Unsurprisingly, he and his family were doxed by angry traders.

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81 points
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Isn’t this the basis of how all cryptocurrency work?

When you think about it … isn’t this also how all money works?

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3 points

None of this is specific to cryptocurrencies or even money, people do this with stocks (esp penny stocks), precious metals (look at all those “Buy Gold!!” videos), and collectibles (I still remember the beanie baby craze of the late 90s).

This is just gambling, betting that you’ll cash out before everyone else, but after the price has run up.

But that’s not “how all cryptocurrency works.” Yes, cryptocurrencies are valued based on supply and demand, but many aren’t actively speculated on and are used more as a currency. For example, Monero isn’t attractive for speculation because mining is unprofitable and exchanging with fiat is banned or difficult in many areas. It’s great as a currency though because transaction fees are low, transactions are fast, and it has a bunch of privacy features. Bitcoin is more attractive, but not as much for gambling because volumes are too high to get crazy spikes. So you end up with longer ye term speculation in Bitcoin like you’d see with individual large cap stocks. Bitcoin isn’t going to 10x overnight, but it’s also not going to drop 90% overnight either.

Like anything else, pick carefully, and ideally don’t gamble.

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3 points

This is just gambling, betting that you’ll cash out before everyone else, but after the price has run up.

Even worse, it is unregulated gambling. In normal gambling there are rules. Yes, the house will always win in the long run as the odds are in their favor, but the game is set up in a transparent way and doesn’t change half way through.

Also the original idea of cryptocurrency was never speculation and cashing out. But sadly it has turned into that in 99% of the time.

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2 points

Yup. The good news is that it’s really easy to avoid that nonsense. Stick to the more established currencies and you’ll be golden.

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21 points

I have to use USD to pay my taxes, and if I don’t pay my taxes i go to jail. Cryptocurrencies aren’t used for anything other than financial speculation

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21 points

Cryptocurrencies aren’t used for anything other than financial speculation

Typical anti-blockchain crypto bashing.

Cryptocurrencies have plenty of uses besides speculation. For example, buying drugs and a plethora of scams.

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3 points

ya got me right there

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31 points
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That’s not how money works. Fiat currency is just IOU’s, literally, which are discharged when the promissory note returns to its originator (in the case of dollars, the US treasury). Check out Debt the First 5000 Years for an anthropological look at the origins of money.

Whereas I would prefer to live in a moneyless (i.e., debtless) post-scarcity anarchist society, which is how small tribes and communities were organized for tens of thousands of years before the rise of nations, fiat currencies are used to maintain the modern (unimaginably huge) marketplace, whose ostensible purpose is to allocate scarce resources.

  1. Personal debt is risky. If I issue an IOU, I might die before I can fulfill that promise. Governments are more permanent, which removes the speculative aspect of currency (at least for most purposes, though Forex trading is a thing).
  2. A central bank can balance inflation and employment numbers to ameliorate the natural volatility of the market (with good regulation lol).
  3. Fiat currency can be synchronized with economic productivity, avoiding the deflationary pressure that is anathema to any currency.

Dollars represent faith in the power of the US government to extract taxes from its population. Crypto represents nothing. It stands for nothing. “Coins” come and go, and if you’re the last one standing in the zero-sum game of musical chairs, you lose your savings. For that to happen with dollars, the US government would have to implode, which is unlikely.

Crypto is, quite possibly, the purest form of speculative trading (gambling) we have ever concocted. The only reason I don’t think it should be illegal is that I have no interest in saving people from their own cupidity and greed.

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-6 points
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All money is ious? If you walk up to me and try to hand me money and I don’t want it… it’s worth nothing.

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14 points
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No one forces you to accept an IOU, but that’s how “money” is created.

If you want a beer and have nothing suitable to offer in exchange, you might give me an IOU, which I then hand off to someone else in exchange for goods and services, until one day someone asks you for goods and services in exchange for the same IOU that you had used to buy a beer months ago.

These things actually happened^

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1 point

Dollars represent faith in the power of the US government to extract taxes from its population

Lol, the debt will never be repaid with taxes.

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1 point

That’s not the point. The US has the power to extract rents; it doesn’t have to use it.

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3 points

For a large portion of time in those small anarchist communities, they’d raid and kill each other.

How would we prevent that?

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3 points

You’re absolutely right, and I have no idea. Maybe wait another 100,000 years for the 30% of humanity that lacks abstract moral reasoning to exit the gene pool.

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3 points

Graeber’s book (Debt: The First 5000 Years) is so, so good.

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19 points

But some currencies are backed by countries with armies and such deterrents. Not so many countries currently backing crypto I guess.

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1 point

backed by countries with armies and such deterrents

Where can I exchange my money for a government army?

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3 points

technically yes, difference is one is backed by a nation state, the other is backed by a teenager…

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15 points

Ya, it’s all about trust.

I trust the EU to manage the Euro, a meme managing a shitcoin not so much 😋

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11 points

Money is backed by a state with the (legitimate) monopoly on the use of force. Is has a worth because you must pay your taxes in it or else.

As such, money coined by a state has an inherit value as long as the state is stable.

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1 point

And said state has both an interest in the stability of the currency as well as tools to influence it that are not available to everyone.

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