Won’t ever click on a Twitter link.
Not much to say. I’m glad one more person got out.
Crypto is still an interesting concept. Maybe not the exact same way that bitcoin does it, but nevermind that. The problem with bitcoin is, was and probably will be, that it is not actually materially backed by anything. Could be real estate, could be agriculture, could be some kind of industry that says, you can always get our product for exactly _______ many bitcoins and we change prices every 6-24 months.
Doing it doesn’t make sense because it would drastically over or undervalue the thing and without that kind of backing the currencies will never stabilize enough to be useful.
The concept of having a single mathematically verifiable, unchangeable record of ownership that doesn’t depend on a nation state is still theoretically useful and interesting though. But obviously none of the current implementations are all that useful. Or they would have “won” by now.
Look, truth is crypto is only profitable because someone has assigned value and another person is willing to buy it.
In a capitalist society, this is how things work. The US dollar technically isn’t backed by anything either, yet people around the world use it for trading commodities. But now we can start to see the cracks in that plan, world wide, as the USA tries to isolate itself from the world. I’m not the only one here thinking the same thing. China is oddly taking a lead in technology and innovation, the EU sleeping giant is about to wake up and figure life is passing it by. All while Russia and the USA want the 1950s back in style.
Why the off topic rant? Because crypto is doing what it has been driven towards: making someone else money and someone else wanted to make money AND at $96000 for a virtual token, someone likely is.
Bitcoin, Etherem: all product of a bright people with no intent on making millions. But one day, someone felt that Bitcoin could be used to buy a pizza… and now we have a market and defi banking and loans and fair trade for services AND… a constant change in the value of goods and services, just like the USD.
So like it or not, crypto is working as it’s intended.
Also, I’m entirely out of crypto. I hope it crashes the market and capitalism just dies.
The US dollar technically isn’t backed by anything either
No, it is. it’s not “hard backed” by X dollars to Y grams of gold, but it absolutely is backed in the sense that McDonalds (and hundreds of other companies) does it’s accounting in USD and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future and doesn’t expect wild fluctuations in ingredient prices or wages and wants to prevent those from fluctuating, because when that happens, their business math gets harder.
You can go outside the door with 100$ in your pocket, vanish for 3 months, come back and it’ll still be usable to buy food, a hotel room or a transportation ticket.
Yes, but last year a cheese burger cost me 20% less and my dollar went further. You’re trying to argue the USD is the best form of currency because it’s used nearly everywhere, I’m telling you that it’s only the best currency today because it was stable in the past and backed in value by the commodities around the world. $100 today still gets you food and drink but soon it’ll buy you a whole lot less. The foreseeable future is here dude, sadly, Americans are in for a shock with this whole isolation focus the USD drops from favor.
No I was trying to explain what bitcoin lacks in terms of backing, in comparison to “traditional” currencies. We don’t “need” need the dollar or euro or whatever. Dollar in particular is in for a rough ride.
The concept of having a single mathematically verifiable, unchangeable record of ownership that doesn’t depend on a nation state is still theoretically useful and interesting though
That’s the thing, a lot of people think blockchain technology = cryptocurrency when the latter is only one kind of implementation of the former. Blockchain itself has its uses and is amazing technology, but it gets conflated with cryptocurrency being used as an unreliable investment vehicle.
Article for those that don’t want to click. Sure enough, sounds like tech bro pulled in by ideals that weren’t real, made shit tons of money, now is ok pivoting and saying no bad.
I Wasted 8 Years of My Life in Crypto
Initial Motivations
I was a politically motivated person when I was a teenager. Of all the books that radicalized me, it was the Aynd Rand books (Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) that did. In 2016, I donated to Gary Johnson as a starry-eyed libertarian. On top of being a staunch Randian, I was into computer programming, so crypto was a natural fit for me. The cypherpunk ethos attracted me. I was enamored by the whole idea of Bitcoin being a private bank for wealthy individuals. Being able to walk across the border with a billion dollars in your head is and always will be a powerful idea to me.
Over time however, I felt like I have lost my purpose in crypto. The initial siren songs of crypto’s transformative powers waned after working in the space full-time. I was disillusioned by my target customers and who I was really building for. I completely misunderstood what the actual users of crypto are v.s. just propaganda. Crypto purports that it helps decentralize the financial system, which I completely bought into, but in reality, it’s just a speculation and a gambling hyper-system that’s really just a mirror of what the economy is now.
The reality hit me like a fucking truck. I am NOT building a new financial system. I built a casino. A casino that does not call itself a casino, but it is the biggest, online, multi-player 24/7 casino our generation has ever concocted. Some part of me wants me to feel proud that I contributed at least my 20s building this casino out. Another part of me literally feels like I wasted my entire 20s in this space. I wasted my life on this, but at least I made good money from it.
Look at what they do, not what they say Crypto is confusing. On one hand, you have propagandists that say that they want to completely replace the financial system to one that exists on the blockchain. I could easily imagine such a system - your bank account would just hold USDC or Bitcoin, and you could send a billion dollars to anyone in the world in a few seconds. That belief is powerful and I still ascribe to it.
BUT the incentives have completely warped what happens in reality. In the real world, every market participant was happy to put their money into funding the next Layer 1 (Aptos, Sui, Sei, ICP etc). The outcome of the past L1 wars in 2020 was there was one winner - Solana. This led to a strong incentive for picking the fourth place (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, ??). This incentive has propped up 100s of billions of dollars of market caps. Did this create a net progression towards a new, ideal financial system? Despite the 5000 word essays VCs write, no, it has not contributed to creating a new system. In fact, it literally torched everyone’s money (both retail and VC alike) so everyone has less money in the new financial system.
I am not just picking on L1s specifically. I could go on and on with many examples like this in crypto - spot DEXs, perp DEXs, prediction markets, meme coin platforms etc. Mania and competition in these market segments don’t positively contribute to the end goal of a better financial system. Contrary to what VCs say, we do not need to build the Casino on Mars.
Gamblification of the economy
It would be a lie for me to say that I joined crypto without any financial motivation. As a reader, it may sound hypocritical to you that I decided to swear off the crypto industry, now that I have made enough money. Yes, maybe I am hypocritical. But maybe I also just feel sick about contributing to the cesspool of financialization and gamblification of the economy.
The normalization of making a quick buck from one another in a zero sum way is not how wealth is made long term. It may seem like it is, but it really isn’t. Being in crypto for 8 years have completely fucked with my ability to identify what is a sustainable business. In crypto, you don’t need a successful business or product to make money. Crypto as an industry has a long tail of high market cap coins, which have zero users.
That is not how the real world works. If you want to actually bring value to your customers in a way that isn’t just gambling + entertainment (which is what casinos do btw), these zero sum ways of doing business are just not it.
Conclusion
I used to think financial nihilism is a cute and innocent concept. And that it’s fine to keep introducing and re-introducing zero sum games for the next generation to play. I have zero doubt that BTC will hit $1m one day. But that is irrelevant to the financial games the industry is churning out.
This industry mentality is incredibly toxic, and I believe it will lead to the long-term collapse of social mobility for the younger generation. You already see this happening in real time, and I think it’s really up to us to find the courage in ourselves to resist the pull of worthless games.
CMS holdings had the best quote ever: “Do you want to make money, or do you want to be right?”. I choose to be right this time.
Yeah I am like that but I never made money in crypto. I have no argument to say that it can’t be lucrative. Its just that its immoral for any that do make money because it is a scam ultimately. Any crypto that is energy efficient does not have as much potential to make money and truly legitimate crypto only has the value of the energy used for its purpose (gridcoin being the best example I know of where the crypto’s energy use results in useful work)
It’s not more or less a scam than the stock market. Not more or less moral.
The only difference is how long the stock market has been around.
I completely disagree. bitcoin has no useful product. its equivlent to getting paid to burn a barrel of oil just to take it out of the available oil supply. Stock represents a company that, hopefully, is producing something useful. Cypto is mos certianly more of a scam and also more moral. Our current market is way out of wack so im not going to say its not scammy in its own way or immoral in its own way but if it is crypto is definitely moreso.
it’s a link to X.com tho
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