@jeffcliff That, you are correct about.
There have been, over the years, many opportunities for mutually beneficial trade, and the construction of systems that facilitate it as well as other beneficial things. If you're an honest person, people are willing to work together with you, and not everything that involves applied complicated math is a scam. Applied cryptography actually allows 'good enough' solution of some tough problems.
Ask @Recorderist if I ever scammed him or anyone else. He's known me for all of that time.
And if I'm being scammed, may this scam continue as long as I live.
@jeffcliff @Recorderist So you were one of the lucky ones who got in on the Ponzi scheme early enough to profit 🤷♂️
While I agree that the general idea of using cryptographic currency has its benefits and is the inevitable next step for money, the current state of the "cryptocurrency" industry is manifestly not that. The continued reliance on the failed blockchain data structure and the lack of regulation has caused an unchecked proliferation of confidence men, self-dealing, and rug pulls. And that's before you get to the energy usage in a world desperate for more renewable production.
For cryptocurrency to be truly viable, it needs to have minimal impact to financial and energy infrastructure, and needs to be backed by a reputable authority that people trust to not SBF their funds away.
People have been calling it a 'ponzi' scheme since back then, too, but here's the thing: it's not a ponzi scheme. It's a currency. It has value when traded.
> the current state of the "cryptocurrency" industry is manifestly not that
The state of cryptocurrency (no scare quotes needed) is that it's a massive enterprise with 10s of millions if not more people involved. Every week I hear of new projects, new businesses, new governments finding ways to engage their citizens with it. And it's been like this for a decade.
>. The continued reliance on the failed blockchain data structure
The blockchain has not failed. It has worked with close to 100% uptime since jan 2009.
> and the lack of regulation has caused an unchecked proliferation of confidence men, self-dealing, and rug pulls.
Sure. If you give people freedom, people will use that freedom how they will. It's not my problem that there are corrupt people in the world -- the problem is how to find honest people and build a world with them. Which I've done.
> And that's before you get to the energy usage in a world desperate for more renewable production.
Using energy is a good thing. We should endeavour to go further up the Kardashev scale now lower on it. Cryptocurrency has helped raise the scale of mass production of renewable energy significantly. Crypto is also the *only* way to incentivize universal small scale methane elimination, which is one of the most promising ways out of our destabalizing of the climate, once it's spun up enough.
> For cryptocurrency to be truly viable,
This isn't 2010 anymore. Cryptocurrency is not some theoretical "maybe it would work in theory if we did this this and this" - it works, today, right now. It is viable.
> it needs to have minimal impact to financial and energy infrastructure
No, it doesn't.
>, and needs to be backed by a reputable authority
Fuck no. The whole point is that "reputable" authority is not necessary.
> that people trust to not SBF their funds away.
SBF was a bank. It was exactly the kind of institution cryptocurrency allows us to replace.