> Financial investments and gambling are both highly regulated industries but crypto is subject to regulations from neither.
We are not arguing about if there is fraud or not because that is not the issue at hand, nor in dispute. Again, this has nothing to do with the original point. Other people's bad choices do not affect the enjoyment of gambling. GL with whatever.
> If you know anyone into crypto you would know they talk about it non stop.
Not really. There are a lot of people holding, mining, DCA'ing into projects they believe in who have no trouble at all keeping it to themselves.
Your remarks about gambling are similarly projecting a portion of the community onto the rest. Those traders who treat it as a speculative asset are gambling as you say, and tend to be obsessive in the way you describe, but you seem not to be aware of everyone who deals with crypto differently than you did.
There are a lot of crypto projects that people don't expect to moon, that effectively serve their purpose right now, and will just get better at it in the future. None of what you wrote is nearly as generally true as you made it out to be.
> Oh, please tell me how that kind of activity is nonexistant in non-crypto companies.
It's not that unethical and illegal activities don't happen at non-cryptocurrency companies, but you don't have to be paying a lot of attention to see that it's happening at a very different scale among cryptocurrency companies.
Yes, you can. You don't have to dig very deep into the crypto world to realize that a lot if not most of the participants have are not plain ol' honest folks making a big ol' mistake giving their hard-earned savings to a slick-talking salesman. They are conscious participants in what they know to be a get-rich quick scheme. They know it is shady, and they don't care, because they think they're going to get out before it crashes. They're motivated by greed, not innocence.
You can recognize this and still support regulation of the industry. One of the big reasons you need regulation is to protect people from their own stupid greed.
> So I think that, ultimately, it's not the use of crypto or the rewards program that comes off as a little skeevy. It's the idea that that stuff exists and the money never goes where it's supposed to go.
Yep, I agree with that. It gets a little guilt by association but that's not where the fundamental issue is.
> on the one hand ETFs are approved by the SEC but on the other highly regulated institutions could not custody crypto assets like less regulated ones
I never commented on any of this.
Non sequitur notwithstanding, yes. ETPs segregate the risk from the rest of the financial system. Their price discovery doesn’t even require market makers touch the underlying asset.
And there are few assets less regulated than crypto. (Its proponents can’t even agree on whether it should be regulated as a currency, commodity or security.)
Note that custody doesn’t mean hold. Blackrock can hold Bitcoin. It just can’t custody it and pretend it’s holding a regular financial asset.
>My take on cryptocurrency has become: it’s also all gambling
I have the same feeling towards the stock market. Sure, it can be well researched information on the stock in question, but it's all a bet your interpretation of that stock is right.
> I don’t want to turn this thread into a crypto version of Wall Street Bets where people are arguing over their favorite coins
it seems like that's exactly what you want. Given that you are spreading lots of misinformation and don't seem to be trying to understand the other side's point.
> if you’re wrong, you’re not accountable to your actions because there was never any actual money on the line.
I mean, that's the risk you run right?
Either you're a regulated system where you can avoid this kind of thing, or you're an unregulated system where you go 'screw the man', but you don't get the protections that are associated with the traditional financial system.
There's some deep irony about complaining about it; isn't the 'good' thing about crypto?
> fundamental value doesn't matter for short term speculative trading
Agreed, but gambling is not my gig. I don't live that far from Las Vegas if I so prefer. I think smart contracts are interesting because I'm a programmer. Someone once wrote that Bitcoin also has executable code so that's on my list to investigate. It's something to do in retirement. I wish Elon Musk well, but he's only human, so I don't expect him to have investigated in depth every thing he talks about. He forms half-assed opinions just like the rest of us.
We are not arguing about if there is fraud or not because that is not the issue at hand, nor in dispute. Again, this has nothing to do with the original point. Other people's bad choices do not affect the enjoyment of gambling. GL with whatever.
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