Bitcoin and other scams

That's not a Piña in your mouth.

It sounds the same, but it's attached to the Zuckatar. 😐

Just finished watching this pretty long but amazing video about how the whole crypto thing is just smoke and mirrors bullshit that will make literally everything worse.

Yeah, that one is so damn good. I admire hos stamina. Of love to see an equally well made argument from the crypto side.

Long read on the crypto house of cards:

Cryptocurrency Is a Giant Ponzi Scheme

" In a widely circulated 2017 paper, researchers attributed over half of the then-recent rise in Bitcoin’s price to purchases made by a single entity on Bitfinex ... Critically, these purchases were not made with dollars, but with Tether."

"Tether has become integral to the functioning of global crypto markets. The majority of Bitcoin trades are now conducted in Tether, 70 percent by volume. By comparison, only 8 percent of trade volume is conducted in real dollars."

“There is no reason to have any faith in Tether. Tether’s peg to the dollar was initially predicated on the claim that the digital currency was fully backed by actual cash reserves — a dollar held in reserve for every tether issued — this was later shown to be a lie. The company has since continuously revised down claims about how much cash they keep in reserve. Their latest public attestation on the matter, from March of last year, claimed to be holding only 3 percent of their reserves in cash.”

"The electricity expended mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is rapidly approaching 1 percent of global usage, which is famously greater than the total electricity consumption of many smaller developed nations. Given that cryptocurrencies don’t produce anything of material value, this enormous waste of resources renders the whole enterprise a negative-sum game."

It's not too late to make money on "crypto", but know this. The only actual value in any of them is if you manage to sell them for more than you bought them.

Netflix stock might go up and down (as we've seen) but behind it is a company that has customers and makes tv shows and films. The blockchain has no practical use what so ever. There's only that number you see on a a screen. There is no future where the blockchain becomes the foundation of a new internet protocol.  

Yeah, burning it to mine bitcoin

It's the circle of life.

I really hope it all just crashes horribly, like properly gets wiped out, in my lifetime. I'd like to see that.

Surely that would domino and fuck everything else, like our pensions etc. I'd quite like to not work at some point

I'm kind of hoping my pension providers are not "investing" in Bitcoins. That wouldn't be in the "safe and secure" area I've said they can. 

Not that I'll ever have enough to retire. 

I've pretty much given up on the idea of retiring, as much as I'd like to, and have no kids I need to worry about, so I have the luxury of being able to want to see things to burn.

And if it dominoes so be it. If it's too embedded for it to be removed safely I'd rather the whole system collapses so we can start again.

(Again, the luxury of not having much to look forward too makes it easier to have those kind of sentiments)

www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-crash-no-big-deal-bitcoin-ether-dogecoin-11620332378

The answer seems to be yes and no. No it wouldn't have a massive impact if it happened tomorrow but yes if crptyo became more entwined in our lives. However a 2 trillion drop isn't nothing to sniff at although it did also say thr dot com bubble took over 6 trillion when it crashed. The world got through it.

I will admit the whole desire to put everything on the Blockchain, such as bills, medical records driving licenses etc, to make it a speculative commodity does make me queasy. The more you read about it the more you realise it's a programmers way of managing society but the programmer in question lacks any form of social skills nor do they have any common sense about life.

#HFSP

OK boomers