They are very unlike other currencies, in that almost all of them are rigged for a period of rapid hype-based growth followed by a deflationary apocalypse where late adopters are squeezed out by those who perpetuated the ponzi scheme (which is to say, nearly the entire community aside from Satoshi and maybe Vitalik Buterin)

> They are very unlike other currencies, in that almost all of them are rigged [...]

So you're actually agreeing with me, that crypto currencies are not a scam. The number of currencies is also irrelevant even in a more colloquial sense. What's more important is how much is really invested in a given currency and the bad tokens are a niche. Ponzi scheme (or just new) coins are usually for gamblers and not in broad use and are comparable to jettons in a casino. Are jettons a scam in that sense?

We should be alarmed about any money system that has the properties that give way to gambling and ponzi-like systems. I would not hesitate to criticize both the money system and the con artists who took advantage of it, when it's so clear that the money system's rules have such inevitable outcomes. I don't mind abolishing any of the money systems that turn out to be harmful and are pushed without broad sociopolitical consent.

Our current money system has the properties that give way to gambling. You can't pretend that gambling didn't exist before crypto.

Very few people are swapping yen and euros trying to get rich from them.

The standard gambling that happens with "our current money system" can also happen with self-written IOUs. This kind of gambling isn't about the money, per se, whereas with crypto you get an additional kind of gambling on the currency itself.

For Yen and Euro it makes less sense since these are relatively stable, but for less stable currencies that is actually a thing. The definition of gambling you are talking about is built into our monetary system.

I give you the point that it is harder (not impossible) to enforce any regulations on these currencies. It's like cash in that sense, but it has easy access and there are plenty of options of cash, which is unlike regular cash.

No, the casino is the scam that's why the house always wins and just like cryptocurrencies as soon as you build one the incentives are to make it an even more predatory scam. That's why they're variously illegal or heavily regulated

Sounds like pre–Civil War U.S. currency.

Yes.... and it was a terrible system, not having a money system with any sort of democratic political controls on its supply and demand. Through a modern lens, we should view the thousands of years of gold coin currency as a human system that was ripe to cause artificial limitations and excesses of resource availability for populations that participated in the system. With a time machine, we should advise people of the past that a much better system -- clay tablets with a list of creditors and debtors, with regular debt cancellations/easements as needed to maintain stability -- had already been invented, possibly thousands of years before the invention of coins.

Funny thing about crypto enthusiasts is that they'll claim cryptocurrencies are currencies when it's convenient then claim they are "assets" or "a store of value" when it's not.

Obvious strawman.

> they'll claim cryptocurrencies are currencies when it's convenient then claim they are "assets" or "a store of value" when it's not.

It's been a while since I took an econ class, but aren't all currencies, by definition, assets / stores of value?

Edit: Oh, you mean they're only assets but don't meet other criteria to be currencies?

Yeah, your edit. It's a common refrain among Bitcoiners when faced with the deficiencies of their scambucks.

How is Bitcoin a scam for you. Tell me.

I didn't say Bitcoin is a scam. It's almost exclusively used for scams and other crimes, though.

You said "Bitcoiners" and "their scambucks" in one sentence.

Before eCommerce took off the internet was almost exclusively used for scams and arguably that is still the case even if not exclusively it's still a big part, so we should declare the internet a scam I suppose.

Disclaimer: I am not even heavily invested (in any sense). It's just a means to pay for stuff for me.

> aren't all currencies, by definition, assets / stores of value?

Yes and no. Modern currencies separate the medium of exchange and unit of account functions, on one hand, from the store of value and standard of deferred payment functions, on the other hand. Paper and deposit dollars are the former, Treasuries are the latter. Someone complaining about inflation eroding their cash under a mattress's value is literally using it wrong.

There’s over 1.8 million crypto tokens. You can find one for any concept that’s been thought up.