What kind of idiot would put "skin in the game" in a rigged game?

What kind of idiot goes around screaming on the town square that everyone needs to repent for their sins because the apocalypse is coming, never gets to bring any credible evidence and still think is going to convince anyone?

If the game is rigged and you truly believe so, yes, it's one more reason for you to put skin in the game.

> If the game is rigged and you truly believe so, yes, it's one more reason for you to put skin in the game.

Uh, no? If you think a casino is rigged, that is a reason NOT to play, no?

What I am saying is that there plenty of gamblers that lost their money and went to complain about being cheated. "Thinking" the game is rigged is not enough. If you want to be taken seriously, either you manage to uncover the con or you use the con against themselves. Otherwise you are just a lame sad loser.

Anyway, I am sure you won't do any of that. It's much easier to just sit on your chair and fool yourself into thinking that you are the only one that knows all the answers and everyone that is trying to work on improving the state of crypto is a fool. What is off-putting about all of your comments is that you dismiss the work or research of anyone as a waste of time (and energy and natural resources) but you fail to provide any kind of compelling evidence that can reject whatever hypothesis people are trying to validate.

So you have zero concerns about Tether?

Oh, yay! Look who is still moving the goalposts... First we started about the environment, then it is the "impossibility" of layer-2 and PoS, now we want to throw Tether into the mix.

Yes, I have plenty of concerns about Tether. I tell anyone I can they should stay away from it. I also tell everyone that when Tether crashes down it is going to make Mt. Gox look like a day at the spa.

I also repeatedly tell them to avoid exchanges that can only do on-ramps in USDT and to use exchanges where they do have a proper KYC system in place.

I also repeatedly tell people that they shouldn't put money into crypto that they can not afford to lose.

I also repeatedly tell them that the idea is not to be rich by doing nothing. That buying crypto is not investing and that those trying to time the market or finding "moonshots" are stupid fools.

I also repeatedly tell people to do DCA, buy a little every month and get the money back during the boom cycles and only keep the profits to grow their stash, so that they don't feel bad about "losing" anything when the next crash inevitably comes.

I also repeatedly tell people that learning and getting involved with crypto is a matter of hedging against the vicious and corrupt financial elites that on each generation take away more and more of our agency and independence. That the price doesn't matter and that our freedom is what at stake. That there are tons of issues with the technology and there will be tons of bad actors trying to exploit both the technical and the social problems.

I tell them to expect things to crash any time, but I also tell them that even if past performance is not guarantee of future returns, so far every crash drove the price down 4x and then the boom cycle brought it back up 20x.

Depending on what country they live, I might tell them that even with all the crashes, BTC has NEVER gone down in price against the Brazilian Real since 2013.

You know what I don't tell people? That I have all the answers and they are fools for trying something on their own volition. Only douchebags do that.

So you think Tether is untrustworthy.

But do you think Tether is having any effect on the overall market?

No doubt.

What does it have to do with you wanting to get rid of all of crypto, calling useful only for extortionists and scammers and with your certainty that PoS is never going to become a viable alternative?

It has to do with why I don't "just short crypto then". The market is manipulated.

By shorting, I would assume that the market is rational, and will go down. There is no reason to assume this, since the market is irrational, and manipulated.

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" is a maxim that is repeated way before blockchain or Tether was a thing. So I understand if you don't want to take your chances to bet against crypto.

Yet, shorting Bitcoin is not the only way to put "skin in the game", and you should know that.

- There are a dozen different projects popping up every week that are genuinely focused on solving the issues that armchair specialists love to criticize, you could work on them.

- There are many crypto projects that have a more hybrid approach to have consensus and are more inclined to work with and not against the status quo (e.g, Stellar) - instead of just spewing the tired "crypto is for suckers" speech, how about finding a project that you think is deemed more worthy of respect.

- There are lots of people that need some way to store and transfer value without relying on local governments or financial systems. If you think people shouldn't use BTC for that, what alternative are you going to bring/propose?

So, to sum up: next time a discussion about BTC or crypto comes around, can you please drop the histrionics and bring something better to the table?