Re:Cryptocurrency scams cost owners $7.7B in 2021, driven by...
by ajross on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:35PM
(#29581013)
That's the core semantic confusion at the heart of this issue. Cryptocurrency protocols eliminated the need for trust for cryptocurrency transactions. So you can exchange BTC or ETH all day and night and always know who you're paying and no one can get in the middle and mess that up.
But it does nothing for transactions outside of that world. The core idea behind the "DeFi economy" is making things happen in the real world (by financing business ideas, buying 230 year old documents, etc...). And that part requires that the crypto resources be given to some kind of real actor in the real world who's going to do something real with them.
And those actors are people, and they cheat. Hence the new term of art "rugging". You can cheat people in the crypto world, in some sense, more easily than you can regular consumers precisely because they got fooled into thinking they didn't need to trust you.
But it does nothing for transactions outside of that world. The core idea behind the "DeFi economy" is making things happen in the real world (by financing business ideas, buying 230 year old documents, etc...). And that part requires that the crypto resources be given to some kind of real actor in the real world who's going to do something real with them.
And those actors are people, and they cheat. Hence the new term of art "rugging". You can cheat people in the crypto world, in some sense, more easily than you can regular consumers precisely because they got fooled into thinking they didn't need to trust you.