Just got very lightly flamed by another user for making fun of crypto and was told that Lemmy and crypto have “the exact same advantages and disadvantages”. Now I disagree heavily there, since even if it shares some principles I’d argue that the scale of the problems change when you’re talking about a global finance system versus a social media platform filled with beans. But it did get me curious- how many of you are crypto supporters?
God, I hope not. Crypto is an interesting technology that’s been used to promote what’s essentially a scam. Just ask yourself this: Are the people into crypto using it to buy things? Or are they going to sell it for dollars at a high value and then walk away?
Most are the latter. Very few people even bother setting up software wallets. They just keep their crypto on markets and try to sell high.
That means that for most people, it’s not a currency at all, it’s an investment. But a normal investment is backed by something of value, while crypto is just backed by pure speculation - that is, it’s backed by all the other people who are trying to sell high, too. The name for a system where you get people to buy valueless assets and drive up their price so you can sell yours and leave others holding the bag is: “Ponzi scheme.”
The name for a system where you get people to buy valueless assets and drive up their price so you can sell yours and leave others holding the bag is: “Ponzi scheme.”
No, that’s a Greater Fool scheme. A Ponzi is more centralized and the people who get paid out are not supposed to be aware that the money is coming from new investors. Ponzi schemes hide that aspect of it. In a Greater Fool you are betting on someone being dumber than yourself enough to buy your worthless investment at a higher price.
A lot of crypto is Greater Fool, but there have been crypto Ponzi schemes.
As a side note, there is a cultural tendency to call all scams Ponzis when they are not. It is a specific type of scam.
It’s a bit of both. The increase in value for those who got in early is propped up by the hype of new bagholders.
Huh. I was thinking of the whole scheme being centralized around a few core people who push crypto, but I think you’re right. “Greater fool” is a better label for it. Thanks!
The technology has potential but right now it’s mainly being used either to buy illicit goods or separate fools from money.
Lemmy is free to use. If you give money to an instance owner, at least you know it’s a donation and that you’ll never get it back.
I’m not a crypto supporter. I do find the tech a bit interesting. I guess, tech-wise, Lemmy would be more comparable federated crypto like Stellar or Ripple (dunno if these are still federated, or if more popular federated crypto exists; been a very long time since I kept up with it). Without some sort of “trust” decentralized systems are too expensive (resource-wise) to be worth it, IMO.
Off-topic, but I’m kinda surprised p2p networks haven’t really advanced since Gnutella. I believe they had the concepts of trust/reputation and self-organizing networks with “super-peers” way back then.
Dont think so, they might just be very loud. A couple of other reddit alternatives, on the other hand, …
Cryptocurrencies are a bit like communism: interesting in theory, but implementations have been a disaster.
(And with this, I’ve just been able to piss off 2 groups in one post)
Unlikely. The hype for crypto scams had fallen off hard in the last year. It peaked like two years ago.
I am not. Plus the ones needing to be mined by wasting of ton of energy are basically an environmental disaster.
I’m a fan. Go ahead and downvote me.
No, fuck crypto. At best it’s a solution looking for a problem while speedrunning a century of banking regulation reform, at worst it’s an environmentally disastrous scam.
Nope. Crypto is clearly a scam
No? There’s definitely some overlap but they’re completely different concepts, just because I like Lemmy doesn’t mean I enjoy unstable coins that use up a ton of energy for no reason and can lose their value by the end of the day
See, that was my response too! Federated servers will waste a bit of energy with duplicate fetch requests, sure, but it’s a far cry from the decades of compute time wasted with adversarial validation and cryptographic mathematics. And that doesn’t even deal with the shitty coins themselves.
Was very confused why they seemed to think the concepts were the same, and thought maybe I was the idiot.
The only concept that is the same I am aware of is that both are decentralized.
I think the person you were talking to had not really given as much thought into the subject.
Thinking about it too much makes them feel uncomfortable and less optimistic, so they avoid it and try to just focus on the many things they will buy when the value of their crypto coins inexplicably goes really high (which it might if a lot of money needs laundering, though I wonder if previous rounds worked out as well as they were hoping or if they got fucked by exchanges disappearing with their money in the night and decided to just go back to 3 mattress stores on one corner in various cities.
Lmao, this guy lightly flaming the crypto Bois in the fediverse.
I honestly see* more overlap with the open-source community than with the crypto community
I filtered out every crypto and investing sub on Reddit other than r/bogleheads
The hivemind of Lemmy has been the opposite so far in my experience. I’m probably what most here would call a “crypto bro,” though I wouldn’t call myself that.
It’s weird to me that the occupy wallstreet folks are all like “banks do it better.” It’s also weird to me that it’s gotten so polarizing. You don’t have to be a libertarian to see its benefits, and you don’t have to be a communist to want scammers locked up.
I’ve run into a couple of cryptobros on Lemmy, but not many.
I do own & use cryptocurrencies a bit but would never had thought to link Lemmy to anything crypto related. Don’t even follow any crypto communities around here… being part of the Reddit exodus, over on Reddit there’s so much spam and shills surrounding the topic that I avoid those communities there too.
My guess is you just happened to run into a random crypto bro.
