[iujjkfjdkkdkf]

Gambling, e.g. casino or sports betting is different because for some it's a fun pastime and participants are (more or less) aware of what it's about.

"Crypto" - not the underlying tech which is potentially interesting and may have merit in some incarnation - but buying or trading "assets" grounded in the tech, is essentially a quasi-legal pump and dump scheme right now. There is a rich history of securities law that is designed to thwart predatory investment schemes, and all of that has been circumvented by allowing people to trade in these assets.

I generally agree that adults should be able to do what they want, but I don't think we have found a way to balance that with what right now is effectively one big fraud.

[grawprog]

How is cryptocurrency different than all the other non-real digital goods that have become valuable over the years?

Games like second life and Eve did the digital currency thing way before bitcoin. How is a pretend coin you can trade for money different than a pretend game currency you can trade for money?

Because one is traded on the stock market and increasingly accepted in real world transactions?

There was and likely still is, people making livings off earning digital video game currency, selling digital assets and converting it to real money. Not to mention every person that made actual money off mmorpg marketplaces.

Seems like cryptocurrencies just remove the game part and cut right to the economic part. With games, it's the people creating the currency through their actions and time, farming gold, working in Eve, etc. With cryptocurrency it's GPUs and stuff...though I guess technically, your GPU's doing the work for the game currency too.

The concept doesn't seem to have changed, buy make-believe thing that exists only on a computer everybody agrees is worth money and the value of said make believe thing changes based on how many people have or want the make-believe thing.

[NovemberWhiskey]

In EVE Online, the only permitted flow is as follows: you buy subscription time for real money from CCP Games. Others can then buy subscription time from you for in-game currency. In-game currency can only be spent in-game.

It doesn't really seem very similar to cryptocurrency to me; could you explain some more about how you think it's the same?

[grawprog]

https://www.playerauctions.com/eve-isk/

That website appears to me to be very much like an exchange for trading EVE online ISK for USD.

The average rate seems to be between $42-$45 for 5000 ISK.

It seems to be a time based currency where its value is based on a player's willingness to spend time grinding.

[voxic11]

That may be the only flow permitted by ccp games but it's far from the only flow possible.

[fsociety]

I will push back and say that the current wave of hype is gambling, not ponzi schemes. Some of it is pump and dump but generally there are cryptocurrencies which aren’t. The gambling aspect came to light with many of the new DeFi apps.

DeFi kinda started as decentralized exchanges but seemingly changed into apps which allow you to leverage tokens. This is like gambling for tech geeks. Probably this will die and be replaced by gambling for non-tech savvy individuals.

The more interesting side, for me personally, is powering financial assets on the blockchain. There is still work that needs to be done here.

I’m particularly worried about how easy theft of tokens can be, but I think that is a solvable problem. Perhaps through technical means or perhaps through banks holding your assets and covering you with something similar to FDIC or insurance.

So all-in-all I don’t think it’s fair to call this one big fraud or pump-and-dump schemes. Some are yes but many aren’t. Like the dotcom bubble many will lose all invested money however the general promise and tech will deliver something world changing.

[tolmasky]

It would be difficult to qualify Bitcoin as pump and dump without inadvertently also including many other assets at this point (which is perhaps a reasonable position to take!). That is to say, the more time passes, the fewer properties it exclusively shares with things we traditionally consider pump-and-dump. Bitcoin has for example now outlasted many startups (12 years and counting). Again, many people do think startups and/or the VC-ecosystem are a convoluted pump-and-dump, fair enough. Some would say that Uber is a massive pump and dump scheme that gives out rides below market value as a side-effect. I suppose you could argue that Bitcoin is similarly a pump-and-dump scheme that allows some people to for example donate to the internet archive as a side-effect. But if Bitcoin is still around 12 years from now, would we feel safe saying it's probably something "else"?

[lowbloodsugar]

Its odd that I can drop a hundred grand at the Venetian, but not in a mates start-up.

[tome]

You can't? In what jurisdiction? I dropped ten grand in a mate's (UK) startup a couple of years ago and all we needed was an accountant to formalise the transaction and issue me a share certificate.

[Sargos]

In the US you need to be very rich to do this as you need to be an "accredited investor" which means either millions in the bank or work with a Wall Street bank to get a license to invest. Normal people are prevented from investing until most of the alpha is gone.

[grncdr]

I think a lot of people find trading crypto assets at least as fun as say, slot machines.