I worked at a crypto exchange and after I came to the conclusion that 99% of crypto was scams and rugpulls, I sold all my crypto and vowed to have nothing to do with it. It's more of a religion than a financial instrument and absolutely nothing has shown to me that crypto is anything more than a speculative gamble, basically tulips with the religious promise of a better world. The number of employees that lost money on rugpulls while I was there, but "still believed in crypto" was staggering.

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kylehotchkiss 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I've found that looking at some people's approach towards tech as a new religion helps me to understand their irrational/criticism-free opinions of them - also helps me understand that I'm not going to change their minds on any of it, and limits my desire to debate it with them.

The religion of the Social Graph/global connectivity, the religion of the Cryptocurrency, the religion of AI (and the separate religion of AGI). People's fixation on UBI leans religious too. All promised transformation into better lives for people around the world, but none have managed to achieve it. We'd really be better off shipping hundreds of containers of solar panels to the global south than pretending some quantity of code we write will have as big an impact.

	▲	hinkley 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I was fortunate to have had a religious crisis before I could code for shit. I was inoculated by that experience and got a booster shot during the DotCom boom. Problem is that not going in for fads gets you labeled as a curmudgeon, rather than as a reasonable person.

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expedition32 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can make money from religion. You just have to make sure not to believe in it. No attachment.

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teekert 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My advice is always: Just hodl some bitcoin, but not in amounts that make you cry when you loose it.

It's been better for me so far than normal savings accounts.

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saalweachter 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

My advice is always: invest in the assets I hold, and never sell.

It really makes the value of my holdings rise.

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ecocentrik 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

My advice: There's always at least one crypto scammer telling you to hold through the dip.

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winternett 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My advice... Take a time machine back to 2009-2012 & only invest %100.

Otherwise it's too late.

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more_corn 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I hear there’s always money in the banana stand.

	▲	ecocentrik 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Given the choice between a 2000 acre banana plantation and 400 bitcoin. I would choose the banana plantation with full confidence that I would get a better return from bananas over the next 20 years.
	▲	kjellsbells 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What can it cost, $5?

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jmathai 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're correct if you own some BTC. FTA:

> I have zero doubt that BTC will hit $1m one day.

	▲	winternett 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		An Ai robot named BTC will hit an Ai robot named $1m on Battle Bots perhaps... Totally plausible.

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amrocha 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is the worst financial advice anyone could take.

For context, this is the equivalent of someone telling you to invest all your savings in the company you work for and use all your salary to buy more stock.

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pavlov 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think you’re missing the joke where the poster is advising others to always buy whatever he’s holding.

	▲	amrocha 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Oh yeah, it was a joke. derp moment. To be fair it’s hard to tell with the crypto grifters sometimes.

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WhyOhWhyQ 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Seems like holding the S&P bag never fails.

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almosthere 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That makes sense, just treat it as a retirement account. And hope that it doesn't get cracked in our lifetime through quantum computing or alien technology.

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anthonypasq 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

well i would hope so, a normal savings account has 0 risk. im not sure this is a great argument to hold some bitcoin lol

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mikewarot 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Because of inflation, a normal savings account is a depreciating asset. It used to be different, but in the land of near zero prime interest, and phony inflation numbers, that's the way it sits.

Also, the risk isn't zero, just way closer to zero than that of Bitcoin or other crypto, in my opinion.

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teekert 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Through some coincidence I started with 80€, now it’s 20k. Maybe someday it’ll buy my kid a house. Then I’ll take it out. If I loose it all, I don’t care.

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sneak 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A normal savings account does not have zero risk.

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bangaladore 2 days ago | parent [-]

What risk are you taking on with a normal savings account?

If you are saying the global collapse of the financial system, crypto will be the first to fall in that case. Crypto like BTC is pretty much a more volatile market tracker.

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clbrmbr 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Ofc a savings account has risk in real terms. But I assume GP was referring to risk in terms of losing principle in dollars.

There’s still some risk short of a global financial collapse where the FDIC rules are weakened, perhaps by making the $250k limit per individual for example, and then there being some bank failures. Or changing to only covering a certain % of deposits etc.

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anthonypasq 2 days ago | parent [-]

dont bother, hackernews commenters are constitutionally incapable of not being the most pedantic person in the room.

	▲	bangaladore 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I believe there was an implication of the commenter I responded to that the risk of a savings account is somewhat similar to the risk of crypto. So, I asked said commenter to quantify or describe the risk. A comment simply with the text "A normal savings account does not have zero risk." is useless to a productive conversation.

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teekert 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Currency depreciation due to inflation is one.

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anon7725 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Inflation risk.

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bangaladore 2 days ago | parent [-]

I think most people would accept inflation as less of a risk then 20+% swings of the crypto market on a fairly common basis.

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sneak 2 days ago | parent [-]

If they’re that common, it’s easy to profit 20% from them.

	▲	bangaladore 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		That makes absolutely zero sense, and you know it. I understand you are here to essentially shill bitcoin given you have a company that exists because of it but at least argue in good faith.

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sneak 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Forcible illegal deportation is one.

ICE grabbed a US citizen friend of mine and threw her on a bus and drove her hundreds of miles away and was about to toss her over the wall to Mexico last week.

Civil asset forfeiture is another.

Tax warrants, which have zero burden of proof to be issued, are another.

I don’t keep money in banks, personally, after the third one bit me some years ago and I realized that storing money in banks makes it more likely to be stolen, not less.

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lxgr 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Hard to argue with that reasoning, on several layers.

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utopiah 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks for sharing that unique perspective.

How do you feel about similar trends at the moment?

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nurettin 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> nothing has shown to me that crypto is anything more than a speculative gamble

Sounds like index futures. I understand wanting to buy fresh corn in one year at a constant price, so you get corn contracts for december 2016 and it gets delivered at that price when the contract expires. You know the cost beforehand and you plan for it.

Index futures? They just dump the equivalent dollar amount to your account when it expires. Who benefited? What happened? No physical commodity got exchanged. You've played with numbers, paid commissions, probably some spread and had around 6x leverage. Pretty much checks every box for gambling.

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venturecruelty 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What did you do with the money?

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mervz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

100%.

It's similar to AI... the only people trying to tell you "it's the future" are those with financial stakes.

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tim333 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

There have been people going back to Turing thinking AI is the future and I don't think he was trying to pump his AI stocks.

	▲	CamperBob2 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah. Rosenblatt, von Neumann, McCarthy, Weizenbaum... buncha morons

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_fizz_buzz_ 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I feel very different about AI. I have still no clear idea what crypto is good for except money laundering. AI feels very different. It might not live up to all it’s promises. But it is clearly very capable.

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amunozo a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The difference is that AI is a huge array of technologies (not only LLMs) and are being used in several fields with different, useful purposes.

There's a cult and a bubble too, though, and I agree with that part.

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lo_zamoyski 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You're forgetting the true believers.

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PKop 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Both supporters and critics approach it too religiously. Yes 99% is scams and rugpulls. The rest of the higher profile coins are, at the very least, tools to make money. Why emotionally sell all your crypto vs holding some higher quality as insurance with potential upside? Or even, ride the periodic bulls and take profits, rinse and repeat? If it's full of scammers, why not take some of their money? Does this require "believing" in it? One can not believe in it at all, and thus actually insulate themselves from getting caught up in the hype.

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didibus a day ago | parent | next [-]

It is basically a big game of hot potato. If you are OK with that, fine, but you are still just gambling on a party game chip.

There is a little bit of real value in having a rail that is hard to block, so you can move money across borders or around account freezes, sanctions, or runaway inflation. But that probably only justifies a tiny slice of the current price.

Most of the rest is speculation.

Fiat is different. A national currency is tied to the economy that uses it. Wages, rent, groceries, taxes, all live in that unit. Even if it crashes on FX markets you can still use it inside that country to buy local goods and services, and over time prices and wages shift along with it. The currency may fall against the dollar, but the local cost of living in that currency moves with it too.

The dream was that crypto gets adopted economically in a similar fashion, and even globally, that simply didn't happen, so it ended up just being gambling.

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lawlessone 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>The rest of the higher profile coins are, at the very least, tools to make money.

Make money from what?

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vmh1928 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Make money from the next greater fool who walks in the door. That's the essence of crypto, magic beans and greater fools.

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darkwater 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not into cryptocurrencies and I hold exactly 0 of them but... Isn't basically how people make money out of gold?

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bangaladore 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Gold has a use case in the real world. We can't manufacture it, so every time it is used to plate a printed circuit board, or XYZ other real application someone needs to purchase it from someone else. Some amount gets recycled, but certainly some not.

Crypto has zero fundamental use case in the real world.

	▲	darkwater a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes I know but... is that use case what really drives the price in the real world? I'm really asking. My intuition would say "no, the main driver is people trading it as a financial product", just like Bitcoin.
	▲	expedition32 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In the 1960s and 70s European countries became nervous about the US economy and sent dollars to NYC in exchange for gold. The US even dispatched some high ranking officials to Europe to stem the tide. It predictably had the opposite effect. So America had the option: stop printing money because gold reserves are finite or end the gold standard.

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didibus 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, gold is very similar, but it has the benefit of being centuries old and not dependent on complex infrastructure.

Specifically, there is value in a global peer to peer and agreed upon standard of exchange of a guaranteed scarce resource that can't be double spent, such as gold and some cryptos.

Imagine a war, a natural catastrophe, societal collapse or upheaval.

You have to pack up, go elsewhere, or you're suddenly occupied.

Basically you have to ask yourself, what's more likely to be worth something in the future or elsewhere that I can park my money into until I need it?

Since Gold has such a history of being accepted by various cultures and people around the world, and it is very resilient, it doesn't require power, infra, computers, nodes, won't get easily destroyed to environmental incidents, can be stashed away for centuries without degrading, etc. It is arguably more likely to still be used as an exchange of value in the future.

Crypto, well, you have to be specific, let's say Bitcoin BTC, how likely is it that your wallet on your hard drive if you migrate from a war and find yourself in a new world order at the other end of the world, you can still use them to trade for goods/services and they're worth close too or more of what they were before?

It's hard to predict, but arguably it seems less resilient than Gold and therefore less likely for it to hold its value over time. That said, it may still appear better than USD, Euros, or shares in some company, etc.

That's why people say BTC is a "store of value", like gold. You use it to stow away value for when you need it later (even generations later), because it appears to be good at holding value even through geopolitical shifts, passage of time, and so on.

But, if people aren't actually using it for storing value, but instead for speculative bets, it means they are taking money out of it and not leaving it in, it becomes volatile, and volatility is a bad "store of value", because when you might need the value if it's at a "low" it's gone, and it failed at the use case.

If you go outside BTC, it becomes even less likely the other cryptos are good stores of value, and more and more they become speculative bets and a game of chicken.

And even BTC has high volatility and is used for speculative bets a lot. And gold isn't immune to his either.

There's no good answer here, nobody knows the future for sure, but that's the idea.

When people defend crypto as a store of value, now you know what they mean. They're basically hoping it'll hold value through borders, time, and so on.

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vkou 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

For the most part, yes. "I am a gold speculator" is, for those reasons, not exactly socially productive employment.

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JumpinJack_Cash 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's also the essence of the stock market because you are getting paid in money, not in products/services produced by the company that you hold stock of

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order-matters 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

no it really isnt. the value of crypto as it relates to FIAT is in trading volume over time, and it does not mean anyone needs to be a fool left holding the bag unless the trading volume decreases and doesnt return.

I want to buy something and use BTC as a medium for exchange. I take $10,000, buy BTC, send BTC to the seller, the seller takes the BTC and exchanges it for $10,000

However, we are not the only buyers and sellers and it takes time for the transfer to go through. So you have a variable amount of $ being held against the fixed amount of BTC, albeit with a variable amount available for purchase.

so i buy some BTC to make my trade, the amount of BTC decreases, the cost to buy more goes up. another person buys for the same reason. they spend more $ per BTC, but it doesnt matter - the value of what they are buying is the same so they buy less BTC. this happens for many people all concurrently.

the seller receives my BTC and then one of two things happens.. if trading volume has increased since i sent it to them then the BTC is more valuable and they make extra money. or if the trading volume has decreased since i sent it to them then the make a little bit less money.

there is a minor gaming of the system that happens with people trying to buy while trading volume is on the rise and then sell back while trading volume starts to decrease. this is why it looks like an MLM / scam - because this obviously doesnt scale, it isnt objectively valuable to increase competition for the resource while its needed to then try to release all that was purchased back into the trading pool while no one needs it. It is just a situation that is gameable in small doses if only a few actors do it.

People buying BTC for no reason other than to sell it back creates a gap in value on the other side for the sellers who need to sell the BTC they received in exchange for goods they valued at a specific $ value. The burden will be distributed across all the late sellers as trading volume decreases.

However, they dont need to sell the BTC if they would take a loss. They could just hold it until trading volume goes back up again, assuming trading volume is just fluctuating with standard customer behavior and not a change in belief of the stability of the currency.

Ultimately, the burden only really needs to be felt by those people who are buying the coin near its peaks who are trying to flip it and then missing their sell window. Actual vendors have wiggle room, as they only lose their COGS - even though they have their Revenue tied up in BTC, so they are still making profit if they sell, just a little bit less. the traders trying to game the system short term, however, are the ones who have more at risk as they have bought the BTC with after-tax liquid funds and need to sell it at enough of a higher price so that they make more profit after transaction fees as compared to alternative investments. As the price of BTC drops, they are the ones who are forced to sell at a minor loss and move the funds to other investments they believe are gaining value to avoid keeping the value tied up beyond their investment window waiting for the price to come back up.

The value proposition for holding BTC long term is basically a claim that the use of digital currency as an exchange of value will be so much more common in the future and BTC will be used for it, such that even times of "low trading volume" then will make current all time highs (in active trading volume) look tiny, even when accounting for the increase in tradable BTC that will come with all the BTC not currently in circulation do to people holding and waiting for that time to come.

So the traders rug pulling each other is kind of just a subplot going on with crypto and completely avoidable while still investing in crypto.

	▲	didibus 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, but now, years later, there's been very little if any uptick in using BTC as an exchange of value, and many times less so for other coins. I think that's where OP might have realized that, the ideal hasn't happened and it's use case is just a game of chicken.

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PKop 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Trading it, obviously. Buying low, selling higher. Riding the repeated boom and bust cycles and getting in and out during some portion of the boom. What I'm saying is one can do this even if they have zero "belief" in crypto and know it's full of scams, scammers, and religious zealots.

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wat10000 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Why crypto? Why not one of the millions of other things you can invest in? Should I hold some onion futures as insurance with potential upside, or ride the periodic bulls of the Nepalese rupee and take profits?

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PKop 2 days ago | parent [-]

Because of the returns, volatility and the liquidity obviously. This is a stupid question. I'm not even talking about "investing", it's a trading vehicle. Short term. Those other things you mentioned are less correlated directly to changes in global liquidity and overall risk assets, so in a sense even more risky and obscure. The fact that you even suggested "holding" onion futures means you're missing the point.

Looking at the chart of Nepalese rupee I don't see any bull market going back to 2005 so what are you talking about?

"Everything is the same" is a bad thesis. Just look at the charts.

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wat10000 2 days ago | parent [-]

Sure, not everything is the same. My question is, why crypto over all millions of other things you could invest in? Are you suggesting it's a better choice because of the volatility?

(The onion futures thing was a joke. Onion futures trading is specifically illegal in the US.)

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PKop 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yes since you can extract a gain within some small portion of its bull market that's compressed into a shorter period of time relative to some other assets like gold. It means you aren't holding for as long.

Crypto rises harder and falls harder. For traders, this is very useful.

Of course I know you were just riffing, but the particular terrible nature of the assets you compared it to was worth pointing out. Since you did ask how they were any different.

Different asset classes have different uses. A thing that doesn't move around much for a long time is not so great to trade, maybe to invest. Crypto is a great sponge for liquidity.

	▲	wat10000 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Volatility might be useful but it also means you'll lose your shirt unless you have some secret technique others don't. If one can reliably ride the periodic bulls, take profits, and repeat, then they ought to be one of the wealthiest people on the planet by now.

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earnesti 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I've never understood crypto, however I'm long term Bitcoin fan and user, and don't consider it "crypto". I think Bitcoin is pretty much opposite what the typical crypto project is.

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kanbankaren 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It has proven neither to be a store of value nor medium of exchange though it is being used extensively for criminal activities.

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atomic128 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Monero is used for criminal activities, not Bitcoin. How do I know? I monitor crime, mostly but not exclusively drug crime, on Tor's hidden services: https://rnsaffn.com/zg4/ Monero is the cryptocurrency of choice.

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lokar 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not all crime is drugs.

Most of it is tax and sanctions evasion.

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rjdj377dhabsn 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What is that hidden service scanner showing with regards to monero?

	▲	atomic128 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The majority of the criminal activity on the Tor darknet is mediated by hidden services listed by that scanner. You can visit those services (using the .onion URLs) and see that Monero (XMR) is the preferred cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is sometimes used for hosting, etc., but Monero exists to avoid Bitcoin's security weaknesses and the criminals are well aware of this advantage.

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leftouterjoins 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is the same, nonsensical argument against monero that is used against end-to-end encrypted messaging. "app of choice for criminals" "makes enforcement harder" etc.

It completely ignores the benefits of Monero. Crime exists. Its not going anywhere. It is not societies job to make the crime fighter's job a walk in the park. Crimninals use cars to commit crimes, we don't outlaw cars. They use masks, the store sells masks.

The benefits of a global, decentralized and truly private and free medium of value exchange would be massive to the average person, but deterimental to those in power so they must use FUD to squash it.

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jobs_throwaway 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

How has it not been a store of value?

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thefringthing 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's a store of value in the sense that it has a non-zero price at any given moment, but when people say that one of the functions of money is to be a store of value, they mean that its value must be reasonably stable so that its future usefulness is predictable.

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VHRanger 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A store of value is an asset with as close to 0% volatility in price as possible.

Bitcoin is a speculative asset: it has very high price volatility. It is not a store of value in the proper term.

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tgsovlerkhgsel 2 days ago | parent [-]

By that standard, over the past year, Bitcoin would be a better store of value than gold...

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kanbankaren 2 days ago | parent [-]

Over the past year,

Bitcoin lost 10.8%

Gold gained 60.0%

	▲	listenallyall 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> A store of value is an asset with as close to 0% volatility in price as possible. You just proved his point. In this example, bitcoin's volatility is closer to zero than gold's. Thus, by the quoted definition of "store of value", then in this particular time frame (it would be very different going back 5, 10, 15 years), bitcoin is the better store of value.
	▲	tgsovlerkhgsel 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		qed

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outside1234 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It has an extremely volatile profile. You might as well stick your money in the SP 500 and call it is a currency.

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psunavy03 2 days ago | parent [-]

Except the S&P 500 will give you a return. The stock market is not gambling, much as some people want it to be.

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lxgr 2 days ago | parent [-]

It does go down by double-digit percentages from time to time though, which is really inconvenient if you want to, say, buy a house today or tomorrow.

There's a reason people still use USD, EUR etc. and not fractional ETFs to pay and get paid.

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psunavy03 2 days ago | parent [-]

And when it goes down the answer is to buy the dip. If you have funds needed for other things, they should be in lower-risk investments. As people get older, they should be moving large amounts of equities into bonds to lock in their gains.

There is a reason people still have things like checking and savings accounts and CDs.

	▲	lxgr 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> If you have funds needed for other things, they should be in lower-risk investments. That’s exactly my point.

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jadbox 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I worked in crypto for five years, and this resonates. Sure, you can make money hustling some hype coin, but chances are you are more likely to lose money/time in the process. Outside of very specific supply chain blockchains, 99% of the actual value I see in order of value: 1) Stablecoins [faster than ACH!], 2) Bitcoin, and in certain places, 3) Ethereum has its uses.

Even Bitcoin though is not a panacea though, as without REAL transactional use-cases, it is also prone to sudden major drops. Until people in your home state can buy a car, house, and groceries using bitcoin directly (WITHOUT a Visa bridge), the real value will be highly subjective to the whims of the market.

	▲	dingnuts 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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alternatex 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How is it opposite. In my mind they all fall under the same libertarian fantasy umbrella.

The post mentioned the idea of casually sending a billion dollars. Was that ever possible with Bitcoin? AFAIK it's less ergonomic to send money using Bitcoin than it is using traditional banking.

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efnx 2 days ago | parent [-]

It pretty easy. I personally think it’s much easier than in traditional banking.

The hard part is that for day to day things you still need an on ramp and off ramp, but that is changing as merchants accept crypto directly.

	▲	daveguy 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Messing with crypto is in no way easier than traditional banking. And traditional banking has guarantees that crypto does not.

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TZubiri 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Ethereum seems useful as well. But that's about it

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theplatman 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

the problem with ETH at its peak is that the gas fees made cost of doing anything real too costly

if there was a real use case it would have manifested itself at this point

i think the abstraction needs to be much higher to end user for this stuff to have value. having to manage your own wallet doesn't make sense.

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amrocha 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Tell me a single useful real world use case that Ethereum is being used in today, a decade after its creation

If I can solve that problem with another simpler, older technology it doesn’t count as useful. I don’t care if you can pay for things using ethereum when I can just use my credit card instead.

	▲	TZubiri 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Tether