Games like second life and Eve did the digital currency thing way before bitcoin. How is a pretend coin you can trade for money different than a pretend game currency you can trade for money?
Because one is traded on the stock market and increasingly accepted in real world transactions?
There was and likely still is, people making livings off earning digital video game currency, selling digital assets and converting it to real money. Not to mention every person that made actual money off mmorpg marketplaces.
Seems like cryptocurrencies just remove the game part and cut right to the economic part. With games, it's the people creating the currency through their actions and time, farming gold, working in Eve, etc. With cryptocurrency it's GPUs and stuff...though I guess technically, your GPU's doing the work for the game currency too.
The concept doesn't seem to have changed, buy make-believe thing that exists only on a computer everybody agrees is worth money and the value of said make believe thing changes based on how many people have or want the make-believe thing.
It doesn't really seem very similar to cryptocurrency to me; could you explain some more about how you think it's the same?
That website appears to me to be very much like an exchange for trading EVE online ISK for USD.
The average rate seems to be between $42-$45 for 5000 ISK.
It seems to be a time based currency where its value is based on a player's willingness to spend time grinding.
DeFi kinda started as decentralized exchanges but seemingly changed into apps which allow you to leverage tokens. This is like gambling for tech geeks. Probably this will die and be replaced by gambling for non-tech savvy individuals.
The more interesting side, for me personally, is powering financial assets on the blockchain. There is still work that needs to be done here.
I’m particularly worried about how easy theft of tokens can be, but I think that is a solvable problem. Perhaps through technical means or perhaps through banks holding your assets and covering you with something similar to FDIC or insurance.
So all-in-all I don’t think it’s fair to call this one big fraud or pump-and-dump schemes. Some are yes but many aren’t. Like the dotcom bubble many will lose all invested money however the general promise and tech will deliver something world changing.
"Crypto" - not the underlying tech which is potentially interesting and may have merit in some incarnation - but buying or trading "assets" grounded in the tech, is essentially a quasi-legal pump and dump scheme right now. There is a rich history of securities law that is designed to thwart predatory investment schemes, and all of that has been circumvented by allowing people to trade in these assets.
I generally agree that adults should be able to do what they want, but I don't think we have found a way to balance that with what right now is effectively one big fraud.