Just got very lightly flamed by another user for making fun of crypto and was told that Lemmy and crypto have “the exact same advantages and disadvantages”. Now I disagree heavily there, since even if it shares some principles I’d argue that the scale of the problems change when you’re talking about a global finance system versus a social media platform filled with beans. But it did get me curious- how many of you are crypto supporters?

  • simple@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    No? There’s definitely some overlap but they’re completely different concepts, just because I like Lemmy doesn’t mean I enjoy unstable coins that use up a ton of energy for no reason and can lose their value by the end of the day

    • justdoit@lemm.eeOP
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      1 year ago

      See, that was my response too! Federated servers will waste a bit of energy with duplicate fetch requests, sure, but it’s a far cry from the decades of compute time wasted with adversarial validation and cryptographic mathematics. And that doesn’t even deal with the shitty coins themselves.

      Was very confused why they seemed to think the concepts were the same, and thought maybe I was the idiot.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Thinking about it too much makes them feel uncomfortable and less optimistic, so they avoid it and try to just focus on the many things they will buy when the value of their crypto coins inexplicably goes really high (which it might if a lot of money needs laundering, though I wonder if previous rounds worked out as well as they were hoping or if they got fucked by exchanges disappearing with their money in the night and decided to just go back to 3 mattress stores on one corner in various cities.

  • YoFrodo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t care about crypto at all. At this point I think of any crypto as pump and dump scams unless proven otherwise

  • RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    No, fuck crypto. At best it’s a solution looking for a problem while speedrunning a century of banking regulation reform, at worst it’s an environmentally disastrous scam.

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    God, I hope not. Crypto is an interesting technology that’s been used to promote what’s essentially a scam. Just ask yourself this: Are the people into crypto using it to buy things? Or are they going to sell it for dollars at a high value and then walk away?

    Most are the latter. Very few people even bother setting up software wallets. They just keep their crypto on markets and try to sell high.

    That means that for most people, it’s not a currency at all, it’s an investment. But a normal investment is backed by something of value, while crypto is just backed by pure speculation - that is, it’s backed by all the other people who are trying to sell high, too. The name for a system where you get people to buy valueless assets and drive up their price so you can sell yours and leave others holding the bag is: “Ponzi scheme.”

    • ZodiacSF1969@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The name for a system where you get people to buy valueless assets and drive up their price so you can sell yours and leave others holding the bag is: “Ponzi scheme.”

      No, that’s a Greater Fool scheme. A Ponzi is more centralized and the people who get paid out are not supposed to be aware that the money is coming from new investors. Ponzi schemes hide that aspect of it. In a Greater Fool you are betting on someone being dumber than yourself enough to buy your worthless investment at a higher price.

      A lot of crypto is Greater Fool, but there have been crypto Ponzi schemes.

      As a side note, there is a cultural tendency to call all scams Ponzis when they are not. It is a specific type of scam.

      • kescusay@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Huh. I was thinking of the whole scheme being centralized around a few core people who push crypto, but I think you’re right. “Greater fool” is a better label for it. Thanks!

      • sauerkraus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s a bit of both. The increase in value for those who got in early is propped up by the hype of new bagholders.

  • Eufalconimorph
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    1 year ago

    Hell no.

    They’re almost entirely scams. I don’t support tricking people out of their money.

    They also ruined crypto as an abbreviation for cryptography, and spam every cryptography-related discussion forum. Even the NIST post-quantum standardization list has been getting their spam.

  • CptOblivius@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I am not. Plus the ones needing to be mined by wasting of ton of energy are basically an environmental disaster.

  • niflhiem@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Crypto is and always has been a joke. It also doesn’t work that much like the fediverse, which is basically a webring where the sites like to copy each other. TBH I’m looking forward to the webring host Lemmy instance drama and people being kicked from the webring defederated.

  • Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    I would argue no, in fact I feel like the Fediverse is a functional version of decentralization as opposed to Block Chains.

    Block Chains are resource heavy, to the point of effecting the ecosystem. They’re supppsed to be 100% reliable yet major Block Chains have already needed to fork their databases, plus it’s very easy to scam and hack into wallets without any legal repercussions. And they have little to no use cases so we had to invent uses like Crypto and NFT. (Yeah there could be use cases for deeds and stuff, but with the unreliability I don’t want Block Chain anywhere near my house deed).

    Meanwhile we have the Fediverse, which is essientially like a bunch of Discord servers stringed together, and it accomplishes a decentralized social network without the planet destroying or needless money speculation added on top.

  • dromicieomimus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    i’m generally anti-crypto. i’m not against it fully, i think it has a purpose but that purpose is not unstable, highly volatile investments, meme coins, or play-to-earn games.

    • sotolf@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      What is the purpose then? To me it just seems like a solution looking for a problem, and that’s not a good way to make solutions.

      • dromicieomimus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        i suppose i should have said it could have had a purpose. i think it was initially conceived as a way to make private purchases, perhaps of things one might not want tracked back to them. for a simple example, i always pay cash when i visit a dispensary, even though many of them take cards now, because i don’t care for my bank to know that i am making that purchase. if i could pay with cryptocurrency at the dispensary, keeping that transaction more private, i would. but crypto has ceased to be a private currency, and turned into extremely volatile investments. who would want to make a purchase with crypto when it could skyrocket in value the next day and you’ve suddenly spent more than you thought, or the vendor has made less than they thought when the values plummet?

        as it is now, it has no real purpose. it could have though. you are right that as it stands it is a solution looking for a problem.

        right now it’s purpose is to tell me who i should avoid

        • sotolf@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Private? It’s in a public ledger right, I think monero does some scrambling, but most crypto is a lot less private than paying in cash.

          • dromicieomimus@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            your comment is a moot point. i was saying that it could be private and while it is probably mostly associated with people trying to purchase illegal goods crypto tumblers are a thing so that is something that can anonymize your crypto. also, you can’t pay with cash online so there is a utility of something that can facilitate anonymity in transactions online.

  • KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Lol, no I am not. Crypto in it’s current form, is not going to be a legitimate, stable, daily use currency. Digital money/systems with technological roots in crypto may be the future but it will be a 2nd cousin, once removed, at best.

    NFTs as implemented, are also pure BS.

  • Phantom_Engineer@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    The technology has potential but right now it’s mainly being used either to buy illicit goods or separate fools from money.

    Lemmy is free to use. If you give money to an instance owner, at least you know it’s a donation and that you’ll never get it back.

  • sauerkraus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Unlikely. The hype for crypto scams had fallen off hard in the last year. It peaked like two years ago.