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And you trust your government with your money?

Take Cyprus as an example. (All bank deposits over €100k were seized no matter how legit your money was).

Take Spain as an example. (The tax office can seize money without warning at their discretion)

Governments can manipulate currency to their hearts' content.

The point of decentralization is to protect against this. That's why it carries value.

Cyprus had a financial crisis and two (?) banks went into (near) bankruptcy and in the EU only the first €100,000 per bank is guaranteed. If you have more cash than that, you should spread it over multiple banks.

At Laki bank everyone lost their deposits over €100,00. At Bank of Cyprus only a percentage of the deposits over €100,00 were seized and exchanged for stocks in the bank.

Mostly rich people suffered from this. Only 51 people took the case to the EU court system in which they lost.

This is how it works in the EU unless the government decides to save the banks.
 
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It sounds like you lost out and are bitter. Better luck next time.
Lots of people make money gambling. I’d venture most regular people lost money on Bitcoin, while there were a few winners. Some made a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. Very few made millions. The easy money was made. The price of anything can go up and be speculated upon. This isn’t a new thing.
 
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Isn't Crypto Asset digital goods? Why is Apple not charging 30% App Store commission?
They are assets like like money or company shares. Apple does not charge you for online banking or stock trading.
 
Cryptocurrencies are the future. Just invest in solid projects. Anyone calling it a scam clearly has no idea what they're talking about. BTC has been around for 10+ years, isn't going anywhere. Same with ETH, same with ADA, etc...Governments are scared they can't control it, banks are scared because they are seeing fiat outflows going to exchanges like Coinbase. No reason to keep it in a savings account when you get .5 interest rate when you can convert it to stable coins and get 8-9% interest.
 
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It'll be convenient if I can use Apple Pay each time I need to buy cryptocurrency to pay the ransom after I accidentally install malware!
 
I worked in the crypto space for 2 years. 99.99% of the projects are straight-up scams.

Everything in crypto is just a ponzi scheme (and a bit like a pyramid scheme). You own a crytocurrency? You hype it up blindly in order to get more buyers. Then you exit for a profit. Anyone saying cryptocurrency is useful or is the future is only saying that to drive hype, thus price, before exiting.

14 years later, crypto hasn't done anything useful except enabling money laundering and buying illegal things. Not only that, it wastes energy (green or not) and hundreds of thousands of people talent that could have gone into solving more pressing problems in the world.

What cryptocurrencies are is just a modern, efficient way of creating and exiting scams. Cryptocurrencies take advantage of social media to spread and the fact that there is a lot of cash looking for "investments" due to our current low interest-rate environment.

Unlike owning things like stocks where the entities must have boards, report financials, have audits, disclose risks, crypto companies can raise $100 million and then completely shut down the next day without any repercussions except getting a few angry tweets from investors. Once you give money to a crypto project, the founders can do whatever the hell they want.

People say blockchain doesn't have a "killer application" yet. Actually, it does. Its killer application is scamming.

There is a reason why a significant portion of crypto companies are registered in the Cayman Islands.

I wish the U.S. and EU would just grow a pair and ban all crypto like China did.
Ah yes. China. The country to emulate.
 
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I worked in the crypto space for 2 years. 99.99% of the projects are straight-up scams.

Everything in crypto is just a ponzi scheme (and a bit like a pyramid scheme). You own a crytocurrency? You hype it up blindly in order to get more buyers. Then you exit for a profit. Anyone saying cryptocurrency is useful or is the future is only saying that to drive hype, thus price, before exiting.

14 years later, crypto hasn't done anything useful except enabling money laundering and buying illegal things. Not only that, it wastes energy (green or not) and hundreds of thousands of people talent that could have gone into solving more pressing problems in the world.

What cryptocurrencies are is just a modern, efficient way of creating and exiting scams. Cryptocurrencies take advantage of social media to spread and the fact that there is a lot of cash looking for "investments" due to our current low interest-rate environment.

Unlike owning things like stocks where the entities must have boards, report financials, have audits, disclose risks, crypto companies can raise $100 million and then completely shut down the next day without any repercussions except getting a few angry tweets from investors. Once you give money to a crypto project, the founders can do whatever the hell they want.

People say blockchain doesn't have a "killer application" yet. Actually, it does. Its killer application is scamming.

There is a reason why a significant portion of crypto companies are registered in the Cayman Islands.

I wish the U.S. and EU would just grow a pair and ban all crypto like China did.
Nothing useful? What about smart contracts?
 
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Where are the actual counterarguments? Or there just isn't any?

This is the third person who refuses to address any of my points except to resort to ad hominem.

Quote my arguments and provide your counterargument. Let's debate.

You didn't make arguments, you stated incorrect factoids and it takes more effort to respond properly than you have with your assertions.

Further, I don't benefit at all by educating you or anyone else. In fact it is probably detrimental to me, which, according to your asinine logic I should be clamoring to legitimize and "argue" with you as that creates another greater fool in this ponzi.

Rather, I hope the public stays out of it for as long as possible so I can keep accumulating. I have not pushed it in the slightest and didn't purchase any, yet look at what it's done.

Perhaps your lesson is that ALL currency is a scam. It's based on nothing but promises and authority. Maybe that's why crypto scares you? But explain why if this is the case, so many major financial institutions are acquiring it? If they're also "scammers" what does that say about any given financial instrument?

But I will pick one easy point to refute, since I'm lazy and bored of people who somehow think their own education is the teacher's responsibility...

For example, your nonsense about picking two out of three: centralization, performance, security is so mindnumbingly incorrect because those three qualities are not mutually exclusive and those are variables for many facets of the technology/system.

You could argue that visa is secure or not secure based on the vector, or that it has amazing performance or awful performance based on the product. and centralization is relative to the ecosystem.

crypto has already been proven to have more transactions per second FINALIZED than any creditor system (vica accepting a transaction is not fulfilled for days), it's key feature is to be censorship resistant if you stay off of mainstream channels, and security is a baseline as there is no harder currency in existance.

ps:

The proper trinity is always cost/quality/quantity in any example because those are three mutually exclusive variables.

for products: fast and cheap is not high quality, high quality and cheap is not fast, fast and high quality is not cheap.

or with a job: well paying and fun is probably not legal, legal and well paying not fun, fun and legal is not well paying. etc.
 
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Cryptocurrencies are the future. Just invest in solid projects. Anyone calling it a scam clearly has no idea what they're talking about. BTC has been around for 10+ years, isn't going anywhere. Same with ETH, same with ADA, etc...Governments are scared they can't control it, banks are scared because they are seeing fiat outflows going to exchanges like Coinbase. No reason to keep it in a savings account when you get .5 interest rate when you can convert it to stable coins and get 8-9% interest.
Yeah, why have a savings account when you can lose 30% in 2 days in a Bitcoin swing!
And yea, governments can control it for general purposes, easily. It can simply be banned and then will only be used on the black market. Not saying it will happen, but governments can hurt it. Look at what China has done.
 
I'm very comfortable financially, have made money through my other investments, and don't prefer to gamble in cryptocurrencies that are damaging to the planet and scams people.

This statement just reeks of privilege.

You sound like you have had good experience in that sector and have made a solid decision for yourself. But I think you neglect to consider the risks people with very little money are willing to take at a chance for financial freedom from the slavery of borrowing and lending and minimum wage jobs. Yes there are a lot of scams in crypto, but there are also a ton of people who can finally pay their medical bills and try their best to climb out of the cracks of our social framework. Like it or not, cryptocurrencies are changing lives for a lot of people.
 
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Serious question: Can someone explain to me what is all the hype about crypto? I wanna know specifically:
1) What exactly can Bitcoin do that money doesn’t already; and
2) How are we supposed to fight money laundering and all sorts of crime money being traded on Bitcoin if the operation is encrypted.
1) The benefit is that Bitcoin over fiat is that it is a finite currency/asset (not to mention immutable - I’ll get to that later). While a government can print more $ w/o any backing & just tell you it is worth x-amount, Bitcoin & other crypto currencies are controlled by software which is confirmed & controlled in a decentralized manner, so - for example - i can’t just “print” more of it. When the government does this is causes inflation - Bitcoin can be a hedge against this

2) Money laundering has been done for many years - long before Bitcoin. In fact cash is the largest form of currency used in laundering…especially since it is untraceable. While it is true, you may not know who is transacting on the blockchain, by name - the chain itself is an immutable ledger & can be traced across wallets. In fact governments have utilized the Bitcoin blockchain to prevent & stop money laundering - there have been several news articles about that.

I hope this helps
 
via stocks app

january price of 1 bitcoin
2015 = $200
2016 = $400
2017 = $800
2018 = $16,000
2019 = $3,000
2020 = $8,000
2021 = $32,000

total number of bitcoin is 21 million
 
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via stocks app

january price of 1 bitcoin
2015 = $200
2016 = $400
2017 = $800
2018 = $16,000
2019 = $3,000
2020 = $8,000
2021 = $32,000

total number of bitcoin is 21 million
count-1.png


The blockchain is great tech tho.
 
1) The benefit is that Bitcoin over fiat is that it is a finite currency/asset (not to mention immutable - I’ll get to that later). While a government can print more $ w/o any backing & just tell you it is worth x-amount, Bitcoin & other crypto currencies are controlled by software which is confirmed & controlled in a decentralized manner, so - for example - i can’t just “print” more of it. When the government does this is causes inflation - Bitcoin can be a hedge against this

2) Money laundering has been done for many years - long before Bitcoin. In fact cash is the largest form of currency used in laundering…especially since it is untraceable. While it is true, you may not know who is transacting on the blockchain, by name - the chain itself is an immutable ledger & can be traced across wallets. In fact governments have utilized the Bitcoin blockchain to prevent & stop money laundering - there have been several news articles about that.

I hope this helps
Except that this is not true. First of all the government doesn't simply print money, it issues government bonds. Second we have a massive increase in public deficits all around the western world in the last 2 decades and we have next to no inflation, central banks are desperately trying to stop deflationary tendencies for years. The only prices that are inflationary are asset prices, but this is not due to the government "printing" money but because of zero interest rates, deregulation of the financial sector and the private banks lending money for asset speculation.

When the government does this is causes inflation
This is monetarism and it is wrong. Just empirically wrong. This is what economists believed decades ago and no central bank in the world anymore believes that. More money is a necessary condition for inflation but not a sufficient one. Rising salaries are the main driver of inflation, not government deficits, which is reasonable because this is how most people generate income to consume.

just tell you it is worth x-amount

The government doesn't dictate prices. Prices are made by the market.

Also there is no point in "backing" money because it isn't something finite. Money is just the quantification of debt. It's like restricting the amount of "miles" available to build roads. If people want to invest and take more debt than before, we need more money.

If there are unused resources (an indicator would e.g. be unemployment) the government can use that resources through expenditure without creating inflation.
 
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