Here's the thing.
I have spent 4 years working in and on crypto.
When I criticise it, I know what I'm talking about.
I was drawn in by the idea of a new financial system that didn't rely on traditional banks. I was excited by the idea of rebuilding digital ownership in a post-streaming world.
In the end, I came to realise my idealism had blinded me. The philosophy was largely false.
And outweighed by the scams, thefts, fraud and grift.
Crypto cost me my life's savings from theft and scams.
It cost me the last of my optimism when I realised the vast majority of people who claimed to support me as a creator were speculators who turned on me, threatened me and harassed me when they realised my work wasn't designed to be an "asset"
I believe in decentralisation. But right now - that's not what crypto is building. It's almost entirely a wealth generation scheme.
I’m so sorry for your loss. You’re doing a real service by sharing your story now.
Sorry to hear you got snookered. I remember telling a young woman several years ago that crypto was a Ponzi scheme, and she just told me how much her crypto had gone up in value since she bought it. I don’t know how she’s doing these days though.
@Daojoan it has been an interesting socioeconomic experiment. Experiments fail sometimes. Too bad that this one involves hundreds of billion dollars already. Also, quite an impact on the global environment.
One lesson definitely learnt: don't try building an independent currency. It's going to be a huge and nasty mess.
@Daojoan how does DeFi support the little people? DeFi will never offer the protection to people that they enjoy under the CFPB and the myriad other financial regulators that ensure American banks are safe, secure, well capitalized, and when there is an issue ensure it is handled in an orderly manner with minimal disruption to depositors and debtors.
Bankers face strict limits on what they do, no such limits exist for the world of DeFi. There is no institution, just the jungle of the market
@Daojoan I'm sorry to learn about your losses in cryptocurrency.
I've worked with computers long enough that I've learned to approach new claims with skepticism.
Cryptocurrency seems like another Ponzi pyramid scheme--thosenl who profit do so only at the expense of newcomers, with no net generation of new value.
@Daojoan regulation on traditional securities is not the product of nanny state fascists. It represents the accumulated expertise of thousands of efforts reacting to fraud and exploitive behavior.
These ecoin tragedies are a feature not a bug. And that sucks. I'm sorry for your experience.
Lessons learned this way are very tough lessons. Reliable as rain, every few years the scammers figure out a new pump-and-dump bubble to transfer other people's money into their coffers. So very sorry you got caught up in one of these. Years ago the dot-com bubble blasted away a small fortune, and that was a tough lesson, but never again. Chasing tigers is a dangerous game. AI is next. Stay clear of that beast.
@r00sty @Daojoan
To the extent there were real experiments to be run and real questions to be answered with blockchain-based currencies, they were all failures, all answered in the negative
At the very most, Silk Road, problematic as it was, operated unmolested for about two years, before earning someone double life plus forty; that's closest crapto ever came to anything anyone could call a success
One guy bought some pizza
Meanwhile, blockchain displaced all sorts of other distributed experiments, some quite promising, distributed LETS systems and the like; if there's to be redemption, it'll come from those, or from new ones
@Daojoan if something promises wealth, there always appears a strange species.
The more they eat, the hungrier they get. Unsatiable.
Kimmerer calls it Windigo economy in her book braiding sweetgrass.
I must admit I never had the brain capacity to understand cryptos. I hope you can compensate your financial loss.
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