so much lost money from newbies, that it's better to just defend toxically against every crypto project, rather trying to go through their arguments and trying to rationally invalidate them. You can safely assume that everything in crypto is a scam.
>How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?<p>I don't think Crypto is a "more equitable financial system" but it is a more equal one.
What level of economic activity in crypto is unrelated to speculative gain.<p>If you want to stop angry responses to claims for the value to economic process you need to be honest about the extent to which crypto is a game for massive speculative gain, pump and dump, washing and money laundering.<p>Use of public signed ledger to audit value flow and provide certainty to low doc activity like cash in Africa, payments to farmers worldwide, ending the game of 90 day credit and discounting for prompt payment, reducing rent seeking. All laudible.<p>But please instead of just listing them, give us some numbers.
It took me quite a while to understand what Bitcoin is about. Of course, decentralised systems are exciting tech, but what's really interesting is that Bitcoin focuses attention onto fundamental questions of society:<p>- How can we transport value through space at the speed of light?<p>- How can we transport value through time?<p>- How can we protect our life savings from inflation?<p>- How can we develop a free market of currencies which solves the issues of centrally controlled currencies?<p>- How can we align incentives such that we stop consuming low quality products that produce lots of waste and start valuing high quality products that last for decades?<p>- In general: How can we, as a society, enjoy the benefits of a low time preference?<p>Such questions are the reason why I believe Bitcoin is one of the most disruptive technologies of our century.
I just want to say that I really appreciate the writing style in this article. I consider crypto a highly-politicized subject, but there are ways of talking about such things without getting political. Specifically:<p><i>But I also think that these proposed solutions are enormously attractive to people who see them as a tangible option in a world where these problems are not being solved—where we are being failed by our political establishments in so, so many ways.</i><p>I may disagree with the author about where to place blame, but I think saying "political establishments" is more authentic than "the government". At least in the US, it's We the People. We're the government. So when I hear anti-government sentiments, I generally start to discount whatever it is that the person is saying. Especially in this era, when the main problem is concentrated wealth in private institutions and corporations, who unlike the government, operate outside of election oversight. Meaning we can't throw them out of office when they do wrong.<p>And that's been my main concern with stuff like crypto. I feel the sentiment that the political establishment often lets us all down. But rather than creating an anarchist playground in crypto to get mathematically free of regulation, maybe it might have been good to put some energy into getting involved politically and solving the actual problems. Vote, raise money for non-establishment candidates, run for office, all that stuff.<p>The long game for crypto looks like any other unregulated game: winner takes all. Perfect wealth inequality. Whatever edge I think I may have to skim a little capital out of that pool, would only end up being used to exacerbate inequality as I take from someone else. Which is why I feel that the original goal of crypto to empower people (by bypassing the rules of the system) is only going to backfire and make things worse. Just like with trickle-down economics, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act or any other policy that claimed it would enrich all but only enriched some.<p>We don't fix the evils of the system by feeding from it. We fix them by paying into the good, getting involved and doing the work.
How's that diversification and equalitization and cyber-web3-rallying going in the light that wealth inequality of crypto closely follows that of real-world currencies? [ref: <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.730122/full" rel="nofollow">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.7301...</a>]<p>Isn't that like, failing to admit that nothing's changed, just the names of the wealth holders (and sometimes not even that)?<p>It looks like we as a species very much tend to form Pareto (or more accurately, power-law) distributions of wealth just by being ourselves.
Regarding the list of questions that are presented here EG - "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?"<p>Can anyone explain to me how crypto is uniquely suited to solve this problem? I'm not in principal against crypto currencies existing, but more and more I just see people trying to apply it to problems that they think exist because "the financial system is over regulated" - without providing any argument for why regulation is causing the unfairness in the first place?<p>I have yet to see anyone define a single problem in the financial system that crypto is uniquely placed to solve (besides funding criminal activity and bypassing sanctions), that wouldn't be better solved from better competition between banks.<p>Not every country in the world has a banking sector that serves it's customers as badly as in the US.
I'm grumpy about Visa/MC taking 3% of every transaction. I want a technofix for that. There are new blockchains that cost less than a penny per transaction use about a millionth of the wattage of bitcoin and I hope they turn out to be non-BS. I just want an efficient low-cost barrierless payment network.
The whole article seems like a cop-out. You could write it about any group or movement, good or bad: identify some legitimate grievances and then frame the group as just trying to solve those grievances. Hand wave away any disagreement by saying "well, I'm not saying they have a <i>good</i> solution..."<p>In this case it's set up as "they're asking the right questions". But everyone's "asking the right questions" as long as you don't look too deeply into whether they're actually asking those questions or not, or whether their proposals could even hypothetically answer those questions, or what other actions they take aside from answering those questions.
Get back to me when you've watched all of KiraTV's[1] excellent videos on various crypto scams and rug pulls.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/KiraTV1" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/c/KiraTV1</a>
I agree that it's aimless to just be toxic or mean to (most) crypto fans, especially those that are genuinely arguing in good faith.<p>That won't stop me chuckling at those that have been duped by a blatant pump and dump.
Any Internet conversation is going to have some toxic people just due to low barriers to entry. When you see someone who thinks “that maybe a lucky crypto buy could help them dig out of crushing debt”, you shouldn’t be mean to them, but it’s very important to let them know that it’s a bad idea! I remember going on a few snarky rants back during the Safemoon pump, and I probably should have moderated my tone a bit, but it was just incredibly frustrating to see people close to me sinking substantial sums of money into an obvious, obvious scam.
I don't think everyone who engages in crypto is evil. Some are, to be sure (as some are in any human endeavor), but for the most part I think they're just credulous. I think that's a belief shared by a lot of anti-crypto people, which makes me wonder if the toxicity stems more from exasperation with evangelism of a thing people find ridiculous. Like, yes, we know about crypto and we think it's silly; please go away—that sort of thing.
>Or the policymakers and governmental agencies who have failed to uphold their duty in regulating crypto and enforcing existing regulation that would protect people from rampant fraud.<p>This is completely tone deaf. Crypto exists because markets are too regulated. Look at PayPal's fees and understand that they exist due to regulatory compliance.<p>Want to pay users fractions of a cent for killing monsters in a game? Not possible with PayPal. The regulatory overhead is too high for microtransactions.<p>If you want to participate in heavily regulated markets because you feel that is the safe or morally correct way to transact, then stick with the existing infrastructure. Why prohibit others and force your views upon them?<p>I expect the paternalist response to go along the lines of, "Well, the plebs are being taken advantage of. They aren't as smart as us. We need to step in and protect them from spending their money incorrectly"<p>Meanwhile, those magical regulators the author loves so well have centrally planned interest rates. Savings accounts have negative real interest rates. "Stimulus" is repeatedly injected into the economy by the wise, all knowing regulators. Don't blame the regulators though, demand more regulation instead?
> hostile against people who have become involved with crypto because they felt they had no other option<p>I've been a victim of this. People in crypto hate you for trying to do things the right way (connecting crypto to real economic value instead of engaging in tribal maximalism and hypemongering popular projects) and people outside of crypto hate you for being involved in crypto which they think is all scams.<p>The irony is that only the scammers on both sides win.
It's hard for me to be sympathtic to cryptocoin maximalists when there are so many in their camp that push "shit" coins and coin-drop scams. Then there's power usage. It's use in aiding fraud and crime (something cash does as well and money laundering with fiat is not new...) as well as it's inability to scale compared to existing solutions to be used as a clearing house (yes, there are other blockchains that seek to speed this up but it's not at parity from what I can tell).<p>So all of this allows me to not feel bad about reveling in the latest crash, or scam, or exchange hack, or when the price falls or what not because I have no skin in this game and can't care any less than I do. I think the whole thing is a speculative farce that has hit a critical mass of adoption and intertia (at least for bitcoin) that will continue to be a puzzle (at best and a scam at worse) for years to come.
> But when you come across someone on Twitter with a hexagon-shaped profile picture, your chances are at least as good that you’ve come across someone in the first bucket than in the second<p>Ah so this is about twitter culture. I agree, it is <i>strange</i> that people showing some outward interest in crypto are ignored.<p>These conversations basically go like this<p><i><user with nft monkey avatar></i>: thats not accurate, the flash loan was used to borrow and acquire a bunch of the governance token and then launch and pass an emergency governance proposal and the primary issue is that the protocol allowed for this to occur in a single block, not the flash loan<p><i><user with predisposition that requires crypto to be bad></i>: you have an NFT profile picture your opinion is invalid! I just screenshot it!<p>so the technical person that could improve understanding is surrounded by perpetual ignorance
The other night I watched the Crypto Startup School video series by a16z on YouTube [0]. It includes presentations from smart people saying that blockchain/ethereum is the computing platform of the future.<p>One issue with ETH/smart-contracts that is not addressed in the series is how to ship patches to a smart contract. Let’s say there’s a vulnerability in my contract that accidentally leaks ETH.<p>How do I ship a patch to fix the contract? Could my buggy contract be taken advantage of indefinitely? Maybe I could move all my ETH to a new wallet and leave the bad contract? How is this problem handled today?<p>[0] <a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK9Lwn4_TfLS3I9huJjd-k_FeMKiTkAff" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK9Lwn4_TfLS3I9huJjd-k_Fe...</a>
Some interesting observations muddled by poor articulation. I hope this trend of describing everything as "toxic" (when other more specific words exist) will go away.<p>For example, the author could use the word "evangelism" rather than "toxicity" and drill down much deeper to the core mechanism of what's going on. Are individuals being toxic within a community? Absolutely. But are they being accepted because "the ends justify the means" for the evangelists? Almost certainly.<p>That, I think, could be a real story being buried beneath the baited lede of "not only crypto supporters but DETRACTORS are being 'toxic'" so it's unfortunate that's never explored in more detail.
As somebody who's delved into the crypto world and attempted to provide utility in the space by building a token aggregator / scam detector [1], I'm more disillusioned than ever with the state of crypto.<p>"Legitimate" projects are in between a rock and a hard place - either pay outrageous sums to the shillers or have no avenue to promote your project, as Google/Twitter/Facebook won't touch your crypto ads. Instead of the decentralised utopia we were promised, we've shifted power from traditional marketing channels with a vested interest in providing some ROI to scammers with no accountability, only in it to make a dollar at whatever cost. Scammers and hustlers are the gatekeepers of new tokens - unless you're paying thousands of dollars [2], it's almost impossible to get recognised.<p>Most projects are scams/get-rich-quick schemes preying on people's ignorance. There are well intentioned tokens out there, but even these have very dubious links between the price of the token and the utility of the project. The buybacks, reflections, stable-coin rewards, promises of guaranteed returns b/c we reinvest into other projects quickly part the ignorant from their hard-earned. Any attempt to dig deeper and understand project economics are met with the same platitudes and flawed arguments.<p>Of course there's the other side of the ecosystem where smart and talented people are raising VC money and working on interesting problems. I do believe there's something there around business model innovations (e.g. near fee-less micro-transactions tied to a crypto identity as a low impedance alternative to SSO) or technological innovations (blockchain-based serverless compute powering dApps - I do see a whole host of problems to which smart contract based dApps are a viable solution). The end result of this isn't a financial revolution but rather a host of entrepreneurs utilising web3 technologies to build the next generation of software startups.<p>[1] - <a href="https://agentsinu.com" rel="nofollow">https://agentsinu.com</a><p>[2] - 5k-10k USD for a single Telegram post is not uncommon
Crypto has solved one problem and that is removing consumer protections - which was really not a problem that needed to be solved. Accept crypto directly - chargebacks are a thing of the past. Once that payment is made, it can't be taken back. This changes dynamics a bit - a company can do less checks for fraud (say an isp/cloud provider can accept more abusive things with out penalty) with out the fear of getting a chargeback fee, loosing that money or getting a merchant/payment processor closed for too many chargebacks or even fraud. Sure the market might be able to solve that with bad reviews but this simply shifts the burden to the holder of crypto.
The article goes to some length to talk about what questions the crypto community is asking itself. Very conspicuously, there is no discussion of sustainability, operational effectiveness, or how to ensure people born in 2022 can get into this system when bitcoin is already 40k a pop. Like any system, how do new entrants get a foothold? Why are questions of energy use and lag time on each transaction left for only the reader to ponder?
like others have said, crypto doesn't meaningfully solve much of anything. we need more anti-crypto sentiments, not less.<p>the really exciting, yet unexplored, leverage point that a new ecology of mutual credit currencies will likely have is in their use in what pioneers have dubbed Network Resource Planning (NRP) software. the DWeb project <a href="http://mikorizal.org" rel="nofollow">http://mikorizal.org</a> is working on this. essentially it entails the open mapping of supply chains using DWeb p2p app frameworks (self-describing protocols, instead of centralized third party Silicon Valley-made platforms), using new (e.g. collaborative, automated) forms of resource accounting already employed by ERP systems behind closed doors (undemocratic stewardship of resources as done today is the real reason we are overusing resources). if anyone can see what i mean i'd love to hear you explain in your own words what you see and what you think of the impact it could have.<p><a href="http://mikorizal.org/Fromprivateownershipaccountingtocommonsaccoun.html" rel="nofollow">http://mikorizal.org/Fromprivateownershipaccountingtocommons...</a>
No amount of crypto scams outweighs the good crypto has and will done for us. Technology is empowering, there is no comparison on the effect crypto has on the poor. There is no other way I would be ever able to participate in trading, speculation or investment, no other way I'd ever be able to afford a home.
"Hey, guys, the people are promising all the socially friendly things. Why are you so toxic at us for participating in an illegal subsidy gambling system which is massively polluting the planet? You're bullies."
Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was really cool to pay for your beer by scanning a QR code and seeing the transaction come through this public, distributed, tamper proof ledger, like magic, with no need for money, banks or any of the other financial infrastructure we're used to.<p>Sadly, the "crypto space" was quickly invaded by hordes of people who never really cared about the technology itself, how it works and what it's actually useful for. (and what it's not useful for)<p>These people, who know <i>nothing</i> about it, and for years had dismissed it as a joke, suddenly began to talk about it very seriously as a very serious "investment" in self-proclaimed "expert" capacity.<p>You know the type of person I'm talking about! We've all seen them, and most of us can probably count one or two amongst our friends.<p>The potential for cool applications of blockchains is still there, but so far it seems to me cryptocurrency has mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias, and little to no meaningful application.
The key thing is, <i>of course</i> people are getting vocal - and vocally annoyed! - at crypto-bros, given what cryptocoins have brought upon us over the last years:<p>- a shortage of all components used in building PCs, starting with CPUs, then GPUs, then RAM, then HDDs, and back to GPUs. Simply because scalpers and shitcoin miners could outbid everyone else.<p>- People getting hacked left and right (particularly blue-checkmark accounts) on Twitter, Youtube or Facebook to rename them to Elon Musk and promise crypto airdrops<p>- the amount of corruption that has been necessary to enable said hacks. "SIM swapping" attacks used to be something nation states did against top-of-wanted-list criminals, not something that could be bought on the darknet for a couple hundred dollars<p>- the loot of said hacks ending up to fund Iranian or North Korean nuclear terrorism programs<p>- the amount of <i>large scale</i> hacks made only possible by Bitcoin and friends providing a relatively easy way to launder money, in particular ransomware<p>- an <i>awful lot</i> of "stars" peddled NFTs, ICOs and the likes and let their fans hang out to dry when the hype collapsed<p>- an awful corresponding lot of friends and sometimes family that got lured in by shitcoins, actually made money and now peddles shitcoins instead of crap MLM products to everyone whose ears haven't fallen off since long<p>- all the "rug pulls", "hacks" and other instances where serious amounts of money got stolen or vanished into thin air<p>- artists getting their works minted as NFTs without authorization<p>- people buying up <i>coal power plants</i> of all things to mine shitcoins<p>- instead of delivering the promised "there are no banks and taxes!" world, <i>all</i> shitcoins (obviously... as everyone predicted) ended up depending on centralized institutions like exchanges, large mining pools, auditors and the likes, especially once governments around the world caught up with developments. And to make it worse, many of these institutions end up with <i>lesser</i> consumer protection than banks! Hooray!<p>The <i>only</i> positive contribution that cryptocurrencies brought to the world was that people had a safe way to pay for and order illicit drugs, as taking out shady dealers and cutters reduced the amount of contaminations. Oh and maybe kick some arses at Western Union into reducing their rip-off rates for international currency transfers.
Ok... so the political and economic foundations of the crypto ecosystem are flawed. It's a movement driven by fascists and criminals posing as libertarians. It's based on the Austrian school idea of, "sound money," itself a poorly conceived idea with roots in racism and fascism. If that doesn't corrupt the entire enterprise, what are the good parts?<p>In the pursuit of this, crypto supporters have blasted exorbitant amounts of excess CO2 into the atmosphere for very little work done in over a decade.<p>And it literally doesn't do anything. It was adopted as a national currency by one country and hardly anyone who lives there seems to use it. It doesn't by-pass international sanctions. It's not free from government regulation like the criminals want.<p>All it seems good for is divesting money from technologically illiterate rich people who jumped on the bandwagon, advertised their crypto holdings, and have poor or non-existent opsec. It's a scammers' dream: it's way easier and far more profitable to rip these people off than to run a scam against a bank or old people.<p>If your goal is truly altruistic and you want to see more transparency in the financial system, access for people from all economic and diverse backgrounds, etc: get into politics, banking, or just vote. Start a non-profit think-tank and hire analysts to help inform positive policy changes.<p>The technology behind this stuff is pretty useless at providing financial services because those systems are social/political systems. Technology is but a small part of supporting them.
Even if crypto doesn't become a problem, I hope politicians will try hard to regulate them, and add tight regulations on companies who convert crypto to dollars and vice versa.<p>I'm afraid crypto will become a tool to launder money, escape taxes and do all sorts of things that are illegal with normal money.<p>It might already be the case and be full of corrupt practices, but I can clearly see people defend it on a political premise of libertarian ideology.<p>By the way, I wonder if Russia is involved a lot with crypto.
It's hard to have a charitable take on a huge majority of the cryptocurrency space when the web is drowning in all of the greedy bad actors that use the ideologies listed in this article as cover to push the grifts that inevitability harm my less technical friends and family.
> <i>Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots</i><p>Citation needed.<p>(This is actually me being charitable; it's not remotely "unquestionable", and in my view it's not even supported by the evidence available.)
> Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots<p>I had trouble reading beyond that in the second sentences. You can’t just retroactively assign a political affiliation to the origin of an algorithm application.
because it takes hours to validate a payment?<p>because it consumes too much power?<p>because it created wealth out of farts<p>because it promotes money laundering<p>because it promotes toxicity (pump and dump)<p>because it is backed by the USD<p>because USA owns the majority of it<p>because it is centralized (exchanges)<p>because it is CIA's testbed for the digital USD
Just here to say that besides the good points that the author makes in defense of Crypto, I also support wholeheartedly its right-libertarian roots, despite the negative connotation it receives in the article.