Until there is an actual use case for Crypto, it’s definitely a scam as a technology. It exists only for investors and scammers, anyone attempting to actually use it is getting reamed.
For each steam power there are thousands of similar inventions that never see the light of practical use cases. We just remember those that had significant breakthroughs.
you know, the fact that they were right sort of undermines your argument, Hero’s engine really diden’t amount to anything outside a fun curio for wealthy aristocrats, modern steam engines are not based on this invention, the modern steam engine comes from early pressure-cooking
You might have had a salient point if the ancient Greeks made it popular for “solving thirst across the known world,” but really it was a novelty. Or if crypto was marketed as a novelty. But crypto was hyped to be the next big things, spreading around the world, no monetary boundaries. The same people making those claims are spending hundreds of millions on the election to making sure it stay unregulated with no consumer protection.
I thought the same, but changed my mind after my bank card stopped working for foreign services. Now Monero is the most straightforward way to pay for my VPS and domain, since getting a foreign card would be prohibitively expensive, and the local companies with foreign servers - the ones I can pay with my card for - are likely to submit to the same censorship I want to bypass.
Even for those who can use their cards, crypto can be useful - for those who would be endangered by using a KYC payment method (activists and dissidents, for example). Even currencies without privacy protections are still leagues easier to use privately than a KYC method.
99.9% of people could not pay for what they want or need except the handful of niche places that happen to accept it. Can’t pay medical bills with it, can’t buy my food at the grocery store with it, can’t buy my gas with it, can’t really apply it where I want to, only in the few spaces I get to.
That’s not what the developers claimed it would do, or what the investors wanted it to do. It’s not cost effective or simple. It’s created more problems than it’s solved. It flat out a scam.
For the cases you described, there is the most convenient and anonymous type of money - cash)
But yea, reception is a problem. However, there is still an assortment of services accepting Monero, including the VPS that is vital for me now. It can also be used to buy prepaid cards, for cases when they are actuay accepted.
How is it convenient? Its not simple setting up a wallet, picking a coin, registering with a market, hoping that the merchant you want something for happens to take your type of coin? And being anonymous is a turn off for most people- the vast majority of people want consumer protection. Merchants carry higher risk with a volatile, unregulated market, so they are hesitant to accept it.
Why would I pay fees to buy a faux currency, to pay for a pre-paid card of the same currency I used to buy to the faux currency, to spend it on things that can’t be paid for with the faux currency anyway? What?!?!
By “convenient” I meant in comparison with getting a foreign card for me, which involves bureaucracy and (by my measure) incredibly expensive travel. As for “picking a coin” - that is not really an issue, since swaps between currencies can be done instantly and very easily. And there are only a few major coins that are commonly accepted anyway (BTC, LTC, XMR and maybe ETH).
For people needing anonymity, giving up consumer protection may be an acceptable tradeoff. Same as with cash.
Pre-paid cards make sense because said cards may be unavailable where the customer resides, and either they can’t (like me) or don’t want to use a KYC method to buy them.
As for difficulty for the merchant - yeah, I agree it is a significant downside.
P.S. Fees are indeed a problem in Bitcoin at least, but Monero’s are barely noticeable.
There are only really two cryptocurrencies you should care about:
Bitcoin - figure out how the Lighting network works
Monero
That’s it. Which wallet you use is up to you, and there are plenty of easy ones freely available for phones (e.g. I use Monerujo on Android).
Bitcoin is the most widely used coin, and Monero is the most privacy-friendly. You can exchange between them using something like Kraken (perhaps the best place to buy/exchange crypto). Bitcoin transactions are slow (processed every 4 hours, I think?), expensive (like multiple dollars), and publicly traceable (if you have the wallet id, you can see everyone you’ve transacted with and how much), which is where Lightning comes in, which dramatically reduces transaction time, reduces fees, and improves privacy. Monero is private by default, and the way it handles transactions discourages mining farms, so there’s usually a bit less speculation and generally way lower fees (usually <$0.01).
As for why you’d do it, it’s because you value your privacy or you do a lot of international transactions (cryptocurrencies don’t care what country the two parties are in). If you buy a pre-paid card w/ credit or debit, the banks can track that transaction and potentially figure out what you used the pre-paid card for, and if they work w/ the government, it’s trivial to track that down (e.g. if you live in or visit a place like China). With Monero, they can only track interactions w/ fiat (i.e. buying or selling at an exchange), they can’t tell where you used those funds or anything of that sort. And that’s true even if they collude with the buyer or seller, they can’t track Monero wallet details to an individual on either end of the transaction.
Some stores offer a discount for buying w/ Monero (and potentially other coins), such as the YouTuber “Mental Outlaw,” who hosts based.win and offers a 10% discount for buying in Monero.
That said, there aren’t a ton of place that accept cryptocurrency, which is a bummer. But the more people start to use it for even small things, the more likely stores are to accept it. That’s my dog in this race, I want to use Monero where it’s available so the few stores that accept it continue to, and hopefully they’ll find enough value in it to get other stores on board. I don’t hate fiat or anything, I just hate how much tracking there is with other digital payment systems.
Nah, Kraken is KYC. NOT good (I probably wouldn’t be able to use such a service even if I wanted to, because it would obey hy sanctions). If we’re talking about swaps - there are other, non-KYC, instant options, like Trocador.
Sure, but so is your local bank. If your alternative is cash, Kraken is trusted just like your local bank is trusted. KYC honestly doesn’t matter for most people, because the exchange cannot know what you’re using the funds for, so the government/your bank will only know how much you’ve converted to crypto.
But yeah, if KYC is a deal-breaker, there are a lot of other options. But be careful, because this can open you up to scams, so only do this if you know what you’re doing. That’s why I recommend Kraken, it’s easy for people to get into and it’s safe.
Yea, but the bank still has a different usecase, and is treated as untrusted. KYC matters to me because a) one more place can leak my very sensitive documents; b) these exchanges can ban me or deny me entry because of my citizenship; c) crypto here is a gray area and having a legal record of me purchasing it might bite me later, even if it is unlikely.
it’s basically as easy as credit cards - you just scan a QR code or copy/paste a number
unfortunately, not something cryptocurrencies can solve, that’s on the vendors
it has the same protections as cash
again, it has the same protections as cash; the user can, of course, backup their keys however they want, so it’s actually better than cash
getting used more would solve this, in the same way that it’s “solved” for cash; with enough transactions, speculation becomes a small part of it (and yes, people speculate on currencies)
this is the same as 2, but I guess an extension of it? If 2 is solved, this will be solved.
and what concerns are those? There are plenty of respected exchanges (Kraken is probably the best), and you can use those ATMs if you want local FIAT (high fees though)
again, it has the same protections as cash; and whether it’s used for illegal activities doesn’t concern the average person, just like it doesn’t for cash
that’s a pretty broad brush you have there; Monero is actually pretty decent since it discourages speculation, and Ethereum is proof-of-stake (so no mining farms), so you can use that instead of Bitcoin as your backup coin if that really concerns you.
If you think of cryptocurrencies as the same as cash, just digital, with all the same protections as physical currency (i.e. physical possession), then it makes a lot more sense. You shouldn’t be putting your life savings into any cryptocurrency IMO, you should be only using it for spending, like a checking account. Keep your savings somewhere else. In my mind, cryptocurrencies are ready today to replace a checking account for some transactions, but it’s not ready to be your primary checking account, nor is it ready to be used as savings.
Saying crypto is pretty much the same as cash is disingenuous.
You don’t need to make an account to spend cash. You don’t need to pay fees to give cash to someone else. You don’t need to pay fees to process cash transactions. You don’t need an internet connection to acquire or spend cash. Cash transactions are executed in person, where mistakes can be reversed. If my personal info is compromised, my cash on hand is safe. Cash is generally much more stable, and is generally accepted everywhere.
And let’s address a biggie- cash doesn’t destroy the earth, unlike crypto. For all the protest I see about AI’s energy consumption, crypto was worse in 2022 than AI is projected to be in 2027. Let that sink in.
Processes to protect from illegal activities? That edges into the same territory as Chat Control. You cannot make a backdoor “just for criminals”. And even if you somehow could - the definition of a criminal sometimes is “searched an abortion” or “donated to a dissident”, so it would defeat the purpose.
I liked the public ledger of contracts idea someone had. You use the public block chain to sign and store stuff like mortgages, that way everyone sees the same copy.
The problem is that there are much-simpler ways to achieve that, if that’s all you want. You just take a digital copy of the contract, timestamp it, and have each party cryptographically sign the contract. You don’t need a distributed ledger for that.
Distribution ensure integrity of data. Let’s say we sign a contract, cryptographically sign it and all that good stuff but then oh no, where we stored your contract went up in fire and now I don’t have to honour that contract. (contrived example I know)
Until there is an actual use case for Crypto, it’s definitely a scam as a technology. It exists only for investors and scammers, anyone attempting to actually use it is getting reamed.
My friend really hyped up crypto as the thing that would replace all local currencies in every country. That we would just have crypto, and thats it.
Thats when I knew it was a scam. My friend is an idiot, and falls for 100% of scams. When he’s preaching something, I know it’s wrong.
The ancient Greeks invented steam power, but didn’t take it any further than a novelty. That doesn’t make steam power a “scam.”
That doesn’t mean cryptocurrencies is like steam power.
Each is a technology with unique features for its time, and where there aren’t any practical applications initially.
For each steam power there are thousands of similar inventions that never see the light of practical use cases. We just remember those that had significant breakthroughs.
Still doesn’t mean crypto is like steam, nor that it will ever have any practical application
I’m sure the ancient Greeks said similar things about their steam pinwheels.
you know, the fact that they were right sort of undermines your argument, Hero’s engine really diden’t amount to anything outside a fun curio for wealthy aristocrats, modern steam engines are not based on this invention, the modern steam engine comes from early pressure-cooking
You might have had a salient point if the ancient Greeks made it popular for “solving thirst across the known world,” but really it was a novelty. Or if crypto was marketed as a novelty. But crypto was hyped to be the next big things, spreading around the world, no monetary boundaries. The same people making those claims are spending hundreds of millions on the election to making sure it stay unregulated with no consumer protection.
But sure, crypto somehow parallels steam?
I dunno, most steam power just involves passing an environmental burden down several generations, which seems like a scam to me.
I thought the same, but changed my mind after my bank card stopped working for foreign services. Now Monero is the most straightforward way to pay for my VPS and domain, since getting a foreign card would be prohibitively expensive, and the local companies with foreign servers - the ones I can pay with my card for - are likely to submit to the same censorship I want to bypass.
Even for those who can use their cards, crypto can be useful - for those who would be endangered by using a KYC payment method (activists and dissidents, for example). Even currencies without privacy protections are still leagues easier to use privately than a KYC method.
99.9% of people could not pay for what they want or need except the handful of niche places that happen to accept it. Can’t pay medical bills with it, can’t buy my food at the grocery store with it, can’t buy my gas with it, can’t really apply it where I want to, only in the few spaces I get to.
That’s not what the developers claimed it would do, or what the investors wanted it to do. It’s not cost effective or simple. It’s created more problems than it’s solved. It flat out a scam.
For the cases you described, there is the most convenient and anonymous type of money - cash)
But yea, reception is a problem. However, there is still an assortment of services accepting Monero, including the VPS that is vital for me now. It can also be used to buy prepaid cards, for cases when they are actuay accepted.
How is it convenient? Its not simple setting up a wallet, picking a coin, registering with a market, hoping that the merchant you want something for happens to take your type of coin? And being anonymous is a turn off for most people- the vast majority of people want consumer protection. Merchants carry higher risk with a volatile, unregulated market, so they are hesitant to accept it.
Why would I pay fees to buy a faux currency, to pay for a pre-paid card of the same currency I used to buy to the faux currency, to spend it on things that can’t be paid for with the faux currency anyway? What?!?!
By “convenient” I meant in comparison with getting a foreign card for me, which involves bureaucracy and (by my measure) incredibly expensive travel. As for “picking a coin” - that is not really an issue, since swaps between currencies can be done instantly and very easily. And there are only a few major coins that are commonly accepted anyway (BTC, LTC, XMR and maybe ETH).
For people needing anonymity, giving up consumer protection may be an acceptable tradeoff. Same as with cash.
Pre-paid cards make sense because said cards may be unavailable where the customer resides, and either they can’t (like me) or don’t want to use a KYC method to buy them.
As for difficulty for the merchant - yeah, I agree it is a significant downside.
P.S. Fees are indeed a problem in Bitcoin at least, but Monero’s are barely noticeable.
There are only really two cryptocurrencies you should care about:
That’s it. Which wallet you use is up to you, and there are plenty of easy ones freely available for phones (e.g. I use Monerujo on Android).
Bitcoin is the most widely used coin, and Monero is the most privacy-friendly. You can exchange between them using something like Kraken (perhaps the best place to buy/exchange crypto). Bitcoin transactions are slow (processed every 4 hours, I think?), expensive (like multiple dollars), and publicly traceable (if you have the wallet id, you can see everyone you’ve transacted with and how much), which is where Lightning comes in, which dramatically reduces transaction time, reduces fees, and improves privacy. Monero is private by default, and the way it handles transactions discourages mining farms, so there’s usually a bit less speculation and generally way lower fees (usually <$0.01).
As for why you’d do it, it’s because you value your privacy or you do a lot of international transactions (cryptocurrencies don’t care what country the two parties are in). If you buy a pre-paid card w/ credit or debit, the banks can track that transaction and potentially figure out what you used the pre-paid card for, and if they work w/ the government, it’s trivial to track that down (e.g. if you live in or visit a place like China). With Monero, they can only track interactions w/ fiat (i.e. buying or selling at an exchange), they can’t tell where you used those funds or anything of that sort. And that’s true even if they collude with the buyer or seller, they can’t track Monero wallet details to an individual on either end of the transaction.
Some stores offer a discount for buying w/ Monero (and potentially other coins), such as the YouTuber “Mental Outlaw,” who hosts based.win and offers a 10% discount for buying in Monero.
That said, there aren’t a ton of place that accept cryptocurrency, which is a bummer. But the more people start to use it for even small things, the more likely stores are to accept it. That’s my dog in this race, I want to use Monero where it’s available so the few stores that accept it continue to, and hopefully they’ll find enough value in it to get other stores on board. I don’t hate fiat or anything, I just hate how much tracking there is with other digital payment systems.
Nah, Kraken is KYC. NOT good (I probably wouldn’t be able to use such a service even if I wanted to, because it would obey hy sanctions). If we’re talking about swaps - there are other, non-KYC, instant options, like Trocador.
Sure, but so is your local bank. If your alternative is cash, Kraken is trusted just like your local bank is trusted. KYC honestly doesn’t matter for most people, because the exchange cannot know what you’re using the funds for, so the government/your bank will only know how much you’ve converted to crypto.
But yeah, if KYC is a deal-breaker, there are a lot of other options. But be careful, because this can open you up to scams, so only do this if you know what you’re doing. That’s why I recommend Kraken, it’s easy for people to get into and it’s safe.
Yea, but the bank still has a different usecase, and is treated as untrusted. KYC matters to me because a) one more place can leak my very sensitive documents; b) these exchanges can ban me or deny me entry because of my citizenship; c) crypto here is a gray area and having a legal record of me purchasing it might bite me later, even if it is unlikely.
But true, it can work. Especially for businesses.
What is needed before crypto can actually be useful:
There’s more, but I won’t bother as the above issues are more than enough to confirm that crypto is a scam.
If you think of cryptocurrencies as the same as cash, just digital, with all the same protections as physical currency (i.e. physical possession), then it makes a lot more sense. You shouldn’t be putting your life savings into any cryptocurrency IMO, you should be only using it for spending, like a checking account. Keep your savings somewhere else. In my mind, cryptocurrencies are ready today to replace a checking account for some transactions, but it’s not ready to be your primary checking account, nor is it ready to be used as savings.
Saying crypto is pretty much the same as cash is disingenuous.
You don’t need to make an account to spend cash. You don’t need to pay fees to give cash to someone else. You don’t need to pay fees to process cash transactions. You don’t need an internet connection to acquire or spend cash. Cash transactions are executed in person, where mistakes can be reversed. If my personal info is compromised, my cash on hand is safe. Cash is generally much more stable, and is generally accepted everywhere.
And let’s address a biggie- cash doesn’t destroy the earth, unlike crypto. For all the protest I see about AI’s energy consumption, crypto was worse in 2022 than AI is projected to be in 2027. Let that sink in.
Processes to protect from illegal activities? That edges into the same territory as Chat Control. You cannot make a backdoor “just for criminals”. And even if you somehow could - the definition of a criminal sometimes is “searched an abortion” or “donated to a dissident”, so it would defeat the purpose.
I liked the public ledger of contracts idea someone had. You use the public block chain to sign and store stuff like mortgages, that way everyone sees the same copy.
The problem is that there are much-simpler ways to achieve that, if that’s all you want. You just take a digital copy of the contract, timestamp it, and have each party cryptographically sign the contract. You don’t need a distributed ledger for that.
Distribution ensure integrity of data. Let’s say we sign a contract, cryptographically sign it and all that good stuff but then oh no, where we stored your contract went up in fire and now I don’t have to honour that contract. (contrived example I know)
All parties who are involved in the contract can store a copy of a contract, even if it’s not distributed to everyone else.
The signing ensures the integrity of the data, whether using a public block chain or not.
The signed document can be distributed as widely as you’d like - it doesn’t need to be attached to a block chain to do this.
Imagine not believing in a use for crypto in 2024. lmao.
Imagine being so fleeced by a scam that you post messages pretending others are dumb for not falling for the scam lmao