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A lot of people hate crypto, and I can understand, however... (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by noctisatrae@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org

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… the founding ideas are promising, and something I dream of.

Before I start, just a little bit of background on me so you can understand how biased I am (😅): I’m a 16 years old programmer and I won a few crypto hackathon/funding rounds and I made a lot of friends in the field. It allowed me to get quite a bit of ETH/XMR along the way!

I see cryptocurrencies getting a lot of hate, rightly so for the number of scams, shitcoins, NFTs bullshit, “governance”, DAOs and all those often useless & snob terms.

However the founding ideas of decentralisation and freedom with your money are very appealing to me. Smart contracts are really interesting for creating your own banking operation and tokens can represent anything! It’s a world of possibilities to play with, and you get to build something useful for people!

I’d just like to add a bit of nuance tho: I see a lot of apps being built and what’s really making me laugh is the lack of open-source, decentralisation and auditing on privacy. Granted, there is a lot of fake promises, but it’s like everything, you have to find the talented people to follow.

I find it fascinating to build unstoppable, decentralised, user-first apps. I just hope that web3 stays true to its founding principles.

Hope it was interesting, tell me what you think!

EDIT: title+typos+the game is not comfortably played in Act 2

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[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Dollar bills have the inherent value that some very grumpy men with guns will kick down my door and take me away if I try to make them myself.

That's not what "inherent" means, and it didn't prevent North Korea from printing their own for decades anyway.

As for the other points:

Several technical weaknesses have been discovered over the last 15 years, some have been exploited, then fixed, and the value is still there.
Governments have made crypto illegal (see: China), it didn't stick.
There are no "billions" of BTC lost, currently there are less than 20 million in total, out of which about 10% are considered lost, with no "magic backdoor wallet".
Tulips mania was speculation with "surprise mechanics" (lootboxes?), there have only been a few scams like that in crypto (see: crypto kitties).

Get around laws against money laundering, smuggling, extortion, and theft

Recently one of the mods on Beehaw was asking for an anonymous way to receive donations, which banks don't allow. I don't think they intended it for any of those.

Banks aren't in the business of censorship

Except for porn.

plenty of others to choose from who'll be more than happy to take your money and not ask too many questions

Take your money, yes. Give it back... not so much.

Still, there are plenty of scams in crypto... unfortunately, the same scams keep being run on all kinds of assets. Avoiding crypto won't shield you from them, only learning about them may give you a fighting chance.