… the founding ideas are promising, and something I dream of.

Before I start, just a little bit of background on me so you can understand how biased I am (😅): I’m a 16 years old programmer and I won a few crypto hackathon/funding rounds and I made a lot of friends in the field. It allowed me to get quite a bit of ETH/XMR along the way!

I see cryptocurrencies getting a lot of hate, rightly so for the number of scams, shitcoins, NFTs bullshit, “governance”, DAOs and all those often useless & snob terms.

However the founding ideas of decentralisation and freedom with your money are very appealing to me. Smart contracts are really interesting for creating your own banking operation and tokens can represent anything! It’s a world of possibilities to play with, and you get to build something useful for people!

I’d just like to add a bit of nuance tho: I see a lot of apps being built and what’s really making me laugh is the lack of open-source, decentralisation and auditing on privacy. Granted, there is a lot of fake promises, but it’s like everything, you have to find the talented people to follow.

I find it fascinating to build unstoppable, decentralised, user-first apps. I just hope that web3 stays true to its founding principles.

Hope it was interesting, tell me what you think!

EDIT: title+typos+the game is not comfortably played in Act 2

  • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    Yeah because you know, dollar bills have inherent value, right?

    Dollar bills have the inherent value that some very grumpy men with guns will kick down my door and take me away if I try to make them myself.

    Cryptocurrency is only worth something until a technical weakness is discovered and exploited, or until governments make it illegal, or until the creators of the currency reveal the back door they left in the system (such as that supposedly-lost Bitcoin wallet with a few billion coins in it) and cash it out, and then it’s all over and your digital tulips aren’t worth the flash cells they’re stored in.

    No, it’s not completely useless.

    Only to criminals.

    People have been using it to get around censorship by banks.

    Get around laws against money laundering, smuggling, extortion, and theft, I think you mean. Banks aren’t in the business of censorship, and even if yours is, there are plenty of others to choose from who’ll be more than happy to take your money and not ask too many questions about your politics.

    Sure, it’s fine to not like it, but having a knee-jerk emotional reaction to it is pointless and makes you look like you’re just being told what to think.

    Yeah, that’s what all the scammers say.

    • jarfil@beehaw.orgEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Dollar bills have the inherent value that some very grumpy men with guns will kick down my door and take me away if I try to make them myself.

      That’s no what “inherent” means, and it didn’t prevent North Korea from printing their own for decades anyway.

      As for the other points:

      • Several technical weaknesses have been discovered over the last 15 years, some have been exploited, then fixed, and the value is still there.
      • Governments have made crypto illegal (see: China), it didn’t stick.
      • There are no “billions” of BTC lost, currently there are less than 20 million in total, out of which about 10% are considered lost, with no “magic backdoor wallet”.
      • Tulips mania was speculation with “surprise mechanics” (lootboxes?), there have only been a few scams like that in crypto (see: crypto kitties).

      Get around laws against money laundering, smuggling, extortion, and theft

      Recently one of the mods on Beehaw was asking for an anonymous way to receive donations, which banks don’t allow. I don’t think they intended it for any of those.

      Banks aren’t in the business of censorship

      Except for porn.

      plenty of others to choose from who’ll be more than happy to take your money and not ask too many questions

      Take your money, yes. Give it back… not so much.

      Still, there are plenty of scams in crypto… unfortunately, the same scams keep being run on all kinds of assets. Avoiding crypto won’t shield you from them, only learning about them may give you a fighting chance.

    • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      No, it’s not completely useless.

      Only to criminals.

      All cryptocurrencies other than Monero are completely useless to criminals. Most cryptocurrencies are designed to be traced. The only thing more traceless than Monero is paying in cash.

      In other words, you’re wrong, crypto is even more useless than that

      • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Ransom is almost always collected in Bitcoin. Buying drugs online was one of the first things you could do with Bitcoin.