Banks running out of money and just failing outright leaving their customers high and dry for one. In addition to this, the scams, the lack of any consumer protection. The hype bubbles, the sheer amount of personal faith that is required to have confidence etc etc.
Also the lack of standards and the terrible promise of decentralization, yet the reality of centralized markets and brokers. (This is a more modern failure).
Difference here is I don't think the government is going to step in and regulate them so they're safer. I think the government is going to treat this all as fraud eventually
I firmly believe crypto is useless. Unlike gold (with metallic and useful properties) or other floated currencies that map back to an economy. Crypto essentially represents spent energy.
If crypto, esp BTC was able to be back converted into the energy used to produce it, that'd be great. But it can't so it's just a net negative IMO.
If people don't understand stone age economics and why gold was seen as valuable even before modern electronics, oh boy... How do they make sense of more modern concepts? We often discuss a lack of education, especially in terms of science and technology. The situation regarding economics education is so dire most aren't even aware there is an issue.
Does that explain why gold has been used to make coins and ingots, held in large reserves by governments, etc.? Surely the value of gold is and has for most of human history been much higher than what would be expected if it were merely a nice metal to make pretty jewelry with.
> Does that explain why gold has been used to make coins and ingots
Over say, Iron?
Yes. Because iron rusts. An iron-coin does not last forever. Copper, Silver, and Gold are easier to take care of, but even old copper/silver coins tarnish and corrode away with time.
Gold does not. A gold coin made 100 years ago would be as brilliant today as it was back then... with minimal maintenance.
There's a _REASON_ why gold was chosen, all across the world, from MesoAmerica, to Europe, to Asia, as a unit of currency.
This is a disingenuous argument because you pretend like gold has no downsides. The major, and very real downside of gold is that it's costly to store. The risk of confiscation is high unless you protect yourself with weapons. (And, in that case, doesn't that make weapons more valuable?)
If that's your worry (and not that you shouldn't), consider that the risk of confiscation of your bank balance or stock accounts is far higher given that those are merely entries in a database held by a third party.
>Jewellery is a store of value with additional attached utility.
we're in the bi-hourly crypto hate thread. the threshold for being useful is set to "is it necessary for basic survival?". "a store of value with additional attached utility" doesn't make the cut, and must be banned to atone for our carbon sins
My Nylon strap for my watch is pleasant and cheap. But the very material itself didn't exist before the 1930s IIRC.
If we're talking about materials that existed even in 2000BCE, gold is one of those metals that you could wear all the time, and never get a rash, allergic reaction, or otherwise get itchy.
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Glass isn't flexible or malleable. Even if we use fiberglass today, its a carcinogen and very bad for the human body. Certainly not a material you want to be wearing all the time.
It may not have been useful, but people from all time periods and all corners of the globe agree that it sure is pretty. That appeal counts for something.
I've been thinking about how the original vision for cryptocurrency was basically "once this exists, governments will fail because they can't tax it" and how far reality had strayed from that.
It only gained popularity by people hoping to get rich in regular currency from the value changing. It morphed into being basically another type of security that gets traded and rises and falls with the general stock market.
And that's ignoring all the scam and theft that has happened. I used to feel bad I didn't buy bitcoin when I was younger, but these days I feel good that I stayed away from cryptocurrency in general.
> I've been thinking about how the original vision for cryptocurrency was basically "once this exists, governments will fail because they can't tax it" and how far reality had strayed from that.
mind if a propose this as an example of a strawman on wikipedia? it doesn't get any better
How are scams and hype a thing only since 200 years ago? I'm trying to understand but the comment makes no sense if you know the history of finance.
Btw it's somewhat ironic because Celsius is essentially a bank and not a blockchain company at all. They've simply found this niche where they're largely unregulated because they're dealing with tokens that are not considered legal tender in most countries and have super shady business practice when you look into it deeper. So this is essentially the old model, branded as blockchain and taking money from people who hold cryptocurrency but do not understand it. The likes who buy Dogecoin on Robinhood.
If lending business were on-chain, everyone could look at the exact figures and observe the risks. Maker vaults aren't defaulting, are they? Also a smart contract once securely deployed can not be arbitrarily stopped. So there is no chance for anyone freeze your funds like this centralized platform does now. These are exactly the problems blockchains can solve, if people only understood and used them. With traditional banks, we've tackled the problem trying to use government regulation, but we all know it doesn't really work. Contracts that can not easily be gamed are a much better solution, at least for the base layer of financial system.
That's the regulation I mentioned. I don't know these banks but would guess it's because they were insured. In the US and the EU all banks have to be insured to a degree. That's not necessarily true elsewhere, people around the world regularly do lose money in bank defaults. And entire countries can go bankrupt too, because the system ultimately has no failsafe. People in more stable countries like to dismiss that but depending on where you're from you can find examples of the entire nation losing practically everything only a few decades ago.
Of course you could do the same with companies like Celsius and insure and regulate them better, but in the end customers are paying for it, it doesn't come free. Also big banks do still fail, are you aware how much money has been paid for bank bailouts just in the past decades? The thing is many don't notice they're paying for it, because they don't understand where the money comes from.
My argument is that Celsius would never have gotten as big if the customers knew what happens with their money. This business model shouldn't even be legal, same as what many more traditional banks are involved in. In fact, often it isn't legal in the first place even according to current regulation. But once they get to a certain size, laws don't apply to them as they apply to the rest of us. This is a problem, regulation is clearly not working properly in the banking sector.
I had around $47,000 in Wachovia in 2008. I was a Wachovia customer since 1991. I didn't lose a penny. Wells Fargo bought Wachovia and over the next year they automatically transitioned us to Wells Fargo accounts with the same login/password, account numbers, and my account balance. I'm still with Wells Fargo 14 years later and everything is fine.
Crypto solves a bunch of problems of its own making while retaining all the human problems (fraud, etc) of the existing banking system without hundreds of years of regulations and policy to stabilize systems and attempt accountability.
Tether is analogous to the gold standard but without verifying the gold exists in reserves, or ever existed at all. Exchanges are facilitating billions in money laundering and fraud while eating massive fees and paying millions to founders. Transactions can be hidden behind shell wallets/groups and filtered through many exchanges reducing transparency and increasing odds of successful illegal activity.
There is a ton of legitimate criticism just looking at the fraud side of Crypto and how lack of regulation in that space enables a ton of crime. It's often drowned out by PR or the next big blockchain based thing that seems flashy but still comes with all the same problems as regular physical money.
It's like asking your IT group to install spyware on users workstations instead of respecting or enforcing HR policy. It's a people problem, not a tech problem.
I don't see why all countries would outlaw "crypto".
I hate that term for it's semantic shift, but that kind of rebellious tribalism fueled this drum beat.
Each class of cryptocurrency technologies, institutions and securities has an analog in the list above. And each will lead to new protections. Maybe Big Brokerage will invest at most X% in cryptocurrencies but not ones repackaged into NFTs.
Etc.
This isn't a bull market, or a bear. To borrow a perhaps racist or outdated term, it's a Buffalo market, and regulators are at the buffet.
