When profits are being made, who cares what happens to future generations.
Cryptocurrency is, for the most part, a contagion. We opened Pandora's box and the genie is out of the bottle. Short of some kind of cataclysmic black swan event, I'm not sure this insanity will end anytime soon. :(
Good! The sooner cryptocurrencies die, the better. The damage they are doing to society right now is immense, and it will only grow larger if they are not stopped.
VCs are pouring money into this space. Do they care about adoption? Nope. They know that this largely unregulated, liquidity challenged space that’s too technically complex for the average rube is the perfect ground to make wild, wild returns.
Unless something changes drastically on the regulation front, the story will repeat itself. VCs and early adopters will buy tokens in the “ice age”.
Come next cycle, the media will start hyping up crypto again, bringing the retail rubes pouring in. And then the VCs and early adopters will walk away with their 50x returns, leaving retail with the bags
I wager once people have to start going back to work and all the free government money dries up, there will be a run on crypto to realize their gains en-masse, and this will trigger a massive wipe out for many latecomers.
Frankly, cryptocurrency being invented and created was a huge mistake for society at large. I hope the comeuppance isn't super destructive outside of cryptocurrency circles.
Crypto is our generation’s write off. The cost of a free market economy. We’ll have people with stranded skill sets. They deserve compassion; though based on precedent, they will find none.
Maybe in a hundred years we’ll realise they were ahead of their time. When some UN blockchain extends across the solar system. Like how we remember N. Tesla and the 90s’ satellite internet folk. Financially ruined. But cute in their own way.
There are a lot of boomers recapitulating their 90s in crypto. They’re fine. They’re gambling. I have a lot more sympathy for the young people wrapped up in the whirlwind. They’re making me wealthy. But oof, do I wish they’d widen up.
One of the shocking things is how much cryptocurrency has poisoned the minds of youth who see it as their easy path to riches. Young people simply don’t want to work anymore, everyone is planning to retire very soon and a job is only a temporary inconvenience while they wait for their crypto coins to moon in value and make them millionaires set for life.
The truth is while many people did get very rich getting in early on the cryptocurrency wave, less and less people these days are actually growing meaningful wealth by investing in crypto. Eventually reality will catch up and people will not be able to afford keeping a bunch of coins with questionable prospects, and when they begin liquidating all at once I guarantee some people will become very poor, poorer than they could ever imagine.
It was all fun and games while the crypto bubble was inflating. You basically could do no wrong, any mismanagement would be hidden away by the exponential appreciation of the underlying assets; just hodl until the next bull run and everything would be fine again.
When things stabilize and start going down, it's like the morning after the frat-party, bad things come to light. Crypto is fundamentally a negative sum game, it takes enormous resources to run and has generated a large number of self-minted millionaires that have cashed out and lamboed their earnings. There is very little actual marketable utility that crypto provides that could cover these large outlays, perhaps with the exception of facilitating money laundry and illegal transactions. I guess that's a business, but (hopefully) not a multi-trillion business suggested by the bubble's peak.
So it's inevitable the game must end with someone holding the bags.
I would actually be surprised if the whole crypto ecosystem isn’t going to implode soon.
The thing is that it doesn’t create any value, it’s all a game of musical chairs.
I don’t care VCs holding the bags, but I do care about the retail “investors” that were naive. (I don’t care about the hfsp bros).
In a few years we will look back at the crypto space and we wonder why nobody intervened like nobody intervened with Madoff, despite multiple people warning about him.
The damage the crypto space has caused is just beyond redemption. To both people and the environment.
It’s time that this stuff is regulated to death. It will also kill the crypto ransom ware pipeline because of a lack of on/off ramps.
After thirteen years this is what crypto gives us. A few people get rich at the cost of all the rest. From coins getting hacked/stolen to ransomware, to just cryto-gambling.
But there is something positive to say about crypto too.
The failings of crypto teach a lot of people about how and why societies work the way they do. And that no amount of tech can ever replace our institutions and human trust.
I'm 100% with Stephen Diehl on this one: the entire 100% of crypto needs to be burned down to the ground. It needs to go because of the enormous harm it does to people and our larger society, for no gains at all.
Crypto is not practical or fair by design. It needs a steady supply of greater fools to operate, and the only future it's capable of creating is one where everything is monetized, corporatized and the wealthy is in charge, with no recourse for the rest of us.
The problem is they will pop, and then come back. They are like a resilient strain of disease. Each time people lose faith in them they develop new ideas and arguments for why they are the future. They aren't the future, they are deeply flawed ponzi-schemes, this is obvious. But we better find out what the future is before they start converting the gullible masses to a currency that is less secure in many ways that is swept under the rug. People are getting hurt by being swept up in cryptocurrency mania; and its not going to end anytime soon. There is talk of China developing new digital currencies(or adopting bitcoin) for stronger population control. There are innovative things happening here, its not all bad, but some of it is clearly evil.
Cryptocurrency is, for the most part, a contagion. We opened Pandora's box and the genie is out of the bottle. Short of some kind of cataclysmic black swan event, I'm not sure this insanity will end anytime soon. :(
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