this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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I don't know much about crypto but this doesn't seem right?
Didnt it hit an all time high recently? All while no one is using it to buy anything anymore?
A coin is worth what someone will pay for it, and people are paying lots because they think it will be worth more later.
It has no inherent value or utility.
Not sure if has hit all time high, but I doubt it. But even if it did, the reason why it did is pretty simple. It's unregulated and a scam. So, get a bunch of sociopaths and let them target people, get them to invest in crypto and then they will be able to sell their own imaginary money to these people for real money. This is how it works in its most raw form. Someone invents monopoly money, convinces someone gullible that it's the future and sells the people the monopoly money for real cash.
Of course there's a whole bunch of obuscation and hype talk to hide what's really happening, so it's not immediately obvious to those people.
Muddying the waters is also the small group of true believers who really think that it's only matter of time when the monopoly money is going to take over and via the power of magical thinking completely fix capitalism and the rich bastards who have money instead of them.
So the signal to noise ratio is pretty bad for really seeing what is actually going on.
Which is EXACTLY the same as all other fiscal vehicles. Except in the case of USD, the group of sociopaths you describe are the elected representatives of USGOV. What defines money as real, Vs not real? The fact that it's backed by the central bank? Is that actually a good thing and positive for anyone? Decentralised finance as a concept is a good thing. Sometimes it takes a little froth for something to take hold. I'll bet there were a bunch of people who said similar things about trading shares and futures trading. You can argue that both of those things are ultimately scams. They are legitimised only due to the fact they make capital. Crypto makes capital. And it's now easy to swap between fiat and crypto.
I LOL at OSS people who say that a government backed crypto currency is a good thing. Explain how monolithic control of finance is good for everyone. Please
Ok, no, Crypto in any form is bad. But unregulated is not an improvement.
Also, money has always since the very beginning been monolithic control finance, the first money were printed by kings. There just were a lot instability with the coins.
The other options are not to have capitalism at all, go back to bartering, or reach the hallowed myth of post-scarcity.
You are ignoring the huge number of crypto, or to be more specific, Blockchain projects that have inherent utility. There are many, and few will survive but some assuredly will. I do believe in DePIN as a concept, and I think it's likely the immediate future. And it's not the only buzzword that does actually have potential. Quantum computing seems like Fusion to me. Always a mere decade away, with only a few insurmountable problems to solve.
Decentralised does not mean without governance. Many of the newer lesser known tokens are governed by the projects they are used for. This, I believe, is a good thing, Each project returns us closer to a world where currency is linked to tangibles. And the control remains with the communities that built them.
Imagine being a business that trades with other nations, and the collapse of the government in the country you operate in results in a once profitable business losing 100x the value of the product over night.
It's harder for that to happen with tokens linked to the businesses that offer a good or service.
How are we now linking crypto to anti capitalism? It's quite the opposite and it's nothing to do with a post scarcity world ideal. I do believe that crypto currency will return finance to something that is closer to the people that use them, and provide a means to involve people more widely, give them a stake, if you will, in the policy surrounding them.
Any centralised regulations need to focus on preventing fraudulent systems. And they are innumerable, which is how we end up with statements like Linuses. I suspect you'll find this comment ages like Bill Gates and his infamous statement about networking.
It got the initial true push as an anti capitalist reaction, well if we ignore the scammers and gamblers. But more in the sense that "hey you got money but I don't have any so imma make my own and be just like you".
Also when did I ever link it to post scarcity? I said, the only "solution" to monolithic money is either bartering or post scarcity, or abandoning capitalism in some fashion.
Crypto is just another immutable database, except shared. It's not a silver bullet or solution for... anything really. The validation methods are cute or terribly resource intensive and they add no real value, aside from consolidating power within the network.