It may have already been noted elsewhere but it seems important to note that the author was (is?) the CTO of private blockchain start up and choosing to not disclose this in any of his crypto criticism seems very dishonest<p><a href="https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/1470126927818067969" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/14701269278180679...</a>
Crypto absolutely has value, and the price of Bitcoin will never go to zero. NFTs are useful.<p>That's because the value these things provide is money-laundering, bypassing of international financial regulations and tax fraud.<p>Yeah that's a superb value proposition right there, and definitely something we want to keep free and available /s<p>The current system is flawed in many, many ways, but none of it happened arbitrarily; the restrictions we have are the because malicious actors abused the system.
You don't need crypto to run a scam. Financial scams are as old as money is.<p>The fallacy in this argument is that there's something special in crypto that makes this more likely to happen. There isn't. In fact, you could argue that the enormous activity of scammers in this space actually points to some inherent qualities that might be useful beyond just running ponzi schemes and other scams.<p>One of these qualities is that scammers are unusually aware and mindful that they might get robbed by people equally untrustworthy on the same platforms that they use. So, the notion that that isn't happening on popular blockchain platforms is useful to them, and others. Tamper proof ledgers are useful for all sorts of things. The history of money is basically increasingly elaborate measures to prevent theft, forgeries, and other abuse. People trying to abuse the system are a constant.<p>Blockchains and other cryptographic tools are just that: tools. I expect banks to gradually incorporate these tools into what they do. That's already happening. E.g. China rolled out the the e-yuan currency last year. Not a decentralized blockchain but it obviously incorporates some of the technology. Other countries are doing similar things.
I'd like to remind the readers that some people use crypto as a payment method and do not speculate.<p>As far as I know there is no alternative with the same level of convinience that crypto provide (KYC-less and fast payments to anyone in the world with just one secret).
Remember that next time you suggest something among the lines of "crypto should be made illegal".
I don't really understand people trying to defend absurd positions like this. What's even the point? It doesn't seem like it's necessary for this to be true if you want to argue that crypto "should" be eliminated, all you need to do is argue that it's decisively more bad than good. When somebody makes weak arguments like this I'm just going to ignore their thoughts in the future because they've demonstrated that they have faulty reasoning.<p>Crypto is awash in scams. On top of the scams you have people who are not intentionally scamming but are misguided and will end up doing harm to others and/or themselves. On top of that there is crypto that could genuinely work under certain circumstances (ie have a use-case that provides value to its users without significantly adversely affecting others).
Then don't buy it. If it's a scam it will go to zero and be forgotten as it does not have any fundamental value, as you say. If it does have fundamental value, then it's not a scam. What a stupid hyperbole.<p>What's the point of making yet another article blasting it with the same old tired arguments that have been continuously repeated ad nauseam for the last 12 years or so? I'm honestly surprised the article does not link to the Line Goes Up youtube video...
> scam /skæm/ (noun): a clever and dishonest plan for making money<p>This fits many projects in the cryptocurrency space. But what about the first successful cryptocurrency Bitcoin? Was it dishonest? What about Ethereum, is it also dishonest?<p>Seems like yes, there are lots of scams in cryptocurrency. But there is also projects that are not, so in the end, the title ends up being clickbait, which I (just like you) fell for...
OP's arguments:<p>- Like indulgences, crypto made value out of thin air<p>- Indulgences were a scam so crypto is a scam<p>- Crypto doesn't fit with Keynesian economics and is therefore false<p>I am not Catholic, but his tone implying that anyone who is religious is a fool feels more like an ad hominem attack than anything.<p>As to the veracity of Keynesian economics, I am less than convinced he got everything right.<p>That said, I am personally suspicious of crypto but I don't think it has no use just because it has no intrinsic value. We do not use paper dollars because of their material or their craftsmanship.
Be grateful you live in the EU or the US and don’t need crypto. It has been a major lifeline for my family and friends in Lebanon and Venezuela, both of which lack fully functioning financial services. I can send Bitcoin just fine though!
Not just a scam, it is the *ultimate* scam.<p>There is no product being sold. People are being convinced to surrender working currency in exchange for a public database entry that records the fact they were duped.
important note about the author <a href="https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/1470126927818067969?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/14701269278180679...</a>
I just want currency that won't be arbitrarily inflated, is digital that some group of people can't control my spending. I just want something that is a unit of value that I can trade for things I want. And it doesn't need to be traced either, I don't want the government to know how much I spend on steak.
"Every day I write something about crypto to the nature of “crypto is all a scam”"<p>Yet he still write daily about Crypto. Very weird. Whoever wanted to be convinced that is a scam should be convinced by now, everyone else just want to hold some coins.
I disagree with this, it seems to me that if you follow author's logic you can call US dollar scam too - a lot of it's value is same thin air called "debt"?. The problem with argumentation and particulary with church comparison is that in order for something to be called scam, as per definition provided in the article, someone must be there who planned it, who gets all the profits. But crypto has no central entity, no final scammer, there are just programmatic rules - and crystal transparency, everyone is free to do whatever fits in this paradigm, and this is future of currency
I use cryptocurrencies to pay for services where I want to stay anonymous for no ill/illegal reason. I just don't feel comfortable being watched wherever I go and whatever I do even if I don't do anything evil.
all money is a scam once people stop believing in it<p><a href="https://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/inflation.jpeg" rel="nofollow">https://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/wp-content/uploads/2...</a>
Society is also a scam if you view it through this lens.<p>All innovation, all technology can be wielded for good or for evil.<p>With fire anyone can burn a building or cook a steak.<p>I like to find the people who are using technology to help others.<p>Let's make stuff to amplify them.
> However, crypto represents a divergence entirely from a Keynesian worldview in that it has created this bizarre simulacrum of markets with all the trappings and veneer of finance but which has no pretense of being tethered to the economic problem at all. No goods, services or resources are being exchanged. Crypto is a Keynesian beauty contest for zero-sum get-rich-quick schemes. I call it the nothingness game, a bizarre contest in which participants continuously punt on get-rich-quick schemes for lumps of nothing based on their perception of which lump of nothing others believe is the most attractive.<p>What a bizarre argument. Keynes wrote in the 1920s and 30s, so according to Diehl, did economics and finance not exist prior to Keynes? Was it all just a simulacrum until Keynes showed up and whipped out his General Theory? The map is not the territory.<p>This isn't even factually true. Crypto is in fact used in the real economy of places that have such bad monetary systems that crypto is much more stable. Look at Venezuela or even Ukraine and how much crypto is used there because the formal financial system is shambolic.<p>Crypto scams may be more common in the developed world where formal institutions are decent enough that the marginal cost of using crypto in the real economy is just too high compared to the legacy financial system.
Crypto enables DAOs. For the first time in human history, large scale financial and economic organization for the general public is possible. And its possible to do it in a transparent manner.<p>In 'normal' life this kind of organization, investment, company creation and management et al are all gated behind legal complications and requirements of minimum capital and many others. Even when a major movement succeeds in setting up a foundation, the running of it is complicated, non-transparent and anti-democratic.<p>Even with companies it is the same - for the ordinary person creating or participating in a company is difficult and it requires understanding legal implications and responsibilities. Even if you do, there are various legal and economic barriers to investing and participating in such large companies.<p>With DAOs, everything is in broad daylight - depending on how the DAO is set up of course. But any properly set up DAO gives the power to the people in taking up the culture that we created in Open Source Software movement up a notch - by enabling organized economic movements.<p>That DAO which tried to buy the US constition failed. There was no way a new, emergent, new way of doing things could gather enough money in enough time to overcome the already aggregated private capital that it competed with.<p>But it proved something - for the first time in history, such things are possible. Economic organization for the masses.<p>Those who criticize crypto seem to have scarce awareness, leave aside understanding of what DAOs represent, and what is happening in DAO space. Of course, its hard to blame people - some understanding of at least Early Modern human history, economic systems and organization patterns and the development of democracy would be required to understand how big a change DAOs are. And that requires an ample interest in history itself.
I mostly agree with this article about "crypto".<p>Bitcoin is not crypto.<p>In any case, you could make similar arguments about banks and the "Federal" Reserve being scams. In fact, quite a few well regarded politicians of old made exactly those arguments. The implicit agreement in this particular argument is that the scam we've accepted is somehow better.
Almost all money is a scam. People don't typically realize that 'making money from thin air' is the oldest of all scams.<p>In history books they tell that people used salt, animal furs, shells etc. as money. What's forgotten is that there was always a 'bro' who shilled these new forms of money to other people. This bro had found a way to produce these cheaply and could get rich.<p>Eventually people realized this scam and moved onto rare metals which can't be produced from thin air, without work. However, these were minted into standard coinage, and eventually they were clipped or mixed with cheaper metals. Again, someone found a way to scam.<p>Next, we moved onto gold-backed paper money and then to fiat currency, and yet again the scamming continues, even easier than before. They've even made the scamming official, by mandating the 2% inflation target.
I gotta disagree with this author on the whole "no intrinsic value" thing when it comes to crypto. Sure, it's true that cryptocurrencies aren't physical assets like gold or silver, but that doesn't mean they don't have value. People are willing to pay money for them, which gives them value. It's supply and demand, plain and simple. Plus, with blockchain technology, crypto is much more secure and transparent compared to traditional forms of currency. So don't be so quick to dismiss it as just entries in a database created out of thin air. There's definitely more to it than that.
Money not based on gold standard, and which can be printed anytime the government feels like it, is also a scam.<p>However when many people agree of a price at a given time, anything, including a scam, can in turn become money.
Yeah, it most likely is but the first half of the last decade I spent buying questionable stuff from markets was totally worth it and be fondly remembered for the rest of my life.
Please stop giving a pulpit to this effing fanatic.<p>Diehl is not rational <i>and</i> utterly biased (he's party to a startup that will fail if any blockhain type tech. becomes popular).
Every now and then I read a press release from some organization about how they're using crypto or going to use crypto (aka blockchain) to solve some industry problem. For the life of me, I can't figure out how any of these ideas will ever bare any fruit.<p>Does anyone know if companies are actually using blockchain for production, revenue generating business (real companies, not crypto companies)?
>Similarly, the “crypto as currency” and “crypto as investment” narratives have been thoroughly debunked because the truth value of these statements is predicated on factual claims that are demonstrably falsifiable.<p>It must be nice to be able to just state something is thoroughly debunked and not have to give any evidence, despite billions of people not knowing, and be magically right...
How can a blanket statement be core to your philosophy? If a blanket objective claim is core to your belief system, it's not a philosophy, it's an ideology.<p>Which is fine, but call it what it is.<p>Also, he says most counterarguments are in bad faith. Foes that mean some aren't? Wouldn't refusal to address these good faith claims mean you're arguing in bad faith as well?
Oh my god, this guy is the ultimate troll,!!!<p>Listen, have you ever observed a troll writing a book?<p>Really? Currency is a scam. You get paid in paper, pay taxes on it, which gets stolen( sorry in edged) in corrupted corps, with a debt system where you are just a slave of your mortgage - unless you're a clever troll, and you bought 10btc 10 years ago, write a book to put the price down, while at the same time, being the most biased possible to trigger HN readers in the hope of getting a Google page rank.... Pathetic.
Then tell me at least one "non scam" business for me to see ?<p>By your definition, all business needs to be scammy in some scene to make money, for survival.<p>Proof is simple: Non of any existing business will tell you anything on why it's bad, nor why you should not use it. And by proof of contradition (Nothing is perfect), you got the proof.<p>Meta won't tell you why it's bad for your psy health, no warning at all.<p>Google won't tell you why it's bad for your privacy, or why its search result is so bad for you, because Ad result is shit.<p>...
In my opinion this is not quite true, because there's a basic form of "investment" scheme going on. People exchange value (money, energy) for some kind of token, expecting to get some value back. They may actually be satisfied with getting only a fraction back in many cases (money laundering...).<p>Cryptocurrencies do have some non-scam value because they fulfill the technical end of such a belief based value store. Don't get me wrong. Plenty of scams in that business...
Let me just point out how incredibly poor the word "scam" is defined in that dictionary. By that literal definition a lot of different things become scams because they are "clever", dishonest and are about making money.
Some here are pathetically-misinformed regarding crypto's utility and social benefits. Read the Latin America section of Chainalysis 2022 report (Pgs. 19 - 27) before claiming "it's all a scam" (and so spreading mis-information):<p><a href="https://go.chainalysis.com/rs/503-FAP-074/images/2022-Geography-of-Cryptocurrency.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://go.chainalysis.com/rs/503-FAP-074/images/2022-Geogra...</a><p>For those not aware, the company that produced this report, Chainalysis, actively aids prosecution of illegality in the crypto space, acting as primary advisors to the FBI, IRS etc. They <i>may</i> just know what they're talking about:<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainalysis" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainalysis</a>
Slightly related. The Reddit subforum for Bitcoin is managed by people supporting the scam and they very actively promote it and will ban any opposition. I think that should be illegal.
The worst thing is the terrible incentives it's created by making it so easy for people to exploit free CPU capacity, and transfer money with no monitoring for fraud or ability to reverse it.<p>So no-one can offer free/demo tier CPU access anymore e.g. on low-end box VMs, ISP shell servers, etc.<p>Likewise any sort of interaction with strangers get absolutely bombarded with fake accounts pushing crypto scams - second-hand sales, dating apps, meetups, pen pals, language exchanges, property listings, job boards, etc., there was always spam before but it was harder to directly monetise.<p>I hope it all gets banned soon. If we can ban Russia from SWIFT, we can do the same to all accounts that ever have transactions with known cryptocurrency exchanges, and refer their owners to the local tax authorities for auditing, etc.