Bitcoin for example was created to be electronic cash, but today most people treat is as a "digital gold" and a store of value, but not as something to be used in regular day-to-day transactions.
And Dogecoin was indeed created as a joke, but it doesn't stop it from being used to buy things (3% of all BitPay purchases[1]), and in contrast to Bitcoin the community wants to keep it affordable. So in a way, you can argue that Dogecoin follows Satoshi's vision more than even Bitcoin does.
~2000 for dogecoin.
Most of the purchases are gift cards ( a method for money laundering)
That kinda sums up how useful it is to add crypto to your e-commerce.
There are less than 10 x amount of purchases through crypto than amount of different crypto.
Correct, and that is zero (or really negative) value. I see crypto as a plague on productive society. People think they can just get rich by investing in currency. It's insane. Value is being destroyed with all the attention wasted in the space. Governments need to step in and protect their citizens from this nonsense.
Why is it you think the government should be involved in this when they are demonstrably incompetents in keeping our basic Credit Cards and Checking Accounts safe from scammers and fraudulent attacks? Especially not keeping our elderly population safe.
They can't even keep public emails safe from a certain Secretary of State.
They can't keep a single man in a Prison safe from 'suiciding' while waiting for the court case of the century.
They can't even keep the phone companies accountable to the Do Not Call list for spam calls.
They cannot keep telco and cable companies from price gauging consumers for internet while at the same time enforcing lock downs that keep people at home- with children- that require internet access and lots of bandwidth. Many states holding the state residents hostage from any sort of options of providers.
If the crypto rush is the new gold rush and it is a burgeoning market, why should - or how could, the government save people from their personal decisions. Crypto itself is not fraud. We have laws against fraud if one specific instance is found to be fraudulent. Why should we make new laws to save people from their bad decisions? Honestly, those bad decisions started with the elected officials that aren't held accountable to the public as it is. So we're going to let incompetents govern incompetently for what exists and ask them to govern competently for NEW things? How peculiar.
The U.S. govt, banks, and credit card companies have issues but there are also a lot of protections for the average person. The govt does get involved when it comes to finance, and that's fine. Things like tobacco and alcohol get regulated, and that's fine.
Cryptocurrencies aren't this magical thing that can't (or shouldn't) be touched by government. It was always a matter of time before the slow machine caught up.
> why should - or how could, the government save people from their personal decisions.
Because having a non-trivial amount of citizens losing their life savings on snakeoil, get-rich-quick schemes is a net negative for society. Plenty of laws and regulations exist -precisely- to prevent or save people from their bad decisions. That's what a government and society is -for-, not to say "too bad, kid, you should've known".
Look at the scam surrounding tether and all of the warnings that have been put out to warn crypto holders.
One of the roles of the SEC is to protect against piramid schemes and crypto has a lot of similarities with it.
Ps. Crypto is not "new", it's more than a decade old.
Believing the government to be incompetent is a self-fulfilling prophecy:
- Only the incompetent or apathetic will choose to work for government and take the hit to their personal reputation.
- Underfunding leads to underperformance which leads to perceptions of incompetence which leads to underfunding.
- True incompetence, corruption, etc. start getting ignored as just "that's how the government is," so nobody tries to fix anything.
- Those who have a financial interest in reducing the capabilities of government will "starve the beast" and make it progressively more incompetent.
There are many functions of government that, though they could always do better, make the world better than it would be in their absence: fire departments, paramedics, infrastructure management (in areas where this is actually done reasonably well), utilities, financial crimes enforcement, agricultural and pharmaceutical quality enforcement, etc.
We're already pretty far down this road of destruction of competence, so I'm not sure how to turn things around, but that doesn't mean we have to keep driving forward into the land of feudalistic anarchocapitalism.
We don't.
> Underfunding leads to underperformance which leads to perceptions of incompetence which leads to underfunding.
Incompetence leads to underfunding. If they would get their shit together I would be fine with funding them (obv not for regulating the crypto market but just in general).
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-07-30-vw-18804-...
Fiat works because a government for and by the people backs it. The government provides protection, services, and a means for the citizens to be productive.
Crypto provides none of this. Only a pyramid shape for the early adopters to get rich off the latecomers.
Nobody elects crypto whales or maintainers. You can't force them out of office. That's a bad structure for society.
Crypto is far from equitable and democratized. It's just a bunch of "finance bros" with code and cryptography, and all the power is at the top. It even lacks the release valves that fiat has.
Here's the problem - replace [currency] with any of many other things and the statement is still valid. You need to explain why crypto specifically deserves more hate than, say, Forex or options trading.
If you feel strongly about it, you should short Bitcoin. I wouldn't recommend doing so, but if that is your conviction you have the option to put your money where your mouth is.
We ban and heavily regulate plenty of financial stuff so that people don't get taken advantage of. Payday loan regulations/bans are a good example.
The driver Out Of Position 2 airbag test comes to mind as one that causes worse airbags/safety, and increases cost.
Subprime? Insider trading? Organised crime?
They are all adults making decisions… why even have police? How much crime is committed by kids anyway?
Of course stealing and fraud and such should be illegal. But if I want to squander my money on bullshit, that is my right.
Ponzu schemes are a crime… are you against that regulation?
That's not what you're arguing for though. You're arguing for laws against participating in risky behavior by participants, regardless whether that risky behavior is a scam or not, on the grounds that they could lose money.
We don't ban fraud because people lose money, we ban fraud because people are deliberately misled, their rights are violated and they are stolen from, deliberately.
"We should ban people from taking risks", "no, I don't think so", "oh so you think fraud should be legal?" It's exhausting honestly. You should be able to come up with a better argument than this.
So if we “know” that USDT is a scam, and people are being deliberately misled then we should define it as fraud, or come up with some kind of new regulation. (By your own logic).
So we agree.
USDT is fraud. Which is illegal, so you are agreeing. Just you interpreted what they said as “introduce new law” whereas I interpreted it much more literally as public prosecutors should be taking action.
Well, there's a pretty big universe of meaning.
> Subprime
What is more wrong? Banks lending to people they know they can't afford it because they think the risk/reward ratio is worth it? Or governments not letting them feel the effects of the markets reaction?
> Insider trading
Honestly who gives a shit? This is the type of thing that would be quickly priced into the market.
> Organised crime
Are we talking about selling drugs? Or murder? Or sex trafficking. Because I have very different opinions between the first and the second two.
> why even have police
See above.
Anyone who seriously believes in a future of cryptocurrency should be calling this crap out instead of brushing everything bad about it under the rug and labeling it as FUD. The problem: very few people actually believe in cryptocurrency, most are looking for a quick buck instead.
This is known.
> Real people will get burned, badly.
Welcome to the game, there is a learning curve.
> You can't even depend on these exchanges to actually handle high trading volume when there are price crashes.
If they're centralized, you mean.
> It's honestly a joke that anyone trusts this system as it currently stands.
It's easy to distrust a system you don't understand.
> Anyone who seriously believes in a future of cryptocurrency should be calling this crap out
If you interacted with anyone in crypto you'd realize that they do.
> The problem: very few people actually believe in cryptocurrency, most are looking for a quick buck instead.
Why is that a problem? The ecosystem needs technologist and "market makers" (including individual traders in this) to function.
> welcome to the game.
Is this a game, or something useful, a currency system? If it's a game all your opponents are right. Truth is, some people get burned with every risk that people take, and everyone gets burned by some risk they take at some point, it is why most of us are risk averse. People get burned crossing the street.
> If they're centralized
Find me a single decentralized exchange that has the liquidity to handle high trading volume.
> It's easy to distrust a system that you don't understand
You're assuming detractors don't understand. It is self supporting fallacious logic, "if you don't agree with me that's because I know more about it than you"
As far as unaddressed points, to talk about crypto getting manipulated and pretend that heavily regulated markets like the housing market or stock market don't get manipulated is hilarious. Every market gets manipulated, but people pretend like the government solves that and cryptocurrency is the only market where this happens.
All in all I like cryptocurrency, and I don't like regulation for the most part. Before someone out there decides that this means I don't think murder should be illegal, I do, so no sense going down that line of discussion. But I don't think protecting people from predators is the same as protecting people from themselves, one is within the realm of a justice system and the other is not.
Do you not think the current economic system is a game? Because it is.
> single decentralized exchange...
Uniswap had no liquidity issues for blue chips with the recent crash.
Clearly there can be more liquidity in the market, but that’s not the argument.
> detractors don’t understand
Why would I think differently when they never do?
Assuming the rest of the response isn’t directed at me.
If they're worried about price influence by social media influencers, this is also a problem for other coins. Elon tweets, and the price of BTC varies. It's not just "meme coins" that's susceptible to this.
The logic that's been applied here is highly suspect to me.