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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2022-007
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Covid-19:
Flying:
Prosecution Futures:
Use as open thread …
@Tom_Q_Collins #171
You said
Nonsense. Ask an Ethiopian the value of a standard contract.
There is no rule of law in Ethiopia.
There is rule of law, more or less, in the 1st world.
“Smart” contracts are an attempt to supercede the rule of law – hence the question: why bother?
Oh right, because there’s money to be made. Fail.
You said
NASDAQ (the hucksters that THEY are) is even pushing it: “>https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/smart-contracts-will-push-cardano-to-new-highs-2021-09-24
I believe that statement refutes your technotopian fantasy all by itself.
You said
While I do agree with you on BTC, I think you’re too hung up on the definition of many things that you’ve chosen to embrace, the most important of which is that you seem like you think anyone who buys and uses crypto is expecting their coin to one day be worth $XXXXXXK. It feels like you’ve spent a lot of time with or talking to the stupid wannabe quants, aka crypto day traders or psycho ‘hodlers’ and none looking into the actual benefits. Anyway, other cryptos are/are on the verge of reaching that type of visibility to the “HNW” (which, undefined, I assume means high net worth – gag) crowd. Ether for one, previously Litecoin
Disagree 100%. IF the bubble ran on for another year, maybe ether would have made it. As it is, it is 100% clear that all of the other cryptos are hyenas following Bitcoin that will fail to get anywhere due to the fact that there aren’t more pools of money to be had (crypto fantasists aside) and all of 2022 and likely at least part of 2023 is going to be extremely negative for all highly speculative asset classes of which crypto is most prominent.
You said
But that’s exactly why something like Ada can actually be useful.
“can be useful” is a favorite term of the scammer – a promise that is sold on now but delivered on later.
A currency becomes useless once nobody can afford it (trading for fractions of something is relatively new at least to the average American investor in stocks and bonds).
Any real world currency is affordable – i.e. ALL of the fiat currencies. But cryptos ARE NOT currencies.
Trading for fractions is irrelevant – we have fractional jets, fractional home ownership etc etc. Yes, there are a handful of stocks that are more expensive, but anyone can buy 1 share. Fail.
You said
BTW, you’re VERY strident on this subject. Almost too much so. Why is that and why can’t someone else have a differing opinion on a topic that is by no means settled, despite your confidence that it is?
That’s funny – have I ever said that no one should buy crypto?
Have I ever said they should be outlawed?
What I have stated are clear and factual reasons why crypto is a scam. As you correctly stated, any number of stocks in the market are scams – and I am equally critical of those *cough Uber Tesla Lyft Peloton etc etc*
I have in the past, on MoA, provided both windows into why Bitcoin rose in the 2020-2021 time frame, and predicted why it was going to crash (along with all the hyenas) in early 2022.
The reality, which I have been immersed in for many years now, is that cryptos primary use case has always been crime: money transfer limit law evasion in China and South Korea in the early days along with crime.
The use cases today have changed: many countries that were victims of the money transfer limit law evasion have banned crypto even as crypto enabled outright crime has surged, primarily because ransomware attackers have evolved (and increased ransoms).
Nonetheless, crypto today still has zero unique, legal real world use cases – you failed 100% to respond to the 400 failed crypto bank test. That’s not true precisely – there is exactly 1 that I am aware of: the use of crypto to ensure positive credit reporting isn’t abused, although there are plenty of ways for abuse there.
But more importantly, there are many structural and base motivation reasons why crypto is a scam.
1) Any creation of value from nothing is a potential scam. The greater the creation of value, the greater the likelihood of scam. You speak of Cardano or Solana or whatever – these are small compared to Bitcoin or ether but are still creating huge nominal value. Cardano market cap is $34 billion; Solana market cap is $28 billion. These huge sums created out of nothing have made the originators of these cryptos rich and provided both motivation and funding to keep promoting said cryptos.
Creating “something from nothing” is exactly what drives scammers – and are the reason why the entire crypto space has attracted all of the smarter grifters in the entire world.
Crypto is a criminogenic environment whatever technotopian idealists want to believe.
2) Crypto – smart contract or whatever – are 100% an evasion of real world legal and political structures. They devolve decisions to developers, decisions which are the proper domain of elected government and laws on books. Elected government and laws aren’t perfect but they are at least legally subject to the will of the people and are also changed by same.
The reality is that all of the cryptos are subject to massive revision, even fundamental change, at any time for any reason by developers.
Ether’s change last year, for example, to “reduce its supply” is a prime example as is the various bitcoin forks and what not.
The reality is that it takes an hour or less to churn out a new crypto – smart contract or whatever – these days because it is nothing but software.
So crypto can also be said to be a power grab by developers.
In summary:
Crypto isn’t limited in supply, isn’t currency, has no real world use cases, and is extremely criminogenic.
Crypto has no accountability to anyone but small numbers of developers and is arguably a literal political/legislative power grab by same at best; a money grubbing, self promotional perpetual motion machine at worst.
Buyer beware.
Posted by: c1ue | Jan 25 2022 14:32 utc | 174
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