Since our Crypto section has been closed, this may be the best place for this.  If it is not, mods, please move it.

We have had many discussions here about crypto, its impacts, it’s value and the many opinions we all have.  As this evolves, it is getting clearer that it may not be the “Everyman” utopia that it was originally set out to be.  Yes, I have been a critic of this, as I have been vocal about this concept for many years.  Just read this article - https://jacobinmag.com/2022/01/cryptocurrency-scam-blockchain-bitcoin-economy-decentralization - and it sums up the things I have been saying about this concept for a long time, but it also goes a bit further than I have.  The last two paragraphs of the opinion sums it up well for me:

• “The 2008 financial crisis made clear why the financial sector must be brought under public control. Cryptocurrency and “decentralized finance” aren’t special — they’re just more of the same privatization and deregulation masquerading as high-tech “solutions” we’ve seen in other industries. Unregulated, privatized financial markets pose the same risks to the public whether or not they are “on the blockchain.””
• “In the case of cryptocurrency, regulation is an existential risk precisely because regulatory loopholes and fraud are the only reason the industry appears profitable despite being wholly unproductive and a waste of energy resources. The same applies to private cryptocurrencies as a whole. The longer governments take to ban them, the worse normal people will be hurt.”

If regulation is an existential threat to this concept, then the concept itself is a threat because if it cannot survive the regulatory, then it cannot survive.  Please help us understand how it protects the “Everyman?”

The ramifications of this are all around us, our environment, foundry capacity, the supply chain, scalping, bots, inflation, and now the news about crypto-type concepts working into games for loot and other things.  Is this good?  If it was good for the “Everyman,” would so many be using this to increase corporate profits?  I have never said blockchain is bad, as it has many applications and is yet to be leveraged to its fullest, but it is being stigmatized by the entire crypto concept and the way theft, bad actors, as well as those who support it, and the general operations within a crypto environment are playing out.  NFTs anyone?  If you cannot secure it, I know I will get push back on this, is it really a currency?  Do we not already have digital currency in the way we all use credit cards?
 
When we then look forward to the metaverse or whatever this misguided concept is (even taking out Fadbook and Zuckerberg), it seems that these moves to the digital world are rife with potential problems.  We already have Walmart and RLP selling digital items in this arena.  Great, now we have to compete with the Jones on what our avatars wear.  Do we need groceries and home furnishings in this place?  What for?  There seems to be a steady path to exploit the consumerism we have grown into the main unit of our economy.   I’ll stop here to then let the discussions roll.

Here a dive into El Salvador from Fortune - https://fortune.com/2022/01/19/el-salvador-bitcoin-economy-distressed-debt/
 
This is not the relief many of these countries that are moving to a crypto-based economy think it will be.  I feel bad for the economic hardships that await people who are already very poor and live in a country where the fiat currency has been mismanaged terribly.

Of course it is - I had an epic thread on it before they dumped the forums & reconfigured them all.
 I wish I could still access that one... but yeah, it's worse than the Wolf of WallStreet 
 
https://www.cbsnews.com/n...cy-wealth-one-percent/

I was trying to find that one to post this in, but I could not so I started this new one.

It's hard to put faith in literal digits in space that aren't necessarily tied to anything tangible.  And there are other reasons as well, but it is just a matter of time before the bigger crypto's get hacked and confidence in all these cryptos comes down. 
 
Crypto dot com just had a $30mm hack yesterday where they were able to bypass 2FA security.  Just a matter of time before all the cards come down.   

yaymz
It's hard to put faith in literal digits in space that aren't necessarily tied to anything tangible.  And there are other reasons as well, but it is just a matter of time before the bigger crypto's get hacked and confidence in all these cryptos comes down. 
 
Crypto dot com just had a $30mm hack yesterday where they were able to bypass 2FA security.  Just a matter of time before all the cards come down.   

I agree.....Crypto seems like a scam to me....but then again, our paper currency with nothin' to back it up seems that way too....to me....
 
 

Not quite, but Crypto does enable more than it's share of illegal activity.
Pon·zi scheme
noun
a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

Chaos_21
 
Pon·zi scheme
noun
a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

isn't that pretty much exactly how the crypto "profits" have worked out?  Its not an investment.  its also valueless until is is exchanged back for real fiat $.  Every dollar someone "made" in crypto is a dollar someone later to the table lost.
 
that's a Ponzi.  

Not sure what I would call it, but I believe that it's a case of certain people did not like the accountability of fiat money and wanted to circumvent regular checks and balances for many reasons, some of those reasons vary from money laundering to outright misdirection and the ability to manipulate the controls surrounding the crypto-currency. All that spells bad news for those less informed and caught up in buzz words and the romance of finding a way to make it rich through non-traditional means. NFTs are even worse in that people are being scammed into the belief on their value because crypto bros buy their own NFTs to give them false value then turn around and sell them to those ignorant of how the value was set. So they keep their original coin plus get the coin from the people who buy it off them.
 
There is no inherent value in crypto or NFTs. It's the emperor's new clothes propped up by infectious group think. You get echo chambers like Reddit and Twitter to white knight perpetuate it. There needn't be any true marketing for it when people are so emotionally invested in it, it becomes their religion of the moment. People look for meaning and will grasp onto about anything to give them that meaning. Cults are not usually logical. Crypto and NFTs are a variation of cult worship.
 
Telling people that won't get them away from crypto, because those that have bought into are not rational about it. They are lead by emotion. When incited by emotion, the only way to change them is to counter that with further incitement. In this case, people are appealing to your emotion by saying that crypto is bad for the environment. It's all just really rich people using viral marketing to shape your perception on how you should spend your available money on their consumer products. Be that product crypto or something physical. As long as they make you feel good about doing it, their job is done. It's all just a big shell game to grab their share of the world's wealth that is spent on consumables. It pity those that have bought into the idea of virtual goods. It is the height of insanity when people willingly buy something that has no physical tangible existence.

I think it is to an extent. It's really a scary genius idea. Get free labor/power/computational power/ of pc owners from the desperate/people wanting to get rich quick. Have all of these people make a digital currency for you, prices inflated by magic to get more onboard. Drop the hammer cause crashes, buy the digital currency off the desperate once you have had them produce enough. Things will go all digital it is only a matter of time, the powers that be want it that way.  It is easy to manipulate financial institutions just have to get world governments and their banks to block it, then the crashes happen to the panic selling begins. Then the criminal activity it can bring and has been doing from people's fortunes stolen, wiped out to the Ponzi schemes.

I refuse to get involved in it, just my opinion on what I think it is, so far it is playing out like I said it would so do not think I am too far off. At the end of it the ones behind it will have bought it all and the new digital money will commence. I would much rather have cash, anything electronic has an id and can be seen where it is going once it's in the market. Cash takes a lot more effort to track. I do not like companies to even the government to know what I spend my money on. Why if I am not doing anything wrong? Ummm Privacy? It's none of their business period.  I do like physical assets more so than cash. Printed funny money, to even crunched funny money crypto in a big collapse is worth nothing. Physical assets are.