Re:The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme
by delabay on Thursday December 09, 2021 @12:59PM
(#29500703)
Regulation will come - folks on both sides are clamoring for it. Crypto industry folks are begging the SEC to do its job, but US Gov departments need to wrap up their infighting and territory division first.
Stephen Diehl is the most eloquent skeptic I've found (stephendiehl.com/blog.html). Much of the complaints point to unregistered securities fleecing retail (absolutely happening) or just overall complaints that humans are irrational (man yells at clouds). In light of his arguments, I still side on the perspective that this is genuinely new technology capable of giving the entire globe digital property rights. It's going to be a rocky road.
Re:The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme
by haskellandchill on Thursday December 09, 2021 @05:00PM
(#29503535)
You also expect to profit disproportionately from onboarding those less fortunate you refer to. How is it fair to them or anyone? Besides the technical limitations of blockchain I find the distribution of rewards grotesque.
Skepticism considers the ways in which you assumptions could have plausible positive or negative outcomes.
I see the entirety of the DeFi "industry" being regulated to death considering how many of these protocols and DAOs behave exactly like securities or replicate existing legal structures; I see no reason that governments will not seek to regulate them the same way.
We can look at the claims of crypt enthusiasts as stores of value, which is coherent, for sure, but if we're willing to give it the benefit of doubt then we should consider other equally shaky technologies and tech scenes, which doesn't give me much hope by itself.
The place where crypto has, and will likely continue to show value, is in money laundering and tax and currency control evasion. There are all things that, while illegal, _definitely_ have value, so my lower bound here is the value of a digital instrument to bypass these controls, especially in countries in which such things are tightly regulated.
That's not an insignificant lower bound; it is at least as large as a big fraction of the remittance industry + shadow banking. It's just that it's really, really difficult to make an honest living in this industry.