OK. So you’re arguing from the perspective of a purist, rather than the crypto ecosystem that most people have actually been participating in. Fair enough.
Bigger picture: I maintain that money is essentially political, unless you run a gold standard. That is a good thing and a bad thing depending on the quality of your government and regulators. We could return to a gold standard, or digital equivalent. Except when we had that, it was an even more oligarchical, less just world than we have today. It also caused pointless depressions because of the deflationary nature of fixed currency.
There’s also the practical problem: let’s say we announce today that Bitcoin is the real currency. The HODLers are now extraordinarily rich and we all have to work for them. Why is that good? Why should anyone else buy into that? Wealth inequality would be magnitudes worse than it already is, overnight.
A few of my friends have also done well with Ohm. One of them borrowed 20k worth of OHm to pay for a deposit on a house. The funds in Ohm he had to lock up in order to borrow the 20k was still accumulating on every rebase, so when he repaid the loan, he unlocked enough to pay off his morgage. Whats really cool about decentralised loans like this is it doesnt matter if your unemployed, 80 years old, or whatever. It doesnt even matter if you dont pay it back cus the only person that loses out is yourself.
And if anyone is short sighted enough to replace a centralised money system with another centralised money system, well, their kinda asking for it really. FTX, coinbase, Binance, Crypto dot com etc etc, thems all the same. Even if they are not corrupt, they are still susceptible to SEC takedowns, e.g coinbase right now.
I made a script that lends my funds, borrows against it, buys 90 day options, with contributing to liquidity pool and earning fees…without asking anyone permission, without trusting anyone but open-source code, without giving anyone my name.
Thats where I feel you are misinformed. “crypto ecosystem that most people have actually been participating in” - by what measurements? FTX number of users, or single deposits is no where near the usage of decentralised protocols.
Uniswap is protocol with immutable, open-sourced code that has quite often generated more daily volume than Nasdaq.
First premise of crypto is “not your keys, not your coins”. The fact FTX got “traction” has way more to do with things that are not crypto related at all, and you can easily check that most of the interactions with FTX was made by other centralised entities. Yes there was people that lost money, but I bet you those were the ones that Forbes, Washington Post and similar sold them the story about SBF. They should think a bit more why did they done it?
Of course thats not good, and no one should advise for that - that Bitcoin is the only and real currency. I haven’t mentioned Bitcoin not once so far - blockchain and crypto is much more than Bitcoin (not that there is anything bad in Bitcoin). I think only acceptable way of more mainstream crypto adoption is through stablecoins and slowly introducing people with what it is, and how to use it correctly, and not just lets ape into Bitcoin.
People did got rich by investing in Bitcoin in the same manner as people got rich investing in Tesla or Apple. Its a flagship stock of the entire ecosystem. and philosophy that crypto is, but crypto is not equal BTC. And trust me you are still not late to make extraordinary profit by investing in BTC. You are just not as early as others. But thats not the point i’m making here.
I’m not avoiding the discussion of deflationary nature of fixed currency, I just think we could go on discussing that particular statement for 3 days.
I also saw someone writing in this thread that capitalism is the main problem. I can’t really argue with people that make statements like this, its just not worth it. I can’t change everyone’s minds. I just want to point out I’m not here selling you my token, some token or any particular protocol. I’m just a bit frustrated at times in how many smart people are easily manipulated into wrong reasoning by a few ill advised and intentionally written narratives.
But unlike traditional finance where you just need to trust the balance sheet, quaterly report, your government or your president, here you really don’t need to trust anyone. Everything is out in the open for you to check on your own.
But funny thing is people don’t actually like doing it.
And what does this have to do with the part that i quoted? If anything it shows why it’s nothing but a dream to think that crypto gives everyone an equal chance. Unless you think that everybody is a programmer (and even if that was the case it still would not be equal at all as has been pointed out countless times in this topic).
Edit: last reply for me by the way. Not going to convince you, not trying to either, but felt the need to point out the obvious dreamy part about crypto being a good solution for everyone.
It has everything to do with it. The fact you didn’t understood also shows you are out of your depth here.
If I want to do the same thing in traditional finance:
i need to open a bank account, provide all my personal information, and i will be at best offered a ridiculously low interest for keeping my money there, and charge me a fee.
that bank will not give me a chance to borrow against my own deposit, but will rather use my deposit for their own investments, and by FED rules keep only 5% of it inside the bank
if i want to buy options I can’t do it myself. I need to open another account at a brokerage, and depend on the broker to try and fill the necessary positions . I am in danger of getting front-run by the same broker I’m giving my order too. I also might get rejected by the brokerage as well, due to any number of reasons
I can’t contribute my own money into the market trading and earn fees of it. Only brokers and banks can.
And the example of my script is just extremely basic. What you can do without asking anything anyone is far beyond this.
And I’m not a programmer. I just downloaded a quite often used free python script with a nice UI and filled in my metrics.
I am a skilled economist to be fair, but thats not the point of the example.
Point is whatever you want to do, you can basically do, without asking anything anyone, and earn transparently as everyone else - there is no chance that Warren Buffet can get better deal on the lending interest rate, or option price than me, or better fee distribution than me. Its all out in the open, same rules apply for anyone.
You’re absolutly right, it doesnt give everyone an equal chance. What it does do is give anyone who dares a fair oppurtunity. Those that get burnt, have not understood the why or how decentralisation is actually working. No coding neccesary.
ah yes, the famously rational finance industry, with their impeccable reputation for long-term decision making and unblemished track record of delivering excellent outcomes for the good of all
That’s the amazing thing. The dominant figures in crypto are so greedy and so stupid that they make Wall Street look like a Quaker meeting. That’s a real accomplishment given the ignorance and hubris of the finance world.
They already are rich. Bitcoin became a store of value and already Is a real currency. Fortunately value doesn’t depend on the government decision if something Is real or not.
Because that paper shows the distribution of wealth within crypto is already worse than the distribution of fiat wealth.
And that’s only amongst those already participating in the crypto ecosystem, which is 4%ish of global population.
So if we say ‘right, you people now have all the ‘real’ money’, those who aren’t already in the 1% of the 4% are screwed.
There might be ways around this. For example, a ‘from scratch’ crypto where everyone in the world starts with the same amount. But there’s still the problem that a deflationary currency has inherent oligarchical dynamics, as proven by history.
I’m surely not, but I’m willing to bet all my Elektron devices, you don’t have it. Its obvious after reading the rest of your posts in this topic.
Even though me and you disagree on this topic, you strike me as a rational person, willing to take arguments, which I respect. The problem here is:
who are dominant figures in crypto?
how they compare to the Bernie Madoff, Enron board of directors, and complete package of front running insider trading group of brokers that dominated the traditional finance in last quarter of a century?
The paper, which I honestly glanced through in 20mins, takes one crypto currency and assumes that the point of blockchains and crypto is to make that one crypto currency the only available currency. If that was the basic premise of crypto I would agree with you. Its not.
The problem that this research paper doesn’t take into account is the fiat distribution. How can fiat distribution be fair at all, if one entity has the power to print fiat in enormous amounts and just distribute it to whoever they want with criteria they see fit?
How is it possible that USA has 31 trillion dollars of debt? To who? How was that debt made, how were the trillions used? How can you have 31 trillion dollars of debt in the currency you are in control of printing? Who benefited from that debt? How was the money distributed in the first place?
Thanks for chiming in, but I don’t think its possible to have a argument based discussion here. Which is ok. I guess some people do like handing over custody and power to a 3rd party entity, and have way more trust in the governments then I do.
LOL. No to mention that some of Madoff’s clients did indeed earn on their investment; namely the ones that sank money into his scheme very early in the cycle.
off the top of my head, i’d like a system where people are provided for according to their needs, and who contribute to society in whichever way best suits their abilities. abolish the bizarre perversion whereby a minority of people live largely off the labour of others, abolish the cult of endless “growth” at the expense of human dignity / having a habitable biosphere, and we’re just about there. i’ve just invented this system and when i’ve thought of a name for it i’ll get back to you
it’s the best system ever invented for turning hilarious quantities of fossil fuels into pictures of monkeys smoking cigarettes and wearing sunglasses. exactly what the world needs right now and i for one can really see the potential
