this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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As with everything crypto this was a huge scam. Besides the obvious profiting from gullable idiots, the other use case is to illegally funnel money.
Not absolutely everything in crypto is a scam, though 99% of it is, and I will definitely agree with you there. But there is 1% that is actually trying to do something useful, and you've got to be able to find that 1% and not throw it out with the bath water.
yeah, the cryptoleftists community has found some decent actual use
I’d wager even the 1% is the stereotypical “solution in search of a problem”. Seems to be a reoccurring theme as of late in the tech industry.
Having a currency not backed by a government or different currency is actually something the world could benefit from. Iranian currency was backed by USD, the US caused a shortage of USD there, and their currency value dropped to under 3% of it's former value. 90 Million people.
That said, I think most of us have only ever used crypto to buy drugs off the internet.
Yeah, but a currency practically needs a military and an economy to back it.
Who is going to stop me from fucking with the bitcoin supply if I own the US economy?
That's the point of crypto - unless you can alter 51% of the blockchain, you can't.
the 1% is the people who say "well, sure, 99% is a scam, but theres a legit 1% thats totally real!"
Thre might be a recognizable item of food in a turd, but I'm still not going to eat it.
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
In case anybody sees this and doesn't know the context, this is the note that was published in the Genesis block of the Bitcoin blockchain, Satoshi wanted to engrave forever the fact that at this time the chancellor was on the brink of second bailout for banks. It was a call-out against the fiat system, and it's one of the best call-outs in history. and will be there forever more.
If you happen to have an original copy of this newspaper, it is a genuine artifact, and you can make absolute tons of money on it. No bullshit.
Based on this headline and the fact that Satoshi mentioned digital cash in the white paper as much as he did, you can clearly tell that he was frustrated with the fiat system and all the excesses that came with it and wanted to create a whole different system that was out of the hands of governments and corporations. He came close to succeeding but didn't quite finish the job because he couldn't figure out a way to add privacy into his ledger, which makes the entire thing completely transparent to law enforcement and government crooks.
However, on April 13th, 2014, the final puzzle piece was added with the launch of Monero, which has a fully private blockchain that does not have sender, receiver, or amounts being shown.
If you ever happen to read this comment, Satoshi, thank you for your great work. We will be forever in debt to you.
The fact that there is corruption in the financial system doesn't automatically mean that every other system is honest.
Ethereum has the potential to carry real world assets on its chain. Why does an share of stock have to go through a clearing house when it could be an L2 on ethereum? A company having a total of 1 million shares is no different from a L2 coin having a total number of 1 million coins. They can even be fractional too.
There is no provable way to show that any claim of ownership on Ethereum is legitimate, unless that person has some real-world proof of ownership, in which case the Ethereum link adds no value. It's just another step with another middleman.
Literally every cryptocurrency supports this. But if the real world assets can be seized with a court order, then what's the point of a blockchain and not just a legally compliant database?
Blcokchains aren't even worth a shit as implementations of a distributed ledger.
but like, man, like.. its totally new, like, and like, totally amazing man. you just, like, cant comprehend, man!
Bitcoin doesn't support this. It's what is being mirrored, yes. But, Ethereum is kinda like the distributed operating system/network that could/would allow 24 hour trading without having a clearing-house middleman.
You're talking about real-world assets carried on-chain, right? Bitcoin has supported this for a very very long time.
The true libertarians and anarchists in the room would call out the fact that they are attempting to build a world where governments don't run courts because governments don't exist and that all courts would be arbitration courts and decentralized and run by the community. If I have a problem with you, I tell my arbitrator about it, and my arbitrator tells you that I have a problem with you. If you don't like my arbitrator, then you choose your own arbitrator, and if I don't like the arbitrator you choose, then the arbitrators choose a third party arbitrator that they both agree on, and we agree to be bound by what that arbitrator says.
Edit: If you are willing to watch a 22 minute video, this might be of interest to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ0Qkhnt6bQ
What's the point of an arbirator when there's no means to enforce compliance with their decision? And what could that system actually be? Functionally, it'd be identical to a government.
The silver lining is that after the obligatory exploitation by grifters, every new technology of this caliber finally gets a more positive use in our lifes. Maybe somewhat naive, but I think we (ie. our societies) have payed ~50% of the tuition fee as far as crypto is concerned. So hopefully we'll be able to absorb the tech in our collective lives soon.
Ps: Different topic, but using the same metaphor for AI, I'm afraid we're just at the begin of its initial fallout.
Yeah, sure, that's why we're all riding Segways.
The reality is that quite a lot of new technologies have no significant real-life use case and vanish without a trace.
I think the rise of Monero over Bitcoin is a very positive sign. Since it has privacy, the government absolutely cannot stand the fact that it exists, and therefore, institutions don't want to touch it. This means the "number go up", "to the moon", and "compliance", shmucks are all driven away in horror and you are left with the real core who want to see a better money in a digital world. If that sounds interesting, you might want to listen to "darknet Market Maximalism" a manifesto by xenu. You can listen to the audio version of it on YouTube.
Edit: I'll save you the trouble. Here's the link directly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ogNg20rGTU