It might be useful for the title of this post to clarify that this is the co-creator of Dogecoin, it’s not mentioned anywhere on the linked thread itself but is very relevant framing for the content. I didn’t realize who this was until I saw this thread linked elsewhere with that context
Cryptos make rich people richer, and are sold to poor people the same way lottery tickets are. ”Look at old Pete here, he used to be a loser like you, but he believed and now he’s got $millions in the bank”
Was recently watching "Becoming a god in central Florida", a Netflix sitcom about a fraudulent MLM scheme in the 90s. I was struck by how similar the vibe was to today's crypto community; anyone who wasn't making money or who questioned the value proposition of the overpriced cleaning products simply didn't understand, didn't believe hard enough, and those who refused to get involved were the enemy, their lack of belief viewed as an attack on the scheme ('no-coiners', anyone?)
For sure. It really has become a more distributed lottery.
The people I know who are obsessed with slot machines and buying lottery tickets are the people I know that own dogecoin.
This whole thing gets more absurd as USD Coin and Binance USD climb to the top with Tether.
The whole space to me feels like such a massive waste of resources and brain power.
A poor person could've invested $50 in Bitcoin when it was priced at $1. That poor person would now be a millionaire if they would've held on to that since. It is not all rich people marketing to poor people, or at least it didn't start that way.
I don't disagree in terms of rich people controlling the crypto ecosystem now. That is one aspect I'm not liking about crypto right now. Too much manipulation, although I think that's at least partly coming from the traditional institutions jumping in and playing the games they do with traditional markets. Plenty goes on behind the scenes in traditional markets, even though they are regulated, and yes, crypto has less regulation, so they probably can get away with more.
I love crypto technology but I think there's stuff going on behind the scenes that regular folk have no idea, and I'm starting to wonder if the grand ideas crypto people have are incorrect. I think the way it will succeed is when big institutions accumulate enough and then it's in their interest to manipulate the crypto market up. I.e. see banks in the Big Short accumulating enough of what Michael Burry was betting on all along, and at that point they revised the indices that track the housing markets, since it was in their interest to at that point.
In the end I don't think crypto is much different than what goes on in equity markets now. Rich people and big institutions control that market too. Meme stocks are essentially also lottery tickets. Way out of balance P/E ratios mean traditional fundamentals are out the window. It's all about momentum and trends now. The one difference, and a benefit I see for traditional markets, is the government will bail them out. The government would be fine if crypto crashes. I think that's the scary part about investing in crypto, but there is also higher potential for upside in crypto markets.
> and are sold to poor people the same way lottery tickets are.
Crypto has never been heavily marketed to poor people. They don't have the capital to buy in at any meaningful scale. The lottery ticket appeal is that you might win $10k or $1m off of a $1 or $2 ticket. There is no mass scale marketing effort pushing $1/$2 of Bitcoin or Dogecoin to poor people with that con-pitch. To this day poor people have barely any stake in the crypto world. For crypto, the lottery players are the small contingent of middle class persons that bother with it (which still isn't very many).
Actual lottery tickets on the other hand, are prominently marketed to poor people all over the place, front and center in many common stores.
Walk into an average convenience store or liquor store, you're telling me they have a large display of dozens of cryptos with updating price quotes appealing to poor people about how big the prizes are and how they can win a million dollars with a $2 ticket? Nope.
It's true that shitcoins are basically a casino but I don't think it's fair to generalize that to the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. We have real projects that provide real innovations and uses such as Ethereum and Monero.
A large chunk of society works this way. How many products are only trying to make crowds spend money uselessly so a group of educated wealthy people make another profit (until the next trend).
Crypto is yet-another-trading-market nothing new expect maybe marketing)
Some crypto like Dogecoin sure. However, some crypto is bets on tech - e.g. those that try to achieve something like DEXs or synthetic assets - not that different than investing in stock or startups.
Every retail instition I know of, and appears on CNBC (a place that bankers, hedge fund guys, Jimmy Prop guy Cramer (I actually feel for Cramer. I had no idea he was having migraines over half the days in a month.), etc.) are creating their own crypto.
They are all believers now.
It does seem like they are just in it to take money from the Retail Investors investors though like they always do. Meaning I have seen to many Bull to Bear Markets, and when the switch happens--it's the Retail investor that looses everything.
(I guess we will know how it all turns out in a few years. If I had Bitcoins, I would sell. The competition is almost exponential. New crypto are coming on daily. Every money licker wants their own crypto.)
- Business and work in general makes rich people richer. Remember that rich is very relative. You are a very wealthy person compared to a random person in some countryside in China.
- Considering the previous point, are you saying that people who have some money should not do anything to make more money? Should they stay the same, or should they become poorer? What do you advocate to do this? Prevent them from working? Take money from them forcefully?
All I hear from people in the crypto world is that you SHOULDN'T invest if you don't have money you're willing to lose. Crypto investment is a dream only for delusional people who want to get rich quick. If you do that then lose your money, you don't get to complain. You're free to choose, if you choose wrong, lose, and then not take responsibility for your choice and blame others, then you're truly a loser.
When England went back onto the gold standard in 1925 it was a form of extreme austerity. That's because the govt can't easily create more money supply if needed. That's similar to the problem with BTC and cryptos with limited availablity. It just favours the early entrants.
"Creating more money" is simply diluting existing holders of money. Capital != money, value != money, productivity != money. Printing more money does not create wealth - it redistributes it to preferred recipients. The gold standard reinforces economic discipline. America and Britain were able to inflate more effectively than others because of having a monopoly on reserve currencies and owning the rails of international settlement, by requiring all countries to settle in their currencies. Essentially they exported their inflation to all other countries to benefit their own citizens.
> "You can believe that 99% of crypto is bullshit while also believing that the 1% that isn't will change the world"
Is this a quote from someone?
Because you can believe anything, believes are not a good method to find what is truth. But it is part of the pump and dump strategy, make people believe that something is valuable and them dump on them all your worthless assets.
Change the world in some as-yet undiscovered way? I have much less than 1% confidence that any of the crypto ideas I've heard so far will change the world.
Bitcoin has been around longer than the iPhone. When it started I think we were all still in Windows XP.
If Bitcoin hasn’t yet discovered a killer app, when will it?
But yeah yeah, it took tens of thousands of years between humans seeing lightning start fires and the charcoal grill… if it took that long, I'm sure it will be tens of thousands of years before Bitcoin finds a use. Better keep buying and holding!
My feelings of meh about crypto have nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with the fact that I can't think of a problem it solves in my life or any way it makes my life easier, more enjoyable or more interesting.
Interesting read. One thing I don't understand is that he still presents decentralization as something to strive for (as lots of people in the crypto space do), but then he criticizes the consequences of decentralization:
> Despite claims of “decentralization”, the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures who, with time, have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial system they supposedly set out to replace.
> Cryptocurrency is like taking the worst parts of today's capitalist system (eg. corruption, fraud, inequality) and using software to technically limit the use of interventions (eg. audits, regulation, taxation) which serve as protections or safety nets for the average person.
From what I understand, people in that space seem to think that because something is decentralized, people will automatically distribute equally between themselves power and authority. That seems really naive. As with any "free for all" type of space, the law of the strongest applies. The "cartel" that he speaks of taking control of crypto is a natural consequence of decentralization. An important part of central authorities in the modern world is to guarantee some freedom from exploitive forces. Democracy, unions, laws are a way to achieve that goal.
I wonder if it's a consequence of people thinking about the state as fundamentally bad? I often see criticism from some people, both left and right-wing, that the state is good for nothing, but it seems clear (in the view of the author) who wins when the state can't exercise its authority. Maybe it's time for some people to review their views about decentralization and its consequences.
Yes, that worldview, i. e. that the intangible structures created by societies (governments, laws, banks) are inherently bad is rather popular with the tech crowd. Witness how they approach free speech issues, putting all their stock in technological solutions (Tor) while generally either complaining about relevant laws or cynically dismissing all initiatives as corrupt.
With regard to central banks, the community is at about the level of the 1920s, where monetary policy was arguably worse than some default law of physics, like the availability of actual gold, might have been. That ignores the bit of history that came later, and the progress that’s been made. That’s why they’re all afraid of runaway inflation, although it has not happened within anyone’s lived experience in western democratic countries.
It’s fun to remember how paranoid the crypto community was at the beginning of being targeted by governments for encroaching on their power. When, in reality, the response was mostly just benign curiosity, and governments only reacted when there were tangible harms to prevent, such as fraud and, more recently, skyrocketing CO_2 emissions. It’s almost as if the FED isn’t a shady private institutions owned by the Rothschild’s out to exploit the common man.
I don't think there's a powerful cartel controlling the industry. If you'd imagine that, they would be controlling the market, not the industry per se, it's production..
Anyhow, most industries are controlled by few players outside of crypto. Perhaps the right question would be if the existence of crypto as a new component of the system can somehow decrease injustice in the system as a whole. I don't know the answer, but I would gamble it's No - for now. The way I see it in the near future (maximum 10y) we'll get obvious reasons to answer Yes, though.
Well it's easy to argue that most crypto projects are get rich quick schemes by their creators. A lot of people haven't even heard of OneCoin [1], but I think it's what most of the crypto community actually looks like when you remove the whole "progressive" or "building future" branding.
I think he describes the current crypto landscape accurately, but I'm becoming more and more bullish on the long term decentralized finance vision. Imagine solving open source funding by OSS developers selling insurance for their projects on decentralized programmatic insurance markets.
> selling insurance for their projects on decentralized programmatic insurance markets
One of the problems with crypto is people treating it like fairy dust. There are remarkably few, perhaps vanishingly so, business models that do not work centralised that do decentralised.
This is one. What is the pay-out? Who makes what guarantees? How are they enforced?
If a business plan requires crypto—as opposed to being enhanced by it—it’s probably dead on arrival.
The problem with OSS funding isn't the technical mechanism that money is sent. The problem is that people don't want to pay period. The ONLY viable crypto use case is currency. The blockchain can't solve issues that require attachment to the real world.
Like the tweeter points out, they're not really all that decentralized. They're controlled by an anonymous cartel that's not accountable to anyone. At least national currencies are controlled by central banks that are accountable to governments that are in turn accountable to the people.
DeFi does not exist without CeFi. So I agree wholeheartedly that there is an inherent problem with the cryptocurrency world today. But I'm still fascinated by decentralized concepts and the explosion of creativity around this. I think even if 1 percent of what's being created has long lasting implications for our world, then we've done well...
So many attack on capitalism ITT. I wish we could have rational discussion about whatever word problem while at the same time not trash the idea of private ownership, competitive markets and investment for profit.
Mind you, every successful country today runs on a MIXED economic system, and communism (or anarchy for that matter) failed every time it was tried.
> After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology
?
> It doesn't align with my politics or belief system, and I don't have the energy to try and discuss that with those unwilling to engage in a grounded conversation.
Like himself. Given what he just said about cryptocurrency being 'inherently right-wing' which that is completely baseless.
Obviously it is heavily manipulated and it is not exclusive to cryptocurrencies, just like forex and the stock market but the main difference is that it is highly unregulated. I expect more exchanges to use more than just KYC, AML checks and the rise of implementing CBDCs to drive cryptocurrencies past the wild west stage that it is today.
Good luck trying to ignore it because it is here to stay. (Even if you are the creator of a meme coin)
Yeah, I suppose you could associate the tech with the libertarian/anarchist crowd (which are nonetheless a minority in that space nowadays, compared to those simply interested in making money), but right-wing? If he was truly willing to engage in the discussion, you’d at least expect him to look up some definitions.
Extremely based and succinct rundown of why crypto is trash and should be avoided at all costs. Yes, the original vision was noble and worthwhile, but like nearly every nice theoretical idea, it was co-opted into the capitalist ecosystem to be just another vassal of greed and corruption, with some throwback wild west vibes.
Cryptocurrency like all right-wing idealism is based on a belief in the supernatural. They preform these ritual calculations and anoint each other with imaginary tokens, claim value has been created and write that off on their taxes, the big difference with crypto over the regular voodoo is that you can actually make money doing it even if you don't believe the fundamentals are sound. You attract the worse of both worlds, the crazy idealists and the complete scam artists and when you get to the core of what crypto is really about those groups are basically the same.
[+] [-] grahamplace|4 years ago|reply
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/14/dogecoin-co-creator-jackson-...
[+] [-] nikanj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] machinehermiter|4 years ago|reply
This whole thing gets more absurd as USD Coin and Binance USD climb to the top with Tether.
The whole space to me feels like such a massive waste of resources and brain power.
[+] [-] w4llstr33t|4 years ago|reply
I don't disagree in terms of rich people controlling the crypto ecosystem now. That is one aspect I'm not liking about crypto right now. Too much manipulation, although I think that's at least partly coming from the traditional institutions jumping in and playing the games they do with traditional markets. Plenty goes on behind the scenes in traditional markets, even though they are regulated, and yes, crypto has less regulation, so they probably can get away with more.
I love crypto technology but I think there's stuff going on behind the scenes that regular folk have no idea, and I'm starting to wonder if the grand ideas crypto people have are incorrect. I think the way it will succeed is when big institutions accumulate enough and then it's in their interest to manipulate the crypto market up. I.e. see banks in the Big Short accumulating enough of what Michael Burry was betting on all along, and at that point they revised the indices that track the housing markets, since it was in their interest to at that point.
In the end I don't think crypto is much different than what goes on in equity markets now. Rich people and big institutions control that market too. Meme stocks are essentially also lottery tickets. Way out of balance P/E ratios mean traditional fundamentals are out the window. It's all about momentum and trends now. The one difference, and a benefit I see for traditional markets, is the government will bail them out. The government would be fine if crypto crashes. I think that's the scary part about investing in crypto, but there is also higher potential for upside in crypto markets.
[+] [-] adventured|4 years ago|reply
Crypto has never been heavily marketed to poor people. They don't have the capital to buy in at any meaningful scale. The lottery ticket appeal is that you might win $10k or $1m off of a $1 or $2 ticket. There is no mass scale marketing effort pushing $1/$2 of Bitcoin or Dogecoin to poor people with that con-pitch. To this day poor people have barely any stake in the crypto world. For crypto, the lottery players are the small contingent of middle class persons that bother with it (which still isn't very many).
Actual lottery tickets on the other hand, are prominently marketed to poor people all over the place, front and center in many common stores.
Walk into an average convenience store or liquor store, you're telling me they have a large display of dozens of cryptos with updating price quotes appealing to poor people about how big the prizes are and how they can win a million dollars with a $2 ticket? Nope.
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
Crypto is yet-another-trading-market nothing new expect maybe marketing)
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Tenoke|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deregulateMed|4 years ago|reply
But alt coins is gambling.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] herbst|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hellbannedguy|4 years ago|reply
They are all believers now.
It does seem like they are just in it to take money from the Retail Investors investors though like they always do. Meaning I have seen to many Bull to Bear Markets, and when the switch happens--it's the Retail investor that looses everything.
(I guess we will know how it all turns out in a few years. If I had Bitcoins, I would sell. The competition is almost exponential. New crypto are coming on daily. Every money licker wants their own crypto.)
[+] [-] throwawayswede|4 years ago|reply
- Business and work in general makes rich people richer. Remember that rich is very relative. You are a very wealthy person compared to a random person in some countryside in China.
- Considering the previous point, are you saying that people who have some money should not do anything to make more money? Should they stay the same, or should they become poorer? What do you advocate to do this? Prevent them from working? Take money from them forcefully?
All I hear from people in the crypto world is that you SHOULDN'T invest if you don't have money you're willing to lose. Crypto investment is a dream only for delusional people who want to get rich quick. If you do that then lose your money, you don't get to complain. You're free to choose, if you choose wrong, lose, and then not take responsibility for your choice and blame others, then you're truly a loser.
[+] [-] Synaesthesia|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seibelj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ernopp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hokusai|4 years ago|reply
Is this a quote from someone?
Because you can believe anything, believes are not a good method to find what is truth. But it is part of the pump and dump strategy, make people believe that something is valuable and them dump on them all your worthless assets.
[+] [-] eli|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spookthesunset|4 years ago|reply
If Bitcoin hasn’t yet discovered a killer app, when will it?
But yeah yeah, it took tens of thousands of years between humans seeing lightning start fires and the charcoal grill… if it took that long, I'm sure it will be tens of thousands of years before Bitcoin finds a use. Better keep buying and holding!
[+] [-] 0xdeadb00f|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okareaman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwsm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zababa|4 years ago|reply
> Despite claims of “decentralization”, the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures who, with time, have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial system they supposedly set out to replace.
> Cryptocurrency is like taking the worst parts of today's capitalist system (eg. corruption, fraud, inequality) and using software to technically limit the use of interventions (eg. audits, regulation, taxation) which serve as protections or safety nets for the average person.
From what I understand, people in that space seem to think that because something is decentralized, people will automatically distribute equally between themselves power and authority. That seems really naive. As with any "free for all" type of space, the law of the strongest applies. The "cartel" that he speaks of taking control of crypto is a natural consequence of decentralization. An important part of central authorities in the modern world is to guarantee some freedom from exploitive forces. Democracy, unions, laws are a way to achieve that goal.
I wonder if it's a consequence of people thinking about the state as fundamentally bad? I often see criticism from some people, both left and right-wing, that the state is good for nothing, but it seems clear (in the view of the author) who wins when the state can't exercise its authority. Maybe it's time for some people to review their views about decentralization and its consequences.
[+] [-] IfOnlyYouKnew|4 years ago|reply
With regard to central banks, the community is at about the level of the 1920s, where monetary policy was arguably worse than some default law of physics, like the availability of actual gold, might have been. That ignores the bit of history that came later, and the progress that’s been made. That’s why they’re all afraid of runaway inflation, although it has not happened within anyone’s lived experience in western democratic countries.
It’s fun to remember how paranoid the crypto community was at the beginning of being targeted by governments for encroaching on their power. When, in reality, the response was mostly just benign curiosity, and governments only reacted when there were tangible harms to prevent, such as fraud and, more recently, skyrocketing CO_2 emissions. It’s almost as if the FED isn’t a shady private institutions owned by the Rothschild’s out to exploit the common man.
[+] [-] gverrilla|4 years ago|reply
Anyhow, most industries are controlled by few players outside of crypto. Perhaps the right question would be if the existence of crypto as a new component of the system can somehow decrease injustice in the system as a whole. I don't know the answer, but I would gamble it's No - for now. The way I see it in the near future (maximum 10y) we'll get obvious reasons to answer Yes, though.
[+] [-] Ar-Curunir|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poorjohnmacafee|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64xcgvEJ3Ys
[+] [-] abiro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|4 years ago|reply
One of the problems with crypto is people treating it like fairy dust. There are remarkably few, perhaps vanishingly so, business models that do not work centralised that do decentralised.
This is one. What is the pay-out? Who makes what guarantees? How are they enforced?
If a business plan requires crypto—as opposed to being enhanced by it—it’s probably dead on arrival.
[+] [-] snarf21|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dan-robertson|4 years ago|reply
I think this doesn’t make any sense but maybe I just don’t understand.
[+] [-] mcv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] speedgoose|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] domatic1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] advisedwang|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandare|4 years ago|reply
Mind you, every successful country today runs on a MIXED economic system, and communism (or anarchy for that matter) failed every time it was tried.
[+] [-] johnwheeler|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rvz|4 years ago|reply
?
> It doesn't align with my politics or belief system, and I don't have the energy to try and discuss that with those unwilling to engage in a grounded conversation.
Like himself. Given what he just said about cryptocurrency being 'inherently right-wing' which that is completely baseless.
Obviously it is heavily manipulated and it is not exclusive to cryptocurrencies, just like forex and the stock market but the main difference is that it is highly unregulated. I expect more exchanges to use more than just KYC, AML checks and the rise of implementing CBDCs to drive cryptocurrencies past the wild west stage that it is today.
Good luck trying to ignore it because it is here to stay. (Even if you are the creator of a meme coin)
[+] [-] mypastself|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] alessandroetc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Niglodonicus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fidesomnes|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] golemiprague|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] question000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karrot_Kream|4 years ago|reply
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