396
submitted 2 months ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

The crypto industry is making its mark on this year's elections to the tune of some $119 million.

The funding has largely come from two companies — Coinbase and Ripple — which are funneling money into super PACs like Fairshake PAC, which is dedicated to "elevating pro-crypto candidates and attacking crypto skeptics," according to Public Citizen.

At the 2024 bitcoin conference in Nashville in February, Trump — who called bitcoin "highly volatile and based on thin air" in 2019 — said he'd lay out a plan "to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world." Trump has already won the backing of several crypto enthusiasts, including his running mate JD Vance, who owns at least $250,000 in bitcoin.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

But it really doesn't work as a currency.

Real currencies represent debt, not value. You work a week and you're owed something for that work. You get currency that represents what you're owed. You're not meant to hold on to currency, it represents an incomplete transaction. When you spend the money you get the value of what you're owed.

Crypto currency depends on it having value. People holding onto it in the hopes of it increasing value. If people stop holding onto crypo-currency the value would crash and it would be useless.

It's not really feasible to take out a loan denominated in crypto currency. Sure it might be technically possible to make this happen but you'd be a fool to borrow crypto currency as if it increased in value (which it has to do to avoid crashing) you'd end up owing more value than you originally borrowed even before any kind of interest might be charged. There's a reason why central banks want slow by steady inflation: people can be confident that if they take out a loan they won't wind up owing more in value terms than they originally borrowed.

Crypto "currencies" simply aren't currencies because the nature of it being required that they have an increasing value to avoid crashing means they can't perform the basic functions of finance.

People buy crypto currency in the hopes that it will increase in value. Inevitably everyone who might possibly be interested in buying into crypto currency will have already bought into it. There's a finite number of people in the world. When that happens it will no longer be increasing in value and then what do the people that bought into it as an investment do? They sell. And the value crashes. This means is fails at the other requirement of a currency, a stable value.

It's a pyramid scheme and everyone knows it. The crypto guys are just trying to get in the last few pumps before they dump it entirely.

[-] alienanimals@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

By your definition stocks are also a pyramid scheme and everyone knows it. The more people that buy it, the price goes up! Sell? The price crashes! What a revelation!

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 months ago

Nope. A stock is a share of a company. A company has assets and revenue. Stocks either provide dividends (which is a share of the profits) or will invest their profits into growing the company which increases it's value, which in turn increases the value of the share.

Certainly stocks can be over valued, and I'd say many of them are right now. But that aside there is a value in a share of company that isn't based solely on someone else valuing it hoping someone else will value it more.

[-] alienanimals@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You know very little about the stock market. You should read up on the OTC markets.

this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
396 points (98.3% liked)

News

23296 readers
3579 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS