this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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The only way for someone to make money in crypto is for someone else to lose it.
Crypto is a scam.
Reminds me of money.
What is that even suppose to mean in this context?
So what's the difference to money, stocks or every other investing option? There's has to be someone who loses so someone different can win. We're living in a capitalistic system, that's how it works.
Money isn't an investment, it's a currency. Of course it's a bad investment and investing in forex is barely a better investment than crypto (purely because there's less risk of a sovereign currency devaluing to 0).
Investing in capital, like stocks, property, equipment etc does not require someone to lose money for the capital owner to profit. If I invest in a stock, each year I'm paid a dividend based on the profits of that organisation - no losers required. I could later sell that stock at the exact price I paid for it and come away with profit from those dividends. What determines whether it's a good or bad investment, is the ratio of profit to the capital owner compared to cost of the asset. Crypto generates 0 profit, so it has 0 value as a capital investment.
Every crypto trader that is clueless about actual investing thinks that dividends don't exist.
Stocks pay dividends to their shareholders. Stocks also represent portions of companies that make other things.
Basically you're saying that crypto is like a shitty stock that doesn't pay dividends, doesn't generate a profit, makes nothing, is not actually valuable, and is only worth what you can sucker someone else into paying for it. I agree.
But I also wouldn't "invest" in such a stock.
Sooooo, the exact same premise with ehmmmm.... Stocks.
You don't understand how stocks work.
How is distributed ledger a scam? It's nothing new and we know exactly how it works. It has nothing to do with making money. If I use it to pay for things online how am I getting scammed? I'm sorry, but it seems you don't fully understand what this technology is.
The blazing fast technology that allows for up to 7 transactions a second worldwide? Amazing.
Don't forget to pay your capital gains tax when you sell your butts online to buy your pizza.
The slow transaction speed is a valid criticism, but it doesn't make this technology a scam. Different cryptocurrencies have different speeds. With Litecoin I think it takes me 40 minutes to pay for something. I still prefer that over being tracked by my bank or having to use PayPal. I think you can pay instantly with Dash, but I haven't used it.
I don't sell anything online, so what are you talking about?
I don't think you'll find most people have such a vendetta against PayPal or venmo that they'll use some other alternative banking system to avoid using it.
That's not a feature... especially if it's worse than PayPal.
You might be right about that, but why would it matter what most people do?
It offers better privacy than PayPal and that's what matters to me. Oh and nobody can lock me out of my account.
Bitcoin does not provide privacy. There are transactional logs from the beginning of Bitcoin until now with every transaction you've ever done on them.
Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency. You can use Monero.
Or I can just not buy drugs on the Internet.
Ah so you think only criminals deserve privacy.
Nah, I'm speaking in practical terms. I frankly don't have enough illicit online purchases to navigate all of the bullshit around coins and wallets and vendors to bother with "privacy coins".
I also wonder why someone would subpoena your PayPal account if you weren't doing illegal things.
If you want to make anonymous transactions, cash is still king.
EDIT: And it's also not a matter of whether I think "only criminals deserve privacy" but a legitimate question of who, other than criminals, needs absolute, unsubpoenable privacy in online financial transactions? I'd say privacy for everyone is paramount when it comes to communications, but who needs to exchange money illicitly other than those breaking the law?
Additionally, with crypto (unlike PayPal) there is no mediator to act on behalf of one of the parties when they don't do what they're supposed to do. Unless you are purely exchanging currencies or NFTs or something, there's no way to dispute a transaction. That capability is far more necessary for people conducting normal online transactions than privacy, and is largely why PayPal was created in the first place.
There are a few problems when it comes to privacy. First is the bank or PayPal tracking your every transaction. If the government needs a subpoena to access that data, that's good, because they probably won't be tracking everybody in an automated way. But I suspect that's not the case in every country. The second problem is random stores knowing who you are. When you buy digital stuff like music or a game, why should the website know your identity? I don't want my private information to leak to random people when the website gets hacked. The less they know about me, the better.
This probably depends on a country.
True, but not for online payments.
Your transactions can say a lot about you. It doesn't matter if it's just something you buy or you want to support a political cause. In some countries it might be dangerous to reveal certain information about yourself. Everyone deserves privacy though.
There is no mediator, but I think there can be. You can see it in some decentralized exchanges. I don't know much about it, but you can read how Bisq handles it here: https://bisq.wiki/Frequently_asked_questions#Is_Bisq_safe.3F
So now we've pivoted again from mainstream usage to some hypothetical country where the government asks for every transaction you ever do... But also in which the citizens have unfettered Internet access, and it's still not clear what you'd be doing on there that isn't criminal.
I dunno man, seems pretty fringe to me.
I also think there's a way to make digital cash, but I highly doubt distributed ledgers are a good way to accomplish that. Seems like any good version of digital cash would be easily usable and exchangeable offline, easily verifiable without going back through the history of the planet first, and not carry with it a complete transactional history as a functional requirement.
Ironically enough scammers today already use things similar to the above as actual currency right now, they call them Amazon gift cards.
The "decentralized" bug has bitten you so good that you don't see how an alternative, actually useful form of digital currency could be created with a central signing authority (or several). IMO "decentralized" is yet another "feature" that serves no meaningful purpose.
I'd recommend buying drugs in person and in cash.
We haven't pivoted anything. I use cryptocurrency to increase my privacy online. But each country has different laws and there are countries with corrupt governments.
I'm sure it would be easy to create something centralized. But if you want decentralized there might not be any other way. This video explains some of it: https://youtu.be/bBC-nXj3Ng4
Yes. Unfortunately some of them make their victims buy cryptocurrency instead.
You could say the same about the Fediverse. In both cases it's not true though. In cryptocurrency decentralization is there to eliminate the problem of trust. It's a trust-less system, because it doesn't rely on central authority. You accuse me of bias for no good reason. If there was another form of online payment that provided anonymity, I would use it. But there is no alternative right now. I would love to use GNU Taler, but it's not used anywhere. You have made up your mind about cryptocurrency without having basic knowledge on the subject and you accuse me of bias.
I don't buy drugs, but people who buy them online use Monero. Thanks for the recommendation though.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/bBC-nXj3Ng4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Why? It is a feature in the fediverse in a meaningful way.
I can go to a different Lemmy server when mine is down. The only thing it's missing is some type of open id integration to allow me to carry my account between servers.
And that's versus decentralization in "currency" which provides me? Trustless? Stores of value? How can I meaningfully make use of any of it? If the ledger forks off, it essentially creates a new coin. The standard way to obtain coin is now not through mining because mining is too resource intensive (by design) but through a centralized exchange anyway because you can't trust random strangers on the Internet. Seems like a meaningless buzzword that's summarily explained as being advantageous to the people that made the original coin and nobody else.
There's multiple problems with the way crypto bros like yourself talk about crypto but one of the problems is that you conflate a bunch of concepts around currency, markets, currency exchange, investments, payments, and ledgers simply because crypto technology is a giant, indecipherable mess that didn't meaningfully distinguish between any of these concepts.
I have "basic" and even advanced knowledge about cryptocurrency. Monero isn't even as private as you're pretending, and Bitcoin (and most other coins) are not private at all.
Just a brief search will show you the multiple exploits that can compromise monero privacy, and while there are other coins that claim to solve those problems it doesn't get you around the fact that every transaction is stored forever and that is a design requirement for these types of crypto coins.
You don't have to trust a bank or some company. Nobody can deny you access to your money or prevent you from using it. It's not something you make use of, it's just a property of cryptocurrency.
So what? This is decided by the people who use the network, not by a central authority.
But using the currency still doesn't require trust. You are wrong though, since there are decentralized exchanges too and they don't require trust. I've already told about Bisq. Other ways of getting cryptocurrency are buying it from an ATM (done that) or accepting it as payment for your work (this is rare, but I've heard of it).
It is not. You should read about it before making up a conspiracy theory.
This is ridiculous. Cryptocurrency or any other technology is not an indecipherable mess. It's nothing new and we know exactly how it works. You can read about it on the internet. There is no conspiracy to make it difficult to understand. I event sent you some links. I haven't said anything about investments, so no idea how that's relevant or what it has to do with this technology, since that's not its purpose.
I've never said that Bitcoin was private. I've said that it can be used anonymously unlike any other form of online payments (except other cryptocurrencies). Monero is probably the most private online payment option that exists.
There is nothing that can let you figure out someone's transactions with 100% certainty. Governments could try this and they might be able to track some targeted individuals, but not everyone. This is better privacy than any other payment option provides. There is a whole video series about Monero's security, but I haven't watched it yet: https://youtu.be/WOyC6OB6ezA
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/WOyC6OB6ezA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Nope, you just have to make sure that you don't accidentally get swindled or defrauded online (often in ways that aren't possible with, you know, a normal bank account or a wallet with some money in it). Also, I don't have to trust the bank to keep my deposits. The FDIC exists. Frozen assets and bank accounts aren't something I concern myself with daily as a normal person who isn't running a money laundering, mail fraud, or other type of crime ring.
EDIT: I also left out here that you also have to make sure to remember your password / passphrase information so that you won't lock yourself out, as many people have already done and will continue to do because there's no really good way for most people to store this information.
How do you convert USD to one of your crappy coins with a decentralized, trust-less exchange? I get how you can transfer around between cryptocurrencies (though I have no idea why you'd want to) once you're inside of crypto, but how about when you are holding actual money?
Never mind, you just do it through a cEnTRaLiZEd service (that already has your banking information...see step #3 of "getting started"): https://bisq.network/getting-started/
Wow, I can really see the usefulness of this "feature". Also, how does that ATM to bitcoin conversion happen, pray tell? Through magical pixie dust, or through a series of services provided to ATM vendors, which almost certainly comply with existing banking laws?
The tech sucks (blockchain is more of an albatross than a gift given from the heavens that crypto fellaters seem to think it is), but more than that the rhetoric and philosophy around it is an indecipherable mess. It's buzzword soup, full of people who are trying to "invest" in a currency when that's not what you'd ever do with a currency in the first place. Payment systems and currency aren't the same thing...except in crypto because everything is a knotted mess and it's a Ponzi scheme masquerading as some leap forward in tech...a solution looking for a problem.
Again, cash exists which offers much better privacy protection than Monero. If I want privacy in transactions I'm going cash 10 times out of 10. The security of Monero is again a tack-on because it cannot change the way that crypto works generally (a huge ledger which cannot be altered ever and records every single transaction):
https://www.wired.com/story/monero-privacy/
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/WOyC6OB6ezA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
You don't get defrauded, unless you willingly give someone your money. This is not a valid criticism of cryptocurrency.
Good, but PayPal has locked me out of my account multiple times. So I prefer to use cryptocurrency where that can't happen.
You go on (for example) https://localmonero.co and you buy it with your preferred payment method.
I was just giving you alternatives to mining. It's irrelevant how you got your cryptocurrency.
A distributed ledger is not a scam. The only way that a technology could be scam is if it didn't work as advertised, but it does. As I said it's not anything new and we know exactly how it works. I don't understand why you can't accept this. I don't care if people are trying to invest in it. Feel free to criticize their behavior, but that is not valid criticism of this technology. What people say about cryptocurrency is also irrelevant to this discussion.
Yes, but cash can't be used for online payments. Monero is the most private way to pay online.
This doesn't disprove the fact that Monero is the most private way to pay online and the article you linked doesn't disprove that either.
I might have been wrong there. I'm not sure how trust-less that is. But cryptocurrency is still a trust-less system.
https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=shibarium-bridge-failure
Someone keeps track of all of the widespread fraud, rug pulls, and generic bullshit around crypto and the losses are in the billions of dollars (if you count it at conversion rates, which I largely don’t actually… Because if everyone pulled their money at once there’s no way the conversion rates would hold).
That's very sad and proves that we need better education. There are scams in every area of life unfortunately. Most people are bad at understanding modern technology (including cryptocurrency), which makes things worse. I'm for exposing and punishing scammers, but blaming technology for this is not a solution.
I don't think people should invest in cryptocurrency at all, even when there isn't any scam going on. Unless maybe they are rich and can afford to lose money.
It's akin IMO to saying that guns are the root of the problem with gun violence in America to say that crypto is the root of the problem with crypto scams.
The type and frequency of these scams just isn't possible using any other technology.
I consider technologies generally to be advanced tooling, and with just about any other type of tool I think it's important to analyze what it's useful for and what it isn't useful for: what it enables, what it disables, what it makes possible, what it makes impossible, what it makes likely, what it makes unlikely, etc.
I think crypto is perfect tooling for scams, ponzis, money laundering, confidence schemes, ransomware, fraud, and the transfer of dark money.
It's not good tooling for quick payments between people (which are is more easily possible through paypal, venmo, etc.) and it is not particularly good for online payments for the type of goods most people purchase online either. It may be (as you say) one of the only semi-private ways to conduct online transactions, but I have not encountered anyone in my life who regularly required such a thing.
As you state, the understanding and adoption of new technology is already a hurdle for most people, and crypto adoption requires you to not only be good at technology, but also have a good understanding of finance and financial instruments. The number of people who are experts (or have even advanced knowledge) in both areas is infinitesimal, and that's a large part of the reason why scams run amok in this area, some even amongst those creating or deploying the technologies themselves. The overwhelming majority of people simply do not meaningfully understand either thing separately, and definitely don't fully understand the intersection of the two.
I'm pretty sure there are states with very little gun violence. But regardless, crypto is not the only technology where scams happen. Many scams happen through a phone, but it wouldn't make sense to blame phones for this. We could get rid of phones and even though I hate them, it would be a ridiculous solution even to me.
Maybe, but many scams don't require much use of technology. For example multi-level marketing is a pyramid scheme, which is completely legal in the US.
That's because of lack of regulation and education in our society, but I agree. I'm only not sure about money laundering. Most crypto exchanges require identification and have limits. So I'm not sure how much it helps the more serious criminals, who need to withdraw significant amounts of money.
Waiting 40 minutes for a payment to go through might not always be a big deal to people, but yeah faster and more convenient methods exist. Most people don't care about privacy, so they will just use the most convenient method. Just like they use WhatsApp for messaging.
You don't need to be good at finance to use cryptocurrency for payments. I certainly am not. Being good at technology helps of course, but I doubt that every cryptocurrency user is. There are tutorials for non-technical people. I think things like that should be taught at schools though. It would be harder to mislead people then.
A phone is a communication device...crypto isn't.
The answer here IMO is to ban MLMs, though it's worth pointing out that naked pyramid schemes are illegal in the US.
What society? The global society? Crypto isn't just scamming people here in the US, but in every place crypto is used.
A common method of money laundering is to sink money from ill-gotten gains into a volatile asset that can be said to either appreciate or depreciate in value to fuzz the numbers. Crypto is at least a reasonable tool for the job.
I think this is an easy thing to say about lots of things. But schools have enough trouble teaching kids to read in this country...which I think would be a prerequisite to figuring out whether the Internet weirdo you're transferring your PooCoin(TM) to is a real deal "PooHead" or a scammer looking to scam people.
Correct. It's a currency and payment method.
Crypto isn't scamming anyone. Scammers are doing it in multiple countries. I am not being scammed by using crypto.
Make sense. I think converting all of it to regular money might be difficult, but I'm not that familiar with how those criminals operate.
The first advice would be to not transfer your coin to anyone. Changing the education would certainly be difficult and there are many more important things that should be taught first. Like critical thinking, the ability to find and verify information, the scientific method. Technology is just another one of those things.
Sure, both of which are more straightforwardly useful tools for financial crimes than a phone is, and less generally useful for other purposes.
Crypto is so popular and useful for criming that ransomware is practically a first order use case for it.
Good for you? But many, many people are getting scammed...some directly through the technology itself.
Generally speaking in money laundering you're trying to take criminal money and convert it into taxable dollars. One mechanism for doing so is saying "oh hey, someone gave me some crypto and it went up in value and look at this huge payday I had". This is true in lots of legitimate cases of crypto use as well, so that's what a criminal would masquerade as...someone who had "won" the "crypto lottery".
I think money laundering is generally done via other means (vs say ransomware which is generally not), but it's a useful tool to have for a criminal upstart who may not have a brick and mortar way to launder their money.
I guess? Makes it pretty useless as a payment method then. My first advice would be to not exchange dollars you need for digital junk that may become worthless, stolen, or forgotten.
I guess phones are better for spying people.
Technology doesn't scam people, it's not alive. People get scammed in all areas of life, regardless of technology they use. It's ridiculous that I have to explain this again.
I doubt it, but it's irrelevant. Criminals use many things that ordinary people also use.
Not really. There is a difference between giving someone your money vs paying for a service. But you know this. It's silly that you keep saying things like that. It just makes you look stupid or dishonest. There are many real things you could criticize about cryptocurrency and I would agree with you on many of them. There is no need to make stuff up.
Right, only cryptocurrency could become worthless, stolen or forgotten. Paper junk can't.
"Crypto doesn't scam people, people scam people" 🙄. It's ridiculous that you have an inability or unwillingness to reasonably evaluate a tool and what its common and obvious uses are. Oh wait, you can do that with tools you don't like:
Depends upon how you're going to guarantee fulfillment of the service...which is a thing you can't really do without a mediating party....unless it's ugly ape art or a different form of shitcoin.
USD isn't only "paper junk", but I should've expected that as a crypto enthusiast you wouldn't understand actual currency.
I'm not sure that's always even true, but it's a lot easier to get defrauded when everyone you're transacting with is online people with a series of randomesque "hashes" tying them to a wallet...and more importantly...the fraud is often irreversible. I've had people steal my credit card multiple times and not paid a dime when it happened.
I haven't had this experience as a user...so I guess for doing whatever likely weird things you're doing Monero is best. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
That doesn't mean it's good for most, or even many people though.
I'm guessing they too use a payment gateway (often PayPal), and I have no idea who these people are and have no guarantee that they aren't going to defraud me or that they will keep my information private.
Nah, the whole ecosystem is though. There was an era where cryptocurrency felt somewhat less scammy, but it was also worth less (or worthless) during that time. A distributed ledger is just not that useful of a technology. Especially one that works the way blockchain works, that's why it's being used almost 100% for fake-o "currencies", NFTs, and ponzis.
Again, I don't have a need for this and like I've also said several times most people also do not. Hell, most people make online payments peer-to-peer using venmo with their transactional history set to fucking public. Just because you sit in some weirdo niche category doesn't mean that this is an overall useful thing for many or most.
EDIT: And actually now that I think of it, you could just buy a prepaid credit card using cash and buy shit online using that.
I think people are using the word scam not in it's strictest sense - that is to say, I don't think Satoshi personally invented BTC to defraud everyone who bought it so in that sense, no, it is not a scam technically. A better way to describe it would be via the greater fool theory: the only way to make money is to find someone even more foolish than yourself to buy it.
Crypto as it is currently implemented is inefficient, riddled with problems, and is deflationary which you can argue about but most economists would say deflationary currencies are bad as they lead to shrinking economies and do not encourage investment.
There also aren't that many problems that it 'solves' that aren't already solvable by existing tech. And even in the case of things it's useful for, if it were to be widely adopted the 'benefits' would be overshadowed by the massive new problems that would be created.
I think crypto will always have a niche, especially for black markers. I don't think anything similar to currently existing crypto currencies will ever be adopted for widespread use as legal tender.
And as the other commenter pointed out, the tax situation is a nightmare. Even if you don't sell online yourself, that's a big hurdle to crypto achieving what many supporters claim it can do.
Cryptocurrency is not about making money. It's a distributed ledger. Technology like that could maybe be a scam if it didn't do what its creators claim it does. But it's been around for a long time and we know exactly how it works.
It has problems, but like every technology it keeps improving. I choose to use it despite its flaws and will probably use it even more in the future.
It gives me privacy and anonymity when paying online. No other online payment technology does. It also doesn't require trust, since it's decentralized. I'm not aware of any other technology that solves those problems.
That's possible, but over time it is accepted by more and more stores. So it keeps growing. But even if it didn't, you can use crypto to buy gift cards for any store. It doesn't have to be popular.
When someone wants to invest in crypto, I can see how that could be a problem. I just use it to pay for things online.
I would venture that the majority of people see it as an investment of one sort or another. I think the insane market cap, and the devestating effect the recent crash had on its reputation and use, are evidence of that.
Most cryptos have fundamental problems that I don't see being fixed, eg it's deflationary properties, BTC's wasteful PoW, ETH skirting/crossing the boundary of being a security, etc.
This is like the one thing they are good for, and Monero is the best at it. This is an arguable point though, others may say that this is a negative due to the implications and governments have cracked down on privacy enhancing tools like Tornado Cash for this reason. I personally value privacy to an extent, but do not see the need in my life to use Monero. I certainly wouldn't fault you for using it, though.
I think adoption has stagnated. And look at El Salvador, they basically had to force crypto on the populace and they use their own proprietary wallet, nullifying privacy benefits. And again, it is treated as an investment by the government there who are buying BTC to speculate.
Yeh this is dependant on your country. Here in Australia every crypto transaction is a capital gains event 🙄
You are right, but it doesn't matter what most people think. I mean we should educate them about it, but their opinion is irrelevant.
Etherum has already switched from proof of work algorithm to less wasteful proof of stake. So it seems that at least that problem can be solved.
You should be able to buy any of the popular cryptocurrencies anonymously. They won't make your payment history private like Monero does, but you will still be anonymous when paying.
I don't know exact stats, but it's bigger than I expected before I started looking into it. There are a lot of crypto ATMs now in cities, which you can see at https://coinatmradar.com. There are also some stores and restaurants that accept crypto, especially in the US (https://coinmap.org/view). You can also find some online services on https://cryptwerk.com. El Salvador is certainly messed up. Bitcoin probably isn't even a good choice, because of its big transaction fees. Other cryptocurrencies are faster, can handle more transactions and have smaller fees.
Damn, that's crazy. So you can't even buy something without paying an extra tax?