[duskwuff]

Cynical take: a lot of it is effectively financial cargo-culting -- building structures which mimic traditional financial products, like banks, loans, and investment funds, in the (fruitless) hope that this will create value.

[kfarr]

I thought the same thing about NFT art trading. But if everyone is part of the cargo cult and the cult is making real money then is it still a cargo cult?

[ben_w]

One of the stories about how cargo cults were first noticed was someone needing to do an emergency landing, noticing a runway that wasn’t on their charts, landing, and finding the locals had built it so that aircraft full of cargo would land on it.

Given it was successful despite being a cargo cult (the plane landed QED), by symmetry the ability to make money with cryptocurrency doesn’t make it not an economic cargo cult.

(One must do more that this to show that it is a cargo cult, rather than that it is still possible for it to be, which I say despite liking the cargo cult comparison and being generally very against cryptocurrency).

[duskwuff]

> But if everyone is part of the cargo cult and the cult is making real money

False premise. Some people are making money, but only at the expense of others. There is no value being created here.