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World's richest 1% gained $40 tn in a decade: Oxfam
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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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I think the idea of cryptocurrency is funny, since it's just "I'm not playing your make believe money anymore, so we'll pay our own make believe money since you are obviously rigging the system". Kinda makes sense if adoption keeps up and the planet isn't on fire
Thing is, the poor aren’t running bitcoin miner farms. Crypto doesn’t change anything but traceability of the funds, letting the rich get even richer.
Yeah riding the bubble let a couple of nerds and early investors maybe take advantage of a little economic mobility, like, incidentally. But those days are long passed now. Like you said, it's rigged in favour of entrenched capital, just like everything else now.
BTC is steady last few months at 60k, if you purchased last year, your investment is up 3x. If you bought 2 years ago at the peak, you're up a few %, which still beats international inflation
So you're saying "too bad for you if you didn't get in at the right time"?
That is 100% the crypto mentality. I got mine fuck you if you didn't.
I guess some people have that stance, but it's a currency. It's supposed to be boring and not thought about much. It's not like most people care about antique and rare coin collections, but some people do, most people just spend and save their money
Calling it a currency is generous. I know it's meant to be, but let's be honest - you're not buying the majority, or probably even any, everyday goods or tech with your BTC are you? Most people certainly aren't. And most BTC owners certainly aren't. They're holding to the moon.
If my local grocery story would accept it, I would. It's a compatibility issue, which all technology is tested this way. Having 5G towers in the 1900s would have been a bummer, but today, somewhat standard. Crypto will need to pass this test if it'll survive
Do you know what a blockchain is? It's not cutting edge technology at all.
You're right though, there is a compatibility problem.The BTC network is designed to be inefficient and it's slow as fuck. Why would we replace a fast and pretty efficient system with a slow one that also makes your money unrecoverable if you make a typo?
That's not even touching on how fun it would be to buy your groceries when BTC crashes 20% overnight.
Or how ridiculously convoluted using crypto is in general. And how easy it is to get hacked, scammed, rug pulled.
It's complete fantasy mate. I'm guessing you're deep in the crypto space from your comments, which are the same old non arguements over and over, so no one ever talks about any potential negatives. That in itself should tell you everything you need to know.
I'm not saying you can't make money with crypto, but it's a casino and nothing more. The rest is just feel good bullshit sold to you to make you buy and hold, generally.
Well, most of our current economic payment system is smoke and mirrors for the majority of the world. In the US, bank transfers can take up to weeks to process, and the only reason why it looks fast to end users is it's insured so they just change the digits on the screen
I'm not necessarily sold on crypto, I am just over the fiat system. Living through multiple economic collapses, seeing prices rise and only held low due to government supplements and corrupt lobbying, and the general way fiat leads to over consumption will do that
Give me something better and I'll take it. I know it's slower than cash, clunky and uses as much resources as google, but right now those aren't draw backs to me in this current environment where we need debt to sustain day to day existence
You know bank transfers are almost instant across most of Europe right?
That's a US specific problem. Solutions already exist.
Yes, there are serious problems with the current system. I hear you, and I agree.
Fiat isn't the problem. These are problems with human behaviour, lack of oversight, and a system that incentivises bad practice.
Crypto does nothing to fix any of them, and in most cases simply makes them worse. It's not a solution, it's just touted as one by the crypto rich to bring in new money.
Just look at the rhetoric vs reality. It's not ok for governments to just print money on demand, but it is ok for Tether to print Tether on demand which they then use to buy shitloads of BTC to pump and dump the market?
It's the same shit, just even worse.
We're all being fucked over by the same ultra rich, and technology is not the answer to that.
Voting in and supporting people who want to start taxing these fuckers and holding them to account is a step in the right direction.
Yeah there are lots of bad actors in the crypto sector, similar patterns existed in the US when towns and companies were issuing their own currencies
And yeah the US and many developing nations have old infrastructure, the EU and China have the pinnacles of fiat payment systems, but the roll out for upgrades are low and expensive
I couldn't agree more, it's a human issue. I think a finite transparent currency would be useful since it would squash the worst actors (fraud, embezzlement and hidden budgets, in the private and public sectors), but that's just my guess
I think more importantly is community and having conversations like these because nothing is a "silver bullet" and we should better as a species. Thanks for chatting, you seem cool
Yep I definitely agree with your last point. And likewise, appreciate that we could have a discussion about this sensibly. Not sure a finite currency would solve these issues as they are human issues. My take would be addressing the human aspect of these problems through education, which is to be fair pretty unlikely to happen.
As you say though conversation is the way forward, whether we're taking about crypto or anything else. Cheers :)
No, it's like any other currency minus it has a fixed supply. So use it, since inflation is eating away any currency with a limitless supply
But deflation pushes people not to spend their money and crypto with a fixed supply is in fact deflationary since the accessible supply goes down as people lose access to their wallet for one reason or another.
Also, crypto value and crypto prices of items are based on the comparable fiat value so yes, getting in at the right time makes a huge difference.
In the end crypto bros just make it so there's still rich people at the top, they're just not necessarily the same ones.
Yes if you meet those criteria and cash out right now. Most people I to crypto will hold though.
Why? Because that's the narrative pushed on the community over and over and over - hodl never sell.
Why? Because if everyone sells, all the people manipulating the market like Tether and their buddies lose their money. Fair play to those that can make a bit of money, but unless you're already rich, are running the market, or fine with creating a shitcoin to rug people, crypto is not going to make most average people rich at all.
Just another way for the already wealthy to fuck you over.
Most assets work that way, if everyone sold Nividia stock then it would tank as well. Most things outside of food and shelter only have value due to our collective belief. Diamond and water paradox is constant in society
Is it a currency or an asset? You replied claiming it's a currency below.
I think an asset is anything that can be converted to liquid, so that depends if you think crypto is liquid or not, which probably depends on location
So you think it's an asset, not a currency?
It doesn't matter what I believe, I was referencing an economic textbook on what an asset and currency are
What do you believe it to be?
It does matter, because with respect you changed what you class it as to support your arguement. Obviously there's still discussion on how to class BTC, but my understanding is the consensus outside of crypto is it's a speculative asset.
That's also why it would be terrible as a currency, from what I understand.
That's a common misconception. Most cryptocurrencies (except XMR) actually increase the traceability of funds compared to traditional payments. Bitcoin really isn't that great for privacy as some crypto enthousiasts say. It's one of those ridicolous "advantages" that prove that most are just hypemen with no idea about how it actually works.
Traceability might be nice since the black market is estimated around 20T USD. Cuts out bad actors which means no fraud, and no hidden inflation since we can see the quantity compared to USD which the Federal Reserve doesn't even know
Have you heard of our Lord and Savior, Monero?
It doesn't solve any of this. The people who invented BTC did not understand whay money is and how it works. Especially how it's created. If we lived in a world with BTC alone and we've reached the point where no more BTC can be created while the world economy was growing, we'd keep creating money by reducing prices and using smaller fractions of BTC to pay them. Of course all of this would be much less practical than adding more units of BTC so if the world lived in this universe, a consensus would be reached to amend BTC to allow for further expansion of the BTC supply. And this doesn't even touch the ability to create money via debt which doesn't even require a currency.
BTW I'm not saying crypto is useless. I think BTC for example will be with us for the foreseeable future but it would likely always be used as an intermediate currency that is then converted to one fiat or another through a floating exchange rate. The exchange rate would take care of the inherent problem I described.
I think the creators had some knowledge of how currency worked, since there has been movements to make digital money in the cryptopunk scene for 20+ years before BTC. Also, you don't need a degree to be an economist, a library card works just as good
Having a fixed supply might reduce astronomical debts but still allow for smaller debts or ones that are collateralized. But yeah, day to day life would be drastically different. No credit cards for sure, but also no compound interest, because can't have compounding interest on anything with a fixed supply or it will acquire all of the resource (or at least attempt to)
But the ultra rich are actually playing with that too and fucking over every single person that invests thinking they're going to be 'financially free'
Adoption will never happen because block chains are shit at everything except being a Blockchain.
Let's fix the system we've got instead of inventing a new one that's worse in basically every way.